When Paris was liberated in August 1944, a comfortable myth settled over the city. General Charles de Gaulle proclaimed that France had liberated itself, implying a nation united in resistance against the German occupier. It was a necessary lie to prevent a bloodbath, but it buried a darker truth: for four years, France had been at war with itself.

In this week’s podcast, I explored the painful history of collaborationCollaboration Full Description:The cooperation of local governments, police forces, and citizens in German-occupied countries with the Nazi regime. The Holocaust was a continental crime, reliant on French police, Dutch civil servants, and Ukrainian militias to identify and deport victims. Collaboration challenges the narrative that the Holocaust was solely a German crime. across Europe, local administrations assisted the Nazis for various reasons: ideological agreement (antisemitism), political opportunism, or bureaucratic obedience. In many cases, local police rounded up Jews before German forces even arrived. Critical Perspective:This term reveals the fragility of social solidarity. When their Jewish neighbors were targeted, many European societies chose to protect their own national sovereignty or administrative autonomy by sacrificing the minority. It complicates the post-war myths of “national resistance” that many European countries adopted to hide their complicity.
Read more and resistance in France, drawing on the work of Max Hastings and the late Tony Judt. The reality is that the occupation was not just a foreign imposition; it was a civil war.

The Enthusiastic Collaborator

We often think of collaboration as a grudging necessity—a way to survive. But as Judt argues in his essay From the House of the Dead, the Holocaust was a “European enterprise.” In France, the deportation of 76,000 Jews was facilitated not just by the Gestapo, but by the French police and the Vichy administration.

Marshal Pétain’s regime was not merely a puppet state; it was a popular, reactionary government that saw the defeat of 1940 as an opportunity to settle scores with the left, the republic, and the Jews. There were thousands of French volunteers in the Waffen-SS, men who saw the war not as a struggle for national liberation, but as a European crusade against Bolshevism. This ideological strain didn’t die in 1945; as I noted in the podcast, it forms the DNA of the modern French far-right.

The Anti-British Reflex

One of the most fascinating aspects of this period is the deep-seated Anglophobia that pervaded the French military elite. After the British sank the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, many French officers viewed Britain, not Germany, as the primary enemy.

This led to bizarre and tragic conflicts where Vichy forces fought fiercely against the Allies—in Syria, Dakar, and Madagascar. As late as November 1942, American troops landing in North Africa were shocked to find French soldiers resisting them with a tenacity they hadn’t shown against the Wehrmacht.

The Resistance: Myth and Reality

And what of the Resistance? The popular image is of a nation of heroes, blowing up trains and smuggling aviators. The truth is more complex. For most of the war, the Resistance was a tiny minority. The vast majority of the population was engaged in the business of survival—finding food, keeping their heads down, and navigating the grey zones of occupation.

It wasn’t until the Germans introduced the Service du Travail Obligatoire (forced labor) in 1943 that young men fled to the maquis in large numbers. Resistance was often less about patriotism than self-preservation.

Moreover, the Resistance was brutal. As I discussed, there are no “clean” guerrilla wars. Assassinating a German officer often meant inviting reprisals against civilians. It was a dirty, necessary war, fought by people who were outliers in their courage.

The Uncomfortable Mirror

Why is this history so hard to confront? Because, as Ian Kershaw notes, most of us would not be heroes. Most of us would keep our heads down. The story of Vichy is uncomfortable not because it is alien, but because it holds up a mirror to human nature. It forces us to ask: What would we have done?

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Transcript

Nick: Hi there and welcome again to the Explaining History podcast.

I’m going to talk about France today—France during the Second World War, the difficulty of historical memory, and the problems we have in navigating collaboration, resistance, and everything in between.

France falls in the summer of 1940. For most of the war, it is divided into an occupied zone administered by the German army and a collaborationist Vichy Republic. The Free French, led from London by Charles de Gaulle, have a difficult relationship with Churchill and Roosevelt. Even StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More didn’t care much for de Gaulle.

