Alan Heusaff - German Occupation

German Occupation

In 1940 German forces overwhelmed the French armies and Marshal of France Philippe Pétain signed an Armistice. The establishment in July of Marshal Pétain's French collaborationist government in Vichy, however, still gave it legal authority not only in the "unoccupied south" but also in northern and western France occupied by the German Wehrmacht. Many Breton militants soon realised that Germany was of little support to them. Rather than help the Bretons achieve their cultural and political freedoms from France, the German Occupation allowed the French collaborationist government of Vichy to remove a large section of historic Brittany, the department of Loire-Atlantique, from Brittany in 1941. This area included Naoned (Nantes) the historical capital and seat of the Dukes of Brittany. The transformation of ancient Breton borders was something post-war governments were happy to inherit. With German approval, Vichy suppressed the Breton National Committee (Comité national Breton, CNB, which had been declared by nationalists in 1940) and its journal L'Heure Bretonne.

From 1941, as resistance to the occupiers grew, Breton nationalism became more divided. Moderates adopted a neutralist position, imitating that of neutral Ireland. But others, including the militant activist Célestin Lainé (later known as Neven Henaff), continued to make overtures to the Nazis, hoping for their support for an independent Brittany with ties to Germany, The more supportive nationalists were of the Germans, they reasoned, the more likely Berlin would be to abandon Vichy and create a Breton state. (7) The war divide within Brittany as a whole deepened at the same time and members of the Maquis, the French Resistance, began to view all Breton nationalists as potential collaborators. They allegedly began a policy of assassination of leading Bretons in September 1943. Yann Bricler, a PNB official in Kemper and manager of the PNB magazine Stur, was shot dead in his office. Another nationalist, Yves Kerhoas, was also assassinated. Then, on 12 December 1943, Abbé Yann Vari Perrot, the 66-year-old parish priest of Scrignac, was shot dead on the steps of his church. Perrot had been decorated for his services in World War I, but was a native speaker and leading cultural Breton nationalist, a playwright and writer, involved in devising a standard orthography for the language.

Célestin Lainé had led an underground physical force movement, Gwenn-ha-Du (black and white, named after the Breton national flag) from 1930, had organised militant groups such as Lu Brezon, renamed Bezen Kadoudal, and now saw the opportunity to organise an open, uniformed and armed group - Bezen Perrot. The conditions of this unit was that it would not fight outside the borders of Brittany but remain as "a protective militia" against the French Maquis's attempts to eliminate Breton activists. But as the conflict on the ground intensified and German reprisals against resisters and civilians became more ferocious, the authorities took the Bezen Perrot and other groups in hand. By 1944, they had provided the unit with uniforms and weapons, and listed them as a unit of the SD, Sicherheitsdienst (auxiliary police). Lainé made clear that Bezen Perrot's war was against France and was on behalf of Brittany not Germany. But although he was reported as concerned that the unit should not operate on behalf of the SD it was used by them and mounted guard on the SD interrogation centre in Rennes. In the months before and after the Allied D-Day landings in June 1944, atrocities were reported on all sides of the conflict in Brittany.

Heusaff had been working as a primary school teach at Kerien (Querrien) not far from his home and between 1941 and 1942 he began to write articles about the problems of Brittany under the pseudonym "Mab Ivi" (Son of Ivi, his home village). Others articles appeared in L'Heure Bretonne" and "Arvor. In 1942 he resigned his teaching post. Heusaff had become a kerrenour (lieutenant) in Bezen Kadoudal, which, in December, 1943, became Bezen Perrot and which the now 22-year-old Heusaff saw as the nucleus of a Breton independence army. (8)

"We were prepared to co-operate with the devil himself, if that would get rid of the French. The French were the greatest enemies of the Breton people". (9)

A fuller account of the Bezen Perrot, including Heusaff's role in it, is given in Daniel Leach's Fugitive Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2009). Among controversies, Leach deals with some later accusations depicting Heusaff as a member of the LVF, showing them to be unfounded. The main focus of the book is an analysis of why Ireland gave asylum after the war to some Bretons and other foreign militants who had collaborated with Axis forces. Controversies on these issues are also elucidated in Leach's article "Irish Post-War Asylum: Nazi sympathy, Pan Celticism or raisons d'etat?" (History Ireland, May/June, 2007). (10)

In June 1944, shortly after D-Day, Heusaff was at Ploërdut, Morbihan, with members of the Bezen Perrot, when they became involved in a firefight with members of a Free French commando unit. He was seriously wounded in the shoulder and lung. Two others members of his unit, Yann Laizet and Jean Larnicol, were killed. Locals took Heusaff to hospital where he remained for a few weeks before evacuated to a German hospital in Montabaur, Alsace-Lorraine, where he remained until September 1944.

