What is the difference between occupied france and vichy france

For that point on, the reactions of public opinion mattered P. Laborie, and The Nazi police authorities accepted this request in order to ensure that their political collaboration with the French government, which was still considered a priority, would remain harmonious. On September 23, he launched another massive deportation of French Jews at least people on convoy number 36, in disregard of the agreements with the Vichy authorities. They were deported on convoys numbers 37 and 38, respectively on September 25 and 28; most of them were gassed at Birkenau just a few days after their arrest S.

Fontaine, , ; J. September 25, : Knochen refused a mass round-up of French Jews that the Jewish Affairs department had contemplated organizing in order to compose the convoys planned for October. This position, which preserved the established political relationship of collaboration with Vichy was confirmed by a telex from Himmler to Oberg.

It was essentially made up of elderly people over 55 years of age, from Belgium and Holland; 56 were selected for labor upon arrival, and the others were gassed S. October , : The different Kommandos units of the Sipo-SD in the regions of provincial French carried out operations to arrest the foreign Jews who were now part of the groups to be deported Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, Belgians, etc.

Almost 2, people were then on hand for transfer to Drancy, where Jews were also available. Convoys were immediately planned for November S. But on the 19th, this execution was suspended for political and timing reasons S.

The main point was not to impede the recruitment of laborers for work in Germany. Passera, November , : The deportation of the Jews of France began again. The Jews arrested outside of the capital in October were carried away on two convoys, numbers 4 and 6. The Greek Jews, whose arrest had just been authorized, were rounded up on November 5, then deported on the 9th and the 11th, in two new convoys to Auschwitz.

After this, Knochen warned Eichmann than the deportations would have to be halted until February S. November 11, : The free zone was occupied by the German army in retaliation for the Anglo-American landing in North Africa three days earlier. The year ended with a pause in massive executions of hostages. But this decision did not settle the issue of what was to become of these people. Since it did not intend to have these people tried, it was actually taking advantage of the NN label to secretly send thousands of detainees to concentration camps in the Reich , as of March Th.

Nevertheless, NN prisoners due to be tried before a Reich court continued to be deported to the special camp of Hinzert until September Finally, the deportation to Reich prisons of persons who had already been found guilt by a military court bore witness to the fact that judicial repression by the MBF was as severe as ever FMD, ; G.

By the end of , the Sipo-SD was also officially assured that it could put suspects in administrative detention without necessarily using the usual procedure, which was still in force, that of a trial before a military court Eismann, Faced with overcrowding of the internment locations available, as well as with the risk involved in maintaining large groups of prisoners behind German lines in the event a second front were opened, interning ever greater numbers of prisoners in occupied France became both an impracticable and an undesirable option.

Hence, most people arrested were destined to be deported from France as Schutzhaft prisoners. But this repressive choice was also linked to the turning point the Nazi concentration system had gone through in the spring of Fabreguet, ; R. Steegmann, ; B. Streibel, The occupied zones became manpower reserves, at a period when the vast majority of Germans had been called up to the front.

Rimbot, Over the same period, the deportation of the Jews of France resumed, after a phase during which no convoys had been organized, from mid-November to early February Thus, thousands of Jews fled from the areas occupied by the Germans to the Italian zone, temporarily finding shelter there. Klarsfeld, ; A. Cohen, Klarsfeld, In July, when it became obvious that the Vichy authorities did not intend to proceed to massively strip French Jews of their citizenship, Knochen restrained his Jewish Affairs Department once again, as it was attempting to organize a mass round-up of French Jews using only German police forces.

In addition, some Jews were also arrested in the context of reprisal operations which, thus, extended beyond the year On January 16, people were thus transferred to Drancy, including French citizens S. Oppetit, ; Ryan, ; A. Meyer, Liaigre, ; see also S. Ordre civil et ordre militaire : les limites de la justice militaire , In terms of the number of death sentences served, this was probably the deadliest trial of the whole of the Occupation.

The rail cars of the convoy were separated at Halle, once it was past the German border. The men were sent to the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin, where most of them were put to work in the Heinkel factory Kommando unit of workers , for the German war effort E. The women, including Danielle Casanova and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier two famous French Communist activists and members of the Resistance , were sent to Auschwitz, where the conditions were terrible, partly due to a typhoid fever epidemic.

By April 10, only 70 of them were still alive. This was probably why the Germans forced a few dozen Gypsies onto the train; they were the only ones deported from the occupied zone C. Delbo, ; D. Peschanski, ; FMD, ; Th. Fontaine, ; E. February , : The interruption of the deportation of the Jews of France had lasted about three months.

