Description
This paper explores the last letters written by French civilians who were executed during the Nazi occupation of France during WWII. The letters were written by people from various layers of society - young and old, communists and Catholics, educated and blue collar, members the resistance and those caught up in the throes of history. Together, they tell us about the mindset of those who lived through the war, what mattered to them and why. The letters are a window into a cataclysmic moment of existential threat, caused by the onslaught of fascism, that these individuals and their families were living trough. By coming to grips with what the letters say and do not say, we are exposed to the different ideologies the executed reveal in their final thoughts, but also to how these views shape the collective nature of war, war as a lived experience, and war as tunnel to some unknown future. The paper seeks to bring these letters into conversation with just war scholarship, specifically the now well-trodden debates between so-called traditionalists and revisionists, to shed new light on where ethics come from and how individual ethics and collective morals are intertwined.
