History of Armenia 47: Charles Aznavour, French Resistance Hero
Charles Aznavour, the world famous crooner, singer, and actor often called the "French Frank Sinatra" wrote over 1,000 songs and performed until the day he died while in his 90s. However, he had a previous life, one he almost never spoke of, one where his family fought the Nazis in occupied France.
Sources:
https://socialistworker.co.uk/socialist-review-archive/charles-aznavour-forgotten-episode/
https://aznavourfoundation.org/en/charles_aznavour/untold_stories
Comments (15)
A somewhat weird example of a fascist collaborator being rehabilitated is President of the Second Philippine Republic José P. Laurel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_P._Laurel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Philippine_Republic Basically, uhhh… a lot of Filipinos hated the American occupation so much that they considered the Japanese occupation a preferable alternative, and while José P. Laurel was initially charged with treason the President of the newly independent Third Philippine Republic granted a general amnesty for wartime collaboration (though not for other, more specific crimes committed by collaborators, like rape or murder) in January 1948, as a kind of “fuck you” to the United States. Granted, this amnesty for anti-American collaborators nonetheless failed to prevent the fall of the Third Philippine Republic and the rise of the, let’s say, basically fascist Ferdinand Marcos, who was supported by the United States because of his repression of Philippine Communists (and his acceptance of the then-ongoing American military presence in the Philippines). Anyway this is just another illustration of how the United States ended up on the “good” side of WWII largely by accident, just because Japan got a bit too paranoid, because even before the Cold War the US sure did love itself some murdered Communists…
I’m listening to the new Behind the Bastards episode on Lord Haw-Haw, and it reminded me of this episode’s discussion of the difference between collaborators and victims. As I understand it, the wartime Japanese are regarded as comparable to the Nazis much more in the places they invaded that weren’t European colonies, where the Japanese committed most of their worst atrocities, than in the European colonies they invaded, where aside from Communists many if not most of the locals saw the Japanese as much more indistinguishable from the European colonial administrators they replaced.
Got to be a bit careful with using Socialist Worker as a source. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the UK are a bit dodgy. They have a habit of co-opting any kind of protest by turning up to things they didn't organise and distributing loads of placards with their name and branding on it to take credit, so they really annoy people. There was also the whole "Comrade Delta" thing a few years back where they tried to cover up the rape of a member by one of their senior guys, and people who harassed the victim are still involved and prominent. Lots of activists don't feel safe around them for this reason. Some actual members are OK, some are really toxic. Their paper is to be avoided.
Trotskyists: they may have a bad habit of developing creepy sex cults, but they’re still really good at publishing newspapers! And, well, Capitalists, by contrast, have become increasingly bad at publishing newspapers in the past several decades, so the pickings are unfortunately kind of slim… For comparison, just look at who owns, say, academic journals. Would you trust Axel Springer more than or less than the SWP? 😅 Also yes it’s not just the SWP: “borger king”. https://youtube.com/results?search_query=%22borger%22+king
Apparently the word “Caucasus” comes from the Scythian word “Croucasis”, meaning “shimmering with snow” and has likely no etymological connection to the Bronze Age Hittite toponym “Assuwa”, the root of the modern word “Asia”. This is to say that Armenians being Caucasian means that Armenians are “shimmering-with-snow people”. Which could perhaps be interpreted as Armenians and other Caucasians being ethnically Nevadan. (One might also draw a connection with the Illyrian Albanoi and the Gaelic Albioneans as other snow-people, albeit by way of the color white.)
Albanians are white people, but Italians are… [checks etymology]… bull people? Sure, that works.
I had no clue Germans took Soviet Armenian POWs for those units, that looks extremely cruel. My Western Armenian granduncle fought against Nazis during the WWII, so for many years I've thought the stories about those units were just propagandistic lies spread by Armenophobic racists. The attempt at Julius Ritter was a brave decision, that man seems like a rare POS. Thank you a lot for such an informative episode!
did Joe just call Istanbul constantinople to trigger the one turk in the audience?
I hate that American discourse of the French during world war two is "y'all rolled over lol!" when in reality the French Resistance is like "we just wanted them to think that, get over yourselves." Just as November Kelly says there appears to be a switch in the back of the heads of Swedes and Fins that when on goes "kill all Russians," it feels like the French have a similar switch. They seem to go all out in the sneakiest sexiest smokiest fashion to undermine the Nazis.
cannot wait for the deep dive
pure love yall
for all the Gundam fans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_Aznable#Creation
He's three times as awesome!
I saw the title at 3am in the morning (Japan time) and was like ugh when did Lions Led By Donkeys go to UC?
Great show! I’ve been a Charles Aznavour fan for a long time and I never knew any of this. Thanks!