But then three convoys were planned in early February. The first, number 46 there were mistakes in the numbering of these trains by the German services: this one was not actually the 46th , left on February 9, carrying around 1, prisoners. The numbers of Jews held in the transit camps did not leave the Jewish Affairs Department much leeway: on the second convoy, which left on February 11, there were deportees over the age of They had only just been taken out of the asylums where they had been interned previously S.

February 13, : Two Luftwaffe officers were killed during the Carousel in. March 2, : A new convoy, number 49, left Drancy in the direction of Auschwitz. Once again, there had been some difficulty gathering the necessary contingent of deportees; most of them were elderly, and had been taken from the Rothschild hospice or arrested during the last round-up, that of February 11, which had led to the capture of 1, Jews, thanks to the French Prefecture of Police.

On convoy 49, over prisoners were over the age of 70; were in their sixties S. March , : Almost 2, Jews, who had been arrested following reprisal measures taken on February 15, were deported to the Sobibor camp in two convoys, almost as soon as they had arrived from the southern zone.

It was the first time that a deportation convoy from France was sent straight to this death camp. Nearly all of the prisoners on board were gassed directly upon arrival S. March , : The third and fourth convoys were sent from France to Sobibor; they were also the last.

The prisoners on board were mostly Jews that had been rounded up in Marseilles in early January. Out of the 2, that were deported, only 15 or so from the second convoy were selected for labor upon their arrival. Klarsfeld, From then on, the Jewish Affairs Department essentially relied on the mass round-ups due subsequently to this Vichy government law.

No convoys were organized from the end of March to the end of June From that point on, other convoys of former hostages, male and female detainees considered highly dangerous and labeled NN, were deported by the Gestapo directly to a concentration camp in this type of small convoy.

April : The German troops withdrew from Tunisia. The persons detained at the Tunis prison were deported by airplane to Italy, then to Germany. Some of them were then interned at the Sachsenhausen camp FMD, , vol. April 2, : The Bousquet-Oberg accords, which had been in the process of renegotiation since February, were extended to the southern zone D. Rimbot, ; Fontaine, June 21, : The Gestapo services led by Klaus Barbie arrested Jean Moulin at Caluire, near Lyon during a clandestine meeting, along with other important leaders of the Resistance in the southern zone see D.

Hence, he was concerned about potential problems in Drancy, where the French authorities would have to intern some of their former fellow citizens and organize their deportation.

The solution he chose to avert this problem was simple and marked a turning-point in the history of Drancy : the Gestapo itself took over the direct administration and complete control of the camp. He had to request help from Eichmann, who detached a special Kommando unit , which arrived in on June 1. Klarsfeld, ; D. Epelbaum, Brunner became head of the Drancy camp.

July 18, : Convoy number 57 was the first one headed to Auschwitz from the Bobigny train station. The telex for this train deporting 1, Jews was the first signed by Alois Brunner, and showed his resolution to make room in Drancy before the de-naturalized Jews arrived. On July 12, the Beaune-la-Rolande camp had been emptied and its detainees transferred to Drancy Serge Klarsfeld, Since the Allies had landed in Sicily, the German authorities were increasingly anxious about the possibility of an Allied landing in Provence, and had drawn up lists of prominent civilians and military men who were likely to become Resistance cadres.

Most of all, the criterion of French nationality was gradually eliminated during the second half of August S. The September 2 convoy bore witness to this change which, from then on, allowed the composition of convoys made up of French Jews; they accounted for over half the persons on this train.

There was no more criticism from Berlin, but neither did [the Berlin authorities] harbor any illusions. Klarsfeld, But Oberg and Knochen did not drive the Vichy authorities into a corner immediately, avoiding serious political conflict. For example, the German operations carried out in the region of Basse-Normandie led a mediocre outcome. In Nice, where Alois Brunner had hoped to arrest almost 25, Jews, the French authorities also refused to help, and his operations finally led to the internment of no more than about 1, people S.

From this point on, the Vichy regime became more radical: on January 20, , the law instituting military courts was signed V. Sansico, The same measure was carried out in the northern zone.

Klarsfeld, From then on, according to the arrests carried out in both zones, the Gestapo managed to form regular convoys to Auschwitz until July This coincided with an increase in the activity of Resistance groups, and often with their fall and dismantling by the German police services. From September to the end of January , all the detainees in the convoys over 9, in total were deported to the Buchenwald camp, from which many of them were sent to the Dora Kommando unit of laborers where they worked on the creation of the secret plant for the manufacture of the future V2 rockets A.

