France’s salvation, at a moment when Germany is preparing the final offensive against Russia, is in total obedience, without mental reservations. France can seize, in playing an economic role in the victory, a historic chance to modify her destiny. From being a defeated country she can become a nation integrated in the new European ensemble.7
The pragmatic case for collaboration was now reinforced by an ideological one. In a speech on 22 June 1942 Laval made the remark for which he was never to be forgiven: ‘I desire the victory of Germany, for without it, Bolshevism would tomorrow install itself everywhere.’
Tightening the Screw: Oberg, Sauckel, Dannecker, Röthke
Conditions had changed since Laval’s first period in power. In 1940, his policy of collaboration had had little chance of success because the Germans hardly wanted anything France had to offer; in 1942 it had no chance of success because the Germans wanted so much that nothing the French offered would be enough. As Goering put it in August: ‘If the French hand over until they can’t hand over any more, and if they do it of their own free will, then I’ll say I’m collaborating.’8
There were three ways in which German policy towards France was about to become harsher. First, at the beginning of 1942, Germany abandoned Blitzkrieg and started to convert to a full-scale war economy. This meant that all the occupied territories had to supply workers for German factories. In March 1942 the Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel was appointed Commissar-General for Labour to oversee this policy. Sauckel was a blusterer and a bully, later to be the bane of Albert Speer’s efforts to introduce rationality into the German war economy. Secondly, in January 1942, the Germans had decided upon the extermination of all the Jews of Europe. Responsibility for organizing the deportation of Jews from France fell initially to the young and energetic SS officer Theodor Dannecker who had represented Eichmann in Paris since 1940 as head of the Judenamt (Jewish Office). After July 1942, when Dannecker was transferred to Bulgaria, he was replaced by Heinz Rôthke who was no less zealous. Thirdly, the growth of resistance made the Germans increasingly concerned about security. In May, control of German policing in France was removed from the army and handed to the SS officer Carl Oberg, who had previously served as a Nazi police official in Poland. Oberg’s two chief assistants, Herbert Hagen and Helmut Knochen, were, like him, fanatical Nazis entirely devoted to Himmler’s deputy, Heydrich. To demonstrate the significance of Oberg’s appointment, Heydrich accompanied him personally to Paris when he took up his post.
Since all the new German policies required co-operation from the French police, a key role on the French side was played by René Bousquet, Secretary-General in charge of the police. Today Bousquet is largely remembered for his role in deporting Jews from France. In the Third Republic, however, he had been the rising star of the prefectoral corps, and a protégé of the Radical politician Albert Sarraut. He became a national celebrity in 1930 when, at the age of 21, he saved many people from drowning during floods in the Tarn département where he was working in the prefecture. One observer of the Vichy scene noted of Bousquet: ‘he had the misfortune to become a hero at the age of 20, and that sent him off the rails’.9 In 1931 Bousquet served in the cabinet of Pierre Cathala, in Laval’s first government. Although it was Vichy which, in September 1940, named Bousquet as the youngest prefect in France, he showed no signs of repudiating his previous affinities. A bust of Marianne remained in his office, and he tried to protect Freemasons from persecution. Bousquet’s willingness to serve the new regime was helped by its commitment to order and anti-communism, but otherwise he was not ideological. Committing his crimes as a zealous administrator not a fanatic, he was the perfect servant of Laval’s authoritarian Republic.10
Policing was now at the heart of collaboration. Any German interference in French internal policing would further erode that sovereignty which Vichy was so committed to preserving. This could only be avoided by reassuring Germany that the French would carry out the necessary measures. Bousquet had his first meeting with Oberg on 6 May. Negotiations proceeded for three months until, on 8 August, Oberg and Bousquet signed an agreement recognizing the independence of the French police. It stipulated that the Germans would no longer issue direct orders to the French police; the Germans would abandon collective executions of hostages; and French courts would judge all crimes except those committed specifically against the Germans. In return, the French promised to struggle against ‘terrorism, anarchism, and communism’. The bargain was simple: Vichy promised to keep order on the Germans’ behalf; the Germans promised to respect Vichy’s sovereignty over policing.
