France: The Dark Years PART IV 1942 - 1943

[pic 1]

[pic 2][pic 3]

Vichy and the Catholic Church

 Even though the hierarchy of the Catholic Church subscribed to Pétain’s Révolution Nationale, soon the lower orders, priests and members of religious orders, rejected the occupation and Nazism for its totalitarian and pagan beliefs

 The upset of 1942

 Towards radicalism

Allied Bombing in France

 On 3 March 1942 Boulogne-Billancourt was bombed by the RAF

 Despite fierce fire from German flak, a wave of British aircraft dropped nearly 200 bombs on the Île Seguin where the Renault factory was situated

 Their objective was to destroy German war production

 Numerous civilian victims

[pic 4][pic 5]

The Vichy Army and the Army in Africa

 The secret plans developed by the remnants of the French Army were forestalled by the invasion of Vichy France

 Meanwhile the Army in Africa was still loyal to Vichy, but the time had come to act

 On 8 November 1942 the Americans landed in North Africa as a part of Operation Torch and the Army was faced with a choice...

Resistance in Algiers

 It was to be in Algiers that resistance was born in 1940, led by the Aboulker family

 Resistance groups prepared to fight in Africa – Ander Achiari began to take action against the Italian and German representatives

 The ‘Group of Five’

The Invasion and Occupation of Vichy France

 Once the Allies had landed in North Africa, Vichy was occupied by the Wehrmacht on 11 November 1942

 All the existing Resistance organisations were in for a rude awakening

 The Marshal... powerless[pic 6]

The Assassination of