Sellier, This binary system remained in operation until August — like Drancy, which was kept as the transit camp for Jews due to be deported to Auschwitz — and only ended when that part of French territory was evacuated by the German administration. The deportation of NN detainees also continued throughout this period; almost all of them were sent to concentration camps.

Persons found guilty by military courts in the occupied zones were also deported, right through to November from certain French cities that were still under German control. Autumn was a turning point in quantitative terms: more and more people fell victim to repressive measures and were deported in ever larger numbers.

The activity of military courts was intensified further during this period, in parallel to the escalation of violence in occupied France.

Around others were sentenced to death from January to April G. Lieb, ; G. Eismann, Its objective was to eradicate the nascent maquis guerrilla fighter groups and Resistance groups, which were increasingly numerous — especially since the Service du travail obligatoire , or STO, law of February 1, This law requiring French men to carry out an obligatory term of labor in Germany had led the proliferation of opponents to the regime — and might threaten the German rearguard in the event of an Allied landing.

As of autumn , large-scale military operations began, in partnership with the Sipo-SD, which was in charge of the policing aspect and the fate of the persons arrested. Four major operations were carried out from February to April A. Massacres of the civilian population became increasingly frequent, especially after the Allied landing in Normandy 99 people were hanged in Tulle, civilians, including children, were killed at Oradour-sur-Glane , etc.

Lieb, , and for the map of the largest massacres carried out. The Vichy forces mirrored this radicalization of repression.

At all hierarchical levels, there was regular contact between German and French personnel. Darnand put himself — and his police force — at the service of the total war the Germans were engaged in. Negotiation was all the less relevant that the head of the Milice did not even wish it. Basch, etc. September 2, : Convoy number 59 left the Bobigny train station on its way to Auschwitz; over half the deportees on board were French citizens.

The majority of the nearly 1, male deportees in this new convoy, many of which had been arrested as they were attempting to cross the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, were sent to the new Dora Kommando which was being formed in order to build and set up the production lines for German secret weapons, the future V2 rockets A.

Sellier, ; FMD, September 9, : The last train of NN prisoners due to be tried in the Reich left on its way to Hinzert. September 10, : Alois Brunnerarrived in Nice and combed through the streets with a small Kommando unit , checking the papers of people whose appearance he found suspicious, regardless of their nationality R.

September 17, : A new mass deportation convoy carried nearly 1, prisoners, which had been arrested as the result of a repression measure, to Buchenwald. Like the September 3 convoy, these were men that were physically fit enough to dig the Dora tunnels; the working conditions were terrible and many died in the weeks and months that followed A. Courtois, D. Peschanski, A. Rayski, ; Th.

October 7 and 28, November 20, December 7 and 17, : Five new convoys of French and foreign Jews left Bobigny, heading to Auschwitz. Some of them were always gassed upon arrival S. October 28 and December 14, : Two new convoys of prisoners arrested due to repressive measures — these were more and more often composed of arrested Resistance fighters — were sent to Buchenwald, to the work Kommandos and to the Dora camp FMD, December — January : Almost members of the Alliance Resistance network, who had been arrested by German counter-espionage services, were deported to Reich prisons to be tried, in small groups of 30 to 40 people.

In the end, few of them were prosecuted and the others were executed in the second half of the year FMD, , vol. This time, Darnand and Laval were informed and they yielded. Almost Jews, including over French citizens, were arrested by the Germans.

At the end of January, a similar round-up was organized in Poitiers, with the same quantitative result. In , two large operations on January 22 and February 4, led to the arrest of nearly 1, people.

But the Germans did not put pressure on the Police Headquarters, and did not receive the complete lists they wanted until August 2 S. In December , the decision had been made to make the Romainville fort the main transit camp for women due to be deported. January 20 and February 10, : Three convoys left the Bobigny train station, heading to Auschwitz. The detainees rounded up in Bordeaux were deported on January 20; those from Poitiers and from were sent off on February 3 and 10 S.

Lieb, Early March — mid-April, : Due to a gradual increase in the deportation of members of the Resistance since spring , in addition to the steady pace of the convoys deporting Jews from France — though this was not as fast as in — the year was characterized by a considerable number of departures.

