Vichy france
The Vichy France or Vichy regime (in French, Régime de Vichy) is the name given to Informally known is the political regime and puppet state established by Marshal Philippe Pétain in part of French territory and in all of its colonies, after the signing of the armistice with Nazi Germany in the framework of World War II. World War. He ruled during the occupation of the country by the forces of the Third Reich and was defeated in August 1944, the date of the liberation of France.
The official name with which the regime called itself was French State (in French: «État français»), because formally it constituted an interruption of the Third Republic —while the name «republic» disappeared of the official acts of the regime -, by the new constitutional laws that liquidated parliamentary democracy, suppressed fundamental freedoms and prohibited political parties. This authoritarian regime, with totalitarian (or fascistic) pretensions, which was framed in the regimes of fascist ideology of the time, was a collaborationist State of Nazi Germany: it assumed the maintenance of the occupation forces, forced the young French to work in Germany to support the Nazi war economy, fought against the Resistance, and took an active part in the mass extermination of the country's Jewish residents.
At the time of the liberation of the country, in the summer of 1944, the Vichy regime was declared “illegitimate, null and void” (illégitime, nul et non avenu) by General De Gaulle, considering that the Republic had never ceased to exist.
History
After the invasion of France by the Wehrmacht and the consequent collapse of the French Army in June 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain assumed power and requested an armistice from Germany, the Armistice of June 22, 1940. After the fall of Paris on June 14, 1940, the French government and its institutions meet in Bordeaux and there the French Senate and the Chamber of Deputies accept the resignation of the President of the Council of Ministers, Paul Reynaud, on June 16, and the formation of a cabinet is entrusted to the right-wing leader Pierre Laval, who in turn imposes on the French parliamentarians the appointment of the elderly Marshal Philippe Pétain as President of the Council of Ministers on June 17 with the granting of "full governmental powers" #3. 4; to celebrate an armistice with the Germans under the veiled threat that, failing to do so, France risked much harsher peace terms with the triumphant Third Reich.
A group of 80 French senators opposes Laval's project to sign an armistice with the Nazis, but they are a minority that loses credibility before the obvious defeat of the allies in the Battle of France. The British evacuation makes it more difficult to sustain the idea of an all-out resistance and the French army is not in a position to stop the Wehrmacht. The possibility raised by Reynaud of withdrawing the government from Algeria and fighting the Nazis from there is completely rejected. On June 17, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate agree to cease their functions and transfer all authority to Pétain and Laval, while on the afternoon of that same day Brigadier General Charles de Gaulle, Deputy Defense Minister, flees to the United Kingdom. to express his rejection of a separate peace with Germany. The new government established from the beginning a collaborationist policy with the Nazi regime, first celebrating the armistice of June 22, 1940, by which France capitulated to the Third Reich, leaving only the United Kingdom and its colonies as the only enemy countries of the Nazi Germany.
As a consequence of the armistice, the German army occupies the north of France including Paris and the entire Atlantic coast of France, covering almost 60% of the metropolitan territory of France, where effective power resides in the Wehrmacht headquarters although de jure the Third Reich formally recognizes Pétain's authority over all French territory.
However, Hitler immediately proceeded to establish a purely German administrative regime over the regions of Alsace and Lorraine, annexing them in practice to the Reich, establishing the Germanization of both territories and expelling the inhabitants who wish to retain French nationality. In the rest of the country, the theoretical authority of the Pétain government was established, although in practice the German troops remained in the positions occupied on June 22, 1940, and the Wehrmacht became the highest authority in said Occupied Zone. In addition, the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region will be run by the German military government in Brussels.
