the vichy regime and i ts national revolution in the pol i...
TRANSCRIPT
The Vichy regime and i ts National Revolution in the pol i tical wri tings of Robert Bras illach, Marcel Déat, Jacques Doriot, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.
Sean Hickey
Department of History
McGill University, Montreal
September, 1991
A thesis submi tted to the Facul ty of Graduate St.udies and f{esearch in partial fulfj lIment of the requirements of the
degree ot Master of Arts (c)
2
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the campaign wagp~ against Vichy's
National Revolution by Robert Brasillach, Marcel Déat, Jacques
Doriot, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. It explores the
particular issues of contention separating Vichy and the Paris
ultras as weIl as shedd':'ng light on the final evolutiou of a
representative segment of the fascist phenomenon in France •
.
3
RESUME
Cette thèse est une étude de la rédaction politique de
Robert Brasillach, Marcel Déat, Jacques Doriot, et Pierre
Drieu La Rochelle contre la ~9volution nationale de Vichy.
Elle examine la critique des "collabos" envers la politique du
gouvernement P~tainist et fait rapport, en passant, de l'ere
finale d'un a3pect du phenomène fasciste en France.
l
•
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapt.er One: "Notre Avant-Guerre"
Chapt.er Two: At the Crossroads
Chapt.er Three: Vichy- Society Recast
Chapter Four:
Chapt.er Five:
Conclusion
Bibliography
Vichy- Society purged
Vichy- Legacy of Defeat
5
9
3.1
38
61
79
101
109
4
5
l NTRODUCT l ON
To date, historians of the French Collaboration have
focussed largely on three over lapPing relat ionshi ps: t.hat
between the Vichy regime and Naz1 Germany, that beLween t.he
latter and the Paris ultras, and the vanous struggles for
power and influence within each camp.: As a resull ot tlllS
triparti te fixation, the relatlonship between Vichy and the
ultras has received short shift. The pre::5ent work seeks ta
remedy this lapse so:newhat by exam1ning the war of \-JOrds waged
by t.he ultras against the Vichy regl.me and its National
Revolution.
This thesl.s 15 predicated on the fact that t.he ul tra
cri tique of Vichy extended weIl beyond the agenda of the
Nazis. The latter saw in the arm.lstice a means of precludinq
a continuation of the war from North AfrlCë:.' and a cos L-
effective method of securing their flank in Western Europe in
anticipation of an invasion of the Soviet Union; parùlleters
which periodically expanded ta meet the growing needs ot the
German war economy. Areas critical ta the Naz1s were subJect
ta the full weight of the Occuplers scrutiny and control.
Vichy' s National Revolution, on the other hand, to the pxtent
it did not impinge on a vital interest, was of only secondary
lSee, for example, Bertram Gordon, Collaborationlsm in France during the Second World War (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1980), Pascal Ory, Les Collaborateurs, 1940-194~ (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1976), and Robert Aron, The Vichy Regime, translated by Humphrey Hare (London, Putnam and Co. Ltd., 1958).
i
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6
importance to the Germans. 2 Con .... ·ersel y, such reform figured
prominently among ultra prior~ties. In the absence of a
coherent NaZl àes 1 gn to manlpulate French domestic poli tics,
apart from the bJgey of an "ultra government" used ta extort
Vichy's cooperatlOn in matters related to the war effort and
the Final Solution, the ultrds enjoyed a wide discretion in
expressinq their own particular vision of how French society
should be restored to health. A dialogue of sorts,
degeneratlng more ,)ften than not into diatriL~, was thus
permi tted to develop between Vichy and the ul tras concerning
the nature of domestic political reform.
In order ta emphasise the lines of the ultra cri tique of
Vichy' s National Revolution more clearly, this study will
focus on members of t~e ultra camp who, in the inter bellum,
str ident l y advocated =' distinct vis ion Qf French regeneration;
men often labelled "f ascist" as a !:' ~sul t. Nor i5 this an
exhaustl ve survey of those in inter bellum France tarred wi th
the brush of fascism. It is limited to the political writings
of fou~ ~ndividuals: Robert Brasillach, Marcel Diat, Jacques
Doriot, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. Such a selection i~ in
many respects arbitrary. Limitations of time and space
dictated the exclusion of such notorious figures as AltJhonse
de Chauteaubriand and Marcel Bucard, to name but two, who
might just as ea~ Iy have been iIlcluded in lieu of on~ of the
~Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 142-145.
h
7
four named prlnclples.
Those chosen are tairly representatlve Dt the scope and
diversity of French fascism. 1 Prasillach dnd Orle..!, whosf'
statures as li terary f iqures dre today as q:-ed t dS ever,
enjoyed reputatl.ons as the preemInent Intellectuals ot the
French fascist movement. D~at and Doriot exemplify the
political dimension of French fascism. The former, dn
introverted Ideologue, was the movement's premier pollLical
theoristi the latter was probably the closest France came ta
producing a leader wlth the charisma of d F~hrer or Duce. A
diverse and heterogeneous group, they accurately retlecL the
multi-faceted diversity which, while a princlplc source of
French fascism' s historical interest, was one of the gredt
source~ of its contemporary politlCdl weakness.
As this study i5 restricted te Braslilach, Deat, DorIot,
and Drieu La Rochelle, 50 aiso i t 15 restr 1. cted ta the ir
political wrltings. Thus, for example, details ot DOrIot's
soldi ering in Russia or Déat' s brief, unhappy 1 tenure as
Vichy's Minister of Labour and Natlonal Solidarlty are
introduced only insofar as they intrude upon thel! editorial
output. The wartime literary output ot Brasillach and Drieu i5
not considered at aIL.
3Some idea of the diversity and extent of the fascl.st phenomenon in France can ne gleaned from Robert Soucy, "The Nature of Fascism in France", Journal of Corttemporary History, 1 (1), 1966, Zeev Sternhell, "Strands of French Fasel.sm", ln Who Were t.he Fascists, ed. by S.U. Larsen, B. Hagtvet, J.P. Myklebust (Bergen, Universitetsforlaget, 1980), or G. Warner, "France", in European Fascism, ed. by S. J. Wool.f (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970).
8
Finally, in response to those who might still insist that
the ultra camp was devoid of indigenous political ideas, that
lt was no more th~n a French mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda,
it is weIL to remember that with military defeat in the summer
of 1940, Déat, Doriot, and Drieu La Rochelle journeyed not to
the German occupied north but to the domestic seat of French
power at Vichy. Only with the~r exclusion from power and the
rejec.:tion of their plans for French regeneration did they
cross in~o the German camp.
, ,
CHAPTER ONE
The multifarious legacy of the Great War hovered 11ke d
spectre over French social and political life in the 1920s dno
1930s. It should thus come as no surprIse that mdny 01 the
most notoriou& figures of the Collaboratlon came of dge durlng
the period 1914-1918. Marcel Déat ended the war il much
decorated captain of infantry; Pierre Dneu La Hoche lle
experienced not only the f1uid batt.les of August 19H but <1)50
the cl~ustrophabic terror of Gaillpoll <1nd Verdun. The young
metallurgist Jacques Dorlot left the new Industr:lé.ll suburbs ut
Paris ln 1917 to continue hi s pol i tlcal educa Ll on on the
battlefields of E4rape. Even Robert BraSIllach, tao young lu
experience combat at first hand, belonged to that generatlon
which Robert Wahl describes as havlng grQwn up in Lhe shddow
of the Great War.· His father died in French North At r .lCd 1 n
the early days of the conflict and Braslliach was ralsed ln
that atrnosp~ere of super-patriotism WhlCh only non combalants
seemed able to sustaln.
Despite the seeming normality of the twenties and the
-illusion of a return ta the golden age of la belle epoque,
rnany of the changes which would eventually lead to the crlses
of the thirties were already taking shape. Among the most
important was the break-up of the French soclalist party
lRobert Wohl, The Gener~ ion of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 32-36.
10
(SFIO) in 1920 over the lssue of Lenl.n's conditions for
membership ln the new Third Internatiomtl. Though Lenin 's
stress on a revi tal ized and central ized control of the
proletariat's struggle WdS li direct result of the successful
Bolshevik revolution ln Russia, the enthusiasm with which the
new emphas i5 on Marxl.st radj ",:alism and party discl.pline was
welcomed in France was indicative of a new extremism whose
sources were native ta France. Thj s new radicalism was perhaps
best personi f ied by the young Jacques Doriot.
Dor .lot spent the early yea-s of the war working in one
of the many factories '.-lhich sprang up around Paris to supply
France' s armles Wl. th the materlel needed ta f ight a modern
lnduslr ia l war. When he came of age in 1917 he was called ta
the colors and served with distinction. The November
armistice, however, did not see the end of Doriot's military
careeri before hl.s demobilization in May i920 he would witness
Bela Kun' s short-li ved communist regime in Hungary and
Gabrlele ct' Annunzio' s seizure of Fiume. Doriot returned ta
civilian life thoroughly radicalized by what he had seen and
done. 'rhe t irst major mamfestation of this new radicalism was
the role he pIayed in encouraging the Jeunesses socialistes to
break w l th the SFIO and submi t to the discipl ine of Moscow.
From this early foray into communist poli tics, Doriot began a
climb which many ~redicted would carry hirn to the Jeadership
of the French communist party (PCF).
If Doriot returned to civilian life convinced of the need
b
l l
to radl.calise the class strugqle in France, Lln oppos i Le
reaction could be witnessed in Marcel Déat. Deat had qone ta
war in 1914 with socialist sympathies arrived al via cdretul
intellectual analys is. A graduate of the prest. ig fous Eco le
normale supérieure, he found in the trenches ot the Western
Front the sentimental attachment to socl.alism WhlCh held il lwayn
eluded hlS previous academlC approach to the subject.' At
war's end he joined the SFIO and played a major pôrt. ln
repairing the damage caused ta the party's Pcrislan cadres by
the mass defections to the communists.
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle entered the army in 1913 atter
having failed to success fully complete the leav 1 nC]
examinat ions for the Ecole des sciences pOIl t igues. Dr l!~U
himself interpreted this failure as an attempt, due lü hls
unorthodox poli tical ideas and his unsavory family background 1
to bar him from a career in the French diplomatie serv i ce. '
In any event, Drleu never qUlte lost his passIon for polillCS
and his literary career was in frequen~ competItion with hlS
political pretensions. In fact, if Drieu first burst on the
French literary scene as a ~esult of his war poetry, he first
gained notoriety for his political writings. In 0e5~rQ_~~~
Fra:1ce (1922) and Genève ou Moscou (1928), Drieu warned
Europeans in general, and Frenchman in particular, that the
2stan ley Grossman, ilL' Evolution de Marcel Déat" , Revu~ d'histoire de la Deuxiime Guerre mondiale, 25(97), 1975, pp. 4-5.
3Pierre Andreu and Frederic Graver, Drieu La Rochelle (Paris, Hachette, 1979), p. 74.
•
12
days of European world mastery were over. He further
maintained that Europeans could prolong their global
domination only if they federated to offset the growing
dominance of new econom~c superpowers like the Soviet Union
and the United S:..ates. 4 Al though Drieu eventually lost faith
in the internationalist efforts of the League of Nations, his
conviction of the necessi ty of European federation never
completely left him.
Robert Brasillach came of age in the inter-war perie land
as such experienced none of the horrors of trench warfare. The
war, however, affected his developrnent insofar as it formed
the watershed which separated his world from that which Déat,
Dorlot, and Drieu had known in their youth. Brasillach also
differed significantly from the other three in that he was the
only one whose political gestation took place on the right of
France' s poli tical spectrum. Brasillach came into contact wi th
the Action Française and its ideology while a student at the
lycée Louis-le-GrRnd. 5 Unlike Drieu, who also experienced a
brief youthful flirtation with the Action Française which
ended due to the former's inability ta submit to the latter's
doctrinal rigidity, Brasillach suffered no qualms in
reconciling the off~cial line laid down by Maurras and his own
conscience. As the thirties pl'ogressed and Bras illach found i t
4Ibid., pp. 150-154, pp. 214-216.
~Paul Sérant, Le Romantisme fasciste (Paris, Fasquelle, 1959), pp. 27-28 .
13
increasingly difficu1t to hide his enthusiasm for the Nazi
regime, he continued to act as theaLre critlc for the Action
Française daily. Despite a growing ideologicai rift between
the two, Brasillach and Maurras were able to sustalfl a
collaboration based on mutual admiration and affectlon. b
Jacques Doriot's progress.lon towards [asclsm lS
inextricably linked with the history of the French communlst
party in the inter-war period. Doriot not only 1 Lnked hlS
fortune to the seemingly rising star of international
communism, but the leadership of the Communist Internationdl
saw in Doriot one of its brightest prospects. Havlnq drawn
attention to himHelf by his pivotaI role ln the mass
defections from the Jeunesses socialistes, Doriot became the
first young Frenchman to be sent to Moscow for poli tical
education.? In Moscow he met and was captivated by bath Lenln
and Trotsky, but remained enough of a political apportunlst
to abandon the latter and ultimately side with StaJln ln the
power struggle which followed Lenin's death in 1924. In 1922
Doriot returned to France and assumed the leddershlp of the
Jeunesses communistes, who saw i ts membershlp soar as a resu l t
of Doriot's popularity. However, Doriot's reputatlon remained
confined to communist circles until the Riff campalgn of 1925
6Robert Brasillach, Génération dans l'orage, 1968), p. 299.
Notre avant-guerre (1941), in Une ed. by Maurice Bardèche (Paris, Plon,
7Gilbert Allardyce, "Jacques Doriot et l' espri t fasciste en France", Revue ct' histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mOfldiale, 25 (97) , 1975, p. 35.
ft
14
thrust him into national prominence. From his position of
immunity in the Chamber of Deputies, Doriot led the ferocious
communist campaign against the suppression of the rebels of
the Moroccan Ri f f .8 However, as the prospect of worldwide
revolution became increasingly jmprobable and the machinery of
the Comintern grew increasingly bureaucratised, voices began
to be raised against the unscrupulous ambition and unorthodox
methods of Doriot.
Imagining social democracy to be a greater enemy of the
working class than right wing reaction, in 1927 the Comintern
decreed that aIl Communist parties should adhere to the tactic
of "class against class". As a resul.t, the PCI-' was forbidden
from cooperating wi th other left wing parties and instead
ordered to direct its efforts towards stealing away their
membership. Doriot witnessed fjrsthand the disastrous effects
of a monolithic Comintern policy applied without regard to
local conditions when the Chinese Communists in Shanghai were
] iquidated by their erstwhile ally Chiang Kai-shek. This
gredtly shook Doriot' s faith in the infallibility of the
Comintern and helps explain his single-mindedness in opposing
the decision to apply "class against class" to France. 9
The crises generated by Doriot's subsequent criticism of
Comintern strategy seemed to come to a head fo11owing ~he 1928
8Diet~r Wolf, Doriot. Du communisme à la collaboration, traduit de l'allemand par Georgette Chatenet (Paris, Fayard, 1969), pp. 41-55.
9Ibid., pp. 62-68.
15
French general election. He was called to account for hjs
deviation from the official party 1ine and made ta pub1icly
reeant. These ideological differences were exacerbated by d
personality conflict between Doriot and Maurlce Thorez, the
man designated by Moscow ta lead the PCF. Al though di t ferencüs
were ostensibly reconciled by Doriot's recantatlon, acrimony
remained and Doriot set about reinforcing his positlon within
the party by having himself elected Mayor of Saint-DenIS, lhe
Parisian industrial suburb from which he had emerged, and
turning the city into a personal f iefdom. Thus began a nüw
staga in Doriot' s political career i a stage marked by a
growing detachment from national pol i tics and ~ln increased
interest in purely local concerns.
The final break with Moscow came following the rlots of
February 1934. Enraged by yet another political scandaI, on
the evening of 6 February various veterans' groups and right
wing leagues assembled before the Chamber of Deputles ta give
voiee to their contempt for the politicians of the Third
Republic. Events saon got out of hand and the niqht ended with
15 dead and 1500 injured .10 Despi te much evidence to the
contrary, the events of 6 February were widely viewed as an
attempted right wing coup. Rising ta confrant the imaglned
threat from the right, yet still unwilling ta cooperate with
the other elements of the French Left, the Communlsts staged
lOGordon Wright, France in Modern Times. (Third Edition; New York, W.W. Norton and Company, 1981), p. 381.
"
16
a protest demonstration on 9 February. In terms of size i t
could not compare wi th the numbers who had demonstrated on the
6 and who would demonstrate under the banners of the SFIO on
the 12.
Although the party line precluded such activity, Doriot
and his followers cooperated with the SFIO in organizing the
general strike and demonstrations of the 12 in Saint-Denis. l1
The massive success of this joint action offered proof of
Doriot' soft repeated contention that the Fren('!h Left was
capable of neutralizing the fascist threat if only the
Cùmmunists dropped their diviEive policy of "class against
class" .
The events of February 1934 served to reemphasize,
following events in Germany the previous year, the danger of
underestimating the fascist threat. It i5 from these events
that the Comintern' s switch to a policy of forging popular
fronts can be dated. Despite the fact that he had been proven
right by events, Doriot's open insubordination could not be
tolerated within a party which prided its~lf on the iron
discipline of its members. Ignoring repeated calls to journey
to Moscow to meet with Thorez and the Comintern leadership,
the latter eventually gave the PCF carte blanche in its
llWolf, pp. 108-112. Under pressure from below, the PCF eventually acq"iesced in the participation of its members in the 12 February demonstrations; in the eyes of the Comintern and the PCF leadership, Doriot' s crime was that he acted not in response to pressure from below but on his own ini tiath'e, wi thout PCF authorization, in coordinating the actions of his followers and those of the SFIO.
17
dealings with Doriot. He was finally expelled trom the party
in June 1934. Still ensconced in Saint-Denis, Dorlot's career
in national politics seemed at an end; expelled by a communist
party which now shamelessly adopted his tactics, he remained
persona non grata to a socialist party dnxious nat ta aliünate
its new communist allies.
A sharper contrast could hardly be drawn than that which
e~is~ed between Doriot, the populist and rabble rouser, anu
Diat, the withdrawn political ~deologue. However, lhe1r
respective political evolutions share similar1t~es Insofdr as
each was expelled from a major left wing party for expressing
the need to cooperate with parties to the r1ght. Llke Dor1ol
and the PCF, Déat' s future wi thin the SFIO seemed one of
unlimi ted horizons, and i t was not uncommon to hear him
referred to within party circ les as the likeliest successor ta
Lion Blum. Indeed, it seemed that Déat was being groomed for
a position of leadership; whenever the vicissItudes ot
electoral politics deprived him of a seat in the Chamber of
Deputies, the party was quick to make aval1able to him
employment within the party apparatus.
