Va-PoReg Country Report France, Vichy 1940–1944

On this date, the armistice agreement between Germany and France was signed, dividing the former territory of France into two zones, a German-occupied zone in the north (zone occupée) and a nominally independent zone in the south (zone libre). We code this regime change event as a foreign intervention to acknowledge the presence and political influence exercized by Nazi Germany. However, the Vichy-Regime is a collaborationist regime and not an occupational regime. Pétain agreed on the armistice with Nazi Germany and set up a government in Vichy, leaving Paris and the northern regions of France to German occupation. The French colonies outside of Europe remained under French, meaning Vichy’s, authority.¹ Pétain followed an authoritarian, conservative-fundamentalist polity (Vagge 2024: 72). The anti-Semitic laws he adopted were by no means forced upon him and his regime orchestrated the deportation of roughly 76.000 Jewish people into German death camps voluntarily (Prinz 2008: 265). Though his ideology was not exactly fascist, it did resemble the fascist ideology in that it was anti-modern, authoritarian, Anglophobe and anti-communist (Prinz 2008: 265). Another narrative that Pétain shared with fascist ideologies was his denunciation of decadence and moral degeneration in the French Third Republic.¹ Vichy France as a collaboration regime was a borderline case between occupation and a protectorate status.

Three days earlier, on 11/08/1942, Allied navy troops had landed in North Africa and pushed back the German Africa Corps. This Allied advance posed a threat to Nazi-Germany, because Europe was now vulnerable along the Mediterranean coastline. On 11/11/1942, German troops started Case Anton, marching south and hence occupying all of France. Italian troops invaded the south-east of France, assisting the German occupation.¹

With the liberation of Paris, effectively, the Vichy-regime came to an end and was replaced by Charles de Gaulles’ Provisional Government of the French Republic (Gouvernement provisoire de la République française, GPRF).

For the time after 08/25/1944, see France.