The
Military Administration in France was an
interim occupation authorityDuring World War II, Nazi Germany created military-led regimes in occupied territories which were known as a Military Administration . These differed from Reichskommissariats which were led by Nazi Party officials...
established by
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
during World War II. It remained in existence from May 1940 to December 1944. As a result of the defeat of
France and its AlliesThe Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
in the
Battle of FranceIn the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
, the French
cabinetA Cabinet is a body of high ranking government officials, typically representing the executive branch. It can also sometimes be referred to as the Council of Ministers, an Executive Council, or an Executive Committee.- Overview :...
sought a cessation of hostilities. An
armisticeThe Second Armistice at Compiègne was signed at 18:50 on 22 June 1940 near Compiègne, in the department of Oise, between Nazi Germany and France...
was signed on 22 June 1940 at
CompiègneCompiègne is a city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.The city is located along the Oise River...
. Under its terms, a designated area in the north and west of France, the
zone occupéeThe zone occupée was the area of France where German occupying troops were deployed during the Second World War after the signature of the Second Armistice at Compiègne...
, was occupied by the German Army; in this region, the
French government located at VichyVichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
, headed by the ageing Maréchal
Philippe PétainHenri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
, was subordinate to the Germans. Most of the remaining third of the country was set aside as the
zone libreThe zone libre was a partition of the French metropolitan territory during the Second World War, established at the Second Armistice at Compiègne on June 22, 1940. It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain based in Vichy,...
, to be fully controlled by the Vichy government.
AlsaceAlsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
and
LorraineLorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...
were reincorporated into Germany proper (thus subjecting their male population to German military conscription.) Several departments along the Italian border were occupied by Italian troops, while areas along the Belgian frontier were administered by the German occupation authorities in Brussels. The entire Atlantic coastline was declared a military zone, placing it off-limits to French civilians (except for local inhabitants, who required a special pass). Both the unoccupied and the occupied portions of France remained legally under the control of the Vichy government.
When the Allies invaded
North AfricaOperation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....
on 8 November 1942, the Germans and Italians immediately
occupied the remaining free part of FranceOperation Anton was the codename for the military occupation of Vichy France carried out by Germany and Italy in November 1942.- Background :...
. The liberation of France began on 6 June 1944 with the Allied forces landing on
D-DayD-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
and the
Battle of NormandyOperation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...
and ended in December.
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
itself was liberated on 25 August 1944.
Shortages
The life of the French during the German occupation was marked, from the beginning, by endemic shortages. They are explained by several factors:
- One of the conditions of the armistice was to pay the costs of the three-hundred-thousand strong occupying German army, which amounted to twenty million Reichmarks per day. The artificial exchange rate of the German Reichsmark
The Reichsmark was the currency in Germany from 1924 until June 20, 1948. The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennig.-History:...
currency against the French francThe franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
was consequently established as one mark to twenty francs. This allowed German requisitions and purchases to be made into a form of organised plunder and resulted in endemic food shortages and malnutrition, particularly amongst children, the elderly, and the more vulnerable sections of French society such as the working urban class of the cities.
- The disorganisation of transport, except for the railway system which relied on French domestic coal supplies.
- The extreme shortage of petrol and diesel fuel. France had no indigenous oil production and all importations had stopped.
- Labour shortages, particularly in the countryside, due to the large number of French prisoners of war held in Germany.
Lack of food
The Germans seized about 20% of the French food production, which caused severe disruption to the household economy of the French people. French farm production fell in half because of lack of fuel, fertilizer and workers; even so the Germans seized half the meat, 20% of the produce, and 80% of the champagne. Supply problems quickly affected French stores which lacked most items. Faced with these difficulties in everyday life, the government answered by rationing, and creating food charts and tickets which were to be exchanged for bread, meat, butter and cooking oil. Hunger prevailed, especially affecting youth in urban areas. The queues lengthened in front of shops. In the absence of meat and other foods including potatoes, people ate unusual vegetables, such as Swedish turnip and
Jerusalem artichokeThe Jerusalem artichoke , also called the sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambour, is a species of sunflower native to eastern North America, and found from Eastern Canada and Maine west to North Dakota, and south to northern Florida and Texas...
. Products such as sugar were replaced by substitutes (saccharin). Coffee was replaced by toasted barley mixed with
chicoryCommon chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons , or for roots , which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also...
