What happened during Vichy France?

Answer

Vichy France, or the Vichy regime was the French government of 1940-1944 during the Nazi Germany occupation of World War II, based at and named after the town of Vichy. It started when the parliament, except for 80 of its members, gave full power to Philippe Pétain. Now known in French as the Régime de Vichy or Vichy, during its existence it referred to itself as L'État Français (The French State).

Vichy France was established after France surrendered to Germany in 1940, and took its name from the government's capital in Vichy, southeast of Paris near Clermont-Ferrand. While officially neutral in the war, it was essentially a Nazi puppet state that collaborated with the Nazis, including with the Nazis' racial policies. Initially it ruled an unoccupied zone in Southern France and some French colonies, but Nazi Germany invaded the zone under its control on November 11, 1942, in operation Case Anton.

The Vichy government's claim to be the de jure French government was challenged by the Free French Forces of Charles de Gaulle, based first in London and later in Algiers, and French governments ever since have held that the Vichy regime was an illegal government run by traitors. At the time, the Vichy regime was acknowledged as the official government of France by the United States, though other nations often varied in their choice.

The collaborationist and counterrevolutionary Vichy France regime was headed by France's World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain ; after the end of World War II, Pétain was convicted and sentenced to death for treason, which was commuted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle.

To some extent, for France, the Second World War and the Vichy Regime were, in addition to a foreign war, also an internal civil war, which opposed on the one hand the Communist and Republican elements of society, and on the other hand, the reactionary elements supporting a fascist or similar regime in the mould of that of Francisco Franco's. This civil war can be seen as the continuation of a fracture that divided French society since the 19th century or even the French Revolution, illustrated by events such as the Dreyfus Affair and the February 6, 1934 riots.

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