Between 16 and 18 September 1943, Speer had a number of meetings in Berlin with Jean Bichelonne, French Minister of Industrial Production. They agreed that factories working in France for German war production (designated Sperrbetriebe) would be given special protection, sparing them from the labour draft. Instead of being forced to work in Germany, French workers could now work for Germany in France. For Laval, this was an important respite; for Bichelonne, it was the foundation of a rationally conceived policy of Franco-German economic collaboration. As Speer writes in his memoirs, he and Bichelonne had immediately taken to each other. The minds of these two young, brilliant, politically autistic, technocrats soared above the contingencies of war to envisage a future Europe of planning and harmony, steel and concrete.42
Bichelonne allowed nothing to sully the purity of his vision of collaboration. The evolution of René Bousquet, that other brilliant, apolitical technician, was different. In April 1943 Bousquet succeeded in getting his police agreement with Oberg extended to the South (where the Germans were now present). Presenting the agreement to the regional prefects, he stressed that Germany and France shared the same enemies: ‘terrorists, Communists, Jews, Gaullists and foreign agents’. But in truth the French police were becoming less reliable, and the Germans increasingly had to interfere in policing. In August 1943, the SS authorities summoned the regional prefects and issued them directly with orders to repress disorder. From this point Bousquet began to distance himself from collaboration. In October, he refused to give the Germans lists of Jews in the Southern Zone; in November, he told Knochen that being a Jew was not in itself a presumption of guilt—a belated discovery. Perhaps it was harder to shut out reality when running the police than when dreaming about the economic reconstruction of Europe. Whatever the reason, Bichelonne was to follow collaboration to its end; Bousquet was to extricate himself just in time.43
Laval too became less accommodating to the Germans from the middle of 1943. Standing up to Sauckel in August was one example of this; another, in the same month, was his attitude towards the Jews. Although in September 1942 Laval had marked his reluctance to be involved in further deportations, this had not signalled the end of French involvement in the policy. In February 1943, when the Germans indicated that deportations must resume, the French police again helped arrest foreign Jews. The round-ups that occurred in the South in February 1943 were the most extensive since August 1942. Vichy’s continuing indifference to the fate of the Jews was clear in its response to events in the Italian Zone where the authorities frequently interceded to protect Jews from the French police. Annoyed by this infringement of France’s sovereignty, Laval protested to the Germans. But German pressure on Italy had no effect, and the Italian Zone became a haven for Jews fleeing the Germans—and the French.44
As it became harder to find enough foreign Jews, the Germans demanded the denaturalization of all Jews naturalized since 1927. Bousquet and Laval at first held out for a later date of 1932–3, and then in August Laval refused point blank. In the words of Marrus and Paxton: ‘For the first time in the history of the Final Solution in France, Laval had said “No”.’45 In July, Röthke had to abandon another major round-up in Paris because the government refused the necessary police co-operation.46 In August, he reported: ‘it is no longer possible to count on the assistance of the French police on a significant scale for the arrests of Jews’.47
All this made Laval increasingly vulnerable to being outflanked by the Paris collaborationists, eager to prove that they could best serve Germany’s interests. When the Americans landed in North Africa, the PPF was holding its congress. There were calls for a declaration of war on Britain and America, and cries of ‘Laval to the scaffold’.48 Doriot was ready to march on Vichy. Again he had overplayed his hand. In December 1942, Hitler wrote to Abetz’s successor, Rudolf Schleier, reiterating his support for Laval. A disappointed Doriot left again for the eastern front where he spent most of the next year.
Although PPF activists played a part helping the Germans against the Allies in Tunisia, the PPF’s stock was falling.49 Laval hoped to seize the opportunity to do away with his enemies once and for all. At his meeting with Hitler on 19 December, he tried to secure German agreement to dissolve all the collaborationist movements and merge them into a single movement loyal to Vichy. Hitler refused this request, but he did authorize Laval to set up a force of his own. This was the origin of the founding of the infamous Milice française (French Militia) in January 1943. Its nominal president was Laval, but the driving force was its Secretary General, Joseph Darnand.
Towards Terror: The Milice
Darnand was one of those war veterans who never entirely readapted to civilian life after 1919. He had been a celebrated war hero and was bitter that the army would not keep him on as an officer. His resentment turned him against the Republic. In the inter-war years he ran a garage business in Nice while participating in extreme right-wing politics. Here he rediscovered the mixture of adventure and fraternity which he missed from the war. In 1940 he again fought heroically, and after the defeat became leader of the Legion of Veterans in Nice.