While in hospital he was visited by Friedrich Hielscher (1902–90), the poet, philosopher and journalist. He had connections with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für keltische studien (German Society for Celtic Studies) in Berlin and had been on a research trip to Brittany in 1943. It is suspected that he took this trip on behalf of the Abwehr (German intelligence), or the Ahnenerbe, which came under the SS. According to some reports, Hielscher had been involved in a resistance circle to the Nazis since the 1930s, helping Jews and others in danger from the regime. Indeed, Hielsher had contacts with members of oppressed "peuples de culture" since 1927 and some members of his group were arrested as early as 1933. (11)

On leaving hospital in Alsace in late 1944, Heusaff took up Hielscher's offer. Hielscher suggested that when Heusaff recovered he should come to his home in Potsdam. But arriving in Potsdam, he found Hielscher had been arrested among the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 assassination plot against Hitler. Hielscher remained in a concentration camp for six months. Heusaff found Breton contacts in Strasbourg and spent time there. Hielscher, released from the concentration camp, moved to Marburg with his wife.

Other Bezen Perrot members were living there under assumed identities. Heusaff joined them and adopted the name Bernhard Heubacher, receiving papers with Hielscher's help. Until 1947 he worked in forestry, It was a frugal existence, sometimes he was forced to live on nettle soup. With Hielscher's help, he entered the university to study Physics and Maths. He remained there until 1950. Then he decided to follow other Breton militants who had sought asylum in Ireland. The Allies had swept through Brittany in August 1944, and as the Germans retreated, many of the Bezen Perrot had fled to Germany as well. On 19 September 1944, the Germans on the Crozon Peninsula had surrendered but pockets in L'Orient and in Saint-Nazaire did not surrender until May 1945.

The former Mayor of Brest, Dr Le Gorgeu, an opponent of all forms of Breton nationalism, had taken over civil administration and started a round-up of Breton nationalists. By November, 1944, 2,000 Bretons were arrested including priests, women, children and even Bretons who had fought in the Resistance. Some had purportedly done little more than attend a Breton language class; others died of ill treatment in prison. Prisoners from the Rennes Central Gaol reportedly often appeared before the examining magistrate with broken limbs and bruises.

By the end of 1946, 3,000 Bretons had been put in special camps; 300 of them had been sentenced to penal servitude for varying terms and 60 sentenced to death. Others had been sentenced to terms of "civil degradation", a loss of all civil rights as citizens and removal of qualifications. As Professor Per Denez later wrote:

"At twenty-one, my university degree was taken away from me because I had been a member of the PNB. What is more, I had been condemned to "national dishonour" … This meant that I could no longer become a schoolmaster, a teacher, a journalist, a doctor, a solicitor. And goodness knows how many other things. In 1945, it was hard to believe that the Declaration of Human Rights also applied to the Bretons".

(12)

Of those involved in the Breton movement generally, 38 had been killed and 9 executed by firing squad, according to contemporary sources such as the Welsh newspaper Baner Ac Amserau Cymru.

Heusaff could not return to Brittany. Like others who went to Ireland seeking asylum, he was sentenced to death in absentia, not for war crimes, but for the crime of "attacks upon the integrity of the French State". (14) He was to receive an amnesty in 1967, along with other Breton militants had who had been similarly sentenced. Heusaff took his wife to Brittany for the first time in 1967 but were forbidden to visit Finistère, his home department. This restriction was lifted in the early 1970s. From then on until his death, Heusaff returned to Brittany on many occasions, staying with his family as well attending many cultural events. His family had in no way supported his wartime activities and, indeed, his brother had served in the French Army and become a Prisoner of War. (15)