In his book Vichy At War, Robert Paxton argues that despite claims to the contrary, technocrats ‘did not save the French people from suffering’ but rather shared Vichy’s ‘heavy burden of responsibility’. The Battle of Marseille, which finds some of its origins in Jacques Gréber’s regional plan of 1936, is perhaps one of the more glaring examples of how this burden is shared by French urban planners. Between 1931-36, Gréber developed a regional plan for the greater Marseille area that proposed a strict separation of functions, slum removal and a hierarchical transportation system. The architect and planner drew up strict aesthetic prescriptions (such as height limits) for Marseille’s Old Port to ensure the buildings of the working-class district would not impede the beauty of the rocky Mediterranean shoreline for those driving along his proposed seaside roadway. Segregated allotments and zoning rules based on class and income and the removal of ‘dangerous and unhealthy homes were also part of his plan to rationalize Marseille’s urban space’.
After numerous procedural delays, Eugène Beaudoin worked between 1941-1943 to update the regional plan. Inaugurated 1 February 1942, Beaudoin’s plan for Marseille can be seen as part of the same urban renewal program. Beaudoin recommended that the Old Port be ‘cleansed’ of its ‘leprous sectors’ and be replaced by an ‘airy, renovated quarter’ though which a new avenue would provide travelers with incomparable views of the coast. The Old Port, which according to a municipal publication was ‘decrepit, rotten…full of corruption, leprosy, and gangrene’, was blocking progress. Ideally the Old Port would be cleared of its ‘pus’ to open forth a path for the planned coastal road. However, like Gréber, Beaudoin was, on his own, unable to complete his slum clearance project.
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Despite these first unsuccessful attempt to level the Old Port, an ultimate collaboration between Vichy authorities and occupying forces would provide the pretext and administrative support needed to proceed with municipal plans. Starting on 22 January 1943, a forced expropriation led by zealous French authorities emptied the Old Port of its 30,000 residents. The police action would result in mass arrests, the deportation of 1,949 Jews to death camps, as well as near total demolition of the neighbourhood. While ordered by Berlin, the operation was as much about urban renewal as collaboration with Nazi policies. Two weeks earlier, on 8 January 1943, the local newspaper published a decree which revealed that City of Marseille had received authorization to borrow 500 millions francs to finance the construction of new buildings, to open up new roadways and ‘to cleanse unhealthy slums’. The expropriation was, as stated in a German newspaper, ‘a rare case where a measure of war coincides with projects long adopted by a Municipality and by a Government and already being executed.’ The Germans had emptied the Old Port of its working-class residents, Jews, leftists and displaced French-African soldiers, but equally as important, the action coincided admirably with Beaudoin’s urban renewal plan. The city profited from the police action by proceeding with expropriation without having to pay any indemnities. While Gréber is not directly responsible for the expropriation and deaths, an arc of knowledge stemming from Gréber’s original regional plan ultimately resulted in the destruction of Marseille’s Old Port.