The genesis of Déat's falling out with the SFIO can be
traced to the publication in 1930 of Perspectives sociaJistes,
an ideological tract in which he questioned many of the basic
tenets of ~arxist socialism. In light of the failure of the
middle classes to become submerged in the proletariat and thus
create d situation were society became divided between a
18
super-rich minori ty and a vast and exploi ted working class,
Déat advanced the notion of a cOûlition of revolutionary
cl asses. 12 While the proletariat would remain the nucleus of
any su ch revolutionary movement, Déat argued that i ts success
dependl~d on its ability to forge a wide coalition ranging from
white caIlar employees and technicians to peasants, artisans,
and shopkeepers. aIl of whom he believed were feeling the
pinch of life under an economic system increasingly dominated
by high finance and monopoly capitalism. Not only did
Perspe~tives socialistes postulate an end to the proletariat 1 s
singular role in bringing about revolution, it also did away
with thH need for turbulent political upheaval. Déat argued
that in a modern industrial society power lay not wi th control
of the means of production but with control of the organs of
government. Thus, he replaced the violent seizure of power
with a three step process in which an electorally victorious
coali tion would gain control of the state and use the
bureaucratic apparatus at its disposaI to promote the
evolution of a socialist society.13 Finally, Déat argued
against the inflexibility of the Marxist framework and, while
recognizing its value as an analytical tool, repeatedly
emphasised the need for French socialists to rediscover
12Emily Goodman, The Socialism of Marcel Déat, (PhD. thesis, Stanford Uni versi ty, 1973), pp. 137-152.
13rbid., pp. 155-158.
! 19
France' s native socialist tradi tion.·~
While D~at may have believed he was doing no more thdn
bringing socialist doctrlne into 1ine with contemporary
reali ty, the SFIO ideolog ists v iewed Perspect 1 'les SOÇl.d 1J s t~lI
as something uncomfortably close to heresy. Blum refused ta
even acknowledge the book while Jean Lebas, the soc i a l ist
mayor of Roubaix, used the SFIO press to cr.ltlcise Déat's
ideas.: 5 Had debate remained on a purely ideological plain,
a parting of the ways would not have been Inev 1 table and
Oéat's hypothesis might weIl have provoked the recons.lderatlan
of doctrinal assumptions he always maintained was the
motivating consideration behind the book.: b Déat however
lacked the requisite patience to let sleeping dogs lie and
immediately set about trying to assemble a coalition of
revolutionary classes.
He sought to fashion this coalition not by forming a new
populist party, but by bringing together those already
existing elements of the centre-left. In practical terms this
meant cooperation between the SFIO and the Rad.lcals; the
extra-national allegiance of the communists precluded their
adherence. His desire to forge a viable coalition, coming as
it did before the SFIO dropped its aloofness and decided to
14Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left, translated by David Maisel (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986), pp. 150-151, p.180.
15Ibid., pp. 156-158.
16Ibid., p. 158.
20
take an active raIe ln the ministerial game of the Third
RepubIic, caused considerable friction between Déat and the
SFIO executive. Intermittent flare-ups were intensified
following the 1932 parliamentary elections, when the SFIO's
electoral success pushed to the fore the question of
participation in a coalition government. The situation came ta
a head in July 1933 at an SFiO Congress at which, stirred on
by the twin threats of economic depression and fascism, Déat
and others who shared his neo-~ocialist views urged the party
to take a more active part in the governance of France. 17
Though the SFIO had never stressed strict adherence ta
orthodoxy in the same way as the PCF, the party leadership
cou ld no longer tolerate Déat' s refusaI to accept party
discipline and stop courting the Radicals. As a resu1t Déat
and three others were expelled from the party in November
1933; jn the wake of these expulsions, twenty-eight socialist
deputies and seven socialist senat ors voluntari ly followed
Déat out of the SFIO told.
Déat and Doriot thus found themsel ves in a poli tical
wilderness, ostracised from the parties to which they had
dedicated themselvesi both men had moved faster than their
respective parties in putting forward effective counters to
the fascist threat, and both had seemingly had their political
17Stanley Grossman, Neo-Socialism: A Study in Political Metamorphosis (PhO. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1969), pp. 46-52, p. 100. Oéat's speech to the July 1933 Congress is re-printed in B. Montagnon, Adrien Marquet, Marcel Déat, Néo-socialisme? (Paris, Grasset, 1933).
21
careers ruined before their ,erstwhile partles had been won
over to their proposals. ThE' era of the Popul.dr Front in
France demonstrated the efficaclty of the sort of cooperatlon
both Déat and Doriot advocated. Branded a renegade by the PCF,
Dor iot became the favored bête nOIre of the commun 1 sts. A
furious effort by the PCF during the 1936 electlon campaJgn
failed to strip him of his seat in the Chamber ot Deputies.
However, in May 1937 Marx Dormoy, the Popular front's Minlster
of the Interior, relieved him of his post as mayor ot SaInt
Denis on grounds of misgovernment.!H The mayoralty ra 0 which
followed was less a matter of municipal politics than cl blLter
confrontation between Doriot and the PCF. Following hlS deteat
at the hands of the PCF candidate, Doriot reslgned hlS seat ln
the Chamber of Deputies and focussed exc-luslvely on his newly
formed Parti populaire français (PPF).
The PPF was founded amid much tanfare in June 1936 on the
heels of the electoral success of the Popular Front. The party
platfarm advocated corporatism as both a means of ellminatlng
class conflict and as the basls of a new decentralized
democratiL: process. 19 However the party, particularly after
the initial tide of PPF fortunes began to ebb in late 1938 and
18Walf, pp. 245-249. The case against Doriot, though motivated by political considerations, was sound insofar as Doriot had a tendency ta blur the line between pdrty and muniCIpal funds.
19The PPF platform is elaborated in Jacques Doriot, Refaire la France (Paris, Grasset, 1938) and Paul Marion, Programme du Parti Populaire Français (Paris, Les Oeuvres Françaises, 1938).
'1.
22
J, 939, found i ts true raison d'être in hatred of communi sm. ~o
The PPF freely availed itself of the ceremonial trappings of
fasc lsm and Doriot, more than any other poli tician of the
Third Republic, personified the ideal of the fascist leader.
Although it asplred to national proffilnence, even at the height
of its popularity it could realistically claim no more than 50
or 60 thousand members concentrated mainly in the Parisian
metropolis, the south of France (principally Marseille), and
French North Africa."'
Follow~ng their expulsion from the SFIO Déat and the
other neo-socialists lost no time in constituting themselves
into the Parti SocIaliste de France-Union Jean Jaures(PSDF).
Like DorIot and the PPF, they advocatei a rejuvenation of
France t hrough corporatism and neo-colonialism. 22 However,
despi te tt.e fact that in conjunction wi th two other SFIO
spI inter parties the PSDF was able to form the third largest
parI iamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies, 23 the party
enjoyed little grassroots support. In pursuit of an electoral
cHent.eIe 1 Déat advocated the creation of a para-mili tary
organization to establish contact with the masses and
technical cadres to act as a shadow government. Despite such
~OWolf, pp. 234-235.
21 l b id., pp. 2 16 - 224 .
~2The electoral platforms of the PSDF avai1able, but can be gleaned from Goodman, Grossman, pp. 176-216, pp. 292-293, pp. 354-361.
23Grossman, Neo-Socialism, p. 165.
are pp.
not readi1y 224-240 and
23
efforts, however, the neo-soclalists failed tü carve out d
signi f icant nlCr<=> for themsel ves and consequent 1 y su f fc~red
severe losse~ at the polIs ln 1936.
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle moved l ike cl restless ghost
acrüss the French political spectrum. Brlef flirlations wlLh
everyone and everything from communism, to the Action
Française, to Gaston Bergery and the Radical party 1eft Drieu
deeply dissatisfied. It was not until the events of Feoruary
1934 that Drieu finally discovered a polltlcal phllosophy
which satisfied him. The mingllng of right and left wlng mon
of action in a common purpose convlnced hlm of th!:!
possibility, the necesslty even, of combinlng the nationalism
of the right. with the soclallsm of the left. ln a new
synthesis. 24 Drieu, unlike D~at and Doriot who ln the Inter
war period never called themselves fascists and who had
repeatedly urged 1eft wing collaboration to counter the
fascist threat, called this synthesis fascism and unashamedly
declared himself a fascist.
Socialisme fasciste (1934) was Drieu's fasclst manifcsto.
In it he sided with D~at in pointing out the bankruptcy of
classical Marxism and the inability of the praletar.lat La
stage a success fuI revolution. However, whereas Déat had
continued ta inslst on the role of the proletariat as the
nucleus of any revolutionary coalition, Drieu felt the
proletariat to be degenerate and placed his hopes for
24Andreu and Grover, pp. 274-284.
24
regeneration ln the petite bourgeoisie.: 5 He believed
democracy to be decadent and saw the twentieth century as an
era of authoritarian regimes established in reaction to the
liberal democratic regimes of the previous century, claiming
to recognize L~e zeitgeist of the age in the efforts of the
new German, Russlan, American, Polish, and Portuguese regimes
to replace class conf lict wi th nationa 1. solidari ty. 26 Drieu
saw no contradiction between his erstwhile internationalism
and his new national authori tarianism. He cri ticised communism
for 19norlng the reality of individual national genii in
favour of a specious international brotherhood of the working
classes. Believing that liberal democracy had demonstrated its
inabllity to forge an effective European federalism (a
reference to the failure of the League of Nations), he
professed to believe that such a federalism could be achieved
by a Europe sharing common fascist values. 27 He consummated
his new convlctions in 1936 when, answering Doriot's calI, he
j oined the PPF. 28
If, as sorne historians have maintained, French Iascism
was more a romantic notion than a clearly defined set of
2~Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Socialisme fasciste (Paris, Gallimard, 1934), pp. 35-37, p. 112.
26Ibid., pp. 106-112.
~7Ibid., pp. 234-238.
~tlHis numerous articles for the PPF weekly L'Emancipation nationale are reprinted in Avec Doriot (Paris, Gallimard, 19)7) and Chror.ique politique. 1934-1942 (Paris, Gallimard, 1943).
25
poli tl.cal and philosophical pos i tions,:<J such a c::mcl us lon
has particular relevance for the fascism of Robert Brasilldch.
Unlike Drieu, no single event can be po~nted to as the ycnesls
of Brasillach' s fascism. One ls inst.ead presented Wl th cl
steady evolution culminating in Bras.lliach' s edl torsh ip ot t.he
fascist weekly Je suis partout, but whose roots must be sought
in his student days in France's elite institutions ot
learnjng. Following his graduation from the lyc~e Louls-le-
Grand, Brasillach attended the Ecole normale superieure. The
student life appealed greatly to Brasillach and even aftcr his
formaI schooling ended and he was forced to earn hlS livlng as
a journalist and Iiterati, he never lost the unlque way of
perceiving the world acquired as a student.
To Brasillach, fascism always remained more cl mystique
than a carefuIIy def ined poli tical philosophy. ,0 This outlook
in large part explains why Brasillach was able to malntaln hlS
close ties wi th the Action Française long il fler he had
rejected that movement's germanophobia. Brasillach's tdscist
mystique was also ciosely connected with youth and the special
raIe he imagined it had to play in rejuvenating French
society; as a resuit his poUtics always remalned deeply
colored by a youthful feeling of rebellion and contempt for
29Sérant, p. 10. Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1964), pp. 138-142.
30Brasillach, p. 244, William R. Tucker, The Fascist Ego. A Political Biography of Robert Brasillach (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975), p. 136.
· 1
1
26
the status quo. Never closely affiliated with any political
party, Brasillach found his means of expression in the French
weekly Je suis partout. Staffed by Action Française renegades
and run along collective lines, Brasillach found in i ts
tightly knit group of young collaborators the sense of tribal
identity he had enjoyed as a student.
Je suis partout, although sprung from the Action
Française, owed allegiance to no political party and fiercely
guarded i ts freedom to act as an independent revue de combat.
In i ts pages Brasillach traced his vision of a fascist
international transcending national boundaries and uniting a
nationalist youth who could no longer conta in its contempt for
the established bourgeois order. Like any other religious or
pol i tica l ideology 1 Brasillach' E; fasclst mystique had its own
pantheon of youthful heros; the Spaniard José Antonio, the
Belgian Léon Degrelle, and the Romanian Corneliu Codreanu. To
Brasillach' s mind, aIl had devoted themselves selflessly to
the pursui t of an ideal which sought not only to end the
8nslavement of the human spirit by t3chnology which liberal
capitalism and Marxism bath condoned, but which also :;ought to
reestablish man on a whole new footing.
Brasi llach identified his new ideal man as homo-fascista
and believed him to be as representative of the new era into
which Europe was mo ling as the Christian knight had been
representative of the medieval age of faith. 31 This new
lIBrasillach, p. 205.
27
fascist man mirrored the Classical ideal of symmetry between
mind and body. In his many travels abroad, what struck
Brasillach most about the new fascist regimes was the
spir.itual and mental vigour he imagined t.hey had been able ta
inculcate into their respective youths. 32 Fascism dppeal ed in
similar ways to Drieu. Obsessed with what he S..lW dS the
decadence of modern European man, Drieu Daw ln fasclsm' s
emphasis on f'port and fresh air a chance to reestablish the
balance between man' s physical and spiritual natures which he
believed had prevailed in the Middle Ages.])
Drieu considered Jews ta be particularly representati ve
of the degeneration and decadence he abhorred in modern man.
Though his first ~,-fe had been Jewish, evidence of a certain
ambiguity on his part, as war threatened he became
increasingly intolerant. 34. Brasi llach, who shared the
tradi tional anti -semi tism of the Action Française, followed a
similar radicalization. 35 Even Doriot, nurtured in the more
tolerant atmosphere of the French Left, came increasingly to
share in the anti-semitism of the PPF's Marseille and North
32Turner, pp. 104 -112.
33Drieu brought together aIl subject in Notes pour comprendre 1941) .
his pre-war musings on this le siècle (Paris, Gall irndrd,
34Robert Soucy, Fascist Intellect.ual: Drieu La Rochelle (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979), pp. 179-183.
35Turner, pp. 159-160, pp. 166-168.
,"
28
African strongholds. 36
The diplomatie crises of the late 1930's saw Brasillach,
Déat, and Doriot deeply commi tted to appeasement. 37 Even
after German intentions were made clear in the wake of che
invasion of Czecho-s1ovakia in March 1939, they refused to
reassess their pos i tions. Such blind fai th culminated in
Déat' 5 famous editori!.~l "Mourir pour Danzig?", a passionate
plea against French invol vement in a war over the disputed
city. Only Drieu abandoned appeasement, breaking with Doriot
over the latter 1 s pro-Munich stance and continued forbearance
of Germany.
The crushing and unexpected defeat of 1940 quick1y gave
rise to rumours of a French fascist fifth-column acting under
German orders. lB As regards Déat, Doriot, Brasillach, and
Drieu La Rochelle, any such allegations are patently faise.
Despite what their cri tics called them, Déat and Doriot never
c Iaimed to be fasc ists. Though their respective poli tica1
ideas owed something to the fascist ideology and Doriot was
gui1ty of accepting subsidies from Mussolini 1 s Italy, their
primary concern was always with lifting France out of the
stagnation in which they believed she was mired.
J6WoH, pp. 312-314.
J7Turner, pp. 159-168. Déat's views are discussed in the previously cited theses by Goodman and Grossman; those of Doriot in Wolf, pp. 266-294.
JBRobert O. Paxton, Vichy France (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 4.
29
CJfi che other hand, Brasi llach and Drieu shamelessl y
avowed their fascism; their trips abroad and journ.llistic
admiration of foreign models were devoid of secrecy. They saw
in fascism a panacea for France's ills and, while recognizing
the international implications of t.heir fasc1.st committment,
never failed to put France first.
P.rasillach, Déat, Drieu La Rochelle, and Doriot were
quickly caught up in the chaos of war and defeat. Brasillach,
called to the colors in september 1939 and attached to the
Third Army in Alsace, passed into captivity w~th tht 51.gning
of the armistice in June 1940. Doriot was aiso called to the
colors; he saw action in the closing days of the campaign and
was decorated for bravery. Ever the political tactician, the
end of hostllities saw him on the road to Vichy.
Though nei ther Déat nor Drieu was mobilized, their
civilian status did not save them from the dislocation of
military collapse. Caught up in the flight from the advancing
Germans, they sought refuge in the French countryside. With
the signing of the armistice, each drew conclus ions s imi lar to
those drawn by Doriot and made his way to the provisional
capital in search of political opportunity.
-
30
CHAPTER TWO
With its best units cut off or destroyed in northern
France and Belgium and her formidable eastern defenses
outflanked, the French army regrouped and attempted to stem
the German tide along the Somme and Aisne ri vers. The
breaching of this line by German tanks in early June ended any
hope of successfully pursuing the war on the Continent. The
French government was faced with either continuing the war
from North Afr Ica or peti tioning the Germans for terms of
armistice. Premier Paul Reynaud, with majority support in the
Cabinet, favoured military surrender in metropolitan France
and a continuation of the struggle from North Africa by a
government in exile. He was opposed by his Deputy-Premier,
Philippe Pétain. Though initially in a minority, with the
support of General Maxime Weygand and AdmiraI François Darlan,
Commanders-in-Chief of the Army and Navy respectively, Pétain
was able ta convince a growing number of ministers of the need
ta come ta terms with the Germans. 1 Sensing that support for
his own intransigence was slipping, on 16 June Reynaud
reslgned his post and recommended that the President of the
Republic ask Pétain to form a government. The quickly
cons ti tuted Pétain ministry immediately approached tl,:J Germans
lThe reasons behind Weygand' s and pétain' s desire for an armistice are dealt with in Robert Aron, The Vichy Regime,
! translated by Humphrey Hare (London, Putnam and Co. Ltd., 1958), pp. 23-24 and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 13-16.
31
and terms were formally agreed ta on 22 June; three days
later, following the signing of a para~lel agreement with the
Italians, hostilities came ta an end. Petain, however,
believed his government's ma .... date extended beyond simply
negotiating an armistice. In an aodress to the nation on 25
June he declared:
Notre défaite est venue de nos relâches. L'esprit de jouissance détruit ce que l'esprit de sacrifice a édifié.
C'est à un redressement intellectuel et moral que, d'abord, je vous convie.
Français, vous l'accomplirez et vous verrez, je vous le jure, une France neuve surgir de votre ferveur.:
Thus, from the outset, were the issues of armistice and
national regeneration intimately linked.
On 29 June, under German escort, the French government
le ft Bordeaux for the newly designated Unoccupied Zone. Its
ultimate destination was Vichy, a spa city whose numerous
hotels provided ample accommoda.tion for the government and i ts
ministries. Vichy's temporary population was further swellcd
by an influx of senat ors and deputies summoned to the
provisional capital. In the drama about ta unfold, none would
play a greater role than Pierre Laval. Called ta the
government on 23 June as Minister of state and appointed
Deputy-Premier four days later, Laval was to prove
indispensable in convincing the National Assembly ta accept
2Philippe Pitain, La France Nouvelle (Montrouge, Imprimeurs Draeger frères, 1941), p. 20.
l 32
drastic constitution~l revision.
As senators and deputies slowly began arriving in Vichy
throughout early JuIy, Laval worked tirelessly to conv ince
them of the need ta refashion the Constitution of the Third
Republic along more authori tari an lines. Leaderless and deeply
shaken by the swiftness and totality of the defeat, on 9 July
the assembled deputies and senat ors voted overwheimingly for
"a revis ion of the laws of the Constitution. 113 The assembled
notables however could not agree on specific proposaIs.