Vichy is one of the 4 sub-prefectures of the Allier department, located in central France, north of the Auvergne region in the heart of the former "province of Bourbonnais", place of origin of the Bourbons, and 55 km from Clermont-Ferrand, capital of the region. It was already then a small tourist town, whose hot springs were widely visited, and with a large number of hotels and summer houses, as well as telephone and telegraph lines that easily connected it with the rest of France. Due to these characteristics, in the summer of 1940 Laval chose Vichy as the temporary headquarters for the new government, while Bordeaux was a port on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean that would be subject to the direct administration of the Wehrmacht. while Lyon (the other big city in the free zone) was a traditional seat of the French socialists; the great Vichy hotels were requisitioned to house administrative entities of the new regime.
To maintain the appearance of an "autonomous" government, Laval decided to install the administrative headquarters of the collaborationist government in some large city in unoccupied France, but this was not possible. for security reasons and German pressure, so that over the months it was tacitly determined that Vichy was the seat of government in practice, although it was never officially declared the "capital".
The regime immediately imposed a series of fascist-inspired policies, persecuting Freemasonry and publicly repudiating the alliance with the United Kingdom and the parliamentary democracy of the Third French Republic.
On July 10, 1940, a new regime structure was established, suspending numerous articles of the 1875 Constitution and changing the official name of the country to "French State" (État Français) to avoid the denomination of "Republic". Pétain was proclaimed "head of the French State" and Laval held the position of President of the Council of Ministers.
Ideology
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La Révolution nationale (French pronunciation:/ /ev/lysj/ turning nasj/nal/, National Revolution) was the official ideological program promoted by the Vichy Regime (the “French State”) which had been established in July 1940 and led by the Marshal Philippe Pétain. The Pétain regime was characterized by anti-parliamentarism, the rejection of the constitutional separation of powers, the culmination of personality, anti-Semitism sponsored by the state, the promotion of traditional values, the rejection of modernity, corporativism and the opposition to the theory of class struggle. Despite its name, the ideological project was more reactionary than revolutionary, as it opposed most of the changes introduced in French society by the Revolution.
As soon as it was established, the Pétain government (at the request of Pierre Laval) took action against the "undesirable", i.e. Jews, métèques (immigrants), masons, liberals and communists. The persecution of these four groups was inspired by the concept of Charles Maurras of "Anti-France", or "extranjeros interna", which defined as the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Masons and foreigners". The regime also pursued gypsies, homosexuals and leftist activists in general. Vichy imitated the racial policies of the Third Reich and also participated in birth policies aimed at reviving the 'French Race' (including a sports policy), although these policies never came as far as the eugenic program implemented by the National Socialists.Timeline
July 1940 - November 1942
The first Laval government
The Vichy government was initially dominated by Pierre Laval, who from the beginning sought to increase the regime's collaboration with Nazi Germany, despite the difficult situation in France: Although the war had not caused mass destruction, in the armistice of the On June 22, it had been agreed that the French government would bear all the costs of supporting the occupying German troops, which entailed a financial burden of several million French francs a month. In addition, the Third Reich kept nearly 1,800,000 French soldiers (among recruits, technicians, and officers) as prisoners of war and refused to repatriate them despite the fact that this enormous number included workers and peasants much needed as manpower; Their repatriation became a necessity months later, but it was very slow, and by 1945 almost half a million French prisoners were still living on German soil.
Vichy France enjoyed a rather reduced practical autonomy due to the fact that the Occupied Zone of France included a large part of the strategic industrial centers (such as Paris and its adjacent region), highly populated cities (Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, Brest), and the largest industrial and agricultural production (concentrated in the northern and central departments of France), for which the Vichy regime assumed effective control only over an area equivalent to 40% of the country, where few industries and less infrastructure existed than in the rest of France.
Although the Wehrmacht was not stationed in the free zone, its internal security depended solely on the regime's police forces and a French army (the "armistice army" 34;) reduced to only 100,000 men in all arms, no heavy artillery or tanks. Traffic between the two areas of France was strictly controlled by the German military authorities, even going so far as to interrupt postal communication in the first months of occupation, and free passage to civilians was prohibited.