Bousquet considered this agreement as a victory, but Oberg was no less happy. The repression against the Resistance intensified. Between May 1942 and May 1943 roughly 16,000 Communists or Gaullists were arrested by French police working closely with the Germans. The head of the Paris Special Brigades (BS) met the Paris Gestapo chief every Wednesday; the French police used torture systematically. In cases directly involving the Germans, suspects were handed to the Gestapo. Despite the Bousquet–Oberg agreement, the Germans did not immediately abandon the execution of hostages. On 11 August 1942, 88 Frenchmen were executed to avenge the death of two Germans after a bomb was thrown into a sports stadium in Paris, and on 17 September another 116 were executed after an attack on a cinema patronized by Germans. But after September, this policy was largely abandoned, and ‘only’ 254 hostages were shot between May 1942 and December 1943 (as opposed to 471 between September 1941 and May 1942).11 After the war, Knochen was clear about the advantages of the deal with Bousquet: ‘If we were able to have smaller police forces in France [than in Belgium or Holland] it was because there existed an established government and an official police.’12
The Vel d’Hiv: 16 July 1942
French police co-operation also proved indispensable to the Germans in the deportation of the Jews. Already on three occasions in 1941, the Germans had, with French police co-operation, rounded up Jews in Paris as a reprisal against Resistance attacks. These Jews were sent to internment camps, and filled the first deportation convoys that left for Auschwitz on 27 March, 5 June, and 22 June 1942, including over 1,000 French Jews. But this piecemeal policy was now to be replaced by the ‘Final Solution’.
At his meeting with Oberg on 6 May, Bousquet was informed by Heydrich that the Germans were intending to deport foreign Jews from the Occupied Zone to camps in the East. Bousquet asked if foreign Jews in the Unoccupied Zone, who were in internment camps, could be included. No decisions were taken on this occasion because the Germans had not decided their strategy. In mid-June, Dannecker demanded the initial deportation of 40,000 Jews between the ages of 16 and 40: 10,000 were to come from the Unoccupied Zone, the rest from the Occupied Zone; 40 per cent of them were to be French. Negotiations on this issue proceeded throughout the rest of the month, Eichmann himself paying a fleeting visit to Paris on 1 July.
The key meeting took place on 2 July between Bousquet and Oberg. Bousquet raised no objections to the arrests. For him the only ‘embarrassing [gênante]’ fact was that they were to be carried out by the French police; for the Germans this was a prerequisite of the operation’s success. A compromise was reached: the French police would round up the Jews but the operation would be restricted to foreign Jews from both zones. The government ratified the agreement on the next day. The Germans had intended only to arrest Jews between the ages of 16 and 40 in order to preserve the fiction that they were being deported to work camps. But Laval proposed that the deportations also include children under 16. After some hesitation, Eichmann gave his approval. Laval claimed to be inspired by a ‘humanitarian’ desire to keep families together. He may indeed have feared the effect on public opinion of scenes of screaming children being forcibly separated from their parents, but his main motive was practical: Vichy did not want to be saddled with organizing care for the children once their parents had gone.13
The operation began in Paris on 16 and 17 July; it was planned with military preci
sion and involved 9,000 French police. In two days, 12,884 Jews were arrested; 7,000 of the victims (including 4,000 children) were parked for five days in the Vel d’Hiver sports stadium where they languished in indescribable squalor with little food or water. They were then taken to special camps before being deported to Auschwitz. The Rafle du Vel d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiver Round-Up) was the largest single operation, but it was accompanied by other arrests in the Occupied Zone. These were followed on 26–8 August by more round-ups in the Unoccupied Zone which netted over 6,500 more Jews.
