Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The armistice negotiations were conducted in the same railway carriage at Compiégne in the forest of Rethondes where Germany had surrendered in 1918; they took three days, and went into effect on June 25th. Hitler was so convinced that Britain would also make peace that he gave surprisingly lenient terms to France. In spite of Mussolini’s demands, France did not have to give up any overseas territory or any ports on the Mediterranean, no naval vessels or any airplanes or armaments to be used against England. Northern France and all the western coast to the Pyrenees came under occupation, but the rest was left unoccupied, ruled by a government free from direct German control and policed by French armed forces. The chief burden of the surrender came from three provisions: (1) the division of the country into two zones, with about two-thirds of French productive capacity in the occupied zone; (2) all French prisoners of war, amounting to almost two million men, were to remain in German hands until the final peace treaty, while German prisoners were to be released at once; and (3) all the expenses of the German occupation were to be paid by unoccupied France. The two zones were sealed off so completely that even postal communication was reduced to a minimum; this crippled the economy of the unoccupied part. The expenses of the army of occupation were set at the outrageous sum of 400 million francs a day. Moreover, by fixing the exchange rate at one reichsmark for 20 francs, in place of the prewar rate of one for eleven francs, it became possible for the occupying forces to buy goods very cheaply in France, thus draining wealth to Germany.

The governmental system of Vichy France was a kind of bureaucratic tyranny. Pierre Laval pushed through a series of constitutional laws which ended the Third Republic and the parliamentary system, combining in the hands of Marshal Pétain the joint functions of head of the state (formerly held by the president) and head of the government (formerly

held by the prime minister), with the right to legislate by decree. Laval was designated as Pétain’s successor in holding these powers, and the parliamentary chambers were dismissed.

In spite of this appearance of centralized authority, the government as a whole operated on the basis of whim and intrigue, the various ministers following mutually inconsistent policies and seeking to extend these by increasing their influence over Pétain. The procrastinations, suspicions, ambiguities, and secrecies of the marshal himself make it difficult to determine what his own policy was, or even if he had one. It seems likely that he followed various policies simultaneously, allowing his legal powers to be exercised by quite dissimilar subordinates in an effort to achieve a few clearly defined aims. These aims seem to have been four in number, in decreasing importance: (1) to maintain, at all costs, the independence of unoccupied France; (2) to secure the release, as rapidly as possible, of the prisoners of war; (3) to reduce the financial charges of the occupation forces; and (4) to reduce, bit by bit, the barriers between the occupied and unoccupied zones.

The ideology of Vichy was a typical Fascist melange of nationalism, social-solidarity, anti-Semitism, antidemocracy, anti-Communism, opposition to class conflicts, to liberalism, or to secularism, with resounding blasts on the virtues of discipline, self-sacrifice, authority, and repentance; but all these things meant very little either to the rulers or the ruled of the new regime. In general, corruption and intrigue, idealism and self-sacrifice were about as prevalent under Vichy as they had been under the Third Republic, but secrecy was more successful, civil liberties were absent, the distance between propaganda and behavior was, if anything, wider, and hypocrisy replaced cynicism as the chief vice of politicians. The two strongest characteristics of the regime, ‘which made it sufficiently solid to continue to function, were negative ones: hatred of the Third Republic and hatred of England. But these ideas were too negative and too remote from the problems of day-to-day existence to provide very satisfactory guides to Vichy policy. As a result, there was complete confusion of policy.

Some leaders, and these the less influential, like Weygand, were resolutely anti-German, and were patiently awaiting the day when Vichy could turn against the German conquerors. Others, and these the more influential, like Laval or Admiral Darlan, had faith in a final German victory over Britain, and felt that France must accept the inevitable hegemony of Germany but try to secure for itself a privileged position as “favorite satellite.” While Pétain’s personal views were probably closer to those of Weygand, his pessimistic and defeatist personality led him to embrace the other point of view as a necessary evil. Accordingly, under German pressure he removed Weygand from all participation in public life (November 1941) and accepted Laval and later Darlan as his chief advisers and designated successors. In this situation Darland had an advantage over Laval, in view of Pétain’s personal inclinations, for Laval was a wholehearted and frank advocate of collaboration with Hitler, while Darlan was a much more devious and ambiguous personality, and thus closer to Pétain’s own character and policy. Accordingly, Laval was named foreign minister and successor in July 1940, but was removed from office, as unduly pro-German, on December 13, 1940. Darlan, who had been minister of the navy, became foreign minister, vice-premier, minister of the interior, successor-designate and chief adviser to Pétain in February 1941 and held these positions until April 1942; at that date Hitler forced Pétain to make Laval head of the government with full powers in both internal and external affairs.

The policy of Vichy France can hardly be called a success under Pétain, Darlan, or Laval. Some of the basic assumptions on which the regime had been founded proved to be false. Britain did not surrender. Efforts to collaborate with Hitler did not succeed in releasing the prisoners of war, in reducing the costs of occupation, or in lowering the barriers between the two zones of France. More than a million prisoners were still in German hands in January 1944. In addition, large numbers of French civilians were forced to go to labor in Germany. In spite of all kinds of resistance, the number of these reached 650,000 by late 1943. The occupation payments were reduced from 400 million to 300 million francs a day in May 1942, but were increased again, to 500 million in November 1942, and finally to 700 million a day in July 1944. In forty-five months (to April 1944) France paid 536,000 million francs of these charges. Such payments resulted in a completely unbalanced budget and extreme inflation. Futile efforts to control this inflation by price-fixing, wage-fixing, and rationing gave rise to enormous black-market transactions and widespread corruption, to the great profit of both German and Vichy officials. The latter did not even retain the satisfaction of believing that the armistice had preserved the integrity of France and of its empire, for Alsace-Lorraine was, in fact if not in law, annexed to Germany, and most of the overseas empire fell out of Vichy control in 1942. Lorraine was Germanized, and those inhabitants who remained loyal to France or to French culture were persecuted and exiled, hundreds of thousands coming as refugees to unoccupied France.

The continued resistance of Britain, the treatment of Alsace-Lorraine, the growing economic strain, and, above all, Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 led to the growth of an anti-German underground resistance in France. Russia’s involvement in the war shifted the Communists throughout the world, as if by magic, from a pro-German, antiwar policy to an anti-German, prowar policy. Their discipline and fanaticism gradually made them the dominant influence in the resistance, in France, and elsewhere in Europe. British and American policies toward Vichy France, as toward Franco Spain or neutral Russia, were parallel but far from identical. London, which broke off diplomatic relations with the new French regime in June 1940, followed a severe policy but at the same time sought to win France back into some kind of anti-Nazi resistance. Vichy weakness made this a hopeless task. At the same time, London tried to build up General de Gaulle, as leader of the “Free French,” into a diluted French government-in-exile, although De Gaulle’s uncooperative personality and arrogant pride made this a difficult and unpalatable task. De Gaulle obtained little support in the French Empire and almost none in France itself, but continued to enjoy a certain measure of British support.