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Authors: Robert O. Paxton

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75
Actes du Saint-Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale
(Vatican City, 1967), IV, 175.

76
Le Procès du maréchal Pétain
(
Journal officiel
, 1945), 191. Abetz thought the Vichy anti-Masonic organizations around Bernard Faÿ and Robert Vallery-Radot were too clerical and hostile to German influence, but he subsidized the periodicals and exhibitions of Henri Coston’s Centre d’Action et de Documentation anti-Maçonnique in Paris. See Paris telegram 3218 of 27 July 1942 (T-120/434/220208–11).

77
Le Figaro
, 6 February 1942. See Bernard Faÿ’s lecture on his discoveries in the “120 tons of documents,”
Le Temps
, 2 December 1941. Lists of Masonic dignitaries appear in the
Journal officiel
, 14 August–22 October 1941.

78
T-120/368/207282–85;
DFCAA
, II, 244.

79
Eichmann thought he could threaten France with being omitted from the “area of evacuation” if the French did not cooperate more fully in July 1942. See report of Röthke telephone conversation,
CDJC
, document no. XXVI-45 (also Nuremberg document RF-1226). See peace plans referring to the Mitteleuropäischen Grosswirtschaftsraum in T-120/363/206135–53.

80
Most works, including Gerald Reitlinger,
The Final Solution
, 2d ed. (London, 1968), 73, assume erroneously that these laws were exacted by the Germans.

81
Robert O. Paxton,
Parades and Politics at Vichy
(Princeton, 1966), 45.

82
Abetz telegram 763 to Ribbentrop, 6 March 1941 (T-120/221/149146); Thierry Maulnier, “L’Avenir de la France,”
Revue universelle
, 10 May 1941, 570 ff.; Léon Berard letter to Marshal Pétain, 2 September 1941 (
CDJC
, document no. XLII-10).

83
Figures are from Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, “Lagebericht über Verwaltung und Wirtschaft, April–June 1943,” Nr. 462/43g, Paris, 21 July 1943 (
CDJC
, document no. LXXV-219). Also see similar figures in Joseph Billig,
Le Commissariat Général aux questions juives
(Paris, 1955), III, 325. The commander of
Verwaltungsgruppe 531
assured the Chamber of Commerce of Troyes of the second point in a letter of 26 February 1941 (
CDJC
, document no. CCXLVI-15).

84
Letters of General de la Laurencie, 16 October 1940, 19 October 1940 (
CDJC
, document no. CCLXVI-19); first circular of S.C.A.P. to provisional administrators, 22 December 1940 (
CDJC
, document no. CCXVI-14). Fournier suggested that provisional administrators form a corporation and keep the original owner as a technical advisor.

85
Abetz (Paris) no 763 to Ribbentrop, 6 March 1941 (T-120/221/149146–47); Billig, I, 51 ff. This was the same meeting at which Darlan stressed Pétain’s insistence upon different treatment for French Jews, especially war veterans, and foreign Jews. In a long report on Jewish policy on 22 February 1942, Theodor Dannecker, the SS officer responsible for Jewish affairs in France, took credit for this step and stressed the value to Germany of having France take the initiative.
CDJC
, document no. XXIV-13.

86
CDJC
, document no. LXXV-147. Vallat also referred to the German “invasion” and warned that he could not forget being treated as a subordinate. Dannecker called it an “unheard-of effrontery.” Vallat was removed from office soon after, in March 1942. For Vallat’s career, see
Le Procès Vallat présenté par ses amis
(Paris, 1948), and Xavier Vallat,
Le Nez de Cléopâtre
(Paris, 1957).

87
Xavier Vallat letter to Dr. Werner Best, 23 June 1941 (
CDJC
, document no. CX-65); Report of the Institut des Questions Juives, 8 August 1941 (
CDJC
, document no. XIb-172). See also Billig, I, 108, 177.

88
Billig, I, 157–66, 327–30; III, 12–60.

89
See Vallat letter to General von Stülpnagel, 9 October 1941, accusing the Germans of reneging on that promise which had “helped me obtain the agreement of my government to the changes you wanted in the text of 22 July.” (
CDJC
, document no. LXXV-62). See also Vallat’s letter to Darlan, 7 July 1941, denying that the text proposed a “general spoliation of the Jews, as some fear.” The letter seems to have been used to sway the cabinet to accept the law. Billig, I, 171 ff.

90
Billig, III, 301.

91
Darquier seems to have escaped to Spain during the Liberation; I have found no trial record. The best source for his work is the archives of the
CDJC.
For du Paty, Haute Cour de Justice, “Arrêt de non-lieu: Mercier du Paty de Clam.”

92
Billig, I, 239–40, 364–65; Reitlinger, 327–51.

93
Abetz (Paris) telegram 2784, 2 July 1942 (T-120/434/220086); Nuremberg document RF-1226 also refers to this agreement; Laval-Oberg conversation, 2 September 1942 (
CDJC
, document no. XLIX-42); Knochen report, 12 February 1943 (
CDJC
, document no. I-38).

94
Weizsäcker memorandum St. S. 507, Berlin, 2 September 1942 and enclosed note from Italian Ambassador Alfieri (T-120/434/220334).