Instead, in strict compliance with the letter of the
Constitution, the following motion was tabled:
The National Assembly conf ers aIl powers on the Government of the Republic, under the signature and authority of Marshal pétain, President of the Council, to promulgate by one or more acts, the new Constitution of the French State.
This Constitution will guarantee the rights of Labour, Family and Country. It will be ratified by the nation and applied by the Assemblies it will have created. 4
Before the proposaI could be put to a vote, it was modified in
committee to forbid the Head of State from declaring war
wi thout the consent of the Nationdi AssembIy, which would
continue to exist until the new Iegisiative bodies cou Id be
consti tuted. In exchange for these concessions, Laval obtained
for Pétain "without restriction ... the full exercise of
JAron, p. 101.
4Ibid., p. 111.
33
executive and legislative powers." 5 On 10 July, in a vote of
fi ve hundred and sixty-nine to eighty with seventeen
abstentions, the sarne Assembly elected under the banner of the
Popular Front voted the Thire' Republi c out of existence and
gave almost. absolute consti tutional, legisla t.l ve, and
executive power to Philippe Pétain.
As expected from men who in the inter-war period had been
vocal cri tics of the Third Republic, i ts dissolution and the
constitution of a new regime generated cons.lderable
enthusiasm. Brasillach and Déat praised the Marshal 's advocacy
of a program of national regeneration, while Jacques Doriot
declared himself "un homme du maréchal. lib He further
characterised the Marl.'lhal as " ... le pilote qui prend le
gouvernail en pleine tempéte, [et qui] a su donner une
direction au navire désemparé. ,,7 Brasillach, commemoratlng the
first anniversary of the armistice, exhorted his fellow
Frenchmen:
Il est le Chef. Soyez les hommes du Chef.
La partie, il y a un an, a failli mourir. Sans l'homme qui lui a fait le don de sa personne, elle ne serait plus.
Plus que jamais, la France et lui ne font qu'un. 8
5Ibid., p. 114.
6"Premier mai", Je suis partout, May 2 1941, "Revolution nationale", L' Oeuvre, 13 October 1940, Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1941).
'Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal, p. 5.
a"Il y a un an ••• Le Chef", Je suis partout, 23 June 1941.
1 34
Drieu praisea the Marshal for his hard nosed realism in
recognizing the need, while others naively placed their faith
in the Royal Air Force, of signing an armistice. 9 Déat, in
his first editorial from German occupied Paris, maintained, as
he would throughout the war, that "[ l] a personne du maréchal
Pétain est au-dessus et en dehors de tout débat ... " 10
Déat had made '~.L. way to Vichy and, as a deputy, had
participated in the suicide of the Third Republic. rronically,
the height of Déat' s poli tical acti vi ty at Vichy was reached
only after his role as an elected representative had been
ecl ipsed by the change of regimes. Together wi th the ex
Radical Gaston Bergery, Déat formed the Comité de constitution
du parti national unique in the hope of collecting together
the disparate elements gathered at Vichy into a totalitarian
party capable of providing effective support for pétain' s
National Revolution. 1l Adopting his ideas from the mass
tot.ulitarian parties of the victors, Déat maintained that such
a party must, in lieu of parliamentary democracy, ferm the
necessary intermediary between the state and i ts ci t.izens. His
efforts, however, were stillborni Pétain instead gathered
together, as a means of contact between his government and the
9Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques poli tiques. 1934-1942, p. 265.
lO"Librement" , L'Oeuvre, 21-24 September 1940. See also "Il faut les chasser", L'Oeuvre, 2 December 1940.
llDéat's efforts are examined in J.P. Cointet, "Marcel Déat et le Parti Unique (été 1940)", Revue d' histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, 23(91),1973.
1 35
French people, veterans of the Great ~var and the recent l y
ended conflict into t.he Légion Française des Combattants.
Déat, who believed that the failure to consti tute a parti
unique would greatly undermine the likelihood of significant
reform, attributed the sabotage of his plans to a conspiracy
of reactionary elements acting behind the scenes at Vichy.!:
In pointing the f inger at an occul t conspiracy, Oéa t
chose ta ignore those more or less openly Oppos€~d ta the
constitution of such a party.lJ Not only Pétain and Ldval,
but such fellow ultras as Jacques Doriot staod in his path.
Having journeyed ta Vichy and surrounded himself with several
hundred PPF loyalists, Doriot loudly proclaimed his presence.
His influence however remained marginal and he had ta content
himsel f wi th settli:ag old scores.: 4 Ever at tuned to the
danger to his own power and prestige posed by tao close a
collaboration with others, Doriot held himself aloof from aIl
attempts at establishing a parti unique. Unwilling hawever to
appear the major stumbl ing black to uni ty, Doriot cleverly hid
his own lack of enthusiasm for Déat' s scheme behind the
12"La révolution nationale est dans l'opposition It, 1.' Oeuvre, 14 December 1940, and "Nécessité du parti", L'Oeuvre, 19 December 1940.
13Cointet, pp. 10-16.
14Most notably, Doriot threatened revenge against Man< Dormoy, the Popular Front Minister of the Interior who had deposed him as Mayor of Saint-Denis in 1937. Due ta insufficient evidencf~, i t has proven impossible to determine the extent of Doriot' s role (i f any) in the murder of Dormoy in July 1941. See Dieter Wolf, Doriot. Du communisme à la collaboration, traduit de l'allemand par Georgette Chatenet (Paris, Fayard, 1969), p. 246n.
36
Marshal 's mistrust of Déat. i5 However, belief that a parti
unique could only be founded with the official sanction of the
Marshal was not necessarily a self-serving proposition. Robert
Brasillach, who did not share Doriot's appetite for political
sectarianism, nevertheless agreed with Doriot that only with
pétain' s blessing could such a party be formed. 16
Dr ieu La Rochelle did not make an appearance at Vichy
until 19 July. He took no part in Déat's efforts to found a
parti unique and by 23 July was already on his way back to
Paris on a diplomatie mission for Paul Baudoin, Vichy' s
Ministe"(" for Foreign Affairs. 17 Nevertheless, he too
maintai ned throughout the period of the Occupation the
necessity of an aIl encompassing mas~ party. His own efforts
a t founding such a party around Doriot, Bergery, and the
industr ialists and technocrats associated with the Worms
banking group also foundered on the rock of official
resistance. Publicly he refused to portion blame for the
failure of his scheme; in private however Drieu pointed the
f Inger squarel y at Laval. 18
Dr ieu' s return to Paris was soon followed by that of Déat
15Jacques Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal, p. 108, pp. 119-120.
1611Parti unique ou partis unis? ", Je suis partout, 9 October 1942.
17Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Fragment de mémoires (Paris, Gallimard, 1982), pp. 36-37.
lBlbid., p. 47, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniaues politiques. 1934-1942 (Paris, Gallimard, 1943), p. 287.
:"l'.,
37
and Doriot. Disgusted with the rejection of his plans for
establishing a parti unique, in the fall of 1940 Deal souqht
the seemingly more hospitable climate of the German occupled
capital. 19 Doriot arrived at similar conclusions. Fearlnq
that the marginalization he had suffered under the Third
Republic would be perpetuated under the new regime, ln October
1940 he set off for Paris determined ta exploit whatever
opport.uni ties presented themselves. Of the four, only
Brasillach did not make the journey in 1940. Held by the
Germans as a POW, his return ta Par i5 was delayed untll
friends managed ta secure his release in the spring of 1941.
19The extent of Déat' s disgust can bE fathomed by his pledge, made as he le ft Vichy, never to return. He obstinately kept his word, refusing ta journey ta Vichy even after he was admi tted inta pétain's government as Minister of Labour and National Solidarity in March 1944; Bertram Gordon, Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 297-299.
38
CHAPTER THREE
pétain' s government lost li ttle time in rnaking effective
use of the sweeping powers i t had been granted. By 12 July the
Presidency of the Republic had been abolished and Pétain
constituted Head of State, the Senate and Chamber adjourned
until further notice, and the legislative and executive powers
granted Pétain on the 10, as weIl as those accruing to him in
his new capacity as Head of State, formalized by
consti tut Lona l decree. 1 From this position of supreme
authority, the new government began drafting the 1egislation
wi th which ta transform French society; legislation which drew
its principle inspiration from the doctrine of Charles Maurras
and the Action Française. 2
However 1 the new government' s most pressing eoncern was
returning France to sorne semb1ance of normalcy. The up 10 :fi:lr
million refugees scattered throughout France, their return
home made more difficult by a nearly hermetieally sealed
demarcation line and various forbidden zones, placed severe
strains on a bureaucratie infrastructure already hobbled by
lRobert Aron, The Vichy Regime, translated by Humphrey Hare (London, Putnam and Co. Ltd., 1958), pp. 161-162.
ZFor the influence of Maurras and the Action Française at Vichy see Aron, pp. 145-158,> Henri Michel, Vichy. Année 40 (Paris, Robert Laffont, 1966), p. 121, and Eugen Weber, Action Française (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1962), pp. 442-447.
39
the 10ss of many ski llee1 civil. servants to German POW camps.
Even more distressing "'-'as the near t.otal shutdown of the
economy. Despite the vast amount of reconstruction würk lü be
done, the restarting of France's economic machine was hampered
by a lack of investment capi tal, a lack of raw mater ials, a
ravaged infrastructure, and the isolation caused by the
demarcation Une and the British blockade. 1
While recognizing the hardship caused by Ule Bri tish
blockade and the dislocation of war, Doriot maintained that
the principle blame for the failure to restart the economy lay
wi th René Belin, the Minister of Production. 4 While competent
management of the economy necessi tated firm leadership, Dor lot
saw in Belin's various p~âns for economic revival little more
than dilettantism. He also cri ticised Belin for not doi ng
enough to redirect France' s productive capaci ty towards those
basic staples in short supply, as weil as for his failu~e lü
take the lead in reopening foreign and domestic markets.
Doriot also maintained that the governrnent' s various
public works projects were insuf ficient to signi f icant l y
reduce unemployrnent. This si tuati on was made worse by Vichy' s
failure to clamp down on moonlighting, a practlce which he
claimed kept employment at an artificially hiqh level."
3Michel, pp. 88-95.
4Jacques Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1941), pp. 29-30, p. 45, pp. 66-68.
5 l b id., p. 24, pp. 34 - 3 6 .
1
i 40
However, both he and Déat insisted that only private
initiative could put the Fren~h economy back on its feet, a
process which the government co~ld foster by moving away from
tight fiscal policies and allowing easie~ access to
reconstruction credits. 6
The Vichy government was aiso faced with fighting off the
economic predation of the Nazis. Even before the stalling of
the German bli tzkrieg in Russia necessi tated a swi tch to a
total wa~ economy, with its attendant labour draft in France,
a more subtle form of exploitation had already been
established. Founded on French occupation payments of 20
million Reichmarks a day and an exchange rate which overvalued
the mark by 50%, it left French industry at the Mercy of
Germany's massive new spending power. 7 As a means of
protecting native industry, a law promulgated on 16 August
1940 prov l.ded for the setting up of Comité d' Organisation.
Grouped according to branch of industry and staffed by
appointees from the Ministry of Production, the committees
controlled such vital aspects of manufacturing as aIl! cation
of raw materials, working conditions, and price schedules. B
With the socialist René Belin at the helm of the Ministry of
(!l'De l'inflation au crédit", L'Oeuvre, 9 October 1940, Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal, pp. 51-53.
7Alan S. Milward, The New arder and the French Economy (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970), chapter 3.
~Robert O. Paxton, Vichy Frauce (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972 ), pp. 216 - 218 .
41
Production, there remained a reasonable chance that the Comité
d'Organisation would not become tools of big husiness. Under
his successors however, industrialists like Pierre Pucheu and
François Lehideux, the Cami té d'Organisation increas ingl y
began to resemble the industrial associations suppredsed in
November 1940.
Either unable or unwilling to take notice of German
predation, Déat saw in the Comité d'Organisation no more than
a reconstitution of the pre--war trusts. Ridiculing Vichy' s
c1aim that it had broken the trusts, he maintained that having
been ousted from their old strongholds, the trusts had
reappeared under the guise of the Comité ct' organisatIon
stronger and more solidly entrenched than ever. 9
Whatever dis agreements would later arise over the course
the National Revolution should take, the suppressIon of the
Third Republic was greeted l-Jith unanimous approval from
Bradillach, Drieu La Rochelle, and Doriot. Brasillach praised
the suppression of the parliamentary form of government, while
Doriot maintained that only wi th i ts elimination could the
task of reforming French values and insti tut ions begin. 10
Drieu shared similar opinions and eventually identiiied
Vichy' s chief weakness in the tact that the regime had
9"Comment Vichy brise les trusts", L'Oeuvre, 5 January 1941.
lO"Vive la France", Je suis partout, 21 March 1941, "Avec Pétain", Emancipation nationale, 21 September 1940.
42
remained " ... éminemment parlementaire, .. sans Parlement." n
Only Déat, unwilling ta confuse parliamentarianism and
republicanisrn, refused to join the chorus proclaiming the
death of the Republic. His reserve however was rooted not in
a sentimental attachment to the Third Republic, but in a
practical desire to rnaintain sorne form of popular
representation. While joining Brasillach, Drieu, and Doriot in
welcoming the suppression of the parliamentary form in favour
of a regime with a strong executive,12 he nevertheless
maintained a careful watch against any government subterfuge
to deprive the French people of their voice in the nations
affairs.
Though charged wi th drafting a new constitution, the
Vichy governrnent proved unable to draft anything more
substantial than piecemeal consti tutional articles. Commi ttees
of d consultative National Council, constituted in January
1941, did however deliberate over several specifie
constitutional questions. What little he knew of these
deliberations displeased Déat. He described the proposed
constitution as a "monster", devoid of any traee of popular
represe nation, which aimed at rule by local notables and
llPierre Drieu La Rochelle, Le Français dl Europe (Paris, Editions Balzac, 1944), p. 317.
12"Enf in le choix est fait", LI Oeuvre, 21 April 1942.
43
goveLnment appointees. t3 His attachment to the representative
nature of the Third Republic, if not its parliamentary form,
emerged in his warning that Pétain could not legally do aWdy
with the representative institutions of the Republ ic except by
public ratification of a new constitution. 1J lUs defense of
the republican form further revealed his kinship with the old
regirre. Whereas Brasillach maintained that by 1940
repub~icanism had died everywhere but France and praised the
Marshal for finally proscribing it, Déat called Pétain to
account, maintaining that he had been charged not with
liquidating the Republic but with purging and fortifying
i t. 15
Nor did Déat limit his defence of the old regime to
republicanism. In November 1940 was pro.oulgated a law
repl~cing elected mayors and municipal councils in lowns ot
more than 2 000 inhabitants with official appointments. This
manoeuvre, thinly veiled as a return to a regime of rule by
local notables, was in reality a purge of the Third Republic's
cadres. 16 Though recognizing the need for a purge of doubtfuJ
13"Le peuple dira non", L'Oeuvre, 26 September 1941. Déat had earlier referred to the proposed Constitution as a "carcan moyenâgeux"; "Qui nommera le chef", L'Oeuvre, 22 November 1940.
14"Simple rappel à la légalité", L'Oeuvre, 16 January 1942.
lS"Et pourquoi pas la République?", L'Oeuvre, 24 October 1940, "La République de Vichy", L'Oeuvre, 23 October 1941, "Monarchie ou République?", L'Oeuvre, la August 1942, "La République est crevée, qu'on le veuille ou non", Je suis partout, 16 June 1941.
16Paxton, Vichy France, pp. 196-200.
44
elements, Déat cri tic ised the government for going too far and
for threatening its own stability by alienating many of the
most experienced administrators in Fr"nce. 17 Déat voiced
similar objections to plans which mooted the abolition of the
departments and their replacement by France's ancient
provinces. While agreeing in principle, he nevertheless argued
in fdvour of the departments as, in the short term, they had
the distinct advantage of aiready being constituted. He once
again suspected however that behind the plan to reestablish
the provinces laya deslre to quietly do away with popular
representa tian. 18
In place of parliamentary institutions, Brasi Llach, Déat,
Doriot, and Drieu La Rochelle saw a parti unique as the
necessary intermediary between the governors and the governed.
Bras illach stressed i ts role as a means of maintaining
executi ve continuity while Drieu emphasised i ts ability to
alloy the heterogeneous elements of the French right and
left. 19 Even Doriot, unenthusiastic about any party which
might drain members from his PPF, saw the establishment of a
nationwide network of syrnpathizers as the necessary minimum
wi thout which the National Revolution would be overcome by i ts
17"Ne touchez pas aux maires", L'Oeuvre, 19 October 1940.
l\1"Réformes urgentes", L'Oeuvre, 16 April 1942, département", L'Oeuvre, 25-26 April 1942.
"Province et
19"La Republique est crevée, qu'on le veuille ou non", Je suis 2,artout, 16 June 1941, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politiques. 1934-1942 (Paris, Gallimard, 1943), pp. 287-288.
45
enemies. 20 Claiming that in 1940 aIl initiatives that smacked
of populism had been smothered in favour of a lim~ted
revolution from above, in August 1941 Déat s~gnaJ led the
failure of this paternalistic revolution and called for French
society to be reformed by a revolul10n from the grassroots.: 1
His sine qua non for the success of such an initiative was the
creation of a mass totalitarian party. He believed that such
a party would constitute the soul of the body politic, the
essential bond between state and nation, guaranteeing
poli tical continui ty and providing a means ta anchor executi ve
authori ty at the base. 22 The aeed for effective popular
representation remained a priority for D~at, leading him to
declare that the party system, not universal suffrage, had
been the fatal weakness of the Third Republic. 2J
P~tain's government ignored these calls to buttress its
position by creating a par~i unique, instead gathering
veterans of the Gredt War and the 1939-40 campaign into the
Légion Françaises des Combattants. Intended as a liaison
between the Marshal's government and the French people, the
Légion quickly came under attack from the ultras. Drieu La
Rochelle labelled it a pale imitation of German and Italian
2°0oriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal, pp. 83-85.
21"Mise en place du moteur", L'Oeuvre, 30 August 1941.
22"Le Parti fera la révolution", L'Oeuvre, 22 December 1940, "La République de Vichy", L'Oeuvre, 23 October 1941, "Quatre prOblèmes", L'Oeuvre, 20 July 1942.
231'Suffrage universel", L'Oeuvre, 25 October 1940.
46
totalitarian parties, while Brasillach accused it of being a
reconsti tution of Colonel François de La Rocque' s pre-war
Parti social français (PSF) .24 Déat, whose hostility stemmed
in part from his objection to the Légion's absorbtlon of the
old inter-war veterdns associations, saw it as a magnet for
reactionary and conservative elements, accusing it of being
divisive and of "pitting Frenchmen against each other ... 25
Addres:Jing the nation on 15 September 1940, Pétain
labelled liberal capi talism a foreign transplant which ran
counter to the French national genius. 26 Trans formed over
time by private interest groups into a tool of economic
domination and na:r:-row self-interest, Pétain proposed replacing
the liberal economic regime with "un régime organisée et
contrôlee." However, organization and control would not be
achieved by massive governmental interve~~ion but by
encouraging industry to organize itself inte self-governing
corporations. With provisions for the effective representation
of labour, management, and technical cadres, the role of
government would be limi ted to impartial mediation wi thin
24Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politiques. 1934-1942, p. 287, "Parti unique ou partis unis?", Je suis partout, 9 October 1942.
