The Organisation Committees Between Collaboration and Resistance, 1941–1944

Abstract

This chapter examines the actions of the Organisation Committee for Steel (CORSID) and particularly its response to Vichy policies such as the Labour Charter, the deportation of French workers to Germany, and the Speer–Bichelonne agreement that envisaged French factories contributing to the German war economy. Based on previously unexploited archival sources, this chapter shows that CORSID went to great lengths to undermine any attempts to remove workers from French factories, while it welcomed initiatives that would allow factories to increase production for the Reich. It concludes that the industrialists running CORSID were guided primarily by business interests and that their actions must be seen as neither resistance nor collaboration.