Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France

Historians have devoted considerable attention to the Second World War as a ‘total war,’ but rarely have considered nature as an integral part of that narrative. Chris Pearson's compact and thoughtful monograph, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France, analyzes the war's impact on the forests, mountains, wetlands and other natural spaces in France, both throughout the actual wartime period and well into the postwar era. Pearson compellingly demonstrates that ‘nature mattered’ in Vichy France, as a material space that was tapped for its resources and that witnessed physical conflict, and as a cultural and imaginary location that was claimed by both Vichy and the Resistance as the basis for future French recovery. In the process, Pearson also stakes a claim for why nature should matter for historians re-assessing Vichy and the French experience in the Second World War. Scarred Landscapes's first two chapters offer parallel narratives about Vichy's attempts to manage and mobilize ‘wastelands’ and forests. Pearson notes that Vichy aggressively waged a ‘war on wasteland’ to increase agricultural productivity, and encouraged a ‘return to the land’ as a means of discovering ‘authentic’ France (p. 16). In similar fashion, Vichy authorities envisioned forests as a key resource and as a useful space for ‘regenerating’ French youth. Yet Pearson demonstrates how Vichy's ambitions were rarely matched by results. Uncultivated land expanded in scope during the war, and the very term ‘wasteland’ – or maquis – became reclaimed as a positive space of resistance. Forests, too, could not be exploited efficiently, due in part to interference from German and Italian soldiers, and were also claimed physically and rhetorically by Vichy's opponents.