Wine and War: WWII France Through the Eyes of Vintners

Introduction: Wine as a Window into Wartime France

Sometimes, by focusing on a relatively minute or specific detail about a nation, a historian can reveal a great deal about that nation's history — and about the larger panorama of world history against which the minor, personal dramas of individuals were played out. So it is in Wine and War. By focusing on the experience of French winegrowers during the Second World War, the authors Donald and Peter Kladstrup illuminate the broader struggle of non-Nazi-identified French farmers to retain their unique identity, even under German Vichy governance and the domination of their traditional modes of life.

Nazi Plunder and the Protection of French Wine

Ironically, despite Nazi assertions of German cultural superiority in all matters, this assertion did not extend to wine — thus requiring French wine producers to protect their stores as the Nazis attempted to plunder this great national treasure for their own palates. Many vintners did so with a zeal that is both heroic in the reader's eye and yet discomforting, considering that other French people, as well as gentile nationals in other nations under the Nazi grip, used this same sort of concealment to protect Jews rather than wine.

Regarding France's Jewish population, fear for the self rather than compassion reigns in the words quoted by the authors. One French farmer notes, "when the crunch comes, we will all be in the same sack," as the Jews, with gleeful pessimism (p. 30). This is despite the fact that "within two months of coming to power, Vichy published the first of a series of decrees making Jews second-class citizens" — second to French gentiles as well as Germans — as "immigrant Jews were stripped of their rights, constantly harassed and threatened with deportation" (p. 51). The Vichy regime's antisemitic legislation thus formed a deeply troubling backdrop against which the vintners' protective energies were directed almost entirely toward their cellars.

Ordinary Men, Not Heroes: The Moral Ambiguity of the Vintners

Regardless of the rarity of their wine stores, one must always remember that these farmers were ordinary men protecting their family's treasures and livelihoods, not wartime heroes willing to sacrifice a lifetime of economic security for the oppressed Jews of France — much less their own lives, which would have been endangered had they chosen to shelter persecuted people. The authors do not make the farmers out to be heroes; they simply highlight the interesting nature of their stories. The fact that many who trod the grapes for wine historically died from inhaling poisonous gas fumes produced by the fermentation process still carries an eerie historical resonance that goes unobserved by the authors (p. 18).

Many of these vintners were initially so oblivious to the historical cannons not far from their vineyards that covert references to Hitler in 1939, during a wine conference, by the lead speakers, were met with confused glances (pp. 14–15). Given the economic and human destruction wrought by the "war to end all wars," the farmers, a reader is apt to think, perhaps should not have been so sanguine about their livelihoods.

Conclusion: Culture, Humanity, and the Limits of the Book

By looking at the war from the perspective of ordinary citizens rather than generals or even soldiers, a reader gains a sense of the importance of preserving peacetime life and culture during wartime. The fragility of culture and economic livelihood in an industry where a cold snap can ruin a crop, as it nearly did in 1939, becomes a parallel for the fragility of the human body and spirit during times of war (p. 13). Still, one wishes that the greatest treasure referenced in the book's subtitle, from the farmers' point of view, would have been viewed as France's human currency and flesh rather than its wine casks and vineyards.