Chapter 15

(JUN 1940 CREATION OF THE VICHY STATE)

“Laval, with his white tie and middle-class French peasant attire, is very much out of place in the great salon among so many uniforms. He tries to speak in a familiar tone about his trip and his long sleep in the car, but his words go unheeded. Hitler treats him with frigid courtesy ... The poor man could not even imagine the fait accompli that the Germans were to place before him. Not a word was said to Laval about the impending action – that the orders to occupy France were being given while he was smoking his cigarette and conversing with various people in the next room. Von Ribbentrop told me that Laval would be informed only the next morning at 8 o’clock that on account of information received during the night Hitler had been obliged to proceed to the total occupation of the country.”

(This is a description of the Vichy Premier by Ciano. Laval was later executed for treason after the war.) The speedy takeover of the country of France in June 1940 culminated in the German-French Armistice of 22 June 1940. The origin of the Vichy State under Marshall Petain’s cabinet signing on that date led to the confirmation of full powers by the National Assembly on 10 July 1940. The French Third Republic was also dissolved on that same date and the new Vichy Government assumed sovereignty over the entire country. Of course, Vichy only had control in part over the non-occupied territory established by a military line of demarcation with strict border controls. It is important to understand that the conclusion of the war in Europe was considered by the Nazis to be imminent with only Britain as the sole remaining opponent.

Vichy government under Marshall Petain as the figurehead leader administered the non-occupied zone of France as well as the French Colonial Empire. They established their capital in the town of Vichy which became the de facto capital of the French state. In the first stage of occupation, the country of France was divided into an occupied zone and the Vichy Zone with almost no German presence. Still, the Vichy government operated under the control of the Gestapo and they little to protect the Jewish residents from being rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps. The second phase from 1942 until 1944 saw the Germans, the entire country was occupied by the German troops and the Vichy government was only a puppet state in name only following the orders of the SS. The final stage in 1944 after the Allied invasion of France even did away with that pretense and the Vichy government was forced to relocate to Sigmaringen in Germany.

The earlier phases of occupation allowed the French to maintain a minimal level of autonomy and control. Slowly Vichy France lost control over the overseas colonies and eventually, they were powerless to do anything to supervise any territory under German occupation or liberated by the Allies.

At the conclusion of the war, a number of the Vichy officials were executed for treason by the De Gaulle government and the French collaborators were severely punished by the remainder of the population. The Vichy officials were responsible for many deaths and crimes against humanity by assisting the Gestapo in sending thousands of French Jews to the camps. They had also executed a number of captured members of the Resistance following orders from the Nazi leaders.

Large numbers of French males were conscripted for labor in Germany under the pretext that they would repatriate the older, sicker French prisoners of war still in German prisons. Later in the war, even females were recruited for labor in Germany as the German civilian losses piled up with around the clock bombing.

De Gaulle discounted Vichy’s claim to be the legitimate French government and that it was an illegal government run by traitors in violation of the French Constitution. There is no argument that Marshall Petain was the true Premier appointed in June 1940 and he was within his rights to sign the Armistice with Germany. His later assumption of dictatorial powers is not considered legal and the Vichy government was not recognized by the Allied powers until they later relented and they extended diplomatic recognition to the Petain government as part of an agenda to legalize the concept of disassociation from the control of Axis power. Of course, this was all a transparent farce and had no relation to the reality of the situation during the period of 1940 – 1945.

It was many years later in my present day life span that I visited Marseilles in connection with other military duties that I was able to walk the streets that the desperate Jews of Marseilles walked in despair doing their level best to survive to another day not sent to the concentration camps and their likely death at the hands of an avowed anti-Semite.

I was interested in Marseilles as a prime example of the hate crimes of Vichy France against innocent and unarmed civilians being hunted down by French militia forces established under the Franco-German Armistice of 1940 along with enthusiastic assistance of the French Vichy government and the uniformed law enforcement units of French authority. My primary interest at that time was in the area of interrogation and detainee processing and the Nazi processes were historically well documented for current day analysis. I saw the police stations and the collection centers still standing along with the sadly empty train station platforms used to transport the thousands of Jews and other unwanted segments of the population deemed suitable for incarceration at a Nazi concentration camp. The inclusion of the bulk of the criminal residents of the city in that group was a surprise to the pimps, prostitutes and other criminal types that walked the streets of Marseilles with the confidant air of long-time underworld dwellers snug as a bug in a rug in what they believed to be a safe environment.