State Collaboration
State Collaboration
The dictionary definition of collaboration above has positive
connotations: cooperation, working together, reciprocal support, mutual
assistance. This, of course, was the spin that Vichy ministers put on the
word during les années noires. The Vichy régime were convinced that
a favourable relationship with a Germany that was going to conquer Europe
would be secured through collaboration. German and France, two
independant states working together to secure a better tomorrow for Europe.
The dictionary definitions above express little, however, of the
connotations of the word collaboration for many during and after the war.
For much of the French population, the term became synonymous with
betrayal, selling out to the enemy and supporting its cause and interests
over those of France. The word collabo (collaborator) - frequently
prefaced with the adjective sale (dirty) - was the worst insult.
The different connotations of collaboration get to the heart of issues
that historians have been debating since the war. To what extent was
collaboration a genuinely reciprocal arrangement between France and
Germany? What was the specific nature of Vichy collaboration? Whose
interests did it serve? These lecture notes will consider these very issues.
Historians of Occupied France generally make a distinction between two
different forms of collaboration:
Shortly after taking over from Paul Renaud on 17 June 1940, Pétain set
about establishing a longer-term political relationship with Nazi Germany.
The armistice was a necessary first step in both avoiding further
bloodshed and in establishing a better relationship with a Germany that
would, according to Vichy's ministers and Pétain himself, soon defeat
Great Britain and become the dominant power in Europe. Some spoke, in
fact, of une Europe allemande, a Europe dominated by Germany.
Pétain and his ministers thought that France, as a colonial power and a
major influence on Europe between the wars, would be well placed to become
an important ally to this powerful nation in the heart of a new European
order, un nouveau ordre européen. A strong government - L'État
français, the French State, was created on 12 July 1940 - and some
form of cooperation with Germany would be a necessary precondition for
this.
On 11 October 1940, Pétain made a speech on the radio in which he alluded
to possibility of France and Germany working together once peace in Europe
had been established. In this speech, Pétain used the term
`collaboration', linking the word to the idea of peace with Germany. Later
that month, on the 24 October, Pétain conducted an historic meeting with
Hitler at Montoire. At that meeting Pétain and Laval discussed the
possible directions of Franco-German collaboration and is a key symbolic
moment in Franco-German relations during the war.
For Pétain and Laval, collaboration with Germany was the means by which
France might secure a better place in Europe once peace had been
established. It would be a sign of France's good faith and willingness to
accept Germany as the dominant force in European affairs. Pétain and Laval
also hoped that collaboration would lead to more immediate improvements:
the return of 1.6 million prisoners of war, the continuing safety of the
French population, a decrease in the war indemnity France was obliged to
pay and, of course, assurance that Vichy's sovereignty over Occupied and
Unoccupied zones would be respected. The issue of sovereignty was the most
consistent concern of both Pétain and Laval and the desire to safeguard it
informed many of their negotiations with Germany.
Collaboration was also essential in ensuring that Vichy was given the time
and space to reconstruct France along the lines of the National
Revolution. With the French population stunned by defeat and invasion, and
the politicals of the Third Republic discredited, Pétain and his allies
seized the moment to conduct their own ideologically-motivated reforms.
To complete their National Revolution, Vichy would have to buy time from
Nazi Germany through a policy of collaboration.
Although Vichy volunteered to collabrate for its own reasons, there was,
it should be remembered, a degree of compulsory collaboration too. Under
Article 3 of the armistice convention, France was obliged to cooperate
with the Nazi military authorities who had full rights and powers over the
Occupied zone. The French authorities in the Occupied zone were obliged to
comply with the requests of the occupying forces, whatever that might
entail. The German military authorities had a right to veto any
appointment or policy with which they disagreed making a mockery, in
essence, of Vichy's claim to sovereignty. Vichy collaboration with Nazi
Germany, therefore, was something of an inevitability.
German military presence and the 1.6 million prisoners of war who were
de facto hostages helped ensure this collaboration and force
Vichy's hand. Vichy was quick to conceal this dependance. On a number of
occasions, Vichy gave the appearance of sovereignty by anticipating Nazi
demands and making them appear to be French initiatives. Vichy's
anti-semitic legislation, and in particular, the notorious Statut des
Juifs, can be seen as an example of this.
Collaboration, therefore, was a reality for the French authorities as
early as the 25 June 1940 when the terms of the armistice came into force.
Although Vichy had high hopes for a genuine partnership with
Germany, the Nazi authorities were more circumspect.
Although there were a few francophile Nazis like von
Ribbentrop and Otto Abetz who were more favourable to this
proposal, the majority of high-ranking Nazis had no
intention of treating France as an equal. Most perceived
France purely in terms of her potential as a supplier of raw
and manufactured goods, and of labour. This was the view of
Herman Göring, after Hitler the most influential man in the
Third Reich, who advocated the systematic economic
exploitation of France.
