French collaborators

Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under harsh terms of the armistice, it adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany, which occupied the northern and western portions before occupying the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Though Paris was ostensibly its capital, the collaborationist Vichy government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "Free Zone" (), where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies.

The Third French Republic had begun the war in September 1939 on the side of the Allies. On 10 May 1940, it was invaded by Nazi Germany. The German Army rapidly broke through the Allied lines by bypassing the highly fortified Maginot Line and invading through Belgium and Luxembourg. By mid-June, the military situation of the French was dire, and it was apparent that the battle for Metropolitan France could not be won. The French government began to discuss the possibility of an armistice. Paul Reynaud resigned as prime minister, rather than sign an armistice, and was replaced by Marshal Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I. Shortly thereafter, Pétain signed the Armistice of 22 June 1940.

At Vichy, Pétain established an authoritarian government that reversed many liberal policies and began tight supervision of the economy. Conservative Catholics became prominent, and Paris lost its avant-garde status in European art and culture. The media were tightly controlled and promoted anti-Semitism and, after Operation Barbarossa started in June 1941, anti-Bolshevism. The terms of the armistice presented certain advantages, such as keeping the French Navy and French colonial empire under French control and avoiding full occupation of the country by Germany, which maintained a degree of French independence and neutrality. Despite heavy pressure, the French government at Vichy never joined the Axis powers and even remained formally at war with Germany. Conversely, Vichy France became a collaborationist regime.

Germany kept two million French prisoners-of-war and imposed forced labour () on young French men. French soldiers were kept hostage to ensure that Vichy would reduce its military forces and pay a heavy tribute in gold, food and supplies to Germany. French police were ordered to round up Jews and other "undesirables" such as communists and political refugees, and at least 72,500 Jews were killed as a result.

Most of the French public initially supported the regime, but opinion gradually turned against the French government and the occupying German forces when it became clear that Germany was losing the war, and living conditions in France were becoming increasingly difficult. The French Resistance, working largely in concert with Charles de Gaulle's movement outside the country, increased in strength over the course of the occupation. After the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 and the liberation of France later that year, the Free French Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) was installed as the new national government, led by .

The last of the Vichy exiles were captured in the Sigmaringen enclave in April 1945. Pétain was put on trial for treason by the new Provisional Government, and sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life imprisonment by . Only four senior Vichy officials were tried for crimes against humanity although many others had participated in the deportation of Jews for internment in Nazi concentration camps, abuses of prisoners and severe acts against members of the Resistance.

Overview

In 1940, Marshal Pétain was known as a World War I hero, who was the victor of the Battle of Verdun. As the last French prime minister of the Third Republic, he was a reactionary by inclination and blamed the Third Republic's democracy for France's sudden defeat by Germany. He set up a paternalistic authoritarian regime that actively collaborated with Germany, despite Vichy's official neutrality. The Vichy government co-operated with the Germans' Nazi racial policies.

Terminology

After the National Assembly under the Third Republic voted to give full powers to Philippe Pétain on 10 July 1940, the name ''République française'' (French Republic) disappeared from all official documents. From then on, the regime was referred to officially as the ''État Français'' (French State). Because of its unique situation in the history of France, its contested legitimacy and the generic nature of its official name, the "French State" is most often represented in English by the synonyms "Vichy France"; "Vichy regime"; "government of Vichy"; or, in context, simply "Vichy".

The territory under the control of the Vichy government was the unoccupied southern portion of Metropolitan France south of the Line of Demarcation, as established by the Armistice of 22 June 1940, and the overseas French territories, such as French North Africa, which was "an integral part of Vichy" and where all antisemitic Vichy's laws were also implemented. This was called the (Unoccupied Zone) by the Germans, and known as the '' Zone libre'' (Free Zone) in France, or less formally as the "Southern Zone" () especially after Operation Anton, the invasion of the by German forces in November 1942. Other contemporary colloquial terms for the were based on abbreviation and wordplay, such as the "zone nono", for the non-occupied Zone.

Jurisdiction

In theory, the civil jurisdiction of the Vichy government extended over most of Metropolitan France, French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, the French protectorate of Tunisia and the rest of the French colonial empire that accepted the authority of Vichy; only the disputed border territory of Alsace-Lorraine was placed under direct German administration. Alsace-Lorraine was officially still part of France, as the never annexed the region. The Reich government at the time was not interested in attempting to enforce piecemeal annexations in the West although it later annexed Luxembourg; it operated under the assumption that Germany's new western border would be determined in peace negotiations, which would be attended by all of the Western Allies and thus producing a frontier that would be recognised by all of the major powers. Since Hitler's overall territorial ambitions were not limited to recovering Alsace-Lorraine, and Britain was never brought to terms, those peace negotiations never took place.

The Nazis had some intention of annexing a large swath of northeastern France, replacing that region's inhabitants with German settlers, and initially forbade French refugees from returning to the region, but the restrictions were never thoroughly enforced and were basically abandoned following the invasion of the Soviet Union, which had the effect of turning German territorial ambitions almost exclusively to the East. German troops guarding the boundary line of the northeastern were withdrawn on the night of 17–18 December 1941, but the line remained in place on paper for the remainder of the occupation.