25CIaude Varennes (Georges Albertini), Le destin de Marcel Déat (Paris, Janmaray, 1948), p. 150, "La réaction continue", L'Oeuvre, 15 March 1941, "Vérité sur la Seine, Erreur sur l'Allier", L'Oeuvre, 27 June 1941 .
.:!f:Jpétain' s views on economics are taken from speeches reprinted in Philippe Pétain, La Nouvelle France (Montrouge, lroprimeurs Draeger frères, 1941), pp. 51-59, and Un an de Révolution nationale. Juin 1940-juillet 1941 (place of publication and publisher unknown, c.1941), pp. 6-8.
l 47
corporations and coordination of economic activity at the apex
of a national corporate structure through a National Corporate
Chamber. As a necessary prelude to such a corporate
restructuring of the economy, the private interests which
Pétain claimed had held the Third Republic hostage were done
away with on 9 November 1940 by a law dissolving France's
trade unions and manufacturers' associations.
The ultra community reacted with caution to the Marshal' s
declarations. While praising pétain' s removal of the franc
from the gold standard and his recogni tion of work, not
speculation, as the true basls of wealth, Déat nevertheless
harbored reserva~ions about the success of the government's
plan of action in the face of concerted opposition from the
trusts and high finance. 27 Drieu expressed similar
reservations, urqing the government to dispel any doubts of
its committment to socialism by acting quickly in establishing
"une organisation syndicale corporative". 28 Doriot, while
praising the government for 1eading the French economy along
the road of integration into a pan-European arder,
nevertheless noted that its actions seemed to be marked by a
certain amount of hesi tation and uncertainty. 29 Brasi llach,
27"Les vraies richesses", L'Oeuvre, libérales", L'Oeuvre, 31 July 1940, L'Oeuvre, 13 October 1940.
13 July 1940, "Illusions "Révolution nationale",
2BOrieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politiques. 1934-42, pp. 281-282.
29Jacques Doriot, Réalités (Paris, Les Editions de France, 1942), p. 64.
48
upon his release from a German POW camp, stressed that more
than clerical slogans and the paternalism of retired military
men was necessary to win over the workers to the National
Revolution. 30
The promised centerpiece of Vichy's socio-economic
policy, the Charte du Travail, was awaited with keen interest
within the ultra community and formed a basic litmus test for
judging the social orientation of the new regime. Bc.th Doriot
and Drieu La Rochelle, while praising the government's early
measures, lamented the failure to give official sanction to
corporative unions by thr. promulgation of sorne form of labour
charter. JI Déat also saw the need to allow corporative
structures to develop, but remained inclined to believe that
such organizations should develop spontaneously and
independently, convinced that too much government int4:!rference
would lead to a suffocation of genuine ini tiati ve. 32
The charter which emerged in October 1941 was a
compromise between the interests not only of labour and
business, but also between Vichy's syndicalists, like Belin,
on the one hand, and, on the other, those in favour of a
corporative structure with did away with trade unionism
JO"Nous, nous continuons", Je suis partout, 2 June 1941.
J1Doriot, Réalités, pp. 29-37, Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politiques. 1934-1942, pp. 281-282.
{ n"Mais où sont les leviers?", L'Oeuvre, 17 October 1940, "Toujours les mêmes", L'Oeuvre, 9 November 1940.
1
49
completely.33
It met wi th Déat' s immediate disapproval. While in favour
of the Charte's provisions for an equitable minlmum wage and
legislated health standards in the work pldce, he felt it did
not go far enough and smacked of government paternal ism.
Thaugh Belin had managed ta retain a role for trade unionism
in the Charte, il. differed considerably from the labour
mavement's traditional role insofar as their ability ta act
effectively was limlted by the uann~ng of strikes above the
local level. The strength of the trade unions was further
sapped by a tripartite voting system, which divided power
between labour, the owners, and the managers and engineers, in
the decision making process of the corporations. Déat
maintained that workers would be unwilling ta give up their
traditional bargaining toois in exchange for vague government
assurances. 34 His eventual change of heart occurred as a
result of meetings in the spring of 1942 between himself,
Minister of Labour Hubert Lagardelle, Minister of Industrlal
Production Jean Bichelonne, and RNP labour specialists. l', The
3Jpaxton, pp. 216-218, Aron, pp. 293-294.
34"La Charte du Travaj l-Survol du paysage social", L'Oeuvre, 310ctober 1941, "Le tout-à-l'Etat", L'Oeuvre, 8 November 1941.
3S"Destin du syndicalisme", L'Oeuvre, 24-25 May 1942, Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques (Paris, Denoël, 1989), pp. 817-819, Claude Varennes (Georges Albertini), Le destin de Marcel Déat (Paris, Janmaray, 1948), pp. 173-174. In February 1941, in the wake of Laval's removal from office, Déat and former cagoulard Eugène
-, Deloncle founded the Rassemblement national populaire (RNP). The latter and his followers were eventually expelled and Déat assumed sole leadership of the party.
1
\
50
Vichy ministers managed to convince Déat that the very
ambiguity of the Charte permitted it to be steered away from
the state paternalism he feared and towards a vibrant
structure in which trade unionism would play a motive rele.
The confidence Déat was subsequently to place in Lagardelle
was echoed by Brasillach, who saw in him an individual capable
of walking the line between the demands of the trusts and of
those labour leaders still animated by the divisive rancour of
the Popular Front. 36
Déat's subsequent faith in the Charte du Travail was to
hinge almost completely on vague assurances given by Vichy
ministers. On several occasions he lauded Bichelonne and
Lagardelle for leading the fight within the government against
the paternal istic and statist vision of the Charte entertained
by 50 many at Vichy.J7 Déat however cou Id not escape the fact
that his fai th in the Charte rested not so much on the
document itself, as on the good faith and political skill of
the ministers charged with implementing it.
Wi th France on the verge of liberation by the Allies,
Déat declared that the Vichy regime had not been able to rally
the working class to itself because it had failed to establish
an equitable socialism. 38 His eventual despair was matched by
Jt)"Devant l'avenir" 1 Je suis partout, 25 April 1942.
J7"Carosseries sans moteur" , L'Oeuvre, "Bagarres autour de la Charte", L'Oeuvre, "Renouveau syndical", L'Oeuvre, 4 April 1944.
25 August 13 October
38"L' at tentisme ouvrier", L'Oeuvre, 28 June 1944.
1943, 1943,
51
that of Drieu La Rochelle. Having always maintalned that in
the wake of the collapse of marxism Vichy must actively take
up the cause of the working classes, his lonq S lmmer ing
dissatisfaction came to a head in 1943 following the overthrow
of Mussolini. He declared that the corporatism espoused by
Vichy, of which he had once been an enthusiast le adherent, was
itself nat socialism but only an intermediary form on the road
to socialism. 39
To the traditionalists and social conservatives at Vichy,
the peasantry were seen as "the principal economlC and social
base of France. ,,40 Whereas urban centers were seen as hotbeds
of unrest and revolution, the peasants' rootedness in the soil
made them a central pillar of any conservative recasting of
society. There is even evidence to suggest that Pétain tacitly
approved of the largely agricultural raIe planned for France
in the German New Order. 41 The attention lavished on the
French peasantry by Vichy should thus come as no surprise. The
Ministry of Agriculture was given ta Pierre Caziot, an
agricultural expert actively involved in the cause of rural
France in the inter-war periode As Minister of Agriculture he
encouraged a recolonization of the French countryside,
39Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politigues, p. 317, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Le Français d'Eur9~, pp. 338-339, pp. 375-376.
4°Quoted in Paxton, p. 206; for discussion of Vichy' s agricultural policy see Paxton, pp. 206-209, Aron, pp. 179-180, and Michel, pp. 135-137.
41Mi1ward, p. 65.
52
modified laws and eased credit restrictions to improve the
productivity of holdings, and encouraging better education in
agronomy. However, the mainstay of Vichy rural policy was the
Charte Paysanne prorllUlgated on 2 December 1940. Unlike their
counterparts in industry, the various pre-war peasant and
agricultural associations were not broken up but were allowed
to retain their autonomy within the new agricultural
corporation. Delegates to local, regional, and national
counclls were elected by the membership of the corporation,
with the latter two submitted to the Minister for: final
approval. Finally, the agricultural corporation was given
legal powers to "promote and administer the common interests
of peasant families in the moral, social and economic
spheres. "
In contrast to the peasant preoccupation of Vichy, t~d
segment of the ultra communi ty under consideration s 3ems to
have been largely disinterested in such matters. Doriot dealt
with agricultural concerns only in passing, while Brasillach
and Drieu only mentioned them obliquely, usual'y in relation
to other matters. 42 Déat, hostile to Caziot, attacked the
agricultural corporation for being a tool of large absentee
landowners and bankers. 43 His principal concern w i th
47Doriot, Réalités, p. 27.
4J"Une agriculture sans paysans", L'oeu~re, 31 May 1941, "Corporation paysanne et groupes spécialises", L'Oeuvre, 17 December 194.2; according to Georges Albertini, Déat had towards Caziot "un mepris aussi total qU'injustifié" but was more favorably disposed towards his sucees sor Max Bonnafous. Varennes (Georges
53
agriculture, however, centered on the ability of the
countryside to supply the urban centers wi th food. Both
Brasillach and Déat launched savage attacks dga lnst Jean
Achard, Minister of State for Food, for his tal.lures to
maintain adequate food stocks in Paris. 44 According to Déat,
the chronic problem of victualing was due not ta a lack ot
production or German requisition, but by the system of
rernuneration and distribution. He accused the huge government
bureaucracy charged with victualing the cities of corruption
and inefficiency.45 Déat maintained that the solution tü th8
problem of insufficient foodstuffs was not draconian
legislation or terror tactics, but the establishment of an
equitable price for farm produce and a willingness ta let the
Corporation Paysanne by-pass the congested state bureaucracy
and bring i ts own produce to market. 4& Only when such
conditions were met would the French peasantry turn away (rom
the illegal profits of the black market and direct its crops
towards the undernourished cities.
The moral and intellectual regeneration which Pétain
prescribed as the antidote to the decay which had led to
Albertini), pp. 148-149.
44"Les rentiers de la disette", L'Oeuvre, 6 January 1941, "Raison d'avance", Je suis partout, 17 January 1942.
4S"Honorer les tickets", L'Oeuvre, 29 May 1941, "A quand l'action sur les prix?", L'Oeuvre, 9 September 1942.
46"Le blé qui se cache", L'O~uvre, 8 April 1942, "Soudure et marché noir", L'Oeuvre, 12 May 1943.
1 54
defeat on the battlefield was nowhere more evident than in
Vichy' s treatrnent of youth. 47 In particular 1 education and
organized youth culture were staked out as the terrain on
which a new sort of youth, radically different from his Third
Republic predecessor, would be formed.
Blarned in large part for the defeat of 1940, the French
educatJonal establishment underwent considerable structural
change under Vichy. 48 Wi th regards ta the ultra communi ty,
more important than the structural change were the ideological
changes wrought. In an article on educational reform signed by
Pétain and appearing in the Revue des deux mondes, the Third
Republ ic' s scholastic curriculum was cri ticised for being too
narrowly individualistic and lacking in discipline. 4~ Pétain
also criticised the Republic's laie educational establishment
for its moral relativism and its failure to imbue its charges
with a sense of moral responsibility. In future, Pétain
stressed, French education:
... ne prétendra plus à la neutralité. La vie n'est pas neutre; elle consiste à prendre parti hardiment. Il n'y a pas de neutralité entre le bien et le mal, entre la santé et la maladie, entre l'ordre et le désordre, entre la France et l' Anti -France. 50
However, whi le they mi4ht admire Vichy' s ideological
41pétain, La France nouvelle, pp. 15-20.
4llPaxton, pp. 153-165, and Michel, pp. 125-129.
-'9pétain, La France nouvelle, pp. 39-48.
~OIbid. 1 p. 41.
55
committment, the ultras found its tane unpalatable. Reliqious
education was reintroduced into the public school system and,
more ominous still, the public purse was opened to fund
private [ie. Catholic] educational establishments. D~at
addressed this clerical challenge to France' s educatlon system
and warned that, given France's anti-clerical tradition, dny
attempt to use the machinery of state ta impose any single
religious view would inevitably cause a backlash against the
regime. 51 Déat also resisted movements by the t.rad i tionai ls t
right at Vichy to ban women from hlgher education. ',,' Hi s
claim that such a move would make of France the laughing stock
of the new Europe, dS weIl as his opposition ta attempts ta
1egislate women back into the kitchen, set him apart not onl y
from the reactionaries at Vichy but also from much of the
ultra camp.
Between June 1940 and April 1942 Vichy went through fi ve
ministers of education. Each had been found, for one reason or
another, undesirable. Such had aiso been the )udgement of
Déat, who remained dissatisfied until Abel Bonnard assumed the
post in April 1942. Déat disliked Bonnard's predecessors
because of their clericalism and lack of revolutionary
fervour, but aIse because of their purges of the teaching
51llLes droits de la conscience et ceux de l'Etat", L'Oeuvre, 12 Nevember 1941, "Anticléricalisme", J,'Oeuvre, 18 August 1942.
5211Les femmes à l'école", L'Oeuvre, 8 October 1940, "La femme démariée", L'Oeuvre, 18 October 1940, "Climat social", L'Oeuvre, 27 April 1941.
... 56
cadres. As wi th France' s mayors, Déat was opposed to purges of
the fa i th fuI servants of the old regime based solely on
ideology; he argued that France needed their eXl=-'ertise and
that they shouid be given a chance to prove their loyalty to
the new regime. 53 Brasillach, who took an avid interest in
aIl matters concerning French youth, came to somewhat
different conclusions. He repeatedly criticised Jérôme
Carcopino, Vichy's fifth minister of education, for being too
lenient with recalcitrant teachers and for turning France's
lycées into safe hou ses for Jews and other enemies of the
National Revolution. 54 Despite their differences with regards
the need ta purge France' s educational cadres, Déat and
Brasillach did agree in their praise of Abel Bonnard. Vichy's
sixth minister of education, Bonnard held the post from April
1942 until the flight of the government in August 1944. A
professlonal man of letters who had previously only dabbled in
the worid of politlcs, Bonnard won approval from Brasillach
and Déat less for his competence than for his ideological
committment to the New Order. Cornrnenting in the spring of 1942
on the new Laval ministry, Bras illach professed to believe
that Bonnard "ne reculera devant rien pour rendre à la
ilVarennes(Georges Albertini), pp. 148-149, "Les instituteurs à .'a barre de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 6 April 1942, "Réformes urgentes", L'O.auvre, 16 April 1942.
J4"Et maintenant. faisons la politique définie par le Maréchal", .,. Je suis partout, 18 August 1941, liA bas les faisans!", Je suis
partout, 11 October 1941, "Raison d'avance", Je suis partout, 17 January 1942.
57
jeunesse le sens de la grandeur et du réalIsme. ".,~ Déat
extended similar praise te Bonnard, calling him "un haut
esprit, ouvert a toutes les nobles idées. Il'!' Personal
affinity aside, Déat was enthused by Bonnard's tireless
propaganda effort on behalf of the> National P.evolution and
France' s place in the new European order.,7 By 1944 howev er ,
Déat had lost hope in even Bonnard's abillty to etfect
purposeful change; despite Bonnard's tireless efforts, d
teaching corps rite with Gaullists and anglophiles, shaken by
the purges of Vichy's early period and under constant attack
by clerical and reactionary elements, had proven incapdble of
coming to terms with the challenges posed by the birth ot a
new society. 58
The Vichy r~gime also attempted to ferm youth ta i ts
image through the establishment of a system of camps. Created
by a law of 30 July 1940 in an effort to ease the problem of
youth unemploymellt and dislocation, these youth camps were at
first aimed exclusively at that class of young men first
called to the colours in 1940. 59 This emergency measure was
'iS"Oevant l'avenir" 1 Je suis partout, 25 Aprll 1942.
56"Oémolition de l'enseignement", L'Oeuvre, 5 May 1942.
57"OU côté des instituteurs", L'Oeuvre, 6-7 June 1942, "Des directives à l'exécution", L'Oeuvre, 9 June 1942.
se"L'enseignement secondaire", L'Oeuvre, de l'Ecole" , L' Oeuvre, 4 September universitaires", L'Oeuvre, 22 March 1944.
8 June 1942, "Autour 1942, "Somnolences
59Aron, p. 177; see aIse Paxton, pp. 160-165, and Michel, pp. 127-129.
j , 58
eventually broadened into the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, a sort
of nation~l service organization in which aIl males of the
southern zone spent eight months of their twenty-first year
doing phys ical labour and undergoing moral instruction. Doriot
qU1ckly carne out in favour of Vichy 1 s efforts to alleviate
youth unemployment by means of officially organized work
camps, but wondered if the government was capable of making
such camps uni versally accessible. 60
Doriot 1 S concern for the accessibili ty of government
sponsored youth camps was echoed in the larger debate
surrounding the regimentation of young people prior to their
induction into the Chantiers de la Jeunesse. At first it had
been widely expected that the new government would set up a
single national youth organization. However, resistance from
the Cathol ic Church, which feared the 10ss of members from i ts
own yûuth groups, and the Germans, who feared the militarist
and nat10nalist nature of Vichy's youth organizations, sealed
the fate of any unitary youth group. In its stead the
government sponsored an official but: voluntary youth group,
the Compagnons de France, which was forced to compete for
members w1th sorne fifteen or twenty private youth
organi zations .61
As Bonnard's ideological committment to the New Order had
bO"Remettre la France au travail", L'Emancipation nationale, 19 October 1940.
b1paxton, p. 161.
59
formed the co~on ground on which Brasillach and Déat could
agree on questions of educdtion, 50 tao the fai l ure ta
organize a single youth group formed the bas1.s of their
criticism of Vichy's handling of youth matters. Deat drew a
connection between the failure ta constitute a un1.tary youth
group and the failure ta forge a parti unique. Criticising the
government for noc creating a jeunesse unique, he maintalned
that thi~ failure had permi tted the corruption of you th by
gaull ists, communists, and the Action Française. '-. Bras llldCh
echoed Déat in criticising the lack of unit y among French
youth. However, while maintaining that a l ack of uni ty a Il owed
the enemies of the National Revolution to wrest control of
youth from the state, he was less adamant that Deat ln
stressing the ne~d for institutional unity. He Insisted that
while institutional or organizational unit y was preferable, it
was not essential 50 long as ideological unlty was assured. b'
In the absence of such an official ideology, Brasillach wdrned
that christian-socialist reactionar1.es were free to preach
attentisme and defend, in the name of a taIse human dignlty,
"la maçonnerie anglo-saxonne et le marXIsme juctéo-
stalinien".64 Even Drieu, who normally l imi ted his
62"Qu'a-t-on fait de notre jeunesse?", L'Oeuvre, 19 December 1941, "Rumeurs autour des Jeunes", L'Oeuvre, 30 March 1942.
