THE MORAL AND ARTISTIC INVOLVEMENT OF COCO CHANEL AND LENI RIEFENSTAHL WITH THE NAZI REGIME PART II

Part I, Section I, examined the life of Riefenstahl as a director for the Nazis and the films she produced during the Third Reich, particularly focusing on her wartime correspondence, her picture Tiefland and Bernard Williams moral (circumstantial) luck.

Here, section II will focus on Chanel’s collaborations as a Nazi spy in Paris, as a non-German, suggesting how Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil relates to Chanel and her desire to protect her career.

Image: Chanel

COCO CHANEL

As one of the most influential women of her century, Chanel revolutionised women’s modern fashion with great success. For instance, Chanel used her time during WWI to her advantage, innovating jersey fabrics in entirely new ways and lifting the hem-line of skirts, transforming the fashion world.

By the time of WWII, she had become very accomplished, taking on different roles during the war. Chanel ultimately aimed to become an independent woman after surviving a childhood of deprivation, poverty and parental neglect.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons for thinking that her desire for independence and appreciation consumed her life. Chanel is renowned for having two real loves; herself and her fashion house. Thereby, despite her admiration, her character was perceived as unscrupulous insofar as being heartless and resilient, especially during WWII.

In addition, questions are raised as to whether Chanel's act of becoming a Nazi spy was justifiable. Motivated by her desire to free her nephew (André Palasse) from a German prisoner-of-war camp, who had contracted tuberculosis, Chanel participated in Nazi collaboration.

With the Abwehr aware of Chanel's anxiety over Palasse's fate, they persuaded her to become a Nazi spy (codenaming her Westminster, agent number F-7124) and utilised her powerful connections around Europe, especially her friendship with Winston Churchill.

Chanel’s two missions had her act as a messenger to initiate peace talks between Churchill and the German High Command in Madrid (1941 and 1944). After her missions, which she never fully completed, Palasse returned to France safely but ailing, with her Nazi connections becoming known to French intelligence services in London.

This suggests that perhaps Chanel was not naïve in her actions but coerced out of desperation in exchange for her nephew. However, it does not mean that it was the morally right action.

For instance, if A had a gun to the head of B, telling B that they must shoot C or B's family member will not be released from detention, B's killing of C is understandable, but perhaps not morally right. B could have refused to kill C, but their family member would have remained in prison.

Similarly, Chanel chose to become a Nazi spy due to her emotional attachment to Palasse. Therefore, her action was understandable for her family's safety, but it is not necessarily morally correct. By becoming a Nazi spy, Chanel implicitly condoned Nazi manipulation and placed other individuals in danger.

Therefore, her action of becoming a Nazi spy can be used as an excuse for saving her nephew's life, but it is still ultimately unjustified as working for the Nazis in this capacity was morally wrong.

HOW WAS CHANEL THOUGHTLESS IN THE BANALITY OF EVIL?

Chanel would have been able to recognise the morally corrupt capabilities of the Nazis, although her action of becoming a Nazi spy would have been excusable insofar as she was thoughtless in a stressful situation, in saving her nephew. By the term thoughtless, I refer to a lack of understanding of how one's actions may cause harm to others; evil intentions are not necessarily needed for evil actions to occur.

Hannah Arendt defined the banality of evil as doing an evil action with no intention of its being evil. Arendt's portrayal of Adolf Eichmann, an SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Final Solution, as a diligent yet 'banal' bureaucratic criminal highlighted this kind of brainlessness and not being aware of the evil he committed.

Eichmann was a normal man, bureaucratically signing death warrants of those in concentration camps from his desk but never actively killing. For instance, when Eichmann entered Auschwitz, he witnessed killings in a mobile gas van where the Jews stripped and entered a truck with the horrific sight of their corpses thrown out after gas poisoning, making him uncomfortable.

Image: Eichmann in Jerusalem, The New Yorker

When questioned at the Eichmann in Jerusalem trial, Eichmann remembered turning points in his career rather well, and his rise through the ranks to Obersturmbannführer, but this did not necessarily coincide with the turning points in the story of Jewish extermination. Eichmann, along with many other Nazi officers, was focused on advancing their position in the Nazi machine.

Chanel herself never actively killed. Her intention was not to hurt anyone but merely to serve her own interests. Nevertheless, her actions still seem morally corrupt when we expand upon Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil or thoughtlessness to go beyond the desk-killers of the Third Reich.