Initially, Germany maintained the same policies towards the Vichy regime as towards any foreign state, allowing it to maintain diplomatic relations with other states, and keeping native civil servants in the public administration as it was impossible to replace them with German servants. In addition to this, Hitler appointed a special ambassador to Vichy, Otto Abetz, to ensure that Vichy's internal policy remained in accordance with the objectives set by Germany.
Simultaneously, the German occupation began to lose popularity when already in August 1940 the Third Reich issued the first regulations for the Germanization of Alsace and Lorraine, excluding them from the military administration based on the Wehrmacht and integrating both zones in Germany as new Gaue, which implied a territorial annexation in practice.
Laval attempted to encourage collaboration with Nazism by sponsoring the Montoire Interview between Pétain and Adolf Hitler on October 24, 1940, as well as Laval assuring the Germans that French colonial troops would defend the territories under their rule against attacks from the Nazis. United Kingdom or Free France, but refusing for their part to declare war on the British.
The Darlan Government
Germany's conduct regarding Alsace and Lorraine, as well as Laval's refusal to grant power to the former French fascists and far-rightists of the 1930s, hastened his ouster by Pétain on December 13, 1940, and he was succeeded by Admiral François Darlan, also of pro-German tendencies. In fact, Pétain remained head of state thanks to his great popular prestige, which is why the Nazis insisted on keeping him as the maximum leader of the regime. For his part, Admiral Darlan enjoyed great prestige among the French navy (almost intact as it had not participated in the fighting of 1940) and his violent Anglophobia ensured a policy of full collaboration with Germany.
Throughout 1941 the Vichy government was chaired by Admiral Darlan, but his lack of political expertise meant that collaborationist groups (in both areas of France) obstructed the machinery of public administration and thus caused a government especially inefficient in addressing the economic problems of France and simultaneously addressing the demands of Germany, for which Darlan sought assistance and diplomatic help from the still neutral United States (which maintained its embassy in Vichy).
In Indochina, the war operations of Japan caused the Vichy regime to grant large concessions to the Japanese armed forces in the French colonial possessions, which could not count on the support of the metropolis. In the same way, the French colonies in the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon) were left with the duty of maintaining collaboration with the Germans in case it was necessary: this was shown during the revolt in Iraq in March 1941 but it did not mean any timely help. regarding the advance of the Afrika Korps in Libya.
The German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 had the unique consequence of launching the French communists, hitherto unnoticed, into active struggle, while the entry of the United States into the war (December 1941) cut off options of Darlan to evade German pressure by using his ties to the Americans.
Darlan strove to maintain the best possible relations with Germany, but his policy sought to avoid further pressure from the Third Reich with the help of the Americans, encouraging the French Legion of Fighters as "political arm" of the regime. In the same way, Darlan tried to recruit to his cause the Worms Group , an informal group of big French capitalists, taking cover of their hostility to communism after the USSR invasion of Germany. Despite this, the collaborationists from Vichy and Paris refused to be relegated by the big owners, in addition to the fact that these were of little help in the face of German pressure. The entry of the United States into the war weakened the hopes of the Worms Group, aware of the enormous economic power of the United States, for which reason it turned out to be a useless alliance for Darlan.
The worsening of the war situation of the Axis after the failure of the hope of a quick victory in the campaign of the USSR, and the fact that Darlan's policies were surpassed by events, caused that in April 1942 Pétain, to satisfy Hitler's demands, reinstate Pierre Laval as head of government and dismiss Darlan.
The return of Laval
Laval's second government revived large-scale collaboration with the Nazis, giving renewed impetus to France's economic integration into the Third Reich's war machine, forcibly sending French workers to Germany (and creating the & #34;Compulsory Labor Service (STO)") and redoubling the importance of the French fascist volunteers who since August 1941 had come to fight alongside the Wehrmacht in the Russian campaign, in addition to accepting new economic exactions from the Third Reich.