63"La hantise de l'Uni té", Je suis partout, 30 September 1941, "Un programme minimum pour la jeunesse", Je suis partout, 19 February 1943.
6'''Nous ne voulons ni Homais ni Tartuffe", Je suis partout, 30 August 1941.
60
observations on youth matters to noting Vichy's failure to
make use of enough young blood in filling ministerial
portfo l ios, accused bath the Catholic and Protestant churches
of sabotaging the National Revolution by actively resisting
the establishment of a unitary and revolutionary youth
movement for fear of lasing their own adherents. 65
The failure of the Vichy regime to bring French youtil
under i ts guidance and tutelage resul ted, or so Brasillach and
Déat claimed, in an absence 0 f revolutionary conunittment.
Bras i.llach saw evidence of this in the growing number of young
people becoming involved in black market activities, and urged
that the state wrest such degenerate youth from their parents
and place them in reeducation camps. 66 Identi fying the
pr inciple problem of French youth as one of 1ack of
inv01vement in the troubled birth of the new Europe, Déat
pra i sed the government' s plan to conscript young people to do
labour service in Germany. Despite such occasional enthusiasm
however, by 1944 Déat pronounced the same verdict of failure
on the government' s handling of organized youth culture as he
had earlier pronounced on its hand1ing of education. 57
h'>p ierre Drieu La Rochelle, Fragment de mémoire (Paris, Gallimard, 1982), p. 85, Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politiques. 1934-1942, pp. 282-283, p. 323.
bh .. Jeunesse dorée, jeunesse noire ... ", Je suis partout, 21 August 1942.
(""Une grande idée", L'Oeuvre, 1 June 1942, "Les jeunes d'abord", L'Oeuvre, 2-3 June 1943, "La Jeunesses devant la vie", L'Oeuvre, 24 March 1944.
-'
l 61
CHAPTER FOUR
Vichy' s attempt at recasting French society along more
traditional lines had its reverse image in a campaign to purge
the nation of various elements deemed undesirable. In as much
as substantial portions of Vichy 1 s constructive ldeology were
drawn from Charles Maurras and his Action Frdnçaise, 50 too
was much of its xenophobia. In large part, Maurras attributed
the decline of French power ta the pervasi ve and noxious
influence of métèques, a term with bestial connotations used
to descr ibe those groups deemed anti thet ical to France' s
national harmony: Protestants, Freemasons, and Jews . 1 By 1940
the f irst 1eg of Maurras' dark tr iad had out. l i ved i ts
political usefulness. France 1 s small and weIl integrated
Protestant communi ty had long ceased to serve as a lightning
rad for discontent, and many of l ts members would come to
occupy important pos i tions at Vichy. Freemasonry, on the other
hand, remained a bête noire of the social conservatives. Its
historical struggle against the Church and other stalwarts of
a conservative moral order, combined with its firm foothold in
French peti t bourgeois republicanism, led ta the growth a f d
conservative demonology which saw the spectre of Masonry
behind French decline.
Much like France's Protestants, the French Jewish
lRobert O. Paxton, Vichy France (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 171-172.
62
community was relatively smali and remarkably well
assimilated. However, its position had begun to be threatened
during the 19305 by an influx of Eastern European Jews seeking
refuge from persecution. Growing hostility directed at these
distinctly different and not easily assimilated foreigners led
the government of the day to issue in April 1939 an executive
order, the so-called Marchandeau decree, outlawing press
attacks against "any group of persons who belong by origin to
a partlcular race or religion when it is intended to arouse
hatred among citizens or residents ... 2 The difficulties posed
by this influx of Jewish refugees were further exacerbated,
following the military collapse of France, by the grind1ng to
a halt of the French economy and the German policy of dumping
its own Jews into the Unoccupied Zone.
Vichy's campaign against Freemasonry began on 13 August
1940 with the promulgation of a law abolishing aIl secret
societies. 1 The text of the law required aIl civil servants
and public employees to swear oaths testifying that they had
never belonged to such a secret society or had in good faith
severed all links with such organizations. 4 Failure to comply,
~Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York, Basic BOOks, Inc., 1981), p. 3; Marrus and Paxton have written the defini tive account of Vichy' s indigenous Jewish poUcy and i ts eventual eclipse by the Iarger and more sin1ster policy pursued by the Nazi regime.
lpaxton, pp. 172-173, Henri Michel, Vichy. Année 40. (Paris, Robert Laffant, 1966), pp. 140-141.
~Un an de révolution nationale. Juin 1940-juillet 1941 (place of publication and publisher unknown, c.1941), p. 36.
63
or a fraudulent declaration, was deemed sufficienl cause for
dismissal. Though the law did not target Freemasonry per se,
the deluge of anti-Masonic propaganda which foU owed Ils
promulgation le ft little doubt of its intended target. The
regime' s obsession wi th Freemasonry was further underscored by
the practice of publishing in the Journal Officiel lhe names
of scores of Lodge members, drawn from confiscated 1ists, who
had failed to make public disavowa!s.
Brasillach praised the steps taken by Vichy lo suppress
Masonry.5 Doriot went further i praising the dissol u tion ot the
Lodges by the law of 13 August and subsequent steps taken by
the government to determine the extent of MasonlC membership
in France, he warned that such steps were insufficlent and
that unless harsher measures were taken the NatIonal
Revol ution would be stillborn. fi Déat, on grounds that no
government could tolerate the infringement of national
sovereignty posed by an internationally connected secret
organization, joined with Brasillach and Doriot in praising
the suppression of the Lodges. 7 While in favour of suppressing
of the Masonic infrastructure. Déat however revolted agalnst
Vichy' 5 persecution of indi v idual members. He argued that
those who had in good faith broken with the movement should
S"Vive la France", Je suis partout, 21 March 1941.
6Jacques Doriot, Réalités (Paris, Les Editions de France, 1942 ), pp. 69- 7 0 •
7"Considérations sur la Maçonnerie", L'Oeuvre, 7 October 1941, "Maçonnerie à rebours", L'Oeuvre, 8 October 1941.
64
not be persecuted, but instead should be allowed to
demonstrate their loyalty to the new regime. He warned that
anti - Masonic wi tch hunts were being used by enemies of the
National Revolution to spread rancour and dissent, and would
deflect energy from the crucial task of socialist revolution.
Behind Déat' s commendable concern for the rights (If
individuals, however, laya vestige of self-interest. As part
of its plan to vilify France's Masonic Lodges, the Vichy
regime published monthly under the title Les Documents
Maçonniques selected documents from the horde seized after the
armistice. Bernard Fa , director of the Bibliothèque nationale
and editor of the confiscated documents, saw in them a means
of discrediting Déat, who while never a Masan had in the
inter-war period used the Masonic network to preach his neo
socialisL gospel. Always vulnerable to attack due to his at
times close relationship with the discredited Third Republic,
Oéat's heated defence of those persecuted for their Masonic
connections was at least in part motivated by a desire to
deflect the blows of his political opponents.
In the same way that its campaign against the Lodges had
begun wi th a fairly general decree against "secret societies",
so too its anti-Jewish campaign began fairly slowly with the
establishment on 22 June 1940 of a commission to review aIl
grants of French citizenship made after August 1927. Though
not an overtly anti-semitic measure, the reality of Jewish
fI ight f rom persecution in Eastern Europe during the inter-war
65
period resulted in Jews being over represented in the number
eventually deemed undesirable.
Vichy's first measure aimed specifically at Jews was the
Jewish Statute of 3 October 1940. Designed to lessen Jewish
influence over the French body poli tl.C, i t excluded Jews from
the upper ranks of the civil service, the officer corps and
NCC cadres of the armed forces, the judl.Clary, and from
posi tians which had a hand in shaping publIC otJinion (eg.
teaching, the press, radio, fl.lm, and theatre). The statuLe
was followed on 4 October by a law permi tting prefects to
intern foreign Jews and, on 7 October, by the repedl of the
1870 Crimieux decree granting French citizenship to Algerian
Jews. This first wave of legislation met with a mIxed reaction
from the ul tra cornmunity. Drieu La Rochelle and Déél t reserved
comment, while Brasillach briefly pralsed the Statute. Il
Doriot, on the other hand, let fly a barrage of ant.l-semitic
invecti ve. 9 He praised the repeal ot the CrémIeux decree and
the promulgation of a Jewish Statute, urging the establishment
of a numerus clausus to further regulate Jewlsh partIclpation
in the liberal professions. Doriot made it clear however that
a"Vive la France", Je suis partout, 21 March 1941. Drieu refrained from commenting on Vichy's Jewish policy. Nevertheless, the period of the Collaboration was marked by a sharp radicalization of his anti -semi tism; P j erre du Ba 15, Dr leu La Rochelle (Lausanne, Cahiers d'Histoire ContemporaIne, 1978), pp. 283-284, p. 295.
90oriot, Réalités, pp. 67-68, "Il faut régler la question juive", L'Emancipation nationale, 7 September 1940, "Ne laissons pas saboter deux grands actes politiques contre les Juifs", L'Emancipation nationale, 26 October 1940.
66
he cons idered them li ttle more than f irst steps in a program
of purges, expropriations, and eventual expulsion from Europe.
The second wave of anti-Jewish legislation, in the summer
of 1941, was the result of indirect German pressure. Fearing
that the French government was losing control of Jewish
matters in the Occupied Zone, in March 1941 the Darlan
administration established a Commissariat-General for Jewish
Affairs (CGJA). Under Xavier Vallat, a right wing deputy and
much decorated World War One veteran, the CGJA was charged
wi th reassert ing French control of Jewish matters over the
who] e of France. In expectation that corresponding German
decrees would be withdrawn as French ones were promulgated,
the range of forbidden occupations was expanded. As weIl, over
the course of the summer and fall, quotas were imposed on an
ever greater number of professions.
The· establishment of the CGJA provided a convenient
lightning rad at which aU the venom pent up in the ultra camp
aver Vichy' 5 handling of the Jewish question could be
discharged. Three months after the appointment of Vallat as
Commissioner-General, Brasillach made known his displeasure
wi th the former' s performance .10 In particular, he emphasised
the qovernment' s lack of vigour and the seemingly endless
proliferation of exceptions and special cases. Vallat' s
eventual falling out wi.th the Germans and his replacement by
lO"Nous, nous continuons", Je suis partout, 2 June 1941, "Ma lheur aux tièdes!", Je suis partout, 30 May 1942.
67
the more amenable Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was welcomed by
Brasillach, who praised Pellepoix for his efforts ln educatinq
Frenchmen to the true nature of the Jewish question. The PPF
press followed a similar line. Campaigning in Russia, Doriot
had left the political direction of his movement in the hands
of such trusted lieutenants as Henri Lebas and Maurice-Ivan
Sicard. The former, equating the progress of anti -Jew ish
measures with the extent of Vichy 1 s commi t tmenL to
revolutionary change, cri ticised Vallat for not proceed ing
wi th enough energy. 11 While Darquie:- de Pell epolx was seen to
have demonstrated the requisite vigO~T, ~e had unfoctunately
been hamstrung in his efforts by the uncooperati veness of
various organs of the French state.
Insisting in his post-war memoirs that he was not. an
anti-sernite, Déat adrnits to having found himself at odds with
anti-assimilationist Jews, as weIl as the french Jew ish
cornrnunity generally for the role he believed i t to have played
in fomenting war with Germany. 12 Déat 1 s fear of Jewish
resistance to assimilation formed the basis of his criticism
of Vallat's work at the CGJA. He feared that the creation of
the Union Générale des Israéli tes de France (UGIF l, an
umbrella organization established under CGJA auspices to bring
nilLe baromètre", Le Cri du peuple, l March 1944. Lebas and Sicard served as editors-in-chief of Le Cri du peuple and L'Emancipation nationale respectively.
12Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques (Paris, Denael, 1989), p. 609, pp. 618-619.
68
together aIl Jewish philanthropie and social organizations,
would not only create astate within a state but would provide
sufficient organization to turn the traditional bogey of the
péril juif into reality.13 Déat insisted that this danger was
further exacerbated by the clerical bent of Vallat and many
other officiaIs at Vichy. He stressed that the government's
obsession with rooting out anti-clericalism, exemplified in
i ts concerted campaign against Freemasonry 1 was di verting
attention f~om the growing conspiracy between the Jews and
their Gaullist, anglophile, and liberal democra~ic allies.
In much the same way as fear of German economic predation
had prompted the creation of the Comité d'Organization, sa tao
did it push Vichy into the unsavory business of the
Aryanization of Jewish property. From the onset of their
occupa t ion 1 the Germans had appointed caretakers to administer
enterprises belonging to Jews who had fled the German
onslaught. By the fall of 1940 such administrations had been
extended to aIl Jewish enterprises. A third German ordinance
of April 1941 gave administrators the right ta sell Jewish
properties, with the proceeds going to the state. Unable ta
stop the Germans from disposing of French property in a manner
which favoured those in possession of overvalued Reichmarks,
Vallat promulgated a law , on the assumption that the Germans
would in turn withdraw their own ordinances, which extended
the spoliation of Jewish property ta the whole of France and
llllJuifs et francs-maçons", L'Oeuvre, 12 December 1941.
1 IJ,
69
placed responsibility for its execution in the hands of the
French government.
In dealing wi th the Aryanization of Jewish properly, bot.h
Diat and Brasillach drew parallels between it and the
wholesale expropriation and sale of Church lands during the
Revolution of 1789. 14 Writing after his departure from .l~
suis partout, in the atmosphere of despalr whlcn dcscended
upon him following Mussolini' s fall from power in the sumnl(~r
of 1943, Brasillach lamentea the fact that Vichy had not been
more forceful in using confiscated Jewish property ta cement
support for the regime. Déat made similar arguments,
maintaining that the government's lack ot enthusldsm in
permitting the resale of Jewish property held ln trusleeship
stemmed from a desire to minimize the confusion attendant on
its repatriation in the wake of the Allied LnvaSlon
anticipated by those elements at Vichy hostile to the NatIonal
Revolution.
Any discussion of the attitude of the ul tra press towdrds
Vichy's handling of the Jewish question would remain
incomplete did it. not deal briefly with what wenl unreported.
Specifically, the silence surrounding the mass deportations of
French and foreign Jews, carried out under German initialive
but with the full complicity of the French state, WhlCh began
14"La curieuse histoire des biens juifs", L'Oeuvre, 30 Septernber 1943, Robert Brasillach, Oeuvres completes de Robert Brasillach, tome XII, edition annotée par Maurice Bardèche (Paris, Au Club de L'Honnête Homme, 1964), p. 610.
ft
70
in the summer of 1942. Given the necessary public nature of
any such operation, as weIl as the active participation of
uniformed PPF militiamen, no claim of ignorance can be
countenanced. One is instead led to view this silence as
ev idence bath of the degree of control the Germans were
capable of exerting over the ultra press when they felt such
control was warranted, and of the depth of awareness within
the Nazi hierarchy that large-scale deportations of Jews ta
the East would repulse French public opinion.: s
Vichy' s efforts at purging French society were by no
means limited to battles waged against those considered by the
Maurrasians to be responsible for the sapping of French moral
strength. Specifically, the agony and shame of military defeat
cried out for the punishment of those responsible for having
steered the nation to disaster. 50 strong and seemingly
unlversal was the calI for retribution, that on 10 July 1940
a specIal Supreme Court of Justice was established. 16
Brasillach, Déat, and Doriot welcomed the establishment of the
l"The raIe of the PPF in the round-up of Jews is briefly discussed ln Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, p. 251, p. 321. The power of German censorship over the ultra press, and the degree to which such censorship was internalized, is discussed in El izabeth Dunan, "La Propaganda-Abtei1ung de France: Tâches et organisatlon", Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, 4 ( 1951 ), and Claude Lévy, "La presse de collaboration en France occupee: conditions d'existence", Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, 20(80), 1970.
IbThe details of the Riom trials are discussed in Robert Aron, The V ichy Regime, trans lated by Humphrey Hare (London, Putnam, 1~58), pp. 297-300, Henri Michel, pp. 145-47, and Un_ an de Revolutio~ nationale. Juin 1940-juillet 1941, pp. 32-34.
7 l
new court at Riom. Doriot screamed for the "chatiment des
responsables .• 117 Brasillach, elaborat 1ng further, maintained
that the proceedings at Riom would serve dS a Iltmus test ot
the revolutionary enthusiasm of the VIchy government . .tl Deat 1
for his part, imagined the RIom trIals to be the sine qua non
of France's break with her liberal democratic pasl and her
integration as a bocialist polit Y Into the new Europedn
order. :9
The question of the new Court' S jurlsdlctlon was one
which aroused cons iderable controversy. 'T'he Germans w i shed the
Riom trials ta firmly establish France' s gu Il t ln sldrt 1 ng the
war. The French, for obvious reasons, were more lncllned ta
seek out thase responsible for leavlng France mllitary
unprepared for waging war. The situation was rendered even
more ambiguaus by the Vichy elite's desire to use the trlals
as a means of discrediting their former Popular Front
opponents. A compromise was eventually arrlved at whereby the
Riom court was authorised to indict:
The Minlsters, under-Secretaries of Stdte and thelr immediate colleagues, who had betrayed the dut les ot their position in acts which had contributed ta a state of peace becoming d state of war, and in dcts which had later aggravated the consequences of the si tuation thus created. ,0
P"Avec Pétain", L'Emancipation nationale, 21 September 1940.
lS"Vi ve la France", Je suis partout, 21 Harch 1941.
19"Avortement judiciaire", L'Oeuvre, Il October 1941, "L'Autre erreur de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 5 March 1942.
2°Aron, p. 298.
72
Under these provisions, which introduced into French
jurisprudence the novelty of retroactive prosecution, were
indicted before the Supreme Court of Justice such prominent
figures of the Third Republic as Léon Blum, Pierre Cot,
Edouard Da ladier, General Maurice Garnel in, Georges Mandel, and
Paul Reynaud.
Given the inability of the politicians at Vichy to
ascertain which of two poli tical1y irreconcilable aims they
wished the Suprerne Court of Justice to pursue, establishing
gUl1t for starting the war or laying blame for 10sing it, in
its deliberations the Riom court, reasserting the traditiona1
independence from political Interference of the French
judiciary, chose to ref lect French popular opinion' s desire to
see the latter course pursued. 21 Both Brasillach and Déat
reacted wi th outrage at the direction which the Court was
perrnitting the trials to proceed.;::2 Déat pointed out, with
characteristic logic, the dichotomy between the growing
emphasis of the proceedings on matters of a mi1itary nature
and the fact that only one of the defûndants was a
professlonal soldier. 23 Brasi 11ach joined Déat in 1amenting
the fact that the defendants were being permitted to use the
trials as public plattorrns, that such disgraced Third Republic
:lIbid., p. 300.
"~"Les équivoques de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 4 October 1940, "La comédie de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 17-18 January 1942, "Procès du régime? Oui, mais duquel?", Je suis partout, 21 February 1942.
