VICHY FRANCE

Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2001) ("In 1940, after a battle lasting only six weeks, France suffered a catastrophic military defeat. An armistice was signed with Germany, and half of France, including Paris, was occupied by German troops. In the other half, a supposedly independent French government, headed by Marshall Petain, installed itself in the spa town of Vichy. The Vichy government liquidated France's democratic institutions, persecuted Freemason, Jews, and Communists, and embarked on a policy of collaboration with Germany. Eventually 650,000 civilians French workers were compulsorily drafted to work in German factories; 75,000 Jews from France perished in Auschwitz; 30,000 French civilians were shot as hostages or members of the Resistance; another 60,000 were deported to German concentration camps." Id. at 1. "The history of the Occupation would be written not in black and white, but in shades of grey. Vichy may have been a reactionary and authoritarian regime, but it enjoyed heterogeneous support, even from people who had backed the left-wing Popular Front in the 1930s." Id. at 2. "There seems little doubt . . . that at the beginning Vichy was both legal and legitimate. . . Quite apart form the glorious reputation of Petainm the regime had law on its side." Id. at 134-135. [Note: This is a good point to remember that the so-called "rule of law" is itself a very thin safeguard against tyranny. The tyrant's first moves are usually lawful and legitimate, though setting the stage for lawfully changing the laws to provide the tyrant with more power.] From the book jacket: "Julian Jackson examines French experiences of Occupation during the 'Dark Years' of 1940-44. Pulling together previously separate 'histories' of occupation, resistance, and collaboration he presents a definitive history of he period. This is a more complex history than the traditional dichotomy between 'collaboration' and 'resistance', one in which the ideological frontiers between Vichy and the Resistance were often blurred. The book ranges from the politics of Marshall Petain's regime to the experiences of the ordinary French people, from surrender in 1940 to the purges of liberation. The author restores the organized Resistance to a more central role than has been customary in recent years and presents a social history of the resistance which takes in the roles of foreigners, women, Jews, and peasants. He uncovers the long term roots of the Vichy regime in political and social conflict and cultural crisis stretching back to the Great War and concludes by tracing the lasting legacy and memory of Occupation since 1945.").