Canon Kir Joins the Resistance
World War II remains the deadliest conflict in modern history, with roughly 60 million people perishing across its multiple fronts. What remains so unsettling about the war is not simply the enormous number of casualties, but the way in which modern technology and industry were so ruthlessly deployed to perfect the machinery of killing. Airpower introduced a “third dimension” to warfare, and soon sent combatants hurtling down the path toward total war, with entire cities incinerated in a night’s bombing. Tanks and armored vehicles gave armies a new mobility and lethality, and by the end of the war two colossal million-man armies were sparring across the length of eastern Europe. Scientists bent their attention to developing the most efficient gas chamber and inventing the atomic bomb. Against such massive forces and technological superiority, ordinary people were often helpless to resist.
And yet, resistance movements did emerge in every country affected by the war, along a broad spectrum of size and effectiveness. In Denmark, the entire population secretly cooperated to evacuate the country’s Jews before the Germans could deport them. In Poland, the Home Army fought a fierce but ultimately futile two-month battle to liberate Warsaw in 1944. Throughout Europe, sympathetic diplomats and government officials risked their lives to provide papers and escape routes to populations at risk. Resistance to the Nazis was extremely dangerous: not only the resisters themselves but local civilians were often killed in retaliation. In one of the most memorialized incidents of the war, virtually the entire population of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane—more than six hundred men, women, and children—were massacred by a Waffen-SS unit after reports of local partisan activity.
Among all the European resistance movements, perhaps none have been so romanticized—or have caused so much controversy—as the French resistance. It is difficult to know exactly how large or pervasive the French resistance really was, and its impact has often been overstated. A great many French people openly collaborated with the new order, whether within the Vichy government or in the notorious Milice paramilitary units. Probably the overall stance of most of the population was neither collaboration nor resistance, but what the French call attentisme, a sort of “wait and see” position. This popular passivity benefited the Nazi and Vichy regimes early on but shifted to the advantage of resistance groups as they grew in strength later in the war. The French Communist Party (Parti Communiste Français; PCF) stepped up its clandestine activities after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and after the Service du travail obligatoire forced labor scheme was imposed in 1943, thousands of men fled deportation and joined rural resistance groups. The Instructions for British Servicemen in France 1944 booklet stated: “We need not doubt the goodwill of the vast majority of the people of France . . . The small, astoundingly brave minority who have led active resistance within the Mother Country, have had behind them a growing proportion (lately up to 95 percent) of the French people, who have passively resisted the Germans and their Vichy stooges.”1
The complexity of the decision whether to resist, and the various forms that resistance could take, can be seen by looking at specific locales within France—such as Dijon, the historic capital of Burgundy. As it happens, the story of Dijon’s resistance helps explain the popularity of the vin blanc cassis, a classic aperitif better known as Kir, named for a popular resistance hero.
Dijon is often described as the gateway to the famed Burgundy wine region, but it is perhaps best known worldwide for the spicy mustard that bears its name. Mustard is made from the seeds of the mustard plant, which has been cultivated in Europe since antiquity, making it a relatively inexpensive and thus popular condiment for centuries. In the mid-fourteenth century, the first large-scale mustard industry grew up around Dijon, and it was here that the firm of Grey Poupon was established in the nineteenth century by the inventor of the steam-powered mustard mill. Today, Grey Poupon is an American company and its mustards are impossible to find in France. But there is no shortage of other options, as mustard is by far the most popular and inexpensive French condiment, flavoring all sorts of dressings and sauces, and a preferred accompaniment to sausages, hamburgers, and other meat dishes. Dijon mustard is the most common style, but it is also worth trying moutarde à l’ancienne, a much grainier variant. Curiously, Dijon does not enjoy an AOC for its namesake mustard.
Another local specialty is black currants, a tart purple berry that is virtually unknown in the United States because it was banned in the early 1900s after it was discovered that its shrubs spread a fungus deadly to pine trees. Most Americans will only know the berry via crème de cassis, a black currant liqueur invented in Dijon in the mid-nineteenth century. About half a century later, local cafés began serving a cocktail of crème de cassis and dry white wine (ideally, aligoté from Burgundy). They called it a blanc-cass, and its refreshingly crisp, sweet flavor made it a splendid aperitif.
Dijon has a long history of prosperity, serving as the seat of the powerful dukes of Burgundy before the region was incorporated into France, and enjoying renewed success with the nineteenth-century expansion of railways and roads into the region. It was occupied by the German army a few days after Paris fell in June 1940, and it lay within the northern occupation zone that was created after the armistice. The mayor of the city fled, and so a group of prominent locals took on key municipal responsibilities, such as ensuring food distribution and the continued operation of hospitals and schools.
One of these local notables was Félix Kir, a Catholic priest then in his sixties. As a conservative parish priest, he was not wholly unsympathetic to the new regime of Philippe Pétain and its motto of Travail, famille, patrie (Work, Family, Fatherland), which replaced the republican Liberté, égalité, fraternité during the war years. Kir was also ideologically pleased with the French regime’s staunch anticommunism. But he could not understand nor forgive Pétain’s submissive collaboration with the German invaders, and from the start of the occupation, Canon Kir adopted a different posture. A number of legends detail his supposed repartee with the German authorities. According to one, when the German troops arrived and asked Kir to surrender on behalf of the town, he replied, “No, sir, because surrender is not French.” When Nazi officials came to the town hall and demanded one hundred tons of hay, Kir protested that they were in the town hall, not a farm—they were welcome to shoot him and turn him into saucisson, but there was no hay available. And when the Nazis requisitioned all the best Burgundy wines, he pretended not to care and declared that blanc-cass was the official drink of Dijon anyway.