November 1942-August 1944
Direct occupation
However, Vichy lost what little autonomy it had after the "unoccupied zone" was invaded by German and Italian troops on November 11, 1942, with which the Wehrmacht troops established their direct control over all French territory and displaced the French civil administration from command, although it (and the Pétain's government) to maintain the fiction of an independent France and because for Nazi interests it was convenient for the administration to continue in the hands of French collaborators with Germany due to the high human and material costs of installing a purely German bureaucracy.
After November 1942 internal security and police throughout France came entirely under the command of the Gestapo, wiping out what little independence the Pétain regime could still display. Throughout 1943 the Laval-led government reinforced France's subservience to Nazi Germany while the activities of the French Resistance spread through cities and countryside. This motivated the Vichy government to strongly sponsor the French Militia as a paramilitary force destined to support the German repression against the Resistance, which meant a hope for Laval and Pétain of maintaining the favor of hitler. In parallel, the fall of Mussolini and the Allied landings in Italy (July-August 1943) eliminated a rival to the Vichy regime but increased German fears of a landing by the Western Allies, a fear exacerbated by the fact that since May 1943 all of Africa North was under Free French or British control. Precisely for these reasons, the Wehrmacht high command had destroyed the port district of Marseille with dynamite on January 22, 1943.
Throughout 1943 Laval also reinforced the presence of the former French fascists in the administration, bypassing the bureaucracy inherited from the Third Republic, but preventing major Paris-based collaborationists such as Jacques Doriot or Marcel Déat from They would move before the Germans. In fact, Laval managed to convince German ambassador Otto Abetz that no "collaborator" he would be as effective for the Third Reich as Laval himself, and that leaving leadership to Déat or Doriot would increase popular discontent and stimulate local resistance. Abetz accepted such an argument and supported Laval's position towards Hitler.
Despite the assurances given by Laval, the economic difficulties worsened: food shortages continued, the general impoverishment of the population, high inflation, and a flourishing black market, while the Resistance sabotage against the Wehrmacht continued. they became more and more daring and daring, which weakened Laval's authority with the Wehrmacht authorities despite Abetz's efforts. Faced with pressure from the collaborationists in Paris, rumors of an early Allied landing in Europe, and the growing strength of the Resistance, Hitler ordered Abetz to "strengthen" the Vichy regime, making room for veteran collaborators but keeping Laval as head of government, which was achieved through various pressures at the end of 1943.
In January 1944 Laval formed a new ultra-collaborationist cabinet including his old Parisian rivals, fearing that the feared Allied landing would make him lose control of the Vichy regime, but by then the fight between the Gestapo and the Militia against the French Resistance had surpassed all expectations, attacks of all kinds against German interests occurring almost daily, and networks of support for Free France being discovered among the old bureaucracy.
The Normandy landings in June 1944 precipitated the final crisis of Vichy France, despite the efforts of Pétain and Laval to salvage part of their power, already completely dependent on German troops in France. In the face of the German defeats in July and August 1944 at the Battle of Caen and the Falaise Stock Exchange and the large-scale revolt launched by the Resistance (which killed pro-Nazi journalist Philippe Henriot on June 28), Hitler and Abetz agreed that the Vichy government was to be evacuated.
The success of the Americans in the landings in Provence and the start of the battle for Paris determined that the German authorities, by order of Abetz, acted on August 17, 1944, demanding that Pétain and Laval transfer the Vichy government to Belfort (next to the Swiss border), although Pétain refused to leave Vichy until August 20.
The End: The "Sigmaringen Commission"
Since the Allied advance could not be stopped, the members of the Vichy regime were removed from Belfort by direct order of Hitler and confined until the end of the war in the German town of Sigmaringen, in Wurtemberg, with which the Vichy regime was practically extinct. With this regime, a large number of its adherents were evacuated to Germany: Doriot, Déat, Abel Bonnard, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Paul Marion, Lucien Rebatet, Joseph Darnand, among others. The administration of the French territory where the Wehrmacht still fought until December 1944 remained in the exclusive hands of military authorities.
