France’s Pro-Nazi Vichy Regime Still Has Defenders
France’s collaborationist Vichy regime aided Nazi Germany during World War II. With far-right candidates surging in the upcoming presidential election, it’s clear there are still people in French political life who think that was a good thing.
Considered a hero following his defeat of the Germans at Verdun, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain established the Vichy regime in northern France in 1940. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
French political life is still marked by a dramatic rupture that opened up in the summer of 1940. After the French army suffered heavy losses on the battlefield against Germany, the country’s parliament handed power to Phillippe Pétain, a highly decorated war hero.
Pétain signed a deal with Hitler that left northern France under direct German rule. He set up his own regime at the town of Vichy, which became a byword for collaboration in occupied Europe. Vichy officials organized the deportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps.
Meanwhile, a renegade French officer, Charles De Gaulle, went to London and pledged to fight on. Inside France, resistance groups began organizing to fight against Nazi Germany and its French collaborators.
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