Georges Blond
Encyclopedia
Georges BlondGeorges Blond (born Jean-Marie Hoedick 11 July 1906 in Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

 - died 16 March 1989 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer. A prolific writer of mostly history but also other topics including fiction, Blond was also involved in far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

 political activity.

Early years

Blond initially came to attention as a disciple of Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation...

, and when reviewing Carrel's book L'Homme, cet inconnu for the journal Le petit dauphinois commented that Carrel was one of the few writers who would genuinely alter who people thought of themselves. He became noted as a sympathiser with fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 during the mid 1930s. His works regularly appeared in L'Insurgé, a literary journal for writers on the far right edited in the late 1930s by Thierry Maulnier
Thierry Maulnier
Thierry Maulnier was a French journalist, essayist, dramatist, and literary critic.-Before 1940:...

.

Second World War

A qualified naval engineer, Blond enlisted in the French Navy
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

 during the early stages of the Second World War but following the Battle of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...

 was interned in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Already strongly anti-English, Blond was embittered by his experiences and following repatriation he took up his pen against Britain, publishing the highly critical book L'Angleterre en geurre: Recit d'un marin francais in 1941. As a result of works like this Blond was one of only a handful of French political writers adjudged acceptable by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 and as a result his books continued to be in print under the Vichy government.

He became a writer for the collaborationist journal Je suis partout
Je suis partout
Je suis partout was a French newspaper founded by Jean Fayard, first published on 29 November 1930. It was placed under the direction of Pierre Gaxotte until 1939...

, although Blond was associated with a "soft" tendency led by the likes of Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach
Robert Brasillach was a French author and journalist. Brasillach is best known as the editor of Je suis partout, a nationalist newspaper which came to advocate various fascist movements and supported Jacques Doriot...

 and Henri Poulain towards the end of the Second World War. In contrast to the "hard" tendency of Pierre-Antoine Cousteau
Pierre-Antoine Cousteau
Pierre-Antoine Cousteau was a French far right polemicist and journalist. He was the brother of the famous explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.-Leftist activism:...

 and Lucien Rebatet
Lucien Rebatet
Lucien Rebatet was a French author, journalist and intellectual, an exponent of fascism and virulent antisemite.-Early life:...

, Blond's group wanted to de-emphasise associations with Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 and instead concentrate on literature, sensing that Nazi defeat was imminent.

Post-war activity

His link to collaboration damaged Blond's reputation in the initial post-war period and his name appeared on a blacklist published by the Comite National d'Ecrivains in September 1945. He suffered dégradation nationale
Dégradation nationale
The dégradation nationale was a sentence introduced in France after the Liberation. It was applied during the épuration légale which followed the fall of the Vichy regime....

in 1949 for his involvement in collaboration. Nonetheless Blond soon became a widely read and published author again with works such as his 1981 book Histoire de la Légion étrangère, the story of the French Foreign Legion
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion is a unique military service wing of the French Army established in 1831. The foreign legion was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces...

, receiving widespread attention and praise.

In 1965 Blond was one of a number of far right figures to lend his name to a petition that appeared in La Dépêche du Midi
La Dépêche du Midi
La Dépêche du Midi is a regional daily newspaper published in Toulouse in south-west France, with 17 editions for different areas of the Midi-Pyrénées region.The paper first appeared on 2 October 1870, when it was called La Dépêche de Toulouse...

, a newspaper controlled by René Bousquet
René Bousquet
René Bousquet was a high-ranking French civil servant, who served as secretary general to the Vichy regime police from May 1942 to 31 December 1943.-Biography:...

, in support of Francois Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...

 at a time when the avowedly left-wing politician maintained links to the Republican Party of Liberty
Republican Party of Liberty
The Republican Party of Liberty was a right-of-center French political party created at the Liberation and absorbed by the National Centre of Independents and Peasants in 1951...

, a group descended from Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...

.

Works

Georges Blond was an extremely prolific writer. This list is not exhaustive and is not classified in a chronological order of publication (release dates are tentative).
  • History
    • L'Épopée silencieuse
    • Le Survivant du Pacifique - Histoire du Porte-avions "Enterprise"
    • Convois vers l'URSS
    • Le Débarquement
    • L'Agonie de l'Allemagne
    • Les Princes du ciel
    • La Grande Aventure des Migrateurs
    • La Grande Aventure des Éléphants
    • L'Homme, ce Pèlerin
    • J'ai vu vivre l'Amérique
    • L'Amiral Togo (samouraï de la mer)
    • Histoire pittoresque de notre alimentation (with Germaine Blond)
    • La Légion étrangère
    • La Marne
    • La Grande Aventure des Baleines
    • La Seconde Guerre mondiale (3 volumes)
    • Histoire de la flibuste
    • Rien n'a pu les abattre
    • Pétain : Biographie
    • La Grande Armée du Drapeau noir
    • Verdun (L'Enfer) (Prix Richelieu)
    • L'Angleterre en guerre
    • L'Agonie de l'Allemagne
    • Les Grandes Aventures des Océans ( 2 volumes)
    • La Grande Aventure de l'Océan Indien
    • Les Naufragés de Paris
    • La Beauté et la Gloire : Nelson et Emma Hamilton
    • Les Enragés de Dieu
    • L'Aventure du langage
    • Pauline Bonaparte
    • Moi Laffite, dernier roi des flibustiers
    • La Grande Armée, 1804-1815
    • Méditerranée (où se joue notre destin)
    • Attaquez le Tirpitz
    • La fin du Graf Spee
    • Les Cent-Jours

  • Novels
    • L'amour n'est qu'un plaisir
    • Journal d'un imprudent
    • Le jour se lève à l'ouest
    • L'île des phoques

  • Novellas
    • La beauté morte
    • Mary Marner
    • L'Ile de la déesse

  • Photographic Albums
    • D'Arromanches à Berlin
    • La Vie surprenante des phoques
    • La Vallée des Castors
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