Darnand quickly found the Legion too staid to quench his thirst for action, and he created within it an activist elite called the Service d’ordre légionnaire (SOL) which spread outside the region. The SOL received official government recognition in January 1942, and Darnand left for Vichy to head it. The SOL had its own uiform—khaki shirt, blue trousers, black tie, black beret—and came to see itself as independent of the Legion from which it had emanated. Darnand was now the coming man on the extreme right, and in January 1943 the SOL became the Milice.50
Laval, always confident of his ability to manipulate others, viewed Darnand as a simple-minded, honest soldier without the political ambitions of Doriot or Déat. He wanted the Milice both as a sort of praetorian guard and a force to counter the Paris collaborationists. Darnand, however, envisaged a more extensive role for the Milice than this, hoping to create a political movement on the model of a fascist party. With this aim in mind, he divided the Milice into several sections. Most members continued a normal professional life, devoting a few hours a week to Milice activities, but there was also the Avant-Garde section, for boys and girls, and the Franc-Garde, a fully militarized section which would be permanently mobilized and live in barracks. In addition, there was a propaganda service, and a weekly newspaper, Combats. The miliciens cultivated the image of a chivalric elite like the Romanian fascist movement the Legion of the Archangel Michael. Swearing a twenty-one-point oath condemning democracy, individualism, international capitalism, bolshevism, Freemasonry, and ‘Jewish leprosy’, they vowed to defend Christian civilization.
Membership of the Milice, between 25,000 and 30,000, was far below Darnand’s expectations. The recruits included virulent anti-Communists, fanatical Catholics, former legionnaires who still believed they were being faithful to the Marshal, and young men, of no fixed political opinion, who saw an opportunity to escape from STO. If the Milice never became the mass movement Darnand had hoped, it did become increasingly important later in 1943 as the Resistance expanded and Vichy was less able to rely on the police. The Milice stepped into the breach.
At first, the Milice’s effectiveness was hampered by German suspicion of any French paramilitary organization. Like the Legion, it was banned in the Northern Zone. It lacked arms and some miliciens stuffed their empty holsters with paper. Darnand became so frustrated that in June he even tried to contact the Free French. In August, however, he burnt all his bridges by swearing a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler and becoming a Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS. This spectacular decision—one no other collaborationist leader had taken—was all the more remarkable from a decorated hero of two anti-German wars. It won Darnand the approval of the SS, who started to supply the Milice with money and arms.
At the moment that Darnand had uncompromisingly committed himself to Germany, Laval was trying to mark his distance. The relations between the two
men deteriorated, and Darnand decided to throw in his lot with the Paris collaborationists. On 17 September 1943, he signed a joint manifesto with Déat, Luchaire, and others. They called for all collaborationist groups to merge into one party committed to total collaboration with Germany and the imposition in France of a fully-fledged National Socialist regime. Although the five signatories claimed they wanted Laval to head the new government, Darnand’s intention was that the Germans should install him instead.
Endgame
This assault on Laval from the collaborationists coincided with a conspiracy against Laval at Vichy by the Pétain loyalists. In April 1943 Pétain had sounded out his closest advisers about forming a government without Laval.51Any such temptation was scotched by a letter from Hitler warning Pétain against a repetition of 13 December. But the idea resurfaced in the autumn when some Vichy leaders started to nurse the idea that if they detached themselves from Germany in time, it might still be possible to do a deal with the Allies. They were encouraged by the example of Italy where in July the king had dismissed Mussolini, and on 8 September the Americans had signed an armistice with his successor Marshal Badoglio.
For such a manoeuvre to work in France, it was necessary to form a government with which the Allies would negotiate. Both Laval and some Pétain aides began to explore this possibility. Laval tried contacting parliamentarians and members of the left in the hope of broadening the base of his government. But no one was willing to join him at this late stage.52 Meanwhile a group of Pétain loyalists set about trying to give the regime a democratic facelift. Bouthillier, Moysset, and Romier started to prepare another draft constitution. By September they had produced something considerably less authoritarian than the 1941 version, a constitution somewhat like the way the Third Republic had been expected to work in 1875: this was the last fling of Orleanism in France. Pétain, despite finding the document too democratic, agreed to play his part.53
The next stage in the plot was to get rid of Laval. On 12 November, Pétain told Laval he intended to broadcast the next day. He would announce that a constitution was ready, and that if he died before it could be ratified, his constituent powers would pass to the National Assembly. The Germans refused to allow the broadcast to go ahead. In its place listeners heard music from a light operetta. Pétain retaliated by going on strike, refusing to carry out his duties. This stand-off lasted for the rest of November, until the Germans decided to raise the stakes. Abetz, back in favour, arrived in Vichy on 4 December with a letter from von Ribbentrop ordering Pétain to form a government fully committed to Germany. Hitler was now ready to ditch Pétain in case of a refusal, but after a day’s reflection Pétain capitulated. The Germans sent an envoy, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, to act as Pétain’s watchdog. The old man was now effectively a prisoner. As for Laval, the price he had to pay for being saved again by the Germans was to bring into his government those collaborationists from whom he had been trying to distance himself. Bousquet was replaced at the head of the police by Darnand who became Secretary-General for the Maintenance of Order; and another ultra-collaborationist, Philippe Henriot, was put in charge of propaganda. The Milice was now authorized to operate in the North. Thus the paradoxical result of Laval and Pétain’s separate machinations to republicanize the regime was to bring it closer to fascism than it had ever been.54 The collaborationists now had power—but in a State which barely existed.
