Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup

World War II: Historical book review. Kladstrup, Donald & Peter Kladstrup. Wine and War.

Sometimes by focusing on a relatively minute or specific detail about a nation, a historian can reveal a great deal about a 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 are able to illuminate the greater struggle about the non-Nazi identified French farmers to retain their unique identity, even in the shadow of the German Vichy governance and domination over their traditional modes of life.

Ironically, despite the Nazi assertions of the 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 concealing methodology 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)

But then again, regardless of the rarity of their stores of wine, 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 betterment for the oppressed Jews of France, much less their own heads, which would have been on the 'chopping block' had they taken the risk to protect the Jews. The authors of the book do not make the farmers out to be heroes, merely stresses the interesting nature of their stories. The fact that many who trod the grapes for wine historically died from inhaling the poisonous gas fumes produced by the process still has an eerie historical resonance that goes unobserved by the authors. (p.18)

Many of these vintners were initially so deaf to the historical cannons not so far away 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. Still, y focusing on the non-heroic French wine farmers, the authors are able to bring to light the economic impact of World War II, and also the cultural ways in which the Nazis imposed upon the long-standing traditions of daily life. What was a source of common pride for these French farmers, both creative and economic, became in constant need of protection. The fact that these French people fought so hard to fight for their livelihoods is admirable, if not heroic.

The lessons of the book even have applications to politics today. This sense of the value and art of winemaking is helpful when understanding contemporary French farmer's often hysterical bromides against the European Union regulating pasteurizing their cheese and other methods of production of agricultural substances, as well as the desecration of McDonald's as a representation of all that is standardized, foreign, and an impingement upon these individual's lives, a life that had changed "little" since the "Middle Ages," and superstitions were so rife that women were barred from the wineries, for fear of bringing bad luck, according to tradition. (pp.17-18)