Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup Term Paper

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…