The variety of procedures leading to deportation was also striking, as the calendar of early spring shows. Two convoys of Jews left Bobigny and headed to Auschwitz on March 7 1, people were on this train; they had arrived at Drancy on February 10 and On April 13, convoy 71 deported almost 1, Jews, including children under 12 years of age; among these were some of those arrested at Izieu by Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in Lyon S.

Simone Jacob, who is now known as Simone Veil a French magistrate and politician , was on this train. Nearly 2, Jews were also arrested in provincial France by the Gestapo, in order to form future convoys S. Almost 1, others were deported on April 6, also in the direction of Austria. Convoys of NN prisoners and detainees found guilty by military courts were still being formed and sent inside the Reich ; among these were four consecutive trains of female NN prisoners who were taken to the Aachen prison.

At least 8 prisoners found guilty by a German military court in the occupied zone were sent to a prison in the Reich to serve their sentence. In March , the first special trains took members of the Alliance Resistance network to the Alsatian camp of Schirmeck; until June, of them were secretly detained there, and of them were executed on September 1, shot in the back of the neck in the Natzweiler camp nearby FMD, Penaud, ; P.

April , : The German army carried out a new operation against the maquis and the Resistance groups in Ain and Jura A. Meyer, ; P. But this time, this was not linked to the reprisal policy. It was more likely to have resulted from overcrowding in Buchenwald, the camp where the deportees of this convoy were eventually sent two weeks later H.

Clogenson, P. Le Goupil, undated. May 15, : Almost men, all able-bodied adults, were deported on convoy number 73 from the Bobigny train station, as usual, but this time they were sent to Kaunas Lithuania and Tallub Estonia. May , : On May 20, 1, Jews, including many families with small children, were deported to Auschwitz.

This was the first large convoy of members of the Resistance to be sent there S. Klarsfeld, ; FMD, June 6, : The Allies landed in Normandy.

The final phase of the German occupation of France began. Two days earlier, a new convoy of over 2, deportees arrested due to repression measures had been taken to the Neuengamme camp.

Thus, as the German troops moved toward the Normandy front, there were many massacres of civilians. This was an extreme case which did not happen again on the same scale J. June , : The German troops took control of Mont-Mouchet, in Auvergne, where a large number of members of the maquis had based their organization. Over members of the Resistance and around 50 civilians were killed E.

June 18 to 29, : The Allied landing had not ended deportations — quite the reverse, in fact. Most of them were Communist activists who had just been evacuated from the Eysses central prison on May 30, in anticipation of an Allied invasion.

June 28, : Philippe Henriot, named Secretary of State for Information and Propaganda in French government at the same time as Darnand, who was a famous chronicler on the Vichy radio, was shot by the Resistance. June 29, : The German military court of Nantes condemned 30 members of the Saffre forest maquis to death; 27 of them were shot the same day J. June 30, : Another convoy left the Bobigny train station, taking 1, Jewish deportees, including children, to Auschwitz.

Two weeks later, over 1, others were sent to a location near Hamburg and quickly forced to work for the German war economy FMD, , see vol. July 21, : After a series of German incursions in January and March, and by the Milice in April, the occupying troops launched a general offensive against the Vercors maquis; some of the German soldiers were parachuted in.

The operation was characterized by atrocities against the population at Vassieux and La Chapelle and the wounded Resistance fighters in the La Luire cave , and wiped out the maquis in three days.

Around 1, people left Toulouse in this way; they were taken from the city prisons or from internment camps in the area. Due to Allied progress, the Germans were unable to separate the men from the women beforehand in France, nor the Jews from the persons detained due to repressive measures, so all of them were sent off together.

The Jewish deportees, over of them, were also registered in Buchenwald, but the camp arrival register mentioned that specificity, and their names were marked by a cross on the list. They were not sent on to Auschwitz afterwards FMD, , vol.

July 31, : The last large convoy composed of detainees from Drancyleft the Bobigny station, heading to Auschwitz and carrying almost 1, Jews. Hundreds of them had only just been arrested in the area. This might be seen as peaceful protest but, if those gestures violated orders laid down by the Germans, they would be punished.

Even listening to the BBC was punished. Other forms of resistance required greater organisation. They included the organisation of escape lines for POWs or downed Allied pilots, sending intelligence about German forces to the Allies by radio-transmitter, and publishing and distributing flyers and newspapers to counter both Vichy and German propaganda with the ideals and aims of the resistance.

These actions were also fraught with danger. Resistance did not always mean taking the fight to Vichy and the Germans but frustrating their plans. It involved the rescue of individuals and groups threatened by persecution, most especially Jews. Charitable organisations set up to attend to foreign Jews interned in camps in turned into escape lines for Jews, especially Jewish children, hiding them with families or in convents.

