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Vichy France
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Within Vichy France, there was a low-intensity civil war between the French Resistance—drawn from the Communist and Republican elements of society—against the reactionary elements who desired a fascist or similar regime as in Francisco Franco's Spain. This civil war can be seen as the continuation of a division existing within French society since the 1789 French Revolution, illustrated by events such as the Bourbon Restoration and the White Terror enforced by the Chambre introuvable; the 1825 vote of the Anti-Sacrilege Act by the ultra-royalist comte de Villèle; the 1871 Paris Commune and the violent repression which followed, including the creation of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in expiation of the "Commune's sins"; the May 16, 1877 crisis; the Dreyfus Affair; the conflict during the application of the 1905 law on the separation of the Church and the State; the 6 February 1934 riots, etc. A part of French society had never accepted the Republican regime issuing from the Revolution, and wished to re-establish the Ancien Régime. This was made apparent by the glee of the leader of the monarchist Action française, Charles Maurras, who qualified the suppression of the French Republic as a "divine surprise".[1]
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Within Vichy France, there was a low-intensity civil war between the French Resistance—drawn from the Communist and Republican elements of society—against the reactionary elements who desired a fascist or similar regime as in Francisco Franco's Spain. This civil war can be seen as the continuation of a division existing within French society since the 1789 French Revolution, illustrated by events such as the Bourbon Restoration and the White Terror enforced by the Chambre introuvable; the 1825 vote of the Anti-Sacrilege Act by the ultra-royalist comte de Villèle; the 1871 Paris Commune and the violent repression which followed, including the creation of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in expiation of the “Commune's sins”; the May 16, 1877 crisis; the Dreyfus Affair; the conflict during the application of the 1905 law on the separation of the Church and the State; the 6 February 1934 riots, etc. A part of French society had never accepted the Republican regime issuing from the Revolution, and wished to reestablish the Ancien Régime. This was made apparent by the leader of the monarchist Action française, Charles Maurras' glee, who qualified the suppression of the French Republic as a “divine surprise”.
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Vichy France had legal authority in both the northern zone of France, which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, and the unoccupied southern "free zone", where the regime's administrative center of Vichy was located. The southern zone remained under Vichy control until the Allies landed in French North Africa in November 1942. Recent research by the historian Simon Kitson has shown that, in spite of extensive State Collaboration, Vichy led an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to preserve the sovereignty of this southern zone by arresting German spies.[1]
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What part did Vichy France really play in the Nazi effort to murder Jews living in France? Few questions, from the end of World War II to the present day, have so haunted French society. This book, now a classic, is the definitive account of Vichy's own antisemitic policies and practices and a major contribution to the history of the Jewish tragedy in wartime Europe. It was originally described in published reviews as 'superb and definitive' and 'brilliant [and] utterly absorbing'. The authors' 'exhaustive research and the sobriety of their prose make this indictment far more powerful than previous work on the subject.' The book 'is something of a spiritual history of a great democratic nation sunk in the squalor of moral collapse.'
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Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 7-25 of The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France by Simon Kitson, translated by Catherine Tihanyi, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press. (Footnotes and other references included in the book may have been removed from this online version of the text.)
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In the beginning of the war, before Vichy France was eventually occupied in 1942, many Jews fled the oncoming tide that was the German Blitzkrieg and ended up in France. However, on must not confuse the fact that many Jews ended up in France with any desire the French might have had to actually harbor these fleeing Jews. Paxton says that “Vichy objected vigorously when the Germans delivered more expatriate Jews into the unoccupied zone in the fall of the 1940” (Paxton, Vichy France : Old Guard New Order, 1940-1944, 371). The fact was that, in reality, France had always been an extremely anti-Semitic nation. The Dreyfus affair in the 19th century is a very good example of how in the past anti Semitism and manifested itself in French society. In fact, it could be argued that French anti-Semitism was more ingrained than it ever was in Germany.
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Vichy France