Introduction
For those of us who remain fascinated by World War II, an area of discussion is France. We ask ourselves how such a great nation could have accepted defeat only some 31 days after Germany attacked her on May 10, 1940. Another question is the behavior of the Vichy government. That is (1) was the Vichy government a helpless victim or (2) was it an enthusiastic collaborator of anti-Semitic policies? Sadly, Dr. Michael Curtis, a Distinguished Professor of political science at Rutgers University, believes that Vichy’s leaders were active collaborators.
The history of Jews in France reflected centuries of hostility. A minority of Jews has lived in France since the Roman Empire. However, by 1940 a majority of French Jews had immigrated to France either from Eastern Europe or North Africa. The Jews of France were a heterogeneous group–Ashkenazi, Sephardic, members of the Nobility, socialists, etc. Many of the recent Jewish immigrants to France were members of the working class. The onset of the Depression led to much bitterness against Jews because the populace felt that Jews were taking jobs from Frenchman by accepting below living wage compensation. While not as extreme as the Nazis, the many right wing parties of France in the 1930’s advocated Jews losing many of their civil rights. Jews were stigmatized along with Communists, Free Masons, and Protestants.
Vichy Government
Michael Curtis pointed out that “the verdict on Vichy must be guilty.” The anti-Semitic policies were conducted by a “deliberate autonomous government policy.”
The author pointed out that almost unique in Europe, the Vichy government rather than German SS officials were responsible for rounding up Jews for deportation. Altogether some 70,000 Jews were deported. A majority of the Jews that were deported were immigrants and not native Frenchmen. However, some French Jewish citizens were also deported.
Vichy passed laws to strip Jews of their civil rights, seize their assets and exclude them from most professions. Worse, the French police apparatus organized and carried out the rounding up of Jews for deportation to the death camps, a task that the small German police contingent in France would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. With more freedom of action than most of occupied Europe, Curtis argues, Vichy was far more complicit in the Final Solution, especially in comparison with occupied Denmark and even the Axis governments in Bulgaria and Fascist Italy, which took concerted action–or at the very least, were less inclined to enforce discriminatory laws–to protect Jews under their jurisdiction. The French parliament meekly acquiesced to the formation of a dictatorship in August 1940, led by Marshall Petain and Pierre Laval.
Since World War II, there has been an attempt by French Government officials to downplay Vichy collaboration in favor of a mythology of heroic national resistance to the Germans. Only 10,000 Frenchmen joined Charles de Gaulle in forming his “independent army.” The so-called French resistance did not get many recruits until 1943 after it became apparent that Nazi Germany was being defeated on all fronts.
The acquiescence of Nazi rule was accepted by the legal establishment, the Church leaders, and even left intellectual leaders like Sartre and de Beauvoic.
We need to remember that fearing French turning over their fleet to the Germans, Churchill ordered a naval bombardment of French ships on July 3, 1940 (killing 1,287 French servicemen) off the Algerian coast. Initially, the invading allied forces in North Africa fought Vichy forces not the Germans in 1942.
To avoid France becoming communist after World War II, both Britain and the United States promoted policies such as creating a French zone in Germany and giving France special status in the United Nations.
