Collaborationist government in Nazi-occupied France
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The Government of Vichy France was the collaborationist ruling regime or government in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Of contested legitimacy, it was headquartered in the town of Vichy in occupied France, but it initially took shape in Paris under Marshal Philippe Pétain as the successor to the French Third Republic in June 1940. The government remained in Vichy for four years, but fled to Germany in September 1944 after the Allied invasion of France. It operated as a government-in-exile until April 1945, when the Sigmaringen enclave was taken by Free French forces. Pétain was brought back to France, by then under control of the Provisional French Republic, and put on trial for treason.
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Background.
Philippe Pétain, a hero of World War I, known for applying the lessons of the Second Battle of Champagne to minimize casualties in the Battle of Verdun, became commander of French forces in 1917. He came to power in World War II as a reaction to the stunning defeat of France in early 1940. Pétain blamed a lack of men and material for the defeat, but had himself participated in the egregious miscalculations that led to the Maginot Line, and the belief that the Ardennes were impenetrable. Nonetheless, Pétain's cautious and defensive tactics at Verdun had won him acclaim from a devastated military, and poet Paul Valéry called him "the champion of France".
He became Vice-Premier under Paul Reynaud in May 1940, when the only question was whether the French Army should surrender or the French government should sue for an armistice. After President Albert Lebrun appointed Pétain prime minister on 16 June, the government signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940.
With France fallen to the Germans, the British judged the risk was too high of the French Navy falling into German hands, and a few days later, in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940, they sank one battleship and damaged five others, also killing 1,297 French servicemen. Pétain severed diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom on 8 July. The next day the National Assembly voted to revise the constitution, and the following day, 10 July, the National Assembly granted absolute power to Pétain, thus ending the French Third Republic. In retaliation for the attack at Mers el Kébir, French aircraft raided Gibraltar on 18 July but did little damage.
Pétain established an authoritarian government at Vichy, with central planning a key feature, as well as tight government control. French conventional wisdom, particularly in the administration of François Mitterrand, long held that the French government under Petain had merely sought to make the best of a bad situation. Vichy policy towards the Germans was at least in part founded on concern for the 1.8 million French prisoners of war. As President Jacques Chirac subsequently acknowledged, even Mussolini stood up to Hitler and in so doing saved the lives of thousands of Jews, many of them French. Antisemitism in France began before Pétain, but became a key characteristic of his time in power, as manifested in Vichy anti-Jewish legislation.
Third Republic.
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Until the invasion, the French Third Republic had been the government of France since the defeat of Napoleon III and the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. It was dissolved by the French Constitutional Law of 1940, which gave Pétain the power to write a new constitution. He interpreted this to mean that the previous constitution, outlined in the French Constitutional Laws of 1875, no longer constrained him.
In the wake of the Battle of France that culminated in the disaster at Dunkirk, the French government declared Paris an open city and relocated to Bordeaux on 10 June 1940 to avoid capture. On 22 June, France and Germany signed the Second Armistice at Compiègne. The Vichy government, led by Pétain, replaced the Third Republic. It administered the zone libre in the south of France until November 1942, when Germans and Italians occupied the zone under Case Anton following the Allied landings in North Africa under Operation Torch. Germany occupied northern France and the Atlantic coast, and the Italians occupied a small territory in the southeast.
Transition to the French State.
At the time of the armistice, the French and the Germans both thought Britain would come to terms any day, so it included only temporary arrangements. France agreed to its soldiers remaining prisoners of war until hostilities ceased. The terms of the armistice sketch out a "French State" (État français), whose sovereignty and authority in practice were limited to the zone libre, although in theory it administered all of France. The military administration of the occupied zone was in fact a Nazi dictatorship. However, the fiction of French independence was so important to Laval, in particular, that he agreed to requisition French workers for Germany to prevent the Germans from doing it unilaterally for the zone occupée alone.
The Vichy régime considered itself the legitimate government of France, but Charles de Gaulle, who had escaped to England, declared a government in exile in London, and broadcast appeals to French citizens to resist the occupying forces. Britain shortly thereafter recognized his Empire Defence Council as the legitimate French government. Under the terms of the armistice France was allowed a small army to defend itself and to administer its colonies. Most of these colonies simply recognized the shift in power, but their allegiance to Vichy shifted once the Allies invaded North Africa in Operation Torch. Britain however outraged the French by bombing their fleet because the British were unwilling to risk it falling into Axis hands.
Alsace-Lorraine, which France and Germany had long disputed, was simply annexed. When Allied forces landed in North Africa under Operation Torch, Germany's response was to annex the free zone in Case Anton.
Pétain administration under Third Republic.
The Philippe Pétain administration was the last administration of the French Third Republic, succeeding on 16 June 1940 to Paul Reynaud's cabinet. It formed in the middle of the Battle of France debacle, when Nazi Germany invaded France at the beginning of the Second World War. It was led until 10 July 1940 by Philippe Pétain, and favored the armistice, unlike General de Gaulle, who favored fighting on in the Empire Defense Council It was followed by the fifth administration of Pierre Laval, the first administration of the Vichy France regime.
Formation.
Paul Reynaud, who had been the French since 22 March 1940, resigned early on the evening of 16 June, and President Albert Lebrun called for Pétain to form a new government.