Meanwhile the French collaborationists in Sigmaringen formed in September 1944 a "Government Commission for the defense of national interests" that it was intended to act as a "government in exile" although Pétain refused to exercise activities as Head of State, considering himself practically a prisoner in Germany and Laval refused to act as head of government, apparently useless given the situation. This "Government Commission" it enjoyed a regime of extraterritoriality on German soil but its degree of real influence was negligible even among the French located in Germany: French workers held by the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) were left under the control of German companies and the forces of the Militia they were attached exclusively to the Waffen SS. The "Government Commission" it was chaired by the collaborationist Fernand de Brinon, with help from Déat and Darnand, but Jacques Doriot formed a "Liberation Committee" in the German town of Konstanz for his account, although without German sponsorship, which subsisted until his death on February 22, 1945.
In April 1945 the Württemberg region was taken over by American forces and also, ironically, by Free French troops. They took Sigmaringen on April 22 after overcoming weak German resistance, seizing any collaborationists they could find. US forces also turned over collaborators discovered in the area to the Free French.
The conclusion of the war led to Pétain's death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment by General Charles de Gaulle, dying in prison on the island of Yeu in 1951. Laval fled to Spain, but was handed over to the Gaullist government and shot for treason in October 1945.
Several politicians, mainly deputies, who had voted to grant "full powers" Pétain were persecuted for it. Such was the case of Robert Schuman, one of the key figures of what is now the European Union (EU).
Characteristics and justification of the regime
On July 10, 1940, full powers were delegated to Marshal Pétain, signaling the official end of the French Third Republic, replaced by the "French State" (État Français) as the official name of the country; Pétain seizes power with the conviction that France is in a state of decline. According to the regime, individualism, industrialization and the growth of large cities have corrupted the natural scales of power, also republican egalitarianism and foreign influence are condemned as the cause of the destruction of values French and as the indirect reasons for the war defeat against Germany.
Much of Vichy's propaganda will insist that democracy is the cause of disunity in French society and that competition between political parties along with its consequences (free speech, political debate, etc.) has been a debilitating factor for France, which would only be saved as a nation by adopting a fascist policy and entering the orbit of Nazi influence.
The Vichy regime also exalts an economy based on agriculture and traditional values of conservative inspiration, with marked social immobility. All of this coincides with German demands that France, a highly industrialized country in 1940, submit its industrial power to the economic demands of the Third Reich (also preventing French industry from competing with German industry) and concentrate more on agricultural production to accentuate French economic dependency.
Pétain and his collaborators thus develop a "nationalism of exclusion" that seeks a justification for its existence in the existence of internal enemies; due to this the communists, the jews, the gypsies or the members of the freemasonry begin to be persecuted. In the case of the Jews, anti-Semitic laws were enacted on October 3, 1940 and June 2, 1941 (the Jewish Statute), in imitation of the Nuremberg Laws established by the Third Reich. Shortly after, the Jews residing in France would be persecuted to be sent to extermination in Germany.
The Vichy regime sought the creation of a new order through the principles of rejection of individualism and exaltation of the family as the center of society, giving these ideas the name of "National Revolution", which can hardly be implemented due to the poor financial situation of the regime and the fact that its economy (even limited to 40% of French territory) had to first meet the industrial requirements of the Third Reich.
In fact, one of the German demands was that the expenses of food, fuel, lodging, and transportation of the Wehrmacht on French soil be covered by the Vichy government, to save expenses for the Third Reich which meant in practice a heavy indirect financial tax to the detriment of France. Similarly, the German authorities in the Occupied Zone demanded the forced transfer of industries to Germany (taking their French skilled workers with them), and when this was not possible they determined German government control over industrial activity within France.