The government modified its position in September in the face of public outrage and Church protests. Seeing Oberg on 2 September, Laval asked not to be required to find more Jews. Handing over Jews was not, he said (whether regretfully or not is unclear), like buying items in a discount store. Although the deportations proceeded through September, they then ceased for the rest of the year, except for four convoys in November. Rôthke, the ideologue, had hoped to sustain the rhythm of a convoy per day until the end of October, but Knochen and Oberg were willing to take account of Laval’s difficulties, and preferred not to compromise Franco-German police co-operation.14
In total, 36,802 Jews (6,053 of them children under 16) were deported from France between July and the end of the year (41,951 in the year as a whole including the earlier convoys). Almost all of them were foreign. Laval’s post-war defenders argued that French police co-operation was the price he paid to save the French Jews. Quite apart from the morally dubious notion that some Jews were more precious than others, or the fact that the government made no protest about the deportations in March and June, which had included French Jews, the idea that foreign Jews were sacrificed to save French ones founders on the fact that, without French co-operation, the Germans lacked the manpower or information to round up significant numbers of either foreign or French Jews. Dannecker could not even find enough German troops available to escort the first convoy on 27 March until French police stepped into the breach.15 Throughout the negotiations, the Jews were viewed as expendable in the wider scheme of collaboration: Bousquet’s priority was to regain control over French policing. The only fact that conflicts with this interpretation was Bousquet’s initial objection on 2 July to French police involvement, but since he dropped the objection almost at once, it seems that his purpose was to underline to the Germans their need for French police co-operation.16
The truth was that Vichy shed no tears over the fate of foreign Jews in France who were seen as a nuisance, ‘dregs [déchets]’ in Laval’s words.17 He told an American diplomat that he was ‘happy’ to have a chance to get rid of them.18 It was after all Bousquet who had initially suggested including foreign Jews from the Unoccupied Zone, to the surprise of the Germans. When the arrests started there, he instructed the prefects to ‘break all resistance’ and ‘free your area of all foreign Jews’. He asked for the names of officials whose zeal was suspect.19
Would Vichy have acted differently if the fate of the Jews had been known? Laval told the cabinet that the Jews were apparently being sent to a Jewish state in Eastern Europe, but neither he nor Bousquet enquired whether this was true. On 2 September Laval informed Oberg that he was telling foreign diplomats that the Jews were being sent to Poland. He asked whether this was the right answer, explaining that his concern was to avoid discrepancies between what the Germans and French were saying, but showed no sign of being interested in what was really happening. When the Protestant leader Pastor Boegner saw Laval on 9 September, he was fed the official line that the Jews were building an agricultural colony in the East. Boegner remarked after the war: ‘I talked to him about murder, he answered me with gardening.’20
The regime’s callousness emerged again in its treatment of Jewish children. In October, the American government offered to take 1,000 Jewish children whose parents had been deported. Laval and Bousquet insisted that only certified orphans be granted visas. Since nothing was known of the fate of the deported parents, such proof was impossible to obtain, and the children were never allowed to leave. The reason for this obstructiveness was a German warning that the departure of children for the United States must not become an occasion for anti-German propaganda. For Vichy, the lives of 1,000 Jewish children were a reasonable price to pay for retaining German favour.21
The Collaborationists Attack
Laval bargained harder when it came to sending French workers to Germany. In May 1942, Sauckel demanded the recruitment of 350,000 French workers. It was almost impossible to have a civil dialogue with Sauckel, who was impervious to French protestations of faith in the new Europe. But Laval finally obtained two concessions: the figure was reduced to 250,000 (of whom 150,000 were to be skilled workers) and for every three skilled workers who departed one prisoner of war would be released. This relève (relief) scheme was announced in a fanfare of publicity in June. Although Laval in person welcomed the first trainload of returning prisoners on 11 August, the results of the relève were disappointing. By mid-August only 40,000 workers had volunteered. Sauckel threatened that if necessary he would requisition the workers himself. To prevent this, Laval promulgated a law on 4 September, making all Frenchmen between 18 and 50, and all unmarried Frenchwomen between 21 and 35, liable to carry out whatever work the government deemed necessary. Employers were required to draw up lists of those who fell under the terms of this law. By the end of the year Sauckel’s figures had been reached.22
