Vichy France (38 page)

An inconclusive summit meeting. Marshal Pétain meets Marshal Hermann Goering at Saint-Florentin (Yonne), 1 December 1941. Admiral Darlan walks behind Pétain, and the German interpreter Dr. Paul Schmidt is at the left.

Pierre Pucheu, France’s Minister of the Interior, with over one hundred prefects at Vichy, as the gathering pledged their loyalty to Marshal Pétain (center). Admiral Darlan is seated next to Pétain.

The struggle against the Resistance. Laval (right) and Joseph Darnand, Secretary of State for the Maintenance of Order, review a special unit of the Milice, spring 1944.

Retribution. A suspected collaborator, beaten by the crowd, is taken into custody by police and soldiers during the liberation of Paris, August 1944.

Laval (standing) testifies at the trial of Marshal Pétain in Paris, August 1945, as the marshal (seated at right, hand to face) listens.

¹
Interview in
Journal de Genève
, quoted in
Le Temps
, 19 July 1940.

²
Cahiers
, vol. 23 (Paris, 1960), 429.

³
Quoted by Yves Bouthillier,
Le Drame de l’armistice
(Paris, 1948), II, 282.

⁴
J. M. Jeanneney and M. Perrot, eds.,
Textes de droit économique et social français
(Paris, 1957), 306.

⁵
Michel-Henri Fabre, “La retraite des vieux travailleurs,”
Annales de la faculté de droit d’Aix
, Nouvelle série, no. 37 (1944), 156.

⁶
Gazette du palais
, 1941, 2e semestre, I;
Les lois nouvelles
, 1943, 51–69;
Revue de droit commercial
, 5e année, 1943, 89–108.

⁷
Bichelonne, preface to Robert Catherine,
Economie de la répartition des produits industriels
(Paris, 1943); Jean Berthelot,
Sur les rails du pouvoir
(Paris, 1968), 219; André Bisson,
Finances publiques françaises
(Paris, 1943), 271–72.

⁸
Procès du maréchal Pétain
(Paris, 1945), 9.

⁹
Henri Michel and Boris Mirkine-Guetzevich,
Les Idées politiques et sociales de la Résistance
(Paris, 1954), 80, 82, 217. See also Henri Michel,
Les Courants de pensée de la Résistance
(Paris, 1962).

¹⁰
Maurras was actually rejoicing in his discovery that Pétain had political sense as well as symbolic value. The phrase does not appear until 9 February 1941. See Eugen Weber,
Action Française
(Stanford, California, 1962), 447.

¹¹
Lawmakers of the Liberation expressed a national urge to dismiss Vichy programs as foreign doctrines “imported into the country by the tanks of the invaders.”
Journal officiel, lois et décrets
, 13 October 1944, quoted in Gordon Wright,
Rural Revolution in France
(Stanford, California, 1964), 224. Robert Aron,
Histoire de Vichy
(Paris, 1954), 196 ff., at least acknowledged Vichy’s indigenous quality, but he treated the National Revolution very briefly as an extension of Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalism.

¹²
Robert Brasillach, writing in prison in 1945, quoted in René Rémond,
La Droite en France
(Paris, 1968), II, 384.

¹³
Marshal Pétain, “La Politique sociale de l’avenir,”
Le Temps
, 20 September 1940. A similar text appears in
Revue des deux mondes
; both were probably drafted by Gaston Bergery.

¹⁴
Emmanuel Mounier, “Programme pur le mouvement de jeunesse français,”
Esprit
, 9
e
année, no. 96 (January 1941), 152–67; Jean Giono,
Ides et calendes
(Paris, 1942), 31.

¹⁵
See
this section on corporatism
.

¹⁶
See footnote 11.

¹⁷
Procès du maréchal Pétain
, 191; Marcel Peyrouton,
Du Service public à la prison commune
(Paris, 1950), 155.

¹⁸
La France irréelle
(Paris, 1957), 154–55.

¹⁹
Alfred Munz,
Die Auswirkung der deutschen Besetzung auf Währung und Finanzen Frankreichs
, Studien des Instituts für Besatzungsfragen in Tübingen zu den deutschen Besetzungen im 2. Weltkrieg, Nr. 9 (Tübingen, 1957), 25–77; Cour des comptes,
Rapport au président de la République, 1940–44
(Paris, 1947), 25.

²⁰
“Dritter Tätigkeitsbericht der deutschen Waffenstillstandsdelegation für Wirtschaft, 1. Juli–31. Dezember 1941” (Nuremberg document 1988–PS), 5; “Fünfter Tätigkeitsbericht der deutschen Waffenstillstandsdelegation für Wirtschaft, 1. Juli 1942–30. Juni 1943,” (Nuremberg document 1990–PS), 8–9; “Sechster Tätigkeitsbericht … 1. July 1943–17. August 1944,” (Nuremberg document 1991–PS), 63. The periodic reports of Franz Richard Hemmen are the most valuable source for Franco-German economic relations. The locomotive figures come from
Ministère public c/Berthelot
, fascicule 2, 45 n. The foodstuffs figures come from Cour des Comptes,
Rapport au président de la République, 1940–44
(Paris, 1947), 11 ff. Alan S. Milward,
The New Order and the French Economy
(New York, 1970), now provides the fullest general account of the economic side of collaboration.

²¹
“Bilan,”
Nouvelle revue française
, January–February 1943.

²²
Georges Bernanos,
La Grande peur des bien-pensants
(Paris, 1931), 454. See also Georges Duhamel,
Scenes de la vie future
(1930), translated as
America The Menace
, and Robert Aron and Armand Dandieu,
Le Cancer Américain
(1931).

²³
Paul Valéry, “Tableau de Bourse des valeurs de civilisation,”
Cahiers
, vol. 23 (Paris, 1960), 306.

²⁴
For “swing,” see
La Légion
, no. 9, February 1942.

²⁵
Le Temps
, 9 and 25 August 1940.

²⁶
Quoted in Harry W. Paul,
The Second Ralliement: The Rapprochement between Church and State in France in the Twentieth Century
(Washington, 1967), 181.

²⁷
Le Marquis d’Argenson,
Pétain et le pétinisme
(Paris, n.d. [1953]), 170.

²⁸
La Revue des deux mondes
, 1 February 1941, 126–36.

²⁹
Testimony of Donati, Inspecteur des finances and former prefect,
Procès Pétain
, 292. See also André Chaumeix’ diagnosis of “moral decadence” since Emile Combes’ anticlerical crusade of 1903–05, in
Revue des deux mondes
, 1 October 1941, 379–84.