Kir’s resistance to the Germans went beyond rhetoric. When a prisoner-of-war camp was opened at Longvic, near Dijon, he used his official position as a de facto town leader to arrange personal visits. He smuggled in extra food rations, and his car regularly had more passengers on the way out than on the way in. Dijon was not very far from the demarcation line and unoccupied France, and Kir provided travel permits to escaped prisoners that allowed them to cross into unoccupied territory. According to legend, he and the local resistance helped more than five thousand prisoners escape the camp.
The term French resistance encompasses a wide spectrum of groups and activities. There were people like Kir, who used their official duties to help others escape France or shield locals from the full brunt of occupation. Underground activists printed newspapers and leaflets denouncing the occupation. More organized groups emerged in the countryside and became known as maquis or maquisards. They sabotaged factories and rail lines, greatly impeding the production and shipment of military supplies and food to the Germans, and helped downed Allied airmen escape France. They supplied critical intelligence to Allied forces and received airdrops of supplies and advisers. The maquis groups were often organized according to ideology or identity, so there were distinct communist resistance groups, a Jewish resistance network, and local groups that also sought regional autonomy. Cooperation among them increased over time, so that by the end of 1942, the Comité Français de Libération Nationale under General Charles de Gaulle served as an umbrella organization for all the resistance groups in France. Their effectiveness improved greatly, and by 1944 they comprised perhaps 100,000 people. They played a key role in preparing for the Allied D-Day invasion and hindering the German response to it.
Burgundy was a key locale for the resistance, as it lay astride the demarcation line and featured large swathes of inaccessible terrain, such as the Morvan Forest, an excellent haunt for the maquis. The Germans were naturally determined to crush resistance activities, and in Dijon they grew suspicious of Canon Kir. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to death. But a senior German commander was reluctant to execute a popular priest and town official, and after several months in jail, Kir was released on the condition that he refrain from any official duties going forward. He continued with his covert resistance activities until 1944, when he was shot by a pair of French collaborators and nearly arrested by the Gestapo. He decided to flee and went into hiding about sixty miles from Dijon.
Shortly after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, it was determined that a second front needed to be opened, and Operation Dragoon commenced that August. In this lesser-known invasion, American, British, and French forces landed on the Mediterranean coast, along the Côte d’Azur, and pursued a weak German army northward up the Rhône Valley. The offensive was greatly aided by local resistance groups, who damaged German communication and transportation lines and thus hampered their defense. The Germans attempted to hold their ground at Dijon but were pushed back to the Vosges Mountains, where a new front stabilized. The entire south of France had been liberated in a little more than four weeks. Allied troops from the southern landing met up with those who had fought their way in from Normandy, and plans were made for the final push into Nazi Germany.
As the Allied troops proceeded toward Dijon, Kir returned to his town, purportedly walking all the way back. He entered Dijon at the same time as the Allies and was instantly recognized and celebrated as one of the town’s liberators. Thanks to his wartime popularity, he was elected mayor of Dijon, a position he held until his death in 1968, and also became a parliamentary deputy for the town. He was an enthusiastic propagandist for the town’s main products, including crème de cassis, with which he greeted visitors to the town hall. When several producers asked if they could use his name to sell the liqueur, he happily agreed. After his death, the producers ended up in court fighting over who had the true right to his name, but by then the blanc-cass was commonly being referred to as a “Kir,” as it is today throughout France and the rest of the world.
There are many variations of the Kir cocktail. Perhaps the best known is the Kir Royale, which is made with a dry sparkling wine instead of still wine, but there are many additional regional variations in France. Crème de cassis mixed with cider is a Kir Normand or Kir Breton; in Nantes, it is mixed with the local wine, Muscadet, and called a Kir Nantais. Crème de cassis mixed with red wine is either a Kir Communard or a Kir Cardinal, depending on your ideological inclinations.
The barmen of Dijon also created a cocktail called the KK, for Kir Khrushchev, in honor of Father Kir’s efforts to promote peace during the Cold War through cultural exchanges with the Soviets. (Unsurprisingly, it is made with crème de cassis, white wine, and vodka—a combination sure to make adversaries forget their political differences.) Premier Khrushchev even visited Dijon during his tour of France in 1960, but unfortunately he was not able to meet Canon Kir: the Catholic Church called Kir away from Dijon on some pretext, apparently worried he might adopt a too-friendly posture toward the godless Soviets. In his memoirs, Khrushchev notes his regret at not being able to meet the resistance hero but expresses delight in the warm welcome he received from the people of Dijon.2
Like many tales of the French resistance, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the legend of Canon Kir. But it is noteworthy how well traveled his legend became, in part thanks to the delicious drink that bears his name, and what it indicates about enduring French beliefs about their wartime experience. Since World War II, the French have enjoyed one of their longest periods in history without foreign aggression. And yet, this extended period of peace did not erase the scars of defeat and occupation for many years. There were new battles to be fought within France itself.