There’s a brilliant chapter in Tony Judt’s book Postwar, an essay called “From the House of the Dead,” which I urge everyone to read. Judt argues that the Holocaust was a “European enterprise.” It becomes easy for countries to hang the blame entirely on Germany, but collaborationist regimes across Europe were in no way reluctant when it came to deporting Jews. The Vichy regime, led by Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval, was enthusiastic about this aspect of Nazi racial policy. Transit camps like Drancy were filled by Jews arrested by French police.

The legacy of occupation is one that pollutes post-war French life. By the time Paris falls to the Allies in 1944, the popular parade suggests that “everybody had been in the Resistance.” But the reality is that France had been fighting its own civil war.

I’m diving into Max Hastings again today. He writes about the complex issues of loyalty in occupied societies. In some countries, it remains a matter of dispute whether those who served the Germans were traitors or simply adopted a different view of patriotism. Many Europeans served in security forces that opposed Allied interests. Dutch policemen, for example, were often more ruthless than their French counterparts—Anne Frank was arrested by Dutch police, not the Gestapo.

There were French, Dutch, and Belgian SS men who saw Hitler as the solution to the threat of communism. They believed antisemitic conspiracy theories and saw the occupation as part of a civilizational struggle. Of course, often they were just psychopaths who enjoyed murder. Those French SS men who survived created the architecture of the post-war far-right in France—the Front National has its roots here.

France was riven by internal dissension. There was widespread support for Vichy and collaboration, partly due to a deep-seated dislike of Great Britain. The British sinking of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940 fueled this outrage. De Gaulle himself viewed the British and Americans with suspicion, fearing they might never leave French soil.

German officers often found their French counterparts easier to talk to than the British. They admired Pétain and detested the communists. Some 25,000 Frenchmen served in the SS Charlemagne Division. Many French officers felt that the real threat to Catholic France was godless communism, not Nazism.

This led to situations where Vichy forces fought the Allies. In May 1942, when the British invaded Vichy-controlled Madagascar, the fighting was protracted. The French governor signaled his intent to resist with the same spirit as earlier battles. There were wars fought between the British and the French during WWII, such as in Syria.

Even in November 1942, American troops landing in North Africa were shocked by the resistance offered by French troops.

In mainland France, the Resistance enjoyed support from only a small minority until 1943, when the Germans introduced forced labor. This persuaded young men to flee to the maquis. But for a long time, the Resistance didn’t have mass support because people were focused on survival—dealing with shortages and the difficulties of occupation. They weren’t thinking about waging guerrilla warfareGuerrilla Warfare Full Description:Guerrilla Warfare transforms the environment and the population into weapons. Unlike conventional war, which seeks to hold territory, the guerrilla strategy seeks to exhaust the enemy psychologically and economically. The fighter relies on the support of the local population for food, shelter, and intelligence, effectively “swimming” among the people like a fish in water. Critical Perspective:This mode of combat blurs the distinction between civilian and combatant, often leading to horrific consequences for the general population. It forces the occupying power into brutal counter-insurgency measures—villages are burned, populations displaced, and civilians targeted—which ultimately validates the guerrilla’s propaganda and deepens local resentment against the occupier. .

We must also puncture the romantic notions of resistance. Resistance is a brutal business. Fighters assassinated German officers knowing it would lead to the execution of civilians. There are no “clean” freedom fighters.

While much of the aristocracy collaborated, there were exceptions, like Countess Lily de Pastré. She used her fortune and her chateau near Marseille to shelter Jewish artists and writers escaping the occupied zone.

However, brave people are outliers. As Ian Kershaw says in his biography of Hitler, most of us would like to think we would fight the good fight, but the reality is that most of us are in the business of surviving. That’s what most Germans did, and it’s what most French people did.

It’s difficult to acknowledge the extent of collaboration because it forces us to confront the fact that we might have made the same choice. Everyone imagines themselves in the Resistance, but the reality is virtually nobody was.

On that cheery topic, I’m going to leave you. Take good care, and I’ll be back with some awesome interviews tomorrow.