Nevertheless, effectively Alsace-Lorraine was annexed: German law applied to the region, its inhabitants were conscripted into the Wehrmacht and pointedly the customs posts separating France from Germany were placed back where they had been between 1871 and 1918. Similarly, a sliver of French territory in the Alps was under direct Italian administration from June 1940 to September 1943. Throughout the rest of the country, civil servants were under the formal authority of French ministers in Vichy. René Bousquet, the head of French police nominated by Vichy, exercised his power in Paris through his second-in-command, Jean Leguay, who coordinated raids with the Nazis. German laws took precedence over French laws in the occupied territories, and the Germans often rode roughshod over the sensibilities of Vichy administrators.

On 11 November 1942, following the landing of the Allies in North Africa (Operation Torch), the Axis launched Operation Anton, occupying southern France and disbanding the strictly limited "Armistice Army" that Vichy had been allowed by the armistice.

Legitimacy

Vichy's claim to be the legitimate French government was denied by Free France and by all subsequent French governments after the war. They maintain that Vichy was an illegal government run by traitors, having come to power through an unconstitutional coup d'état. Pétain was constitutionally appointed prime minister by President Lebrun on 16 June 1940 and he was legally within his rights to sign the armistice with Germany; however, his decision to ask the National Assembly to dissolve itself while granting him dictatorial powers has been more controversial. Historians have particularly debated the circumstances of the vote by the National Assembly of the Third Republic granting full powers to Pétain on 10 July 1940. The main arguments advanced against Vichy's right to incarnate the continuity of the French state were based on the pressure exerted by Pierre Laval, a former prime minister in the Third Republic, on the deputies in Vichy and on the absence of 27 deputies and senators who had fled on the ship ''Massilia'' and so could not take part in the vote. However, during the war, the Vichy government was internationally recognised, notably by the United States and several other major Allied powers. Diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom had been severed since 8 July 1940 after the attack on Mers-el-Kébir.

Julian T. Jackson wrote, "There seems little doubt... that at the beginning Vichy was both legal and legitimate". He stated that if legitimacy comes from popular support, Pétain's massive popularity in France until 1942 made his government legitimate, and if legitimacy comes from diplomatic recognition, over 40 countries, including the United States, Canada, and China, recognised the Vichy government. According to Jackson, 's Free French acknowledged the weakness of its case against Vichy's legality by citing multiple dates (16 June, 23 June and 10 July) for the start of Vichy's illegitimate rule implying that at least for some time, Vichy was still legitimate. Countries recognised the Vichy government despite 's attempts in London to dissuade them; only the German occupation of all of France in November 1942 ended diplomatic recognition. Supporters of Vichy point out that the grant of governmental powers was voted by a joint session of both chambers of the Third Republic Parliament (the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies) in keeping with the constitutional law.

Ideology

The Vichy regime sought an anti-modern counter-revolution. The traditionalist right in France, with strength in the aristocracy and among Roman Catholics, had never accepted the republican traditions of the French Revolution but demanded a return to traditional lines of culture and religion. It embraced authoritarianism while dismissing democracy. The Vichy regime also framed itself as decisively nationalist. French communists, strongest in labour unions, turned against Vichy in June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.Debbie Lackerstein, ''National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies, 1930–1944'' (2013) Vichy was intensely anti-communist and generally pro-German; American historian Stanley G. Payne found that it was "distinctly rightist and authoritarian but never fascist". Political scientist Robert Paxton analysed the entire range of Vichy supporters, from reactionaries to moderate liberal modernizers, and concluded that genuinely fascist elements had only minor roles in most sectors. French historian Olivier Wieviorka rejects the idea that Vichy France was fascist, noting that "Pétain refused to create a single party state, avoided getting France involved in a new war, hated modernization, and supported the Church".

The Vichy government tried to assert its legitimacy by symbolically connecting itself with the Gallo-Roman period of France's history, and celebrated the Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix as the "founder" of the French nation. It was asserted that just as the defeat of the Gauls in the Battle of Alesia (52 BCE) had been the moment in French history when a sense of common nationhood was born, the defeat of 1940 would again unify the nation. The Vichy government's "francisque" insignia featured two symbols from the Gallic period: the baton and the double-headed hatchet (labrys) arranged so as to resemble the fasces, the symbol of the Italian Fascists.

To advance his message, Pétain frequently spoke on French radio. In his radio speeches, Pétain always used the personal pronoun , portrayed himself as a Christ-like figure sacrificing himself for France and assuming a God-like tone of a semi-omniscient narrator who knew truths about the world that the rest of the French did not. To justify the Vichy ideology of the '' Révolution nationale'' ("national revolution"), Pétain needed a radical break with the French Third Republic. During his radio speeches, the entire French Third Republic era was always painted in the blackest of colours as a time of ("decadence") when the