There was a feeling that France, as the conquered nation, should pay the
price for its defeat as well as meeting the costs of military occupation.
Many Nazis still bore a grudge against France for the punitive peace
settlement it had helped impose on Germany after World War I and were more
than happy to see France suffer. Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Minister for
Propanganda, was quick to seize on the propaganda value of France's
humiliation in Germany. It is claimed that his desire was to see France
reduced to an `enlarged Switzerland', an agreable destination for German
tourists as well as convenient source of high quality couturiers
(Hirschfeld: 1989 p.6).
Hitler was happy to see France willing to collaborate as it both kept
France out of the war - this was a priority as France's military potential
was still considerable - and incurred lower demands on Germany's own
military resources. Nazi Germany had no real interest in helping
establish a sympathetic ally or even an independant fascist state in
France. In its relationship with France, all other concerns were
subordinate to the realization of its own agenda (Hirschfeld: 1989 p.11).
Perhaps the most widely practiced and significant form of collaboration to
take place during les années noires was economic. This form of
collaboration was not so keenly sought after by Vichy as others. However,
from the German point of view, it was the most attractive. Nazi Germany
had, as I have mentionned earlier, no intention of treating France as an
equal; it perceived France purely in terms of its potential as a supplier
of raw and manufactured goods and of labour.
Many private companies, particularly those in industrial sectors important
to Nazi Germany's war economy (e.g. the coal and steel industry, aircraft
and motor vehicle manufacture) found themselves forced into economic
collaboration with the Germans for survival. Many companies feared
bankruptacy, or the seizure of their assets by the occupier, or else the
growth of German companies at the expense of French ones. Many companies,
then, saw economic collaboration as an unpleasant necessity to ensure
their own survival. Others for example, were more than willing to work for
the Germans in the expectation of higher profits. In 1941, for example,
the French photographic company Photomaton, without any prompting, offered
to produced identity photographs for Jews in Germany's concentration
camps. `Research published in the 1980s (see Hirschfeld: 1989 p.9 for
overview) has indicated that industrial output and profits increased
during the first two years of the war as opportunities were siezed and
lucrative contracts with the Germans were signed. Although the post-war
years are seen as those of economic modernisation, recent research has
also indicated that it took place during the war years too. Collaboration
with the Germans on a number of projects was, for example, particularly
beneficial to the French aircraft industry.
David Pryce-Jones estimates that some eight or nine million worked
directly for the Germans on roads, military defences, aircraft, armaments
and food production.
By early 1942 there were concerns that Germany's supply of foreign labour
- mainly from Russia and Poland - was beginning to run out. Fritz Sauckel,
a long-time Nazi was given responsibility for recruiting new labour and,
in May 1942 he demanded that 250,000 French workers be sent to Germany by
the end of July that year. Laval, initially unhappy with this decision,
responded with a scheme called la relève by which one French
prisoner of war would be returned to France for every three workers who
volunteered to work in Germany. This scheme, perhaps inevitably, failed to
recruit the required number and by February 1943 the Vichy administration
was required to introduce a form of conscription, le Service du travail
obligatoire (STO). The response in France to the introduction of a
compulsory labour service was an increase in the numbers of
réfractaires, young men fleeing, some joining the resistance, and
of those finding work in occupations exempted from STO like mining. There
is an account of one déporté du travail STO at Témoignage: les parias du STO (R.
Noblet).
France's contribution to the German war effort was considerable. At the
end of the war, it is estimated that approximately 650,000 Frenchmen and
44,000 Frenchwomen had been sent to labour in Germany, making France the
second largest contributor of unskilled labour - only Poland contributed
higher numbers - and the largest contributor of skilled labour to the
German economy (Atkin: 1998 p.174). Of the wealth Nazi Germany acquired
from its occupied territories, some 40% came from France. As early as
1940, Vichy had authorized the transfer of the Beligian gold reserves held
in France and the shares to the Bohr copper mine in Yugoslavia. The
looting of art works and antiques from Jewish owners which were then sent
back to Germany.
There was a degree of daily, low-level collaboration with the occupier.
This frequently took the form of letters of denunciation. Letters to the
Vichy or German military authorities identifing black marketeers,
réfractaires, resistance members and sympathizers, and, of course,
Jews were commonplace and even encouraged by the collaborationist press.
Collaborationist magasines like Au pilori and Je suis
partout with peak wartime readerships of about 100,000 and 300,000
respectively, encouraged such activity and included the relevant adresses
to which information should be sent (Pryce-Jones: 1989 p.28). Such
letters, a sample of which are collected in Henri Amouroux's La grande
histoire des Français sous l'occupation, were frequently motivated by
personal grudges and anomosity rather than ideology.
Although Vichy maintained a position of neutrality, there was nonetheless
a degree of military collaboration with Nazi Germany. This was entirely
consistent with other forms of collaboration that Vichy had sought with
Germany. However, military collaboration and Vichy's abandonment of its
neutrality became more and more difficult in the context of the `total
war' Germany had to fight and of the invasion of French colonies in North
Africa by the Allied forces.