Banality, in the case of Chanel, can relate to only advancing her career. It can be argued that if one deceives oneself enough, one starts to believe the lies and not recognise the truth. Therefore, the thoughtlessness expressed through the practice of self-deception as a self-preservation mechanism shows a disturbing aspect of Chanel’s moral character.

Chanel was consumed by the vice of self-serving motives to stay independent and financially secure at a time of war, which may have come at the expense of others. This thought process contributed to the formulation of these banal motivations that spurred her actions to become a Nazi spy.

Such remoteness from reality, through self-deception and thoughtlessness, can inflict more moral chaos from the inability to think from the other's position. As an ‘Aryan’ French citizen, with her nephew being a victim of the Nazis, Chanel must have been aware of Nazi evil. Instead, Chanel became complicit in the evil by becoming a spy, knowing it was wrong.

There are apparent moral differences between the cases of Eichmann and Chanel, and I do not imply that Chanel should have been executed like Eichmann. What distinguishes Eichmann from Chanel is that he knew of the deaths in Auschwitz and still signed for the transport of individuals to the camp.

Chanel was not involved in bureaucratic decisions but created art (her clothes and perfume) that people deeply value aesthetically, whereas Eichmann did not produce anything of value. However, Chanel’s art does not reduce her moral culpability, and she should have been proportionately punished for her wartime actions as other French collaborators were, which I outline below.

Even though her intentions may have been banal, her actions were not, and both intention and action are considered appropriate loci of responsibility and blame Eichmann's execution regarding his actions is justified, whilst Chanel escaping punishment is morally unjust.

DOES CHANEL’S TALENT EXCUSE HER ACTIONS?

Chanel’s talent may mitigate her thoughtlessness, but it does not justify her actions. Hence, it is undignified that she was not punished for her wartime involvement with the Nazis, as many other ordinary women dealt with the consequences of their desperation to survive during the war.

For instance, all over France, "horizontal collaborators", women found in any German company, were dragged nude from their homes and had their heads shaved in public in the humiliation of their wartime activities, with many beaten and even murdered.

Since Chanel was also sleeping with the enemy, Hans Gunther von Dincklage (an SS officer who worked both for the Abwehr and the Gestapo), she was classified as a horizontal collaborator. Though it may never be certainly known to what extent Chanel was aware of von Dincklage's activities, she had made all sorts of accommodations in having an affair with a German.

However, Chanel was not humiliated, whilst between thirty and forty thousand collaborators in France were executed or punished by losing the right to vote, stand for election, hold public office, or practise certain professions. Though I do not claim Chanel should have faced the same punishments as other horizontal collaborators, her wrongdoings should have been publicly recognised.

Chanel’s actions remain hugely morally problematic and question whether talent should excuse morally impermissible acts. For example, if we have an aesthetic intuition regarding Chanel’s art, we should take this seriously. However, we should also take our moral intuition seriously when we compare the consequences of Chanel with other collaborators.

Although many people do not know about Chanel’s Nazi collaboration, popular magazines, including Vogue, have commented on Chanel’s wartime involvements. Therefore, it is remarkable that Chanel’s legacy remains untouched by her moral failings in the popular imagination.

It is also of note that we can be grateful for Chanel because of her innovations, both aesthetic in the richness she has added to the fashion industry, along with her empowering innovations to womenswear. This suggests we have a positive intuition when judging Chanel’s art, illustrating intuition is linked to aesthetic value, for instance, in the aesthetic innovation of Chanel No. 5, which is extremely appealing to people.

Image: Advert for Chanel No. 5, Lily-Rose Depp, Duty Free Hunter

Hence, Chanel’s positive aesthetic influences should make us think seriously about our understanding of how, and indeed if, talent can excuse morally disgusting acts. I will pick this discussion up further in section III, suggesting that we can also have a moral intuition along with aesthetic intuition.

Stay tuned for section III, investigates the distinction between aesthetic and moral values.

For further information-

Al Cimino. Nazi Sex Spies. London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2020.

Deirdre Lauren Mahony. Hannah Arendt’s Ethics. Great Britain: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. United States: Penguin Books, 1977.

Lauren Milligan. “Not Coco.” Vogue. August 18, 2011.[Consulted May 14, 2021].

Lisa Chaney. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 2012.

Vaughan. Sleeping with the Enemy. Vinatge, 1990.