I am not taking up the defense of Germany. I am taking up the defense of the truth. I do not know if the truth exists, and many people have made arguments to prove to me that it does not. But I know that lies exist; I know that the systematic deformation of facts exists. We have lived for three years with a falsification of history. This falsification is skilful: it involves fantasies, it is even based on a conspiracy of imagined fantasies. Me, I believe stupidly in the truth. I even believe that it ends up triumphing over all and even over the image which one makes of us. The precarious destiny of the falsification invented by the Resistance has already brought us proof of this. Today the block is broken, its colors are peeling off: these billboards last only a few seasons. But then if the democracies' propaganda has lied about us for three years, if it has distorted what we did, why should we believe it when it talks to us about Germany? Did it not falsify the history of the occupation just as it mispresented the actions of the French government? Public opinion is beginning to correct its judgment about the purification. Should we not ask ourselves whether the same revision is not to be made about the condemnations brought by these same judges at Nuremberg? Is it not at least honest, indeed necessary, to raise this question? If the judicial action which struck thousands of French is a fraud, what proves to us that that which condemned thousands of Germans is not also a fraud? Do we have the right not even to be interested in this issue?
I am not taking up the defense of Germany. I am taking up the defense of the truth. I do not know if the truth exists, and many people have made arguments to prove to me that it does not. But I know that lies exist; I know that the systematic deformation of facts exists. We have lived for three years with a falsification of history. This falsification is skilful: it involves fantasies, it is even based on a conspiracy of imagined fantasies. Me, I believe stupidly in the truth. I even believe that it ends up triumphing over all and even over the image which one makes of us. The precarious destiny of the falsification invented by the Resistance has already brought us proof of this. Today the block is broken, its colors are peeling off: these billboards last only a few seasons. But then if the democracies' propaganda has lied about us for three years, if it has distorted what we did, why should we believe it when it talks to us about Germany? Did it not falsify the history of the occupation just as it mispresented the actions of the French government? Public opinion is beginning to correct its judgment about the purification. Should we not ask ourselves whether the same revision is not to be made about the condemnations brought by these same judges at Nuremberg? Is it not at least honest, indeed necessary, to raise this question? If the judicial action which struck thousands of French is a fraud, what proves to us that that which condemned thousands of Germans is not also a fraud? Do we have the right not even to be interested in this issue?