. Some people benefited from the black market, where food was sold without tickets at very high prices. Farmers diverted meat especially to the black market, which meant that much less for the open market. Counterfeit food tickets were also in circulation. Direct buying from farmers in the countryside and barter against cigarettes were also frequent practices during this period. These activities were strictly forbidden however and thus carried out at the risk of confiscation and fines. Food shortages were most acute in the large cities. In the more remote country villages, however, clandestine slaughtering, vegetable gardens and the availability of milk products permitted better survival. The rationing system was stringent but badly mismanaged, leading to malnourishment, black markets, and hostility to state management of the food supply. The official ration provided starvation level diets of 1300 or fewer calories a day, supplemented by home gardens and, especially, black market purchases.
Lack of raw materials
ErsatzErsatz means 'substituting for, and typically inferior in quality to', e.g. 'chicory is ersatz coffee'. It is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement...
, or makeshift substitutes, took the place of many products that were in short supply; gas generators ("gazogènes") on trucks and automobiles burned charcoal or wood pellets as a substitute to gasoline,
chicoryCommon chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons , or for roots , which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also...
took the place of coffee, and wooden soles for shoes were used instead of leather. Soap was rare and made in some households from fats and caustic soda.
Aerial bombings
With nearly inhabitants killed and tons of bombs dropped, France was,after Germany, the second most severely bomb-devastated country on the
Western Front of World War IIThe Western Front of the European Theatre of World War II encompassed, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and West Germany. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale ground combat operations...
. Allied bombings were particularly intense before and during
Operation OverlordOperation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...
in 1944.
The Allies'
Transportation PlanThe Transportation Plan was a plan for strategic bombing during World War II against bridges, rail centres, including marshalling yards and repair shops in order to limit the German military response to the invasion of France in June 1944....
aiming at the systematic destruction of French railway marshalling yards and railway bridges, in 1944, also took a heavy toll on civilian lives. For example, the 26 May 1944 bombing, hit railway targets in south-eastern France.
Obligatory Work Service
During the German occupation, the Obligatory Work Service consisted of the requisition and transfer of hundreds of thousands of French workers to Germany against their will, for the German war effort. In addition to work camps for factories, agriculture, and railroads, forced labor was used for V-1 launch sites and other military facilities targeted by the Allies in
Operation CrossbowCrossbow was the code name of the World War II campaign of Anglo-American "operations against all phases of the German long-range weapons programme—operations against research and development of the weapons, their manufacture, transportation and their launching sites, and against missiles in flight"...
.
Curfew
At night, inhabitants had to close their shutters or windows. Without an
AusweisKennkarte was the basic identity document in use during the Third Reich era, first introduced in July 1938. They were normally obtained through a police precinct and had the corresponding issuing office and official’s stamps on them...
, it was forbidden to go out during the night. During the day, numerous regulations, censorship and propaganda made the occupation increasingly unbearable.
Education
Schoolchildren were made to sing "
Maréchal, nous voilà !"Maréchal, nous voilà !" is a French song dedicated to Marshal Philippe Pétain. Lyrics were composed by André Montagnard , and music was attributed to André Montagnard and Charles Courtioux...
" ("Marshall, here we are!"). The portrait of Marshal
Philippe PétainHenri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
adorned the walls of classrooms, thus creating a personality cult. Propaganda was present in education to train the young people with the ideas of the new Vichy regime. However, there was no resumption in ideology as in other occupied countries, for example in
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, where the teaching elite was liquidated. Teachers were not imprisoned and the programs were not modified overall. In the private Catholic sector, many school directors hid Jewish children by providing education for them until the liberation.
Jews
Approximately 49
concentration campsThere were internment camps and concentration camps in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the...
were in use in France during the occupation, the largest of them at
DrancyThe Drancy internment camp of Paris, France, was used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of whom 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children...
. In the occupied zone, as of 1942, Jews were required to wear the
yellow badgeThe yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
. On the
Paris MétroThe Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
Jews were only allowed to ride in the last carriage. 13,152 Jews residing in the Paris region were victims of a mass arrest by Nazi authorities on 16 and 17 July 1942, known as the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, and transported to Auschwitz where they were killed.
Overall, according to a detailed count drawn under Serge Klarsfeld, slightly below 77,500 of the Jews residing in France died during the war, overwhelmingly after being deported to death camps. Out of a Jewish population in France in 1940 of 350,000, this means that somewhat less than a quarter died; while horrific, the mortality rate was lower than in other occupied countries (e.g. 75% in the Netherlands), and because the majority of the Jews were recent immigrants to France (mostly exiles from Germany), more Jews lived in France at the end of the Vichy regime than did approximately ten years earlier when Hitler formally came to power.