At certain key moments, Vichy offered various forms of support to the
German war effort. Some military collaboration, like the logistical
support Darlan offered the German military in Tunisia and Syria (27-28 May
1941), was accepted. Other proposals, like the offer in November 1942 to
create a Légion tricolore in which French troops, in French uniform, would
fight alongside the Wehrmacht in Tunisia, were rejected. Such
rejections of Vichy proposals expressed German reluctance to consider
France as a proper ally and not as a conquered territory.
Vichy's priority was very much one of defence. It was determined to avoid
fighting a war on French territory and was therefore willing to resist
Allied invasion of its colonies. This inevitably meant that Vichy was, in
spite of its desire to maintain neutrality, engaged in combat with Allied
forces.
By 1943, however, Germany was fighting a war on many fronts - a `total
war' to use Hitler's own phrase - and required as much assistance as
possible. On 22 July 1943, Frenchmen were allowed to join the Waffen-SS
and, in 1943 Laval was finally granted permission to create the Milice.
The Milice played an important role alongside the German military in
combating the resistance - the defeat of a resistance cell at les Glières
is an infamous example.
Various collaborationalist parties in the Occupied zone assisted in
establishing the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme
(LVF). This volunteer unitarmy - there were 10,000 volunteers initially -
fought against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front in Nazi uniform. The
LVF became a Wehrmacht infantry regiment and continued to fight in Germany
after France's liberation as part of the SS Charlemagne division.
The Allies, for their part, were interested in persauding France to join
in the struggle against Germany.
Although most forms of collaboration were not motivated by any ideological
affinity to fascism, there were a number of political parties in the
Occupied zone with a firm commitment to Nazi ideology. Falling under the
influence of what French historian Philippe Burrin calls `le champ
magnétique des fascismes' (Burrin: 1984), the magnetic field of
fascisms, these parties modelled themselves on the Nazis. Some went so far
as to adopt paramilitary uniforms and Nazi-style salutes, Their view of
the degeneration of French society owed more to Nazism than to the
National Revolution. France was enjuivée (riddled with Jews) or
négrifié (riddled with blacks). Its only path back to greatness was
through the creation of a régime along the lines of Nazi Germany and a
closer relationship with them than even Vichy had envisaged.
The Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) founded in February 1941 by
Marcel Déat, or the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) established by Jacques
Doriot in were two collaborationist parties that advocated such a
strategy.
One justification for collaboration put forward by Vichy ministers during
and after the war was that it reduced the damage the occupiers might
potentially inflict on France. After the war, Pétain used this argument
at his trial. His defence claimed that Pétain and Vichy had formed un
bouclier, a shield that had protected France against the worst
excesses of Nazi domination. Historians call this defense the `shield'
philosophy.
Although plausible as a theory, it doesn't stand up against the evidence.
Firstly, protecting France against the full barbarity of Nazi rule implies
an awareness on the part of Vichy of Nazi policy. It is possible to argue
that Vichy's understanding of Nazi policy was limited. The actions of
Vichy, predicated on the victory of Germany in an essentially European
war, expresses a blinkered view of the dynamics of Nazism. The Germany of
1940, thought many in Vichy, was little different to the Germay with whom
they had agreed an armistice in 1918.
Moreover, the argument that Vichy collaboration prevented France from
becoming another Poland is similarly unfounded. The `polonization' of
certain sections of the French community took place, and took place, more
importantly, with the complicity of the French authorities. The
deportation of 75,000-80,000 Jews, the forced dispatch of 750,000
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen to work in Germany, the trials of 135,000 French
people, the internment of 70,000 `enemies of the state', the complicity of
the French police and the Milice in suppressing resistance are all
examples of this. There was no shielding or moderating influence here.
Comparisons with other occupied countries in Europe underline the
specificity of the French experience. In the Netherlands, for example,
civil servants were only expected to ensure the proper functionning of
essential services and not to provide any other assistance to the
occupying forces.
Vichy not only facilitated and assisted in Nazi atrocities, but it also
exploited France's military defeat to construct its own internal political
revolution. This makes Vichy France, with the possible exception of
Croatia and Slovakia, newly created states, a specific case in occupied
Europe.
I shall leave the last word to Gerhard Hirschfeld;
COLLABORATION, n.f. Travail en commun. Association. Aide,
appui, concours, coopération, participation.
Defining Collaboration
Le Petit
Robert
State Collaboration and Collaborationism
State Collaboration
Germany's Attitude to Collaboration
Economic Collaboration
Everyday Collaboration
Military Collaboration
Collaborationism
Conclusion
Collaboration had not prevented the worst from happening but rather had
made it possible and in any case paved the road to Auschwitz (Hirschfeld:
1989 p.13).
Further Reading
tony.mcneill@sunderland.ac.uk
The University of Sunderland
Last Update 3-Nov-98