I.2. La coopération franco-allemande dans le domaine de la Judenpolitik , 1940-1942

Abstract

The reaction of the French and the country’s administration to the German occupation during WWII is too often reduced to either collaboration or resistance. However, recent Holocaust research has shown that European societies both contributed to and benefited from the persecution of Jews without necessarily being pro-German. By focusing on France, Michael Mayer demonstrates that the German concept of occupation was based on the fact that Germany could not implement the Holocaust in France without a relatively high degree of French cooperation. Furthermore, he shows that the French administration took German anti-Semitic measures into their own hands in 1940 and 1941. Through this strategy, the French were able to curb German influence in France at the expense of the persecuted. At the same time, the Vichy government enacted its own anti-Semitic policies that were aimed at segregating French Jews through race-specific legislation.In 1940 and 1941, the relationship between France and Germany oscillated between a surprisingly high degree of cooperation (despite the French government’s generally anti-German attitude) and the relatively large room for maneuver that the Vichy government used to implement French anti-Semitic policies. However, from 1942 on, the German occupational policy increasingly curtailed France’s semi-autonomous status. In the end, Vichy France was no more than a half-hearted participant in the Holocaust.