Georges Blond

Early years

Blond initially came to attention as a follower of Alexis Carrel , and when reviewing Carrel’s book The Man, this stranger for the newspaper The little Dauphinois commented that Carrel was one of the few writers who would genuinely alter who people thought of themselves. ^[1] He became noted as a sympathizer with fascism during the mid-1930s. ^[2] His works was published in The Insurgency , a literary journal for writers on the far right edited in the late 1930s by Thierry Maulnier . ^[3]

Second World War

A qualified naval engineer, Blond enlisted in the French Navy during the early stages of the Second World War but following the Battle of France was interned in the United Kingdom. Already strongly anti-British, Blond was embittered by his experiences and follow the repatriation he took up his pen against Britain, publishing the highly critical book England at war: A story of a French sailor in 1941. ^[4] As a result of works like this Blond was one of only a handful of French political writers adjudged acceptable by Nazi Germany and as a result continued to be His books in print under the Vichy government . ^[5]

He became a writer for the collaborationist journal I’m everywhere , though Blond was associated with a “soft” tendency by the likes of Robert Brasillach and Henri Poulain towards the end of the Second World War . In contrast to the “hard” tendency of Pierre-Antoine Cousteau and Lucien Rebatet , Blond’s group wanted to de-emphasize associations with Nazism and instead concentrate on literature, sensing that Nazi defeat was imminent. ^[6]

Post-war activity

His link to collaboration damaged Blond’s reputation in the early post-war period and his name appeared a blacklist published by the National Committee of Writers in September 1945. ^[7] He suffered national degradation in 1949 for his involvement in collaboration. ^[4] Nonetheless Blond became a widely read and published author of his book The History of the Foreign Legion , the story of the French Foreign Legion , in which he attached widespread attention and praise. ^[8]

In 1965 Blond was one of a number of far right figures to a petition that appeared in La Dépêche du Midi , a newspaper controlled by Rene Bousquet , in support of François Mitterrand at a time when the avowedly left-wing politician maintained links to the Republican Party of Liberty , a group descended from Croix-de-Feu . ^[9]

Works

Georges Blond was an extremely prolific writer. This list is not exhaustive and is not classified in a chronological order of publication.

• History
  • The Silent Epic
  • The Pacific Survivor – History of the Aircraft Carrier “Enterprise”
  • Convoy to the USSR
  • The landing
  • The Agony of Germany
  • The Princes of Heaven
  • The Great Adventure of Migrators
  • The Great Adventure of Elephants
  • Man, this Pilgrim
  • I saw America live
  • Admiral Togo (samurai of the sea)
  • Picturesque history of our diet (with Germaine Blond)
  • The foreign Legion
  • Marne
  • The Great Whale Adventure
  • The Second World War (3 volumes)
  • History of the flibuste
  • Nothing could knock them down
  • Pétain: Biography
  • The Great Black Flag Army
  • Verdun (The Inferno) (Prix Richelieu)
  • England at war
  • The Great Adventures of the Oceans (2 volumes)
  • The Great Adventure of the Indian Ocean
  • The Shipwrecked of Paris
  • Beauty and Glory: Nelson and Emma Hamilton
  • The Enraged of God
  • The Adventure of Language
  • Pauline Bonaparte
  • Me Laffite, last king of buccaneers
  • The Great Army, 1804-1815
  • Mediterranean (where our destiny is played out)
  • Attack the Tirpitz
  • The end of Graf Spee
  • The Hundred Days
• Novels
  • Love is only a pleasure
  • Diary of an imprudent
  • The day rises in the west
  • Seal Island
• Novellas
  • The dead beauty
  • Mary Marner
  • The Island of the Goddess
• Photographic Albums
  • From Arromanches to Berlin
  • The surprising life of seals
  • The Beaver Valley

References