Laval’s attempt to bargain with the Germans, rather than accept their demands unconditionally, made him vulnerable to attack from the Paris collaborationists. They had turned against him once his return to power brought them nothing. During the summer, Doriot stepped up his attacks on Vichy. Announcing that the PPF was preparing for power, he started describing Laval as Kerensky to his Lenin. Not to be outdone, Déat also radicalized his rhetoric: he talked of ‘blood and soil’, and began appearing in uniform. In September, with Abetz’s approval, Déat organized the National Revolutionary Front (FRN) to group together all collaborationist parties. The RNP, the MSR (now in the hands of Soulès), and the Francistes all agreed to join, but Doriot’s refusal doomed the enterprise to failure. Doriot was meanwhile being encouraged by the SS and the SD to believe that he was Germany’s candidate to replace Laval. But his hopes were dashed in September when Ribbentrop reassured Abetz that Hitler still backed Laval. Doriot was to be a sword of Damocles over Laval, as Laval had been over Darlan, but Laval would stay as long as he was useful.23
The collaborationists became increasingly interested in North Africa as an arena where the French could be more useful to the Germans than on the eastern front: while Germany defended Europe from Bolshevism in the East, France would defend her from the Anglo-Saxon allies of the Bolsheviks in the South. Doriot set up an Empire youth movement in May 1942; barely a day went by without an article by Déat on the Empire.24 Laval tried to neutralize the collaborationists by authorizing Benoist-Méchin to turn the LVF into a new organization called the Légion tricolore. Where the LVF had been an independent organization, enjoying Vichy’s unofficial blessing, its volunteers were now treated as full members of the army who could fight on the eastern front, but also in the colonies. Laval hoped this would both tame the LVF and win collaborationist approval. Benoist-Méchin, however, saw it as the embryo of full-scale military collaboration between France and Germany. But Laval soon became worried that Benoist-Méchin might use the Légion tricolore as an independent power base, and sacked him in September 1942. The LVF reverted to its former name.25
Although Laval remained convinced that Germany had won the war, he had lost any appetite for military collaboration. Unlike the collaborationists, he wished to preserve French neutrality, but this became increasingly difficult as the war beat at France’s door both inside and outside Europe. In the Caribbean, the Americans, still concerned that French possessions might be used by the Germans, asked Laval to agree that all French ships in the area be totally immobilized. The Germans, fearing that America wanted to ta
ke control of France’s Caribbean possessions, tried to get Laval to stand firm.26 The war came even closer in August 1942 when the Allies launched a raid on Dieppe to test German coastal defences. The Germans easily destroyed the Allied force, and Vichy propaganda praised the local population for refusing to aid the Allied aggressors. Pétain wrote to Hitler on 21 August proposing joint military action to repulse further attacks, but received no reply. Pétain’s motive was possibly to win the French army a toehold in the Occupied Zone and get the Germans to allow a reinforcement of the Armistice Army. But he clearly considered the British attack an aggression to be resisted at the risk of jeopardizing neutrality.27
It was increasingly feared the Allies intended to attack next in Africa. For this reason, on August 27, Vichy was permitted to organize an armed unit in West Africa to resist a possible Allied invasion in return for allowing the Germans to charter neutral ships docked in French ports since 1940.28 For Vichy, the prospect of an Allied attack offered an opportunity to squeeze concessions from Germany, but if an attack actually came, it risked jeopardizing French neutrality. Thus when the Americans finally landed in North Africa on 8 November 1942, the conditions which permitted Laval’s delicate balancing act of satisfying Germany while preserving French neutrality were finally shattered.
B006NTJT4U EBOK Page 32