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Program Title
Credits Executive Producer: Ted Childs Producer: Chris Kelly Director: David Wheatley, Malcolm Mowbray Intro MONSIGNOR RENARD/Episode 2/Intro by Russell Baker The year is 1940. The German occupation of France isn't yet as brutal as it will later be. Still, there are signs of trouble in the town of St. Josse. Black market operations are beginning. Food is being stolen. French boys spoiling for trouble are beginning to taunt young German soldiers. A French girl has rejected the local boy who was courting her, and is now obviously enchanted by a German soldier. People of the town have started sending letters to the police denouncing friends and neighbors. And most dangerous of all, an underground resistance movement is beginning to form. Later in World War Two, when the resistance was in full flower throughout France, the Germans in some areas indiscriminately shot civilians in retaliation for Resistance attacks, but things are nowhere near this stage in Monsignor Renard's parish. His chief concern at the moment is putting together the annual parade in honor of the town's patron saint. Monsignor Renard, second installment. Extro MONSIGNOR RENARD/Episode 2/Extro by Russell Baker The political passions dividing Monsignor Renard's fictional town reflect the political divisions that had paralyzed France in the 1930s. In those years, while Hitler was turning Germany into a European powerhouse, France was becoming a comic model of ineffectual government. French Communists and socialists fought each other for power, and both fought French fascists. Parliamentary democracy like Britain's was widely considered absurd. It had certainly failed in France. French Communists were devoted to Stalin in Moscow. When Stalin shocked the world by signing a treaty that made him Hitler's ally, the Communists were in a humiliating bind. Hitler represented everything that Communists hated. How could they stay loyal to Stalin without repudiating their history? Well, they did. They loved Stalin more than history. The Communist to whom Renard offers his eggs may still hate Hitler, but he doesn't want the English to win the war, either. It wasn't until Hitler double-crossed Stalin and invaded Russia in 1941 that communists suddenly became devoted to the Allied cause. Then they became some of the fiercest fighters in the resistance movement against Hitler. As for anti-Semitism, it had deep roots in France. There were still people who hated the Jewish Dreyfus for being innocent of the espionage charge for which the army had framed him, and sent him to Devil's Island in 1894. With so many political passions dividing it, it's no wonder that in the twenty years leading up to World War Two, France had no fewer than forty-three governments. I'm Russell Baker. Goodnight.  Episode number: 1 2 3
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