Vichy France’s Collaboration with Nazi Germany

Abstract

During the Second World War in France, a fascist government known as the Vichy Government replaced the Third French Republic. In 1995, the French government publicly admitted that shortly after signing an armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, the Vichy regime was responsible for implementing racist policies and contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The purpose of this paper is to begin exploring the extent to which the Vichy Government participated and collaborated in the killings, internment, and discrimination of many thousands of people during the Second World War. The following article focuses on three major aspects of the Vichy Government’s collaboration: anti-Semitic legislation, the internment camps in France, and the roundup at the Vélodrome D’Hiver. The case study of the Vélodrome D'Hiver alongside the other aspects of collaboration are illustrative examples that offer new insights suggesting that Vichy France's government operated as an emphatic collaborator with Nazi Germany rather than simply submitting to or passively assisting this adminstration. The article's thesis advances the notion that this emphatic collaboration was implemented mostly without direction or instruction from the authorities of the Nazi occupying forces.