Hubert Wolf, The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal

Abstract

image of the Resistance' (83), whereas Tillion's ethnographic training allowed her to highlight its 'unifying character. . . in which former social and ideological divisions might be transcended' (85). Stephanie Hare's 2003 interviews with former Paris police prefect Maurice Papon form the basis for an investigation into the complexities of oral history and the 'behavioral codes and mentalities of the French civil service' that shaped his defence of his wartime activities as a 'duty to obey'. His defence, she concludes, was a combination of 'self-justification and ''business as usual'' for the state', revealing the shared responsibility of Papon and state bureaucrats (100).The third section, 'Toeing the Party Line', considers how party membership affected a variety of writers, intellectuals and artists. Angela Kershaw considers the struggles of the re´sistant and writer Edith Thomas to reconcile her commitments to the French Communist Party with its constraints on her activities. Jean-Baptiste Bruneau asks why contemporaries found the political beliefs of the rightwing writer Drieu La Rochelle so hard to pin down, revealing that the 'problems in understanding and recognizing fascism derived from a serious inability to grasp its impact on French politics' (122). Finally, the art historian Sarah Wilson examines how communist party membership affected the political and representational strategies of several painters engaged in anticolonial struggles on the eve of the Algerian War.This collection offers stimulating insights into mid-twentieth century political life, reminding us of the embodied aspects -physical, verbal, and visual -of political engagement as well as the persistent tensions between individual and collective action that typified the period between 1930 and 1950. More important, the contributions illustrate how the political polarization that preceded and followed the Second World War compelled many people to commit to a party or cause, even when this resulted in disrupted family life and professional life or class and ethnic identities, producing the competing memories of the period that persist today.