This became more urgent when the French and German authorities began to round up Jews — first foreign, then French — in the summer of , deporting them to the extermination camps. Networks of Jews and Christians, sometimes working together, spirited them away when they could across the border to Spain or Switzerland.

What characterised the sorts of people who resisted? This was not wholly true, but they needed to be non-conformist enough to feel ill-at-ease in Vichy France, and brave enough to risk a great deal by becoming involved.

Some people became involved for ideological reasons. And at the same time a very deep antifascism, a hatred of all that. Others were influenced by family histories. The diplomat Jacques Lecompte-Boinet was 36, short-sighted, and a father of four in He was not called up but sent to direct evacuees at Saint-Lazare station. He did so in order to live up to the memory of his father, whom he remembered going off to war in and not returning. The author Madeleine Riffaud was only 15 in when she was kicked in the backside by a German soldier.

Such was her humiliation and anger that she swore to join the resistance. In July , she shot a German soldier dead on the banks of the Seine, hoping to rouse the Paris population to revolt. She was arrested, sentenced to death, narrowly escaped deportation, and was released during the Paris insurrection of August Many of those who were ill-at-ease in Vichy France were precisely those whom the regime was persecuting: communists, Jews and foreigners.

After the victory of Franco, they fled to France where they were interned along with the Spanish republicans they had fought with. Late in , the Germans arrested a group of resisters led by the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian. In fact, communists, Jews and foreigners were overrepresented in the resistance because they were persecuted, and also because they had constructed networks to hide, support and train resisters.

There were tipping points at which major changes of circumstances shook routines and provoked greater engagement with resistance. One moment was the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June , which realigned the revolutionary and patriotic goals of communists after the confusion of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and freed them to throw themselves into resistance activity.

A second was the round-up of Jews in the summer of , which drove many young Jews into underground resistance networks as a way to survive. The consequent invasion of the Free Zone by the Germans on 11 November shattered the illusion that Vichy was getting anything in return for its collaboration with Germany.

Many young men decided to make their way through Spain to join French forces in North Africa, from which an Expeditionary Force was drawn to land in Italy in November All young men of military age were liable for STO. Between 5 per cent and 25 per cent, depending on the area, joined maquis that were forming in the mountains and forests, ready to come out fighting on D-Day. W e now return to the question raised by Bayard: would one have been a resister or a collaborator?

Bayard looks back to the life of his father, born in , and reconstructs a succession of wartime crises that require him to decide one way or the other between resisting and not resisting. Should he be a hero, get on a boat, and go to North Africa where the war might continue, or join the nascent Free French around de Gaulle in London? He did what most French people chose to do. Despite his ideological differences with the regime, he stayed put, relieved that the war was over, and continued to prepare for his entrance examination.

When the STO was introduced in , he was initially excused on medical grounds, but as D-Day approached he decided to resist and join a maquis in the south of France. He had no luck. Given the spike in resistance casualties between D-Day and the liberation, in fighting or in collective reprisals for resistance activity inflicted by the Germans, he was probably safer in Germany.

What about myself? How far would I have behaved differently from the Oxford dons whom I suspected in the s might have collaborated? As it happens, my great uncle, Denis Saurat, head of the French Institute in London, went to see de Gaulle on 19 June , the day after his famous appeal on the BBC, and provided him with numerous contacts with the British establishment.

Saurat, however, was the same age as de Gaulle both men were born in , and my great uncle was related to me by marriage, not by blood; I could not legitimately take him as a surrogate for my younger self. My father had a fantasy that he would arrive in Singapore in a white uniform and liberate his father from Changi Prison.

Since Britain was not occupied by the Germans, he did not have to resist, but did his bit in the armed forces. He was a patriot, but not a foolhardy one. In a decision that would eventually make them one of the wealthiest surviving Native American nations, the Osage tribe agrees to abandon their lands in Missouri and Arkansas in exchange for a reservation in Oklahoma. The Osage were the largest tribe of the Southern Sioux people Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.

On November 10, , newspapers report the burning of 36 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. The ship weighed more than 13, tons and was feet long. It was launched in as the biggest carrier On November 10, , Henry Wirz, a Swiss immigrant and the commander of Andersonville prison in Georgia, is hanged for the murder of soldiers incarcerated there during the Civil War.

Wirz was born in Switzerland in and moved to the United States in He lived in the The patent office awards U.