Kaplan's historical task in large part has been to penetrate that shield of denial in order to illustrate editorial excisions, half-mouthed acknowledgements of awareness, and shifty language habits. The history of the World War II victors, whatever its Hollywood-ization and problematic issues, is and will ever remain incomparably superior to the execrable history propagated by the war's losers. Brasillach had the education that enabled him to engage in rationalizations of fascism in the name of patrie et gloire. He emerged from the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieur in Paris, an historic breeding pond for the French intelligentsia. He became a novelist, although Kaplan makes quite clear that she has little patience for Brasillach's polite, allegorical and repetitive fictions.
Entire novels disappear in three-line synopses.
The publisher was Charles Maurras, grandfather of the French nationalist right, a royalist and an anti-Dreyfusard whose long career finally ended after Liberation with a treason trial and a life sentence. However influenced by Maurras, Brasillach was too much the modernist and soon switched to Je Suis Partout , an outspokenly fascist and antisemitic daily. Having been identified by the Nazis as a friend, Brasillach was released from imprisonment in order to lend support to the German occupation policies in France. All this is really prologue for Kaplan, whose attention centers most on Brasillach's trial and its political milieu. Her treatment of the trial in August 1944 is admirable, particularly in the depth and detail of its archival research.