ABSTRACT
Оп February 24, 1943, the poet Maurice Вlanchard noted in his diary: "Thirty-two months today".2 This recalls the way that the Free French broadcaster Jacques Duchesne marked the passing of the Occupation [гот London; each evening оп the ВВС, Duchesne reminded his listeners that it was the nth day of "the French people's struggle [ог liЬегаtiоп".З Whether the тетогу was а stimulus to resist (in the next breath Blanchard daydreamed about killing а German) ог а pretext [ог submission (as we have noted, Petain also reminded himself еуегу day of what had happened in 1940), it is incontestable that May-June 1940 remained а looming presence so long as the German occupiers were present. The concept of defeat as а collective turning point had ап immediacy and concreteness in those years that it lost as soon as the Occupation ended.
