The History of France Under German Occupation During World War II

Emerging from France's catastrophic 1940 defeat like a bedraggled and rather sinister phoenix, the French State – better known to history as “Vichy France” or the “Vichy Regime” after its spa-town capital – stands in history as a unique and bizarre creation of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's European conquests. A patchwork of paradoxes and contradictions, the Vichy Regime maintained a quasi-independent French nation for some time after the Third Reich invasion until the Germans decided to include it in their occupation zone. Headed by a French war hero of World War I, Marshal Philippe Petain, and his later Prime Minister Pierre Laval, Vichy France displayed strong right-wing, conservative, and authoritarian tendencies, though it never lapsed fully into fascism until the Germans arrived to reduce its role to little more than a mask over their own dominion. Petain carried out several major initiatives in an effort to counteract the alleged “decadence” of modern life and to restore the strength and “virtues” of the French “race.” Accordingly, he received willing support from more conservative elements of society, even some factions within the Catholic Church.

Of course, not all French people proved willing to surrender to the Nazi invaders, however. While large numbers “collaborated” – working for German or Vichy companies to provide for themselves or their families – and some wholeheartedly backed the new regime out of opportunism, fascist conviction, or other motivations, many courageous French resisted the Nazis and the quisling Vichy state. At the same time, despite the legends, the French Resistance never grew into a single unified organization. Rather, it remained divided in several major and numerous minor factions, each with their own philosophy and agenda. While these factions all shared the same goal – opposition to the Germans their Vichy pawns – they viewed each other with some suspicion and sometimes cooperated only grudgingly.

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