:J"Des militaires aux pacifistes", L'Oeuvre, 14 october 1940.
1 73
figures as Blum and Daladier were being allowed to lurn
themselves into martyrs, and that other such notoriOUS figures
of the old regime as Reynaud and Mandel were belng allowed La
escape judiclal scrutlny.;4 Stresslng that Lhese men had t.o
be made examples of, both Brasillach and Deat chdstised Lhe
governrnent for not asserting i ts authorl ty by summar il Y
executing those before the Court.
Br~sillach and D~at were not the only ones displcased
wlth the course of the Riom proceedlngs. The VIchy governmenL
came under increasing pressure from the German authorlt.18s t.o
quickly bring the trials to an end. In reactlon ta ChIS
pressure, the hearlngs of the Supreme Court of JustIce were
terminated on 15 April 1942. Brasillach praised the move,
urging however that new proceedings ~e started immediately ta
address the pressing question of guilt in the conspiracy Lo
embroil France in war. Déat expressed similar satisfaction and
assured his readers that the matter would be taken up agaln dt
a later date, at which t.lme the emphasls would be squarely
placed on the complicity of the Third Republic's rullng ellte
in the outbreak of war. 25
The collaborationist press' hunt for scapegoats and
24 "Avortement judiciaire", L'Oeuvre, 11 October 1941, "La comédie de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 17-18 January 1942, "La boîte de Pandore", L'Oeuvre, 24 February 1942, "L'Impasse de Riom", L'Oeuvre, 25 March 1942, "Et les coupables?", Je suis partout, 6 September 1941.
25"Le vrai procès aura lieu", L'Oeuvre, 17 April 1942, "Est-ce le règne de la raison?", Je suis partout, 18 April 1942.
ft
74
saboteurs, however, extended weIl beyond the regime' s official
demonology. In the opinion of many ultras ~.he bureaucratie
machlnery of the regime itself was infested wlth fifth
column.1sts more dangerous than Jews, Freemasons, or the
discredlted pollticians of the Third Republic. From its onset,
Déat, Doriot, and Drieu La Rochelle expressed doubt in the
French bureaucracy' s ability to successfully apply the decrees
insti tuting the National R&volution. 26 This early doubt in
the bureaucracy's ability to act with any degree of
effect.1veness was soon supplanted by the conviction that it
was act.l vel y engaged in subverting the Marshal' s decrees. ~~
In the face of such a treasonous challenge to legitimately
consti tuted author i ty, Doriot sounded a note which was to
becorne a hallmark of the PPF press. 28 He urged the government
to purge the civil service so that French bureaucrats, the
majorlty of whom were loyal to Vichy, could carry out
unhindered the government' s orders. In a similar vein,
Brasillach warned that while it was always necessary to
~bllRévolution nationale", L'Oeuvre, 13 October 1940, "Conditions intérieurs", L'Oeuvre, 2 November 1940, Doriot, Realités, pp. 65-67, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Chroniques politique_s. 1934-1942 (Paris, Gallimard, 1943), p. 290.
~ 'II Il faut cesser de jouer avec le destin de la France", Je sui§~rtout, 20 December 1941, "Les démolisseurs t.ravaillent", L'Oeuvre, 10 November 1940, "Leur Sainte-Alliance", L'Oeuvre, 1 December 1940, Jacques Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1941), p. 110.
:1l"Vite et tous", L'Emancipation nationale, 28 December 1940; similar sentlment .. were expressed at a much later date by Henri Renaut, "Epurath n! Epuration! Epuration!", Le Cri du peuple 1 24 July 1944.
75
welcome with open arms those willing te serve the new
government in good faith, the only way to deal with the hard
core of committed opponents of the Natl.onal Revolution who
remained at their posts within the bureaucracy was lo
ruthlessly root them out and dl.spatch them with il bullet lo
the head. 29
Agreeing with Brasillach and Doriot in principle, Deat
nonetheless surpassed them in elaborating the extent of the
conspiracy within the breast of Vichy. Recognl.zl.ng the civil
service as the most readily identl.fiable element ln the
conspiracy, he nevertheless warned against large scale und
arbitrary purges likely to turn the mass of ullcommi tted
bureaucrats agal.nst the regime. 30 As Déat saw the sltuat.l.On,
bureaucratie obstructionism was but a symptom of a much more
sinister machination.
At the heart of the plot was the clerical and royalist
Action Française, working in tandem with Its Masonic and
Jewish allies. Acknowledging that only a small percentage of
those in pos.tions of authority at Vichy actually belanged la
the Action Française, Déat attributed thelr extensIve
influence to the pervasiveness of the Maurrasian ideology,
their ability to place reliable men in key government
positions, and their predominance within pétain's inner
29"Le problème de la locomotive", Je suis partout, 13 June 1942, "Un homme a parlé", Je suis partout, 23 October 1942.
30"Les démolisseurs travaillent", L'Oeuvre, 10 November 1940.
76
circle. ': From such vantage points and wi th the collaboration
of such powerful allies as the American ambassador at Vichy,
"the Freemason and anglophile AdmiraI Leahy", the Action
Française sought ta discredit collaboration and reestablish a
Latin block in preparation of a renewal of the struggle
against Germany. J2
Déat believed the threat posed by the Action Française to
have been amply demonstrated by the events of 13 December
1940. In what he would later describe as "le jour le plus noir
qu'elle (ie. France) ait cunnu depuis juin 1940", the first
Laval administration was forced to resign and Laval himself
briefly placed under arrest. 33 Seeing it as much more than a
palace revolution, Déat insisted it was a carefully
orchestrated manoeuvre whose primary purpose had been to
Jl"Climat maurrassien", L'Oeuvre, 13 December 1940, "Formules creuses te ventres vides", L'Oeuvre, 24 January 1941, "Dans l'illégalite", L'Oeuvre, 4 February 1941, "Les nouveaux Tartuffes", L'Oeuvre, 15 February 1941, "Ces Messieurs de l'AF", L'Oeuvre, 19 March 1941, "Infiltrations et travaux d'approche", L'Oeuvre, 20 March 1941, "Les travaux et les jours de Vichy", L'Oeuvre, 14-15 July 1941; for opinions Deat did not express in print see Claude Varennes (Georges Albertini), Le destin de Mp,rcel Déat (Paris, Janmaray, 1948), p. 15.
1~"Manifestat.ions déplacées", L'Oeuvre, 14-15 April 1941, "L'attentisme pourissant", L'Oeuvre, 30 July 1941, "Espérances capitalistes", L'Oeuvre, 18 December 1941. Déat's repugnance with regards Leahy was shared by Brasillach; "La politique de la France doit être une politique de présence", Je suis partout, 6 December 1941, "Bilan de l'année", Je suis partout, 27 December 1941-
J3"Du chantage à la trahison", L'Oeuvre, 12 January 1941, "Anniversaire d'un jour noir", L'Oeuvre, 13 December 1941, "Treize décembre", L'Oeuvre, 14 December 1942. Déat himself was briefly detained on the night in question, but was quickly released once the Germans got wind of his arrest.
j 77
derail Laval's efforts at forging closer Franco-German
collaboration.
Following the demise of the Laval cabinet, Admlrai
François Darlan eventually assumed the reigns of government.
While impossible to sketch an exact track of D~at's
fluctuating confidence in Darlan, it is nonetheless P_sy to
set out the principle causes behind Déat's declining
confidence. 34 Not only did Déat accuse Darlan of compllclty
in the events of 13 December 1940 and of subsequently havlng
favoured the promotion of naval officers lo positIons ot power
within his government, but of aiso having been one of the
principle architects in the rise of the so-called Syndrchy,
the last element in the cabal Déat believed to be holding sway
at Vichy.J5
Acting under the aegis of the clerical and militarlst
reactionaries of the Action Française, Déat insisted that the
34While Déat's editorials treated Darlan in a pOSItive manner up to the moment of his machinations in North Africa ln the fall of 1942, his memoirs and the wri tings of his assoclate Georges Albertini seem to indicate a mistrust which antedated these events; Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques, p. 600, Claude Varennes(Georges Albertini), Le destin de Marcel Déat (ParIS, Janmaray, 1948), pp. 139-140.
35The myth of the Synarchy i5 effectively debunked in Richard F. Kuisel, "The Legend of the Vichy Synarchy", French Historlcal Studies, 6 ( 3), 1970. Al though his edi tor ials betray a li teral belief in the existence of an organized conspiracy of monopolists and big business, a position supported by the testimony of Claude Varennes(Georges Albertini), p. 140, Déat's post-war contention that he used the myth of the Synarchy simply as a means of draW1l1g attention to the growing power and influence of cartels and other government sponsored concentrations of heavy industry, necessltated by the growing demands of war production, must also be g1 ven serious consideration; Déat, Mémoires politiques, pp. 622-623.
78
pre-war trusts were secretly being reconstituted. 36 Far from
tinding conditions of wartime hardship an impediment, French
industriaiists relished the rationalization of productive
capaci ty neceSSI tated by wartime shortages. He maintained that
the Synarchists' aim was a structured national economy
dominated and regulated by the great captains of French
industry, and that their committment to the emerging European
order rested entirely on the contingent of continued German
military success. Therefore, any shift in the tide of war
would be met not by increased solidarity against the common
foe, but by a desire to reintegrate into the Anglo-Saxon,
liberal-capitalist, world order.
Having hitched his wagon to the fortunes of Pierre Laval,
Déat was inclined ta pretend that the former's return to power
would bring to an end the multifarious conspiracy within the
bosom of the Vichy.3 7 Laval however proved no more effective
than PIerre-EtIenne Flandin or AdmiraI Darlan in bringing the
var ious conspiratorial elements to heel, and demands for
effective action remained a hallmark of the entire ultra press
until the exodus of August 1944. 38
Ib"Vichy et le nouvel Etat" 1 L'Oeuvre, 30 "Noyautages d' "Action Française'''', L'Oeuvre, 6 "Cortège de la monarchie", L'Oeuvre, 18 November défend l'intérêt national?", L'Oeuvre, 6 December comprend rien", L'Oeuvre, 16 March 1942.
October 1941, November 1941, 1941, "Qui donc 1941, "Vichy ne
j'''Les dormeurs se réveillent", L'Oeuvre, 26 April 1941.
ltl"Nous avons le droit de parler", Je suis partout, 2 May 1942, '''l'riage des hommes", L'Oeuvre, 12-13 December 1942, (Henri Renaut) "L'Administration favorise les ennemis de la patrie", Le Cri du
79
CHAPTER FIVE
The armistice signed in June 1940 between France and
Germany offered mutual advantage. It spared the Germans
dealing with a continued resistance based on North Atrica and
the encumbrance of having to place the whole of France under
military administration. l It offered the French more than
deliverance trom the horrors of societal collapsei it aiso
allowed them to retain their fleet and colonlal empire, two
bargaining chips to be husbanded for use ln eventual peace
negotiations with Germany.2 Having thus deait with the
pressing problem of German vlctory in the Battie of France,
the new ruling elite at Vichy turned its attention La damestic
matters with calm assurance that whatever form the coming
Anglo-German engagement would take, France had been
successfully insulated trom further conflict. J
Such illusions were shattered on 3 July 1940 when a Royal
Navy squadron opened fire on elements of the French
Mediterranean Fleet anchored at Mers-el-Kebir killing nearly
1 300 French sailors. This incident, along wlth the internment
peuple, 28 July 1944.
lRobert O. Paxton, Vichy France (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 6-8.
2Robert Aron, The Vichy Regime, translated by Humphrey Hare (London, Putnam and Co. Ltd., 1958), pp. 65-67, Henri Michel, Vichy. Année 40 (Paris, Robert Laffont, 1966), pp. 77-78.
3 Aron, p. 135.
80
and forced disabling of numerous other French warships, was
prompted by Br1tish fears that the conditions of armistice
d1d not provide sufficient guarantees that the French Fleet
would remaln permanently out of German hands. 4 Further proof
of the tenuous nature of French neutrality was provided in
September 1940 by tl,e Anglo-Gaullist attempt ta wrest the West
African port of Dakar from its pro-Vichy garrison. Though
unsuccessful, the raid was more indicative than the Mers-el-
Kebir action of the fate to befall the French Empire. Barred
from large scale operations on the Continent by the crushing
sup&rior1ty of the Wehrmacht, the British and their allies
would make use of their naval supremacy to neutralize the
everseas territor1es of the Axis and their satellites.
Lacking clear-cut evidence of a willingness on Vichy's
part te actively cooperate with the Germans in military
matters, the ultras turned to the diplomatie front. In
particular, they focused their attention on a series of high
level summl ts as proof c: Vichy' s committment to the New
Order. The first of these, between Pétain, Laval, and Hitler,
teek place at Montoire in October 1940. Though nothing of
substance was agreed on, the true significance of the Montoire
meetings was the public tGne they set. 5 In their aftermath,
Peta ln addressed the French people and declared himself ta
4peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, Total War (New York, Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 128-131.
~Paxton, pp. 74-75, Aron, pp. 213-221.
1 81
have "entered on the path of collaborat.ion. lib
Déat praised both Pétain and Laval for their decision to
meet Hit.ler and attributed to both men a keen sense ai
France's vital interests. Doriot lauded pétain, though not
Laval, for his clear thinking and his abiJity to transcend a
narrow revanchist mindset. His content.ion that Pétain had
placed France on the road to national recovery was echoed by
Brasillach, who saw in collaboration the only means of
avoiding the errors which had aiready caused France sa much
pain and suffering.'
Laval' s removal from office in December 1940 was followeG
by the brief premiership of Pierre-Etienne Flandin. However,
the German's refusaI ta deal with Flandin necessiLated his
eventual replacement by AdmiraI François Darlan. Darlan was
able to place Franco-German collaboration back on track by
finally prevailing upon the Germans to grant him an inLerView.
On Il and 12 May 1941, Darlan conferred with Hltler and German
Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop at Berchtesgaden, the
Führer's Bavarian retreal. These meetings resulted jn the
signing of the Protocols of Paris on 28 May. The Protocals
proposed, in exchange for limited German concessions,
substantial moves by the Vichy government towards military
6Philippe pétain, Actes et Ecrits, Edition établie et présentée par Jacques Isorni (Paris, Flammarion, 1974), pp. 549-550.
7"Vers l'Europe", L'Oeuvre, 30 October 1940, Jacques Doriot, Je suis un homme du maréchal (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1941), p. ID, "Vive la France", Je suis partout, 21 March 1941.
82
cooperation w i th Germany. Though stopping short of actual
cobelligerency, the Protocols envisaged the use by the Germans
of various French colonial ports and installations. 8
Brasillach, commenting on the Berchtesgaden meetings before
the signlng of the Protocols, expressed his ignorance of whal
thelr impdct would be but nonetheless praised the government
for once agaLn entering upon the path of collaboration. 9 Déat
drew mixed conclusions from the meetings. Welcoming any
dttûmpt to restart the collabordtion derailed by the events of
13 December 1940, Déat insisted that the Berchtesgaden
meetings wouJd ultimately prove more frultful than those held
the pre v ious year at Montoire because they deal t wi th specifie
issues and not just general statements of intent. However,
despi te his belief in the sincerity of the Darlan
adminis trat....on' s des ire to place relations wi th the Germans on
a more normal footing, Déat suspected that the new willingness
to appease the Germans was at least in part moti vated by
Vichy' s deslre to preclude the Nazis br inging pressure to bear
in favour of radical social revolution in France.:o
The first practical result of the Protocols of Paris was
the granting of landing rights in Syria to German aireraft
involved in supporting the anti-British revoIt of Rashid Ali
Hpaxton, pp. 116-131.
g"La Moisson de 41", Je suis partout, 19 May 1941.
fi 10"Suites du onze mai", L'Oeuvre, 17 May 1941, "Redevenir Européens", L'Oeuvre, 18 May 1941.
•
83
in Iraq and the transfer of French milltary stockplles ta lhe
rebels. Fearful that any initial German mll itary prcsünce ln
Syria or Iraq would grow to constitute a milJor thrcat La
Britain's oil supply and its lines of communlcdtlan lh!"ough
the Suez Canal, on 8 June 1941 a combl ned Commonwed l th and
Free French force crossed into Syria and Lebanon. Thü l OCd l
French commander, General Henri Dentz, resisted the invùdlnq
force for flve weeks. Thougp .10t outnumbered, ViC'hy's ndusdl
ta accept Germany' s offer 0 f a lr support necess 1 Lel lf:d tHl (~(1l-1 Y
capi tulation of French forces before the super l or cll r ,Hld
naval power of the Anglo-French invaders.
Both Bras i llach and Déat praised the va liant rcs 1 s t(lnce
of the French troops und2I" Dentz' s command.·,' Dor lot of fered
similar praise, but stressed that with the 1055 of Synil Vichy
would have ta take a more act ive role ln the war l f l t w i shed
to regain i ts lost possesslons. Reconsldering the Syrian
question from the perspecti ve of Dentz' s surrender, Deat
bl amed i ts 1055 on those elements at Vichy opposed ta c laser:-
collaboration wi th Germany. Publ icly hinting that he bel ieved
the lost colony would soon be returned to the fold, in his
post-war memoirs Déat expressed 1"1is belief that, wi th its loss
llBritish fears about the growing German presence ln Syria and Iraq are expressed in Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, Vol. III of The Second World War, 5 vols., (New York, Bantam Books, 1979), Book two, chapter 18. The military aspects of the Syrian carnpaign are djscussed in Aron t pp. 324-32~, and Calvocoressi &
Wint, pp. 162-164.
12"Le chemin de Damas", Je suis partout, 14 July 1941, "La France se retrouve", L'Oeuvre, 9-10 June 1941,
1
84
ta the Brl tish, Syria had passed forever out of French
hands. Though he majntained a public silence over events in
Syria, DrIeu La Rochelle's prlvate assessment of the situation
was by far the most trenchant. Judging the Syrian campalgn ta
be nothlng more than a mlnor skirmish in the larger battle for
control of North Africa and the Middle East, Drieu concluded
that France's near eastern possessions would have most
effectlve~y been protected not by mllitary action in Syria,
but by the lncreased pressure on British posItions ln Egypt
Whlch would have resu l ted l f the Afrlka Korps had been allowed
ta draw supplies through the French controlled Tun~sian port
a f rH zerta . :4
The ultras' expressed or implied bellef that the loss of
Syrla would awaken Vichy ta English designs on French colonial
possessions was not borne out by events. To the contrary, the
loss Jf Syrla marked the beginning of an ebb of empire which
was not ta end untll France's cherished North African colonies
were stripped away by Allied force of arms in the autumn of
1942.
'rhe 1055 of France' s only North American possessions,
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, ta a Gaullist raiding force in
December 1941 prompted Déat to declare that in its eagerness
'Jacques Doriot, Réalités (Paris, Les Editions de France, 1942), p. 86, "Les travaux et les jours de Vichy", L'Oeuvre, 14-15 July 1941, Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques (Paris, Denoël, 1989), p. 606.