The regime incurs in serious contradictions such as the fight against the role of the state in broad aspects of social life (with the slogan « trop d'Etat ») while increasing the number of of officials and fascist-inspired corporations are created for the organization of society and population control. Likewise, a nationalism is exalted based on the French rivalry against the United Kingdom and against "international Jewry" ally of the Anglo-Saxon world, but at the same time it is becoming increasingly clear to the population that the Vichy regime can only act within the guidelines that Nazi Germany allows it, since neither Pétain nor Laval are in a position to formulate a refusal under pressure from Hitler.
Collaboration with National Socialism
The Vichy regime was characterized by its support and "state collaboration" with the Nazi regime that has its origin in the conditions of the armistice that, among other things, forced to support the German war effort. Economic collaboration impoverishes France, which through transfers of manufactures and labor supports German industry to the detriment of the needs of its own population. Military collaboration also occurs through the ceding of some African military bases while French police cooperation (of great magnitude) is established in the metropolis to be complicit in the Holocaust and in the fight against the resistance.
The police and the French Militia, created by the Vichy regime in 1943, were closely linked with the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel (SS) to combat the French Resistance and persecute opponents. More than 70,000 French Jews were deported to concentration camps, a quarter of whom were arrested during the raid on the Velodrome d'Hiver (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv). The establishment of the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) allowed 650,000 workers (between volunteers and forced) to be sent to Germany to help the German war effort between 1940 and 1944. Members of the Resistance, Freemasons, trade unionists and communists (the latter persecuted with greater determination since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in 1941) were persecuted and handed over to the occupation forces.
Similarly, collaboration with Germany prompted collaborationist groups to form military regiments to collaborate with the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa against the USSR in June 1941, founding the "Légion des volontaires français contre le Bolchevisme", or simply "Légion des volontaires français", LVF, of 2,800 men designated by the Wehrmacht as Infanterieregiment 638, where they served up to 6,500 individuals. As the war progressed, the collaborators managed to form other troops that were integrated with veterans of the "French Militia" and from the LVF to join the Waffen SS and fight on the Eastern Front, where the Charlemagne Division was created which remained fighting alongside the Nazis even until the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
Frenchmen who opposed the Armistice of June 22, 1940 (and therefore joined the British in continuing the fight against Germany) were sentenced to death "in absentia" by the Vichy regime, such a sentence reached Charles de Gaulle and all his exiled supporters.
It should be noted that since the 1940 armistice the Germans arrested numerous Spanish republicans who had fought alongside the French army, taking them out of the prisoner of war camps to deport them to concentration camps in Germany, without the Vichy regime was opposed. Most of these Spaniards were transferred to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Along with the persecution of exiles from Spain, Vichy also had to accept the German order to hand over to the Gestapo all anti-Nazi or Jewish German exiles who had fled. refugee in France since 1933.
Diplomatic relations with the Allies
Between 1940 and 1942, many countries maintained a diplomatic representation in Vichy to keep open a channel of dialogue with the Pétain regime. In addition to the Axis powers and neutral countries, the US maintained diplomatic relations with Vichy until November 1942.
One of the biggest concerns of the United Kingdom (which did not recognize the Vichy regime as the legitimate government of France) was that the French war fleet would not fall under German control, one of the few concessions that Pétain had obtained from Adolf Hitler in the 1940 armistice. Diplomatic relations with the British were broken in July 1940, when Churchill ordered an attack on the French fleet stationed in the port of Mers el-Kebir (Operation Catapult) because the Vichy government had refused to allow the French fleet to safety in areas controlled by the British Navy.
Encouraged by the British government, which wanted despite everything to have some channel of communication with the French government, Canada kept its ambassador in Vichy, as well as the US, which they thought they could keep an eye on so that the Pétain regime would not granted the Germans more concessions than those established in the armistice treaty. Both countries broke their relations with Vichy only in November 1942, when German and Italian troops invaded the so-called free zone.
Australia will also maintain its embassy until then, but this did not prevent it from simultaneously having diplomatic relations with the Free French of General Charles de Gaulle. The Soviet Union, under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, retained an embassy in Vichy until it broke relations in June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded its territory in what became known as Operation Barbarossa.