Collaboration: The Balance Sheet
What had collaboration achieved? It is hard to dissent from the view that it failed by any standard against which it is judged. Certainly it failed to win the French a privileged place in the German Europe. At no point did the Germans even hint at any kind of partnership. Laval never obtained any guarantees about the future peace treaty, and even in November 1942 when it would have cost Hitler nothing to offer the French some promises about the future of an Empire they were about to lose, he would not do so. The few examples of the Germans failing to get what they wanted—the demand for bases in North Africa on 15 July 1940 and again in July 1941—occurred only because the Germans decided not to press the matter further. Vichy believed that it had trump cards—the fleet, the Empire, the Free Zone—but paradoxically the very existence of these prevented a more robust policy. Precisely because it did have something to lose, the Vichy government was always terrified to push its case too far for fear of provoking the Germans.
Vichy only won paltry concessions: a reduction in Occupation costs between May 1941 and November 1942; the suppression of the Demarcation Line in March 1943 (but by this stage the whole country had been occupied); the right to equip France’s armed forces beyond the levels prescribed in the Armistice (but it was in Germany’s interest that France should be able to defend her Empire). Vichy did enjoy some limited success in getting Germany to release French prisoners of war, but this cost Germany nothing, and kept the French dangling in the hope that good behaviour would obtain yet more releases. In any case, the prisoners were more useful to the Germans working for Germany in France than languishing in camps. Some prisoners were let out after Montoire, another 6,800 after the signing of the Protocols of Paris in June 1941, 1,075 after the sacking of Weygand, 90,747 under the terms of the relève. In total 600,000 prisoners came back during the war, about 220,800 thanks to Vichy’s efforts (the others escaped or owed their release to illness).
After the war, defenders of Vichy conveniently forgot the more ambitious expectations they had harboured for collaboration, and constructed the theory that Pétain had acted as a ‘shield’, protecting France from suffering the fate of Poland. How does this claim stand up? It is true that France did not suffer like Poland, but it had never been Germany’s intention that she should. The Nazis did not class the French in the same ethnic category as Slavs. France was to be exploited, but not destroyed. The only valid comparison would be with the rest of Western Europe, and it does not suggest that France received favourable treatment. Comparisons of caloric intakes are difficult because regional variations were so considerable. But France’s figures seem to have been the lowest in Western Europe.55 Germany siphoned off so much of the French economy that it would have become counter-productive to take any more. In 1943, Germany was taking 50 per cent of French iron ore, 99 per cent of French cement, 92 per cent of French lorries, and 76 per cent of French locomotives. The Economic Section of the MBF estimated that by the end of 1943 as much as 50 per cent of all French non-agricultural production was for German purposes. Massive quantities of agricultural produce also went to Germany. Hemen’s prediction in 1940 that the Germans would be able to buy up the French economy had been largely fulfilled.56 The shield was more like a sieve.
In the end, the ‘shield’ defence revolved around two claims: that thanks to Vichy’s efforts a smaller proportion of workers had been sent from France to Germany than from Holland and Belgium; and that a larger proportion of Jews survived in France than in other occupied countries. The first of these claims was simply untrue. By the end of 1943, there were 646,421 French workers in Germany. This represented 10.8 per cent of the total number of foreign workers, making the French the third largest foreign contingent after the Soviets (36.4 per cent) and the Poles (18.5 per cent). The big difference was that women accounted for only 6.6 per cent of the French workers, as opposed to 51 per cent of the Soviets and 34 per cent of the Poles.
In total, Paxton estimates that total numbers of French working in Germany amounted to 3.3 per cent of the French population, as opposed to 3.4 per cent in Belgium and 3 per cent in Holland. Thus although Laval was able to claim that, thanks to the relève, labour conscription arrived later in France than Belgium and Holland, this did not in the end make much difference. It was true that the numbers conscripted to work in Germany fell far below Sauckel’s demands, but this was due partly to the Bichelonne–Speer agreement, and partly to the fact that increasing numbers of Frenchmen refused to obey the law. A huge amount of Vichy propaganda was devoted in 1942 to encouraging people to work in Germany; and a h
uge amount of police time was devoted in 1943 to forcing them to do so. If the Germans did not obtain all the workers they desired, this was largely in spite of Vichy.57
The same observation can be made about Vichy’s claim to have protected the Jews. It is true that a larger proportion of Jews survived the Holocaust than in almost any other European country, but the real issue is whether, without Vichy’s co-operation, even fewer Jews would have perished. The comparison ought not to be with Holland and Belgium, which did not have supposedly independent governments, but with those countries which did, like Denmark and (up to September 1943) Italy. If this comparison is made, Vichy emerges very unfavourably. The massive deportations of the summer of 1942 had been made possible by the Vichy government and its police. To the extent that the regime did, after September 1942, display a slightly less co-operative spirit—though French police in Bordeaux were still arresting Jews in January 1944—this was due to Laval’s awareness of the adverse popular reaction to the round-ups of the summer.
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