~p ierre Drieu Editions Gallimard,
La Roche Il e , .::.F-=r:..:a::.;g:3.:m=e.:.:n..::t~-=d::.:e=----,m=é:.::m:..::o~i::.::r:..;e:::. 1982 ), pp . 1 0 1- 1 0 2 .
(Paris,
B5
not to antagonize the Anglo-Amerlcans Vichy was rlsking the
10S5 of more than just ItS colonIes. The su rrende r t 0 t1w
British of the small garrlson defendlng ~1addgascar ln Nov(~ml)(>r
1942 caused further consternatIon ln the ultra cdmp.
Brasillach decried the rv1aurraSlan dXlom "la Francp <H~ul(~"
which seemed to guide Vichy' s defense of 1 ts Emp 1 re. D(:~dl
noted the government' s penchant for faillng to bdck 1 ts
grandiose declarations Wl th suf f ic lent mil i Lary comm 1 ttmenl.
He urged 1 t not on1 y to lncrease efforts al de t ence 1 bu t Co
al 50 take passes l:;; ion 0 f Br l tish colonies f or use as ba rgd 1 n l nq
chips.-6 Ultra frustration over Vichy's inabillly t.O defcnd
i ts interests agalnst Anglo-Gaull1 SL aggress ion ln the Wes te rn
HemIsphere was exacerbated by the po1icy of symblotlc
cohabitation pursued by the French ln the Far East. Faced wlth
unassailable Japanese military superiority, in August 1941 .ln
agreement was slgned wüh Tokyo WhlCh recognlzed Japan' s
predominant lnterest ln the Far East and granted her the use
of certain mi l i tary faci l i ties in exchange for J apanese
recognition of the territorial integrity of French Indo
China. 17 Praising such a realpoli tik assessment of French
interests, Brasillach expressed hope that the agreement was an
indication of the shape of things ta come. Déat reserved
lS"Comment on ne défend pas l'Empire", L'Oeuvre, 4 March 1942. Déat's allusion is ta a 10ss of French honour.
16"Il faut choisir", Je suis partout, 9 May 1942, "L'Empire sera-t-il enfin défendu?", L'Oeuvre, 8 May 1942.
17Aron, pp. 205-206.
86
comment long enough ta lament Vichy's fallure to fulfill
Brdsillach's expectatl.ons. Havlng clearly and unequivocally
dllgned llself wlth Japan ln the Far East, he questioned the
f ëlctors moll vatlng trie goverTiments fallu re to display such
dec un veness Hl lhe Medl terranean .. >l
The thlrd gn:~at formaI summl.t between the leaders of
France and Germany took place at Saint-Florentl.n on l December
1941. DesplLe the fact that the interview between pétaln and
Field Marshal Hermann Gorlng proved lndeClSl.Ve, Braslliach and
Dea L dcknow ledged l t w i th their usua l enthus l asm. :s By
December 1941, however, events in Europe had moved weIl beyond
the uneasy stalemate which marked the period following the
fal1 of France. With the German invasion of RUSSla in June
1941, collaboration in Hitler's yreat anti-Bolshevik crusade,
not diplomatie summl.t meetings, became the yardstick by which
French commlttment to the new European order was measured.
Desplte Petaln's vocal support of the German lnvasion of
Russ.la, the government made no move to raise such support
above the ]evel of rhetoric. 20 The ultras, however, saw in
the campaign against Soviet communism the issue with which ta
unite Europe behind the German New Order. Consequently, the
l~"Nous n'avons de respect que pour notre pays", Je suis Q..artout, 4 August 1941, "Alignement nécessaire", L'Oeuvre, 1 August 1941, "De Saïgon à Vichy", L'Oeuvre, 27 December 1941.
19"La pol i tique de la France doit être une poli tique de présence", Je suis partout, 6 December 1941, "Attendons la suite", L'Oeuvre, 4 Decembnr 1941.
~OMarc Ferro, Pétain (Paris, Fayard, 1987), pp. 330-332.
...
87
various ul tra movements and personal i t les sel dSlde lhe ir-
sundry differences and, in July 1941, founded lhe LegIon des
Volontalres Françals contre le Bolch~vlsme (LVF), 'l'hc' LVI-'
was a private militla, recrulted by tri\.. 't1lrcls, bul lrdlrwd
and led by the Germans. The volunteE'rs tought ln German
uniforms, incorporated into the Wehrmacht's 638lh Infdnlry
Regiment. They first saw actlon in the German'<; cluLumn
offensive against MosCOWi they performed poorly, sutfl~n~d
heavy casualties, and eventually had to be pullc~d j rom lh,'
line. After a period of regrouplng, they returned lü dcLIVC
service and è;~tingulshed themselves as an anti-pdrtlsdrl unit.
Arnong the first recrults was Jacques Doriot. He ~. uld
serve ln the Wehrmacht untli his death ln 1944, Interspersing
combat service wlth propaganda and recruiting acllvlly back in
France. Wi th his enrollment in the LVF Dor lot' s roI e riS cl
professional politician came to an end and the tdsk of
formulatlng the PPF's daily polltlcai agenda p~ssed la such
trusted lieutenants as Henrl Lebas and Maurice-Ivan Sicard.' J
Given his hatred of communism and committment ta the German
cause, it cornes as little surprise that Dorlot urged Vichy lo
21The LVF i5 discussed in Owen Anthony Davey, "The Orlglns of the Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme," Journal of Contemporary History, 6(4), 1971, Bertram Gordon, Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1980), chapter 9, and Albert Merglen, "Soldats français sous uniforms allemands," Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, 27(108}, 1977.
22They served as edi tors - in-chief of Le Cri du peuple and L'Emancipation nationale respectively .
88
take an active role in the war against Soviet Russia. 23
Bras ill ach and Déat were less direct. Al though Brasillach
pralsed Petain and Laval for their vocal support of Germany's
battle agalnst Bolshevlsm, the bulk of his comments centered
on Vichy' s relatlonship with the LVF.'4 Praising the
Marshal 's moral support, he lamented the fact that the absence
of any substantial amount of materiel support had turned the
soldiers of the LVF lnto the "forgotten sons of the
collaboratIon.'" Deat, while recognlzing pétain's support of
the LVF, r ?vertheless pointed out that the financing and
equlpplng of the unit should not be the sole responsibillty of
the Germans and urged the Marshal' s government to stop
hamperlng recrulting efforts in the Unoccupled Zone. 26
Anxious for any sign of Vichy's continued support of the
collaborationist effort on the steppes of Russia, Brasillach
and Deat made do with what little they could muster. The
Idt ter trumpeted the placing of the LVF under off icial
tutelage and its transformation into the Légion Tricolore in
July 1942. Brasillach, visiting the unit during the summer of
:JDorlot, Réalites, p. 86.
~4"Le 22 juin 1941 la civilization prenait les armes contre la barbar ie", Je suis partout 1 20 June 1942.
·'!>"Sur le front de l'Est avec la Légion française", Je suis partout, 30 July 1943, "La LVF a deux ans", Je suis partout, 27 August 1943, "Légion tricolore et Légion du Travail", L'Oeuvre, 24 ... T,me 1942.
~b"L'attentisme contre la Légion", L'Oeuvre, 16 August 1941, "Qui trop attend manque le train", L'Oeuvre, 9-10 November 1941, "Ni traître, ni espions", L'Oeuvre, 5 February 1942.
89
1943 as a member of an official government delegation, SdW in
this visit confirmation of the fact that these men were
f inally recei v ing the off le ial a t tent.lon they deserved.·"
The piecemeal 1055 of France's far-flung colonial
possessions, though a cause of genuine eoncern, was .1 n rea 1 i ty
more a quesU on of honour than economics. From the délyS of
France's great empire bullder Ju]es Ferry, French colonlalism
often seemed to be dr i ven more by psycho log i ca land emot 1 ond 1
than economic cons l.derat ions.' il Al though 0 f cons 1 dCt-ilb l e
strategie importance ta the Axis as a means of ClOSllHJ tho
Wes tern Medi terranean to Allled shi pplng, ta the Frpnch
themselves North Africa's importance remalned predomindnLly
symbolic. North Africa represenLed, depend i lH] on orH" • s
politics, either a base from wh.leh France cou Id be
reconquered, or her main sphere of influence in the New Orde!:'.
With seeming prescience of eoming events, as early as October
1942 Brasillach began to predict that the faLc ot Franec's
Empire would soon be decidp.d. Stressing that an effective
defence of North Afriea necessitated the cooperation of the
Germans, he confidently concluded that Pierre Laval was the
27"Légion tricolore et Légion du Travai 1", L'Oeuvre, 24 June 1942, "Sur le front de l'Est avec la Légion française", Je su is partout, 30 July 1943.
2BGordon Wright, France in Modern Times (3d ed.; New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1981), pp. 250-251.
90
man best sui ted to carrying out thl.s defence. 29 On the eve of
the Anglo-American landings, Déat expressed similar confidence
ln Laval' s abi li ty ta defend French sovereignty in North
Africa. lo
In the event, the resistance of Vichy troops proved
short -li ved. Though ou tnurnbering the invasion force which
landed in Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942, through
secret pol i tleal machinations the Amer ieans were able to
convince AdmiraI Darlan to sign an armistice two days
later. Il In Algeria visi ting a sick son, Darlan signed in his
capac i ty as Commander- in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Déat
angrily rejected Vichy's excuse that North Africa had been
lost due ta a lack of troops and materiel; an inevitable
result of the armistice conditions imposed by Germany in June
1940. JO: He instead b1amed the conspiracy he had for 50 long
accused of hobbling France's domestic transformation. French
military lntelligence, subverted by the Action Française and
acting ln tandem with the British Intelligence Service and the
American Embassy, was held responsible not only for the 1055
~9"On ne badine pas avec le destin", Je suis partout 1 2 October 1942, "Vers les solutions de hardiesse?", Je suis partout, 16 October 1942.
JO" 1 1 Y a des crises nécessaires", L'Oeuvre, 4 November 1942.
31Mili tary aspects of the invasion are discussed in Calvocoressi and Wint, pp. 365-70; the serpentine political intr igues surrounding the French capitulation are dealt wi th in Aron, pp. 392-425.
J'''Heures tragiques", L'Oeuvre, 11 November 1942.
91
of North Africa but also for the scuttllng of the French
Fleet. 33
To the ultras, however, the true villain of the piece was
Adm.i.ral Darlan. Referring to him as "le plus abominable
traî tre de notre histoire", Deal saw Darlan 1 s acli vil i ('5 in
No ..... th Africa as the natural cot'ollary of his trcasonous
participat~ion jn the events of 13 December 1940. '1 Drieu W,lS
of the opinion that Darlan had deliberately gone ta Alg(~rJd in
the hope of offering his services to the Arner-icdl1s. P,
Brasillach bitterly pointed to t.he sham of the NùLlUfla\
Revolution given that 50 many of its most revered figun~s,
soldiers and admin istra tors such as Darlan 1 Giraud 1 Noqups 1
and Châtel, had defected to the enemy and abùndoned North
Africa to the Anglo-Americans and their Gaullist dllies. l"
The rapid collapse of French resistance ln North Afrlca
met with a swift German reaction. On 11 November 1942 G(~I-méln
troops crossed the Demarcation Line, disarmed and dl sbr1nd(~d
France' s Armistice Army, dnd occupied the remaini ng lwo- [i t lhs
33"Af f irmation de l'uni té" , k.:_Oeuvre, 19 November 1942,"Couleurs de la trahison", L'Oeuvre, 10 December 1942.
34"Brelan de traîtres", L'Oeuvre, 17 November 1942, "Trej ze décembre", L'Oeuvre, 14 December 1942, "Trah i son et. assas ina t" , L'Oeuvre, 28 December 1942.
35Drieu La Rochelle, Fragment de mémoire, p. 103.
36"Mon pays me fait mal .•• ", Je suis parlout, 20 November ] 942. Yves Châtel was governor-general of Algeria; General Henri Giraud escaped from a German POW camp, made his way to Switzerland, and enjoyed a brief period as the American's favour~~ alternative to de Gaulle; General Auguste Noguès was governor-general of Morocco.
•
92
of France. In accordance with standing orders, on 27 November
the French Fleet scuttled itself before the Germans could take
possession of it. Moving quickly to salvage the military
situation, the Germans demanded and received lanaing rlghts in
Tunisia and began a maSSive relnforcement of the area
sufficient to sustain reslstance until May 1943. Brasillach,
Déat, Doriot, and Drieu La Rochelle maintained a silence with
respect lo these events. The occupation of the remainder of
France by German and Italian troops, like the previous
summer's massive deportations of Jews, remained a non-issue.
Déat, however, unleashed a concerted attack against the
military establishment responsible for the 10S5 of Morocco,
Algerid, and the Fleet. He demanded an immediate purge of the
drmed forces. J7 Commenting on the volunleer unit being raised
by Vichy to fight alongside the Germans in Tunisia, the
bombastically titled Phalange Africaine, Déat urged Vichy not
to remake old mistakes by allowlng it to be composed of
elements hostile to the National Revolution but ta recruit
only ideologically sound individuals.
In terms of Germany's life and death struggle in the
East, the 10ss of North Africa was only a minor setback.
Failure to defeat Soviet Russia in a single campaign had
necessi tated the speedy transformation of the Nazi war economy
PilLes gestes qu'on attend", L'Oeuvre, 14-15 November 1942, "Une armée et un parti", L'Oeuvre, 21-22 November 1942, "Etat de guerre", L' OelJvre, 25 November 1942, "La poli tique et l'armée", L'Oeuvre, 21 December 1942 .
93
to cope with the demands of total war. tl As a vassal staLe of
the Reich, France was cons iderabl y a f feeted by Germùny' s
assumption of a total war pas ture. Spec l t l ca Il y , Franc(~
represented the largest s~ngle pool of tralned IndusLrlal
manpower in Europe. With the dim of tapplng this resouree, ln
June 1942 Fritz Saukel, Naz~ Germany's labour czar, arnved ln
Paris to set ln motion the proeurement over the comlng year of
over 700 000 Frenchmen for work in German factories. Eaqor Lü
shore up his domestic pos~ tlon, Ldval cushioned Lhe Cermùn
demands by introducing a scheme known as the Releve, whereby
the Germans agreed to release one POW tor every three würkers
who volunteered ta go ta Germany. D~al, seeing ln the Releve
Franee's chance of taking up her falr share of the burden of
defence against Boishevism, commended Laval for his efforts in
guaranteeing the smooth and efficient transfer of workers Lü
Germany. )9
Hav ing spent the best part of a year as a POW beh i nd
German barbed wire, Brasillach exhibited a speclal concern for
the fate of those still held. As a result, his analysis of the
Relève differed in perspective from D~at' s. Whereas the latter
J8The transformation undergone by the German war economy is discussed in Alan S. Milward, The German Eeonomy at War (London, The Athlone Press, 1965); the particularly French aspects of this process are deal t wi th in Milward, "French Labour and the German Economy", Economie History Review, 23(2), 1970, rÜlward, "German Economie Policy Towards France, 1942-44", in Studies in International History: Essays Presented ta W. Norton Medlicott (London, Longmans, 1967).
39"Pour aider a la relève", L'Oeuvre, 11-12 July 1942, "Problèmes de la relève", L'Oeuvre, 3 Novernber 1942.
94
was quick to stress the important role played by French
workers in keeping German factor ies running at full capaci ty,
Brasillach emphaslsed the return home of prisoners from
capLivity. Recognizinq Laval as the principal architect of the
Relève, he vlewed the repatriation of the POWs as the only
1 ight in an otherwise dark time. 40 Even before the Relève,
however, the questlon of t.he almost one and a hal f million
prlsoners in German Stalags and Oflags welghed on the ultras.
BraSIllach concurred wlth PétaIn in the latter's beliet that
thelr speedy return was jeopardized by acts of violence
against the Germans. D~at, always eager to push Vichy along
the path of collaboration, drew a connection between the
government's willingness to collaborate and the number of
pr isoners released. 41
The failure of the Relève' s voluntary enlistment to
sat.isfy Saukel' s appetite for labour led to the adoption by
Vichy of increasingly draconian measures. In order to fulfill
German quotas, in February 1943 the Service du Travail
Obligatoire (STO) was instituted. The STO drafted Frenchmen of
military age for service in factories manufacturing materiel
for the German war machine. D~at believed the STO to be doubly
beneficial. Not only wou Id France assume an increased share of
40" SolstIce d' hi ver", Je suis partout, 24 December 1942, "Les deux ~1éments de la révolution", Je suis partout, 22 January 1943.
H"Le retour de suis partout, 27 L'Oeuvre, 9 M.arch January 1943.
nos captifs, ce serrait une résurrection", Je September 1941, "L'appel des prisonniers", 1942, "Précaires espérances", L'Oeuvre, 26
95
the burden in the war against Soviet Russia, but those youths
inducted would acquire the moral and clvic indoctrination the
mandarins at Vichy had proved unwilling to provlde.:·
Post-Liberation testimonials aside, the vast ma]Orlty of
Frenchmen were so shaken by the events of 1940 thal they
resignedly followed the example set by Péta.ln, accepted
defeat, and trled to adjust to the new conditions of 1 i fe. De
Gaulle' s 18 June address to the French nation went unnotlccd;
even among those aware of the man and his sel f - i mposed
mission, his support was marginal. 4J Organized resistdncc
developed slow1Yi spurred initially by French c:ommunists
seeking to hamstring Germany's war against Russia, the rdnks
of the Resistance swe11ed with the prospect of Allied vlctory
as increasing numbers of French youths took ta the maquis to
avoid doing labour service in Germany . .)4
With the murder in August 1941 of a German naval cadet on
a Parisian subway platform, there began a cycle of terrorism
and counter-terrorism which V-TaS to increase to heights of such
ferocity that the societa1 col1apse seemingJy avoided by the
armistice of 1940 would, by 1944, once again loom
42"Mobilisations totales", L'Oeuvre, 10 February 1943, "Relève et service du travail", L'Oeuvre 1 24 February 1943, "Les jeunes d'abord", L'Oeuvre, 2-3 June 1943.
43Just how marginal can be st::'en in Paxton, pp. 41-45.
44The most exhaustive account of the Resistance ta Henri Noguêres en C'ollaborati on avec M. Degl iame-Fouché Vigier, Histoire de la Rés istance en France de 1940 a tomes, (Paris, Robert Laffont, 1967-1981).
date is & J.-L. 1945, 5
96
threateningIy. In the wake of these first murders 1 Brasillach
urged Vichy's Minister of Interior P.ierre Pucheu to 1I1ake good
his promise to bring the guil ty te j usUce. He "'larned the
government against shying away from bloody acts of
retribution, lest justice be taken into privdte hands as had
happened in the Dormoy af fair. 45 The figt"-t agalnst the
Resistance was overwhelmingly the task of the various mili tary
and police organizations which the Germans had set up in
France. However, as Resistance acti vi ty increased throughaut
1943 and 1944, the German authorities sought increasingly ta
invoive the French themselves in their battie to stamp OUL
dissidence. The eventual ma.1nstay of Vichy' 5 anti -par-tisa,'
activities was the infamous Milice. However, its tull and
active deployrnent in the field woulci not corne bef(Jre January
1944, the terminus of a Ion~ and torturous p'v01ution. 4fJ
The Milice grew out ot the Service d'Ordre Légionnai re
(SOL), an activist wing of the Légion de3 Anciens Combattants
formed in the Alpes-Maritimes by Joseph Darnand. A rnuch
4SIILes crimes sont signés", Je suis partou:', 13 September 1941. Minister of Inter ior under the Popular Front, Marx Dormoy was rnurdered on 26 July 1941, while under house arrest, by a bomb blast for which no persan or organizat.1on claimed responsibi li ty; see also chapter two, footnote 9. Brasillach rnakes no mention of the German policy of shooting hostages as acts of reprisal; by 25 October over 100 hostages had already be~n shot. Paxton, pp. 223-224.
