The Crime of Napoleon
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The Crime of Napoleon (in French Le Crime de Napoléon) is a controversial book published in 2005 by French historian Claude Ribbe. In the book, Ribbe advances the thesis that it was Napoleon during the Haitian Revolution, not Hitler and the Nazis 140 years later, who first used gas chambers as a method of mass execution. The book caused a minor political and academic storm when it was published, and remains contentious to this day.
In the early 19th Century, the French colonies of Haiti and Guadeloupe were hit by a series of massive slave rebellions. Napoleon was in charge of putting them down, and he did so with brutal efficiency. Ribbe claims that some of Napoleon's regime's men refused to do as they were ordered, and then later wrote journals describing the massacre. From these passages, he claims that Napoleon's troops used sulphur (readily collected from nearby volcanoes) to create sulphur dioxide gas. This is extremely poisonous, and would have been extremely effective at helping to quell the rebelling Caribbean slaves.
Ribbe's most controversial accusation is that the holds of ships were used as makeshift gas chambers; he says that up to 100,000 black slaves were murdered in them. These revelations are still in considerable academic dispute, but when the book was published, the French establishment was quick to condemn his allegations. The French newspaper France Soir, for instance, published a stinging editorial, calling the claims of the book inane. Napoleon is seen as something of a national hero to many in France, and 2005 was the bicentennial of what is often regarded as his greatest victory, the Battle of Austerlitz.
[edit] See also
- Polish Legions in Italy one of French army units sent to Haiti
[edit] References
- (French) Ribbe, Claude (2005). Le Crime de Napoléon (ISBN 235076012X) (There are currently no plans for an English edition)
- A newspaper report appeared in the Daily Telegraph in late 2005 about the controversy. Retrieved July 2006