The Resistance
Although the majority of the occupied French population did not take part in active resistance, many resisted passively through acts such as listening to the banned
BBCRadio Londres was a radio broadcast from 1940 to 1944 from the BBC in London to Nazi occupied France. It was entirely in French and was operated by Free French Forces who had escaped the German occupation...
, or giving collateral or material aid to Resistance members. Others assisted in the escape of downed US or British airmen who eventually found their way back to Britain, through Spain. Beginning in 1942, many others refused to be drafted into the factories and farms of Germany by the "STO" organisation, going underground to avoid imprisonment and subsequent deportation to Germany. For the most part, these "réfractaires" eventually joined the Resistance. Armed underground groups in the field (known as the "
MaquisThe Maquis were the predominantly rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance. Initially they were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire to provide forced labour for Germany...
") began to organise in the more remote parts of France in late 1942 and 1943. They received weapons such as Bren guns, Sten submachineguns, US M1 carbines and other rifles, plastic explosives, ammunition, and funds from thousands of parachute drops and solo landings at night by RAF
LysanderThe Westland Lysander was a British army co-operation and liaison aircraft produced by Westland Aircraft used immediately before and during the Second World War...
aircraft. They also received direct support on the ground from British radio operators and tactical advisors, such as
Nancy WakeNancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM , served as a British agent during the later part of World War II. She became a leading figure in the maquis groups of the French Resistance and was one of the Allies' most decorated servicewomen of the war.-Early life:Born in Roseneath, Wellington, New Zealand in...
, who were parachute dropped to assist the Maquis in central France. After the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the French armed resistance groups (FFI, FTP and others) systematically sabotaged the railway lines, destroyed bridges, cut German communications and provided general intelligence that was communicated directly to London via radio within hours.
See also
- Fall Rot
- Antoinette Feuerwerker
Antoinette Feuerwerker was a French jurist and an active fighter in the French Resistance during the Second World War.-Biography:...
- David Feuerwerker
- Born in Geneva :He was born on October 2, 1912, at 11 Rue du Mont-Blanc, in Geneva, Switzerland. He was the seventh of eleven children. His father Jacob Feuerwerker was born in Sighet, now Sighetu Marmatiei, Maramureş, then Hungary, now Rumania...
- Salomon Gluck
Salomon Gluck, , was a French physician and a member of the French Resistance.-His ancestors:...
- Home front during World War II
The home front covers the activities of the civilians in a nation at war. World War II was a total war; homeland production became even more invaluable to both the Allied and Axis powers. Life on the home front during World War II was a significant part of the war effort for all participants and...
- Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
- Military history of France during World War II
The military history of France during World War II covers the period from 1939 until 1940, which witnessed French military participation under the French Third Republic , and the period from 1940 until 1945, which was marked by mainland and overseas military administration and influence struggles...
- Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
- Oradour-sur-Glane
Oradour-sur-Glane is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in west-central France.The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company...
- Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
- Rose Warfman
Rose Warfman is a French survivor of Auschwitz and heroine of the French Resistance.-Born in Zürich:Rose Gluck was born on October 4, 1916, in Zürich, Switzerland, the daughter of Paul Gluck-Friedman and Henia Shipper .Her father was a direct descendant of Hasidic Masters, going back to the...
Further reading
- Bueltzingsloewen, Isabelle von (ed) (2005). "Morts d'inanition": Famine et exclusions en France sous l'Occupation. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes
The Presses Universitaires de Rennes or PUR is the largest French university press. Founded in 1984, PUR publishes around 200 books every year. It is located in Rennes in Brittany on the Rennes 2 University's La Harpe Campus...
. ISBN 2-7535-0136-X
- Gildea, Robert
Robert Nigel Gildea is professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and is the author of several influential books on 20th century French history. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, before attending St Antony's for a D.Phil under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin. His D.Phil...
(2002). Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation 1940–1945. London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-78230-9
- Hirschfeld, G. & Marsh P. (eds) (1989). Collaboration in France: Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation 1940-1944. Oxford: Berg.
- Jackson, Julian T.
Julian T. Jackson is a prominent British historian. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London Julian Jackson is one of the leading authorities on twentieth-century France.He was educated at the University of...
(2001). France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944. Oxford: Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. ISBN 0-19-820706-9
External links