46Jacques Delperrie de Bayac, Histoire de la Milice (Parls Fayard, 1969) provides a full account of the evolution and activities of the Milice. A more concise account in provlded by Bertram Gordon, Collaborationisrn in France durinq the Second World War (Ithaca, New York, Corneli University Press, 1980), chapter five.
97
decorated veteran of the Great War, former cagoulard, and
devoted follower of pétain, Darnand had originally created the
SOL as a œeans of bringing together the most mili tant
supporters of the National Revolution. In January 1942 Pétain
called Darnand to Vichy and charged him wi th the task of
forging an SOL network throughout the entire Unoccupied Zone.
As stalwarts of the National Revolution, Darnand and the SOL
were warmly supported by Brasillach. He lauded this "born
fighter" whose efforts at the helm of the SOL had raised it
weI] above i ts moribund parent organization. 47
The next stage i.n the slow transformation of the SOL came
in January 1943 with its official designation as the Milice
Française. Wi th Darnand as i ts secretary-general, the new
organization was still far removed from the anti -partisan
fighting fOrl .. C' it would eventually become. To start, its
raison d'être hact yet to be established. Still nominally under
Laval' s control, he wished to see the Milice develop into an
eli te bodyguard unit for himself and other top Vichy officiaIs
targeted bv Resistance hit sq .ads. Darnand, however, had more
ambi tious plans for the Milice. Sharing his am]- i tion, Déat saw
in the new organ ization a bulwark against the anarchy and
danger of civil war posed by the Re&istance. Doubtful that
civilian police could successfully combat armed guerilla
bands, an opinion shared by Bras illach, Déat believed the
41r'Parti unique ou partis unis?", Je suis partout, 9 October 1942, "Un homme a parlé", Je suis partout, 23 October 1942.
----------
9ti
Milice possessed the requisite ideological motivation ta
successfully challenge the maquisards. ·Hl He also f'xpressed
hope that the new Milice might provide the southern base, in
conjunction with the united ultra militias ot the ncrth, ot a
new revolutionary parti unique. 49
The Milice reached the height of its influence following
Darnand' s entry, the result of German pressure, into the Vichy
government as Secretary-General for the Maintenance of nrder
in late December 1943. For its unenvl.able raIe as German
auxiliary in the war against a Resistance swelled by thousands
of deserters from the STO, the Mil ice pos süssed near l y JO 500
volunteers. Of these, almost 17 500 composed the Franc-Guard;
barracked regulars and reservists, armed and tralned by the
SS, who made up the Mllice's force de frappe. ',0 With
restrictions against their operation ln the Northern Zone
lifted by the Germans on 1 January 1944, they were free ta
roam the whole of France in pl.l!'suit of thel.r quarry. To arrned
might was added legal sanction. A law of 20 January 1944 gave
4S"Le danger intérieur", L'Oeuvre, 3 March 1943, "Présentation des Milices", L'Oeuvre, 10--11 April 1943, "Procès du régime? Oui, mais duquel?", Je suis partout, 21 February 1942.
49"Impôts et conseils", L'Oeuvre, 13 January 1943, "Des Milices au Parti", L'Oeuvre, 4 February 1943. The unit y to which Déat refers is the ephemeral Front révolutionnaire natl.onal (FRN) wiLh its subordinate, and even more nebulous, Milices révolutionnaires nationales. Founded in September 1942, this effort at establishing political unit y within the ultra community foundered, as 50 many ethers, on the obstinacy and independent nature of one or another ef the ultra leaders.
50Gordon, pp. 355-356.
99
Darnand the au thori ty to convene special courts mé:rtial to try
on the spot those caught by the Milice in acts of
assassination or other violent crimes against the state. 51
Death by f iring sq'Jad was the invariable penalty for
individuals unfortunate enough to be found to have been in
"f lagrant violation" of laws against murder and assassination.
D~at agreed whole heartedly with the new courts, and publicly
affirmed that Darnand had the determination and drive to break
the back of the Resistance. Similar support for Darnand's
appolntment as Secretary-General for the Maintenance of Order
came from the PPF camp.o2
Déat's support for the special courts of the Milice was
symptomatic of the hysterid which gripped those who maintained
solidarity hFith the Germans in the dying days of the
Occupation. In the wake of the Allied landings in Normandy on
6 June 1944, Déat personally declared war on the invaders. His
ini tial support for Pétaln' s renewed declaration of neutrali ty
and his exhortation to Frenchmen to resist the temptation of
taking up arms against the Germans, was quickly followed by
scorn for the Vichy government's inability to de fend its own
~lIbid., pp. 293-294.
~2"Empécher la guerre civile", L'Oeuvre, 7 January 1944, "A quelques excités", L'Oeuvre, 31 January 1944, (Henri Lebre) "Labourer la mer", Le Cri du peuple, 15-16 January 1944. In his memoirs Déat was more equivocal about Darnand. Oddly, given Darnand's deep and highly compromising involvement with the Nazis, Déat referred ta his as "très peu collaborationniste et même nettement dnti-allemand." Déat, p. 738.
100
terri tory against invasion. 53 8uch cr i ticism echoed ear lier
complaints of reliance on German anti-aircraft batteries to
defend French civilians aga~nst the rising crescendo ot air
raids which preceded the A Llied landings. '4
To compensate for France's lack of air defenses, Deal
advised Vichy to make use of interned British nationals as
shields or hostages. He proposed, as did Brasillach, that
these hostages be shot in retaliation for French casuallies
suffered as a result of Allied action. '>', Oéat's indifferenC(~
towards innocent bystanders was not liwited to forclgn
nationals. While he condemned the execution by the Millce 01
individual hostages as acts of reprisaI agalnst Re3istdnce
violence, even in the seclusion of his Italian exile Déat was
prepared to mitigate, if not excuse, the massacre of French
men, women, and children by soldiers of the Waften-S8 division
Das Reich at Oradour-sur-Glane. 5b
53"Je ne suis pas neutre", L'Oeuvrp., 0 June 1944, "Pour éviter la guerre civile", L'Oeuvre, 13-14 July 1944.
54"La France désarmée", L'Oeuvre, 30 May 1944.
55"Le deui l, la colère, et la honte", L' Oauvre, 7 March 1942. "Représailles nécessaire", L'Oeuvre, 11 8eptember 1942, "Il faut choisir", Je suis partout, 9 May 1942
56Déat, p. 765, p. 846. In relation ta this infamous massacre of 642 men, women, and children (the men shot, the women and children herded into the village church and burned alive), Deal comment:.s: "C'était parfaitement lamentable, et les Allemands n'en étaient pas fiers. On pouvait cependant s'attendre que des chefs harcelés et affolés, dont les hommes étaient tués par surprises au détour d'un chemin, se laissassent emporter à des Violences inhumaines." The massacre and the events surroundlng i tare chronicled in Max Hastings, Das Reich (London, Michael Joseph, 1981).
101
CONCLUSION
The cracking of the German defenSl ve line ln Nûrmandy in
early August 1944, and the subsequent fanning out of Allied
armour behind the German front, restored fI uldi ty to the
battle in the West. As the Allied spearh~ads pushed deeper and
German mllitary authucities prepared for dn ostensible no
holds barred defence of Paris, the Nazi infrastructure of
occupation was quickl y dismantled. Crowds of col1ak:.orators,
among them D~at and Doriot, sought refuge with the retreating
Germdns. By the tlme Paris broke into open revol t on 19 August
in anticipation of the arrivaI of Allied troops, the ultra
press had already been sllent two days.
Among those who declined the German offer of sanctuary
were Brasillach and Drieu La Rochelle. The latter remained in
Par is, calmly contemplating his fate. On 12 August he
attempted ta take his own life. Rushed to hospital and
rev i ved, a second at tempt was also foi led by the hospi tal
staff. Released, on 15 March 1945 he learned of the arder for
his arrest. Determined not to fall into the hands of his
enemies, he took poison, turned on the gas, and slipped into
a coma from which he never emerged.
Brasillach' s fate was worse still. He witnessed the
liberation of Paris trom a secret hideout. The arrest of his
mother in September 1944 prompted his surrender to the
authori ties. He was eventually sent to the Fresnes prison,
102
which held many of the> major figures of the PariSldn
Collaboration. Brasillach' striaI lasted less than a day, al
the end of whlch he was sentenced to death. Desplte d plea ot
clemency on his behalf by severai vf France' s leadinq
intellectuals, the sentence was duly carrted out on 6 February
1945. 1
The terminus of the ultras' retn'at was the Hohenzù Il ern
castle of Sigmaringe:n in southweGtern Germany. Here they were
joined by Pétain, Laval and other members of the Vichy
government. Only Doriot stood aloof, he dnd hlS followers
quartered by the Germans at Meinau, an i s land ln Lakp
Constance. The lack of unit y which had marked the period of
the Occupation continued in German exile. Taklng advantage ot
Pétain and Laval' s refusaI to collaborate any further, by
October 1944 the ul tras assembled at Si gmar i ngen had
constituted themselves into the Commisslon gouvernementale
française pour la défense des intérets natlonaux. Senslng Lhat
hif: star was in the ascendancy, Doriot refused to join the
Commission and in January 1945 founded his own Comi te de la
libération française.;:: His favoured position vis-d-vls the
1The transcript of his trial, as weIl as the text of the peti tion made to de Gaulle, is rep~ inted ln Robert Bras lliach, Ecrit à Fresnes, ed. by Maurice Bardeche (ParIS, Plon, 1967). 'l'he trial transcript, along with commentary by Brasillach' s lawyer Jacques Isorni, is also reprinted in Jacques Isorni, Le proces de Robert Brasi~lach (Paris, Flanunarion, 1946).
2Bertram Gordon, Collaborationism in France dur 1ng the Second World War (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 315-320.
103
Germans Led to the growth of his prestige Wl thin the
expatn ate ultra çommuni ty 0 The uni ty whieh had always eluded
the ultras, as it had the tascists of the inter bellum, seemed
finùlly within grasp when Déat at last recognized Doriot's
supremacy and proposed an accord 0 Hùwe,'er, the meeting of the
erstwhile implacable toes, set for 22 February 1945, never
took place. En route ta the proposed meeting place, Doriot's
car was strafed by a fighter-bombero) He succumbed to his
Injur ies and was buried, wi th honours, in the German::, 1li tary
cemetery at Mengeno
Under the blows of Doriot' s death and the imminence of
Allled military victory, ttle ultra community in exile lost any
sense of coherence and became incrc:t3singly suffused by a sauve
qui peut attitude. In April 1945, é'îmid the chaos of the death
throes of the Third Reich, Déat and his wife crossed the Alps
i nto Northern Italy 0 He eventually sought sanetuary at the
monastery of San Vico, converted to Catholicism and lived the
lite of an ascetic, incognito, until his death in 1955.
* * * To the last, the ultras faithfully eehoed Nazi concerns
whenever dny of the latter's prima=-y interests were at stake.
'Conspiracy theorists point to several pieces of evidence in support of their contention that Doriot was killed by the 5D (the intelligence service of the 5S) 0 While the possibility cannot be ruled out (the fog of war provides a fertile breeding ground for al! manner of conspiraey theories), a preponderance of evidence and common sense suggests that the plane which killed Doriot was an Allied aireraft. See ibid., pp. 321-]22, and Dieter Wolf, Doriot. Du communisme a la collaboration, traduit de l'allemand par Georgette Chatenet (Paris, Fayard, 1969), p. 415n.
1
- ----- ----- ---------
104
This allegiance underlay the~r vltriol ln condemnlng Vlchy's
refusal to embark upon even l lm1 ted Franco German
cobelligerency, the reg1me's foot dragg1ng in Its t~ttorts lü
keep German factories supplied with skllled French labour, and
even Vichy' s inability to stem the steddy erOSlon of Frclnce' s
overseas Empire. In short, the ul tr 35 condemned ad nauseam any
evidence of Vichy's unwillingness to part.lClpate more tully in
the ever expand~ng German war effort.
Such slavish devotlon was similarly manltesl in lhe
ultras' adoptlon of Naz i anti - seml t ~sm. The inter bell um clnt.. 1
semitism of Brasillach, Do' ~ot, and Drieu, even dl ILs helghl
during the war scares of the late 1930s, had always hc~en more
of an af fectation than an ideologlca 1 lmperall \le. The
Occupation saw the adoption of v.lrulent anti-semltlsm by aIl
three. Even Deat, with the deepest roots in the traditional
egali tarianism of the French Left, condemned the VIchy
government for a lack of enthuslasm ln Its persecution ot
French Jewry.
\'lhereas the expanding global conflict and the Naz.ls'
Final Solution brought the interests 0: the occupler and the
occupied into conf llct, with the ul tras habi tuall y coming down
on the side of the former, Vichy's program of lnternal reform
was of only secondary importance to the Germans. The prIncIpal
objective of their French policy had always been the securi ty
of their flank in Western Europe; what the new French
government did within its sphere of infll.;ence was, to the
--------------------_._-
105
exlent that it did not transgress the terms of the armistice
agreement, viewed largely as a domestic French affaire Vichy
was therefore free to pursue ltS National RevolutIon, as were
the ultras to criticise what they perceived to be its many
failings.
Convlnced that the hour of French rebirth was at hand,
Déat, DorIot, and DrIeu La Rochelle gravitated to Vichy.
Withln monttls aIl three had 1eft for Paris; held as a POW,
BraSlllach's ideaiistic faith in Vichy's Nb~iona1 Revolution
was simllarly short-llved. 4 Such a precipitous 10ss of
confidence was a result of the hcrror with which tney viewed
the new regIme's conservative agenda. Such horror was readily
reclprocated; those at the helm of the National Revolution
showed Ilttle interest in the ultras or their ideas. The venom
WhlCh perm~ates 50 much of the present work is a result of the
wlde Ideologlcal gulf which separated the two camps.
The basis of the ultra critique of the National
Revol ut Ion was a conviction that Vichy' s el i tes, desL}i te
professIons to the contrary, lacked the requisi te ideo10gical
committment to restructure French society al~nq tota1itarian
1 ines. One has only to examine the related matters of
educatIon and the regimentation of youth. All agreed on the
need of reforming France's educational cadres. Tc the ultras'
horrar, the conservatives set about this task by persecuting
_ 4Robert BrasIllach, Journal d'un homme occupé (1965), generation dans l'orage, ed. by Maurice Bardèche (Paris, 1968), p. 299.
in Une PICln,
106
educa tors not shar i ng the.l r ideology, and by rev 1 v 11H01 «'rance' s
old system of secta!:"~an education. Simllarly, whlle tht~ ultras
insisted that the youth of France needed a cornmon Ideoloqy to
properly orient them in the new Europe, Vlchy's deterence to
the Catholic Church resul ted in a fraqmented Vou th mov(~ment
which, in the former's opinion, gave clerical and rCdctlondry
elements a fl'ee hand to corrupt. Likew ~ se, the rees t.ab Ils hment
of labour on a more equitable footIng supposed ta result. trom
the Charte du Travall falled to develap not, accordlnq t.a Lhl'
ul tras, dS a resul t of pressures exerted by the needs () f the
German war effort, but as d result of the ,.:alculdted
obstruction of a bureaucracy Infected Wl th the tWln bdClll i of
Maurrasian nationalism and clerIcal reaction.
Accusations of a lack of ideological camml t tment were
also levelled at Vichy ln relat.~on ta the need for a parti
unique. To the ultras, the totalltar~an mass party was the
essential organ by which contact would be malntalned between
the pays réel and the pays légal. Wi thou t. the or gan 1 zed
grassroots support prav ided by such a party, measures
instituted from above would wither and dIe; a t.otailtarian
party thus became the sine qua non of a suc:essful revolut.lon.
The ultras criticised the substitute fashioned by Vichy, the
Légion Française des Combattants, not only for lts lack of
vigour, but also because it was perceived as a tool of
reaction.
Conversely, despite having s~rung from the Légion, the
107
Milice enjoyed the ultras' support. Such approval is
indicative of th~ positive light in which the radica1ization
which marked the terminal years of the regime was received.
Despl te such growlng radical ization however, distrust of Vichy
n,m.a l ned endemic i in general, the ultra' s support extended to
indivlduals, not institutions." Sueh Individuals were usually
distlngulshed not as a result of any conerete aehievement, but
as a resul t of their percelved ideologieal orthodoxy. For
examp lei despi te his glaring failure to eurb Resistance
activiLy, J03eph Darnand waB repeatedly judged of sufficient
ideolog ledl sour..dness to maintain his posi tion as Secretary-
Gent:!ra 1 for the Maintenance of Order. Similarly, despi te an
obv lous lack of success in the education portfolio, Abel
Bonnard was, time and again, deemed better suited to the job
of reforming the French educational establishment than any of
his equally unsuccessful predecessors.
In short, to the extent that the Vichy el i tes' more
consp.rvative vision of the National Revolution predominated,
it met W.lth the vitriolic condelnnation of the Paris ultras.
Such condemnation slackened only as more radical elements made
inroads at Vichy.
Th.lS vi triolic condemnation reflected the radicalization
undergone by the whole ultra camp as a result of exposure to
nazlsm. Howe' .. er, the latter were Indifferent proselityzers and
<'The ma j or exception ta this rule was the Milice. However, whlle it enjoyed the support of the ultras, by and large their kudos were d.lreeced at its leader Joseph Darnand.
108
had no coherent policy of winning Frenchmen over ta national
socialism. Such conversions were invariably voluntary, based
either on a desire to curry fnvour with the Occupation
authori ties or on a genuine bel let that the naz lsm represented
the wave of ti'e future.
Wi.th regards Braslilach, Déat, Doriot, and Drieu La
Rochelle, radicalization was largely the result of the awe
with which they viewed an ideology that had, ln thejr m .. nds,
taken Germany from the depths of economic depressian to
mastery over Europe in under a decade. rrhls process of
radicalization, which in etfect transfarmed them into French
national-socialists, bath alienated them from whatever
socialist experiments Vichy undertook and ta a large degree
s~vered the thread of continuity linking them with a naLive
French poli tical tradition, of which they had been an Integra 1
part during the inter belluJ11, ~tretching back at leasL cl5 Idr
as the Faisceau 'Jf Georges Valois.
109
BIBLIOGRAPHY
l. Primary Sourc9s
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Le Cri du peuple (de Paris)
L'Emancipation nationale
Je suis partout
L'Oeuvre
B. Books
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___________________ . Ecrit a Fresnes. Paris: Plon, 1967.
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110
1937.
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