Jean-Jacques Becker, who died on July 10 at the age of 95, was one of the greatest historians of the 1914-1918 war. He preferred to call it “the Great War”, a term used by contemporaries of the conflict. “A war unlike any we’ve seen before,” he said. Born on May 14, 1928 in Paris, Jean-Jacques Becker, whose father had “made” Verdun, grew up in a France where the memory of the “great butcher’s shop” was omnipresent.

He came from a Jewish family in Alsace, which left Paris for Grenoble, in the southern zone, in 1942. After the Second World War, he continued his studies in history, devoting himself first to that of the labor movement. He joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in 1947, but like his sister, the historian Annie Kriegel (1926-1995), he broke with communism in 1960, following revelations about Stalinism.

Actively campaigning against the war in Algeria, he also became involved in trade unionism. A member of the National Union of Secondary Education (SNES), he was a very active section secretary in the strike of May-June 1968, at Arago high school where he taught history.

Jean-Jacques Becker undertook a first thesis on the surveillance of antimilitarists in France before 1914, defended in 1968, then a second on the French when they entered the war in 1914, under the direction of Pierre Renouvin, veteran of the Great War. Renouvin, grand master of diplomatic history, accepted, not without some reluctance. Indeed, the subject is not self-evident: the Great War is no longer in the spotlight and French public opinion is an unclear field of study.

“The Gun Flower”

Jean-Jacques Becker discovers a precious source: the reports of French teachers during the year 1914. His research will lead him to question the mythology of going to war “the flower with the rifle”. The historian establishes that, in the countryside, it is astonishment that prevails when the mobilization is announced. In the cities, the surprise is less because the newspapers have been giving disturbing news for some time. At first dismayed, the French resolved to go to war.

Pierre Renouvin dies before Jean-Jacques Becker finishes his thesis. It is René Rémond who will follow his work. Defended in 1976, his thesis, entitled French Public Opinion and the Beginnings of the 1914 War, was published a year later by the National Foundation for Political Science.

Appointed assistant professor at the Nanterre Faculty of Arts (1968-1977), then professor at the universities of Clermont-Ferrand (1977-1985) and Paris X-Nanterre (1985-1994), Jean-Jacques Becker took over the management of the International Research Center of the Historial of the Great War of Péronne (Somme), inaugurated in 1992, he surrounds himself with a team of historians from all over the world. Among them, his daughter Annette Becker, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, the American Jay Winter, the German Gerd Krumeich and the Briton John Horne.

From the outset, they decided that the museography of the Historial would give as much importance to the French, British and German belligerents. Privileging cultural history, the center of Péronne pays particular attention to the experience at the front and at the rear. Other innovative projects were launched: Jean-Jacques Becker directed with Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau an Encyclopedia of the Great War (Bayard, 2004, repr. Perrin, 2012), bringing together a hundred articles on the military, political, economic aspects , social, religious, artistic and cultural conflict.

Recognized as a pioneer in the renewal of the history of the Great War, he became an essential reference for the media and politicians. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the start of the war, in 1994, Le Monde entrusted Jean-Jacques Becker and his close collaborators with the task of writing a summer series entitled “The very Great War”.

Favorite subject

Requested by the Secretary of State for Veterans for the organization of the 90th anniversary of the armistice, in 2008, the historian proposes to invite the heads of state of the former belligerent countries, including the German chancellor. But Angela Merkel having declined the invitation, Nicolas Sarkozy put aside the “Becker report”. Renouncing the traditional ceremony of the Arc de Triomphe, the president chose to celebrate November 11 in Verdun. “If the intention was to leave Paris – which does not shock me – we could have thought of the Somme, commented Jean-Jacques Becker at the time. The battle that took place there in 1916 was indeed more deadly than that of Verdun, and also more international insofar as the English also took part. »

After Prime Minister Lionel Jospin called for the “reintegration of soldiers shot for example into the national memory” on the 80th anniversary of the Armistice in November 1998, he challenged the exemplary character given to executions in the French army. . According to him, the mutinies had been marginal. A thesis extended in 14-18, rediscovering the War (Gallimard, 2000), by Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, which was strongly opposed by a new generation of historians committed to the left.

When he was not writing about the Great War, Jean-Jacques Becker cultivated his other favorite subject: contemporary French political life.

Author of numerous studies on the French left, including Does the Communist Party Want to Take Power? (Seuil, 1981) and History of the Lefts in France, co-directed with Gilles Candar (La Découverte, 2004), Jean-Jacques Becker regretted that his work was reduced to 1914-1918. Honorary President of the Society for Jauresian Studies since 2015, Jean-Jacques Becker was also a Clemence member. If his word was rare during the commemorations of the centenary 14-18, he did not give up the pleasure of writing. In one of his last articles, entitled “Clemenceau could he have stopped the war before 1918? », published in the journal L’Année Clemenceau, 2017 (CNRS Editions), he demonstrated that at his old age he was still able to brilliantly dissect complex questions.