Asterix consciously served a very clear purpose in post war France. After a humiliating surrender and widespread collaboration with the Nazi regime, liberal French ideology and identity was in crisis. Asterix is about a little Gaulish village keeping up the resistance in Roman occupied Gaul — conquered, but with unbroken spirit. It was exactly the story the patriotic French ego needed after the Vichy government had betrayed, arrested, deported and handed over to the Nazis over 75.000 of their Jewish friends and neighbors, who were murdered in the death camps.
Asterix consciously served a very clear purpose in post war France. After a humiliating surrender and widespread collaboration with the Nazi regime, liberal French ideology and identity was in crisis. Asterix is about a little Gaulish village keeping up the resistance in Roman occupied Gaul — conquered, but with unbroken spirit. It was exactly the story the patriotic French ego needed after the Vichy government had betrayed, arrested, deported and handed over to the Nazis over 75.000 of their Jewish friends and neighbors, who were murdered in the death camps.
De Gaulle pushed the narrative:
It wasn’t until 2012, that a French president acknowledged, that the round up of French Jews
On the other hand, Asterix helped to interest kids in ancient history, so there is that.