Pétain recruited Adrien Marquet for Interior and Pierre Laval for Justice. Laval wanted an offer of Justice. On the advice of François Charles-Roux, the , and with the support of Maxime Weygand and Lebrun, Pétain stood firm, which led Laval to withdraw, followed by Marquet in solidarity. After the armistice, Raphaël Alibert convinced Pétain of the need to rely on Laval, and the two rejoined the government.
Pétain obtained the participation of the SFIO by bringing back Albert Rivière and André Février with the agreement of Léon Blum.
The following is a list of the French government ministers in the administration of Pétain under the Third Republic.
End of administration.
On 10 July 1940, the French National Assembly met in Vichy and voted to give absolute power to Pétain in the Constitutional Law of 1940, effectively dissolving itself, and ending the Third Republic. The Vichy regime began.
Vichy governments.
Pétain and the French State.
In the French State under Pétain, French authorities willingly enacted and enforced antisemitic laws, unprompted by Berlin. His collaborationist government helped send 75,721 Jewish refugees and French citizens to Nazi death camps.
First Laval administration (1940).
The fifth government formed by Pierre Laval was the first administration formed by Pétain under the Vichy regime after the vote of 10 July 1940 ceded full constituent powers to Pétain. The government ended on 13 December 1940 with Laval's dismissal. This administration was not recognized as legitimate by the Empire Defense Council of the government of Free France, which the British Government had quickly recognized as the legitimate government of France following De Gaulle's radio appeals to the French public.
Formation.
The government of Philippe Pétain signed the armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940, put an end to the Third Republic on 10 July 1940 by a vote conveying full powers to Pétain and followed up with three Vichy Constitutional Acts on 11 July. Meanwhile, on 11 July General de Gaulle created the Empire Defense Council, which was recognized by the British Government as the legitimate successor of the Third Republic, which had allied itself with Great Britain in the war against the Nazis.
On 12 July 1940 Pétain named Pierre Laval, second Minister of State of the last government of the Third Republic under Philippe Pétain as vice-president of the Council, while Pétain remained simultaneously head of state and head of government. Constitutional Act #4 made Laval next in the line of succession should something happen to Pétain. On 16 July, Pétain formed the first government of the Vichy régime and kept Pierre Laval on as vice-president of the Council.
Laval's administration more or less coincides with the arrival in France of Fritz Sauckel, tasked by Hitler with procuring qualified manpower. Until then, fewer than 100 000 French workers had voluntarily travelled to Germany to work Refusal to send 150 000 skilled workers had been one of the causes of the fall of Darlan. Sauckel demanded 250,000 additional workers before the end of July 1942.
Laval fell back on his favorite tactic of negotiating, stalling for time, and seeking reciprocation. He proposed the "relève", in which a prisoner of war would be freed for every three workers sent to Germany, and announced it 22 June 1942, after the same day, in a letter to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German minister of foreign affairs, Laval framing the "relève" policy as French participation, by providing workers, in the German war effort.
"They give their blood. Give your labour to save Europe from Bolshevism".
Nazi propaganda leaflet suggesting French workers travel to Germany to support the war effort on the eastern front (1943)
The voluntary "relève", was replaced by the Service du travail obligatoire (STO) which began in August 1942 throughout occupied Europe. To Sauckel, the "relève" had failed, since fewer than 60 000 French workers had gone to Germany by the end of August. He threatened to issue an "ordonnance" to requisition male and female manpower. This "ordonnance" would only have had effect in the occupied zone. Laval negotiated a French law covering both zones instead. Laval put workplace inspection, the police and the gendarmerie at the service of forced impressments of labor, and tracking Service du travail obligatoire scofflaws. Forced impressments of workers, guarded by "gendarmes" until they boarded a train, drew hostile reactions. On 13 October 1942 the Oullins incidents broke out in the suburbs of Lyon, where workers at the railway station went on strike. Someone wrote "Laval assassin!" (Laval murderer) on the trains. The government was forced to back away; on 1 December 1942 only 2,500 requisitioned workers had left the southern zone. On 1 January 1943, Sauckel demanded, in addition to the 240,000 workers already sent to Germany, a new contingent of 250,000 men, before mid-March To meet these objectives, German forces organised ineffectively brutal raids, which led Laval to propose to the Council of Ministers on 5 February 1943 legislation creating the STO, under which youth born in 1920-1922 were requisitioned for work service in Germany Laval mitigated his legislation with many exceptions.
In all, 600 000 men left between June 1942 and August 1943 despite what Sauckel denounced in a letter to Hitler as "pure and simple sabotage", after meeting more than seven hours on 6 August 1943 with Laval, who again attempted to minimize the number of requisitioned workers and refused to his demand for 50 000 workers for Germany before the end of 1943.
On 15 September 1943, Reich minister for Armament and War Production Albert Speer reached an agreement with Laval minister Jean Bichelonne — an agreement Laval was counting on to "block the deportation machine". Many businesses working for Germany were removed from Sauckel's requisition. Individuals were protected but the French economy as a whole was integrated into that of Germany. In November 1943, Sauckel demanded, without much success, 900 000 additional workers. On orders from Berlin, French workers stopped