95
Antignac report,
CDJC
, document no. I-53. The whole CDJC dossier I is the source for this paragraph.

96
Edith Thomas in
Lettres françaises
, no. 2, quoted in Claude Lévy and Paul Tillard,
La Grande rafle du Vel d’Hiv
(Paris, 1967), 176.

97
Reitlinger, 327, 538, probably has the last word on the shaky German statistics.

98
Unsigned memorandum, 23 January 1942 (
CDJC
, document no. LXXV-38). Knochen’s report of 12 February 1943 (
CDJC
, document no. I-38) accused Pétain, the French clergy, and Police Commissioner René Bousquet of “doing everything to hinder the deportation of French Jews.”

99
T-120/405/213960–63.

100
Notes of Laval-Oberg conversation 2 September 1942 (
CDJC
, document no. XLIX-42).

101
CDJC
, dossier no. XXVII.

102
“Les données du problème français,”
Revue de Paris
, 1 February 1938.

103
Léon Blum,
A L’Echelle humaine
(Paris, 1945), 57.

104
Poincaré was the first to enjoy this extraconstitutional device, on 22 March 1924;
pleins pouvoirs
had been denied Briand during World War I, on 30 December 1916. Jacques Soubeyrol,
Les Décrets-lois sous la Quatrième République
(Bordeaux, 1955).

105
Léon Blum,
La Réforme gouvernementale
(Paris, 1918, reissued 1936); André Tardieu,
La Révolution à refaire
, I.
Le souverain captif
(Paris, 1936).

106
Le Réforme de l’état
, Conférences organisées par la société des anciens élèves et élèves de l’Ecole libre des Sciences Politiques, (1936); André Bisson,
Finances publiques françaises
(Paris, 1943), 271–72; Jean Guéhenno,
Journal des années noires
(Paris, 1947), 25 October 1942.

107
The word is Pierre Pucheu’s. See General Schmitt,
Toute la vérité sur le procès Pucheu
(Paris, 1963), 166.

108
For example, the PSF deputy from St.-Etienne, Creyssel.
Ministère public c/Creyssel
, 18.

109
It was the method also used by General de Gaulle in 1958.

110
The pretender, Henri Comte de Paris, told the U.S. consul at Tangier that he believed there was a chance of a monarchical restoration upon Pétain’s death. J. Rives Childs (Tangier) to Department of State, 11 July 1941 (U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.00/2311). But when he got German permission to visit Pétain at Vichy in the summer of 1942, Pétain seems to have angrily rejected any talk of restoration. (T-120/112/116360–62, 116385; T-120/434/220261–62). By November 1942 the Comte de Paris was on hand again in North Africa awaiting another change of regime.

111
Laval, who was rumored in July 1940 to be planning to form a single party with Marquet, Déat, and Weygand, opposed the idea afterwards for fear that Doriot would control it. (T-120/121/119723; U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.00/2918). Henri-Haye expected on 31 July 1940 that a single party including Déat and Bergery would shortly be formed (U.S. Dept. of State Serial File 851.00/2046). Abetz, on the other hand, worked in the Occupied Zone, according to instructions, “against a unified political will in France” [Abetz (Paris) telegram 5295 to Ribbentrop, 19 November 1942, T-120/928/297509–11].

112
Xavier Vallat, quoted in
D’Ordre du maréchal Pétain. Documents officials réunis et commentés par Jean Thouvenin
(Paris, n.d. [1940]). The veterans’ Légion Française des Combattants must not be confused with the Légion des Volontaires contre le Bolshevisme, which sent French volunteers to fight Russia.

113
Jean Guéhenno,
Journal des années noires
(Paris, 1947), 23 August 1942.

114
Almanach de la Légion française des combattants
, 2
e année
(1942), 111–12. “Published with the express approval of Marshal Pétain.”

115
Jean Le Cour Grandmaison, “Le Parlementarisme et la révolution nationale,”
La Légion, revue mensuelle illustrée
, no. 1 (June 1941).

116
René Gillouin, “Souveraineté et représentation,”
Revue universelle
, 25 November 1941, 617;
Le Figaro
, 18 October 1941. It was Xavier Vallat who called war veterans the “aristocrats of courage.”

117
Le Procès Flandin devant la Haute Cour de Justice
(Paris, n.d.), 203 ff. The Senate and Chamber of Deputies were not to be dissolved, however.

118
The members of the National Council (
Conseil national
) are listed in Henri Coston,
Partis, journaux, et hommes politiques
(Paris, 1960), 166 ff. See also
Le Temps
, 27 April, 22 May, 15–19 September, 15 October 1941.

119
Abetz (Paris) telegram 3022 to Berlin of 6 October 1941 criticizes these plans as too clerico-bourgeois-reactionary to fit his ideal of a “socialist Europe” (T-120/405/213889–90). Xavier Vallat, “La Constitution voulue par le maréchal,”
Revue de Paris
, refers only to efforts to assure continuity in 1944. Peyrouton’s claim in
Du service publique à la prison commune
, 161, that the
National Council
was appointed only because the occupation prevented elections ignores the distrust of elections shown in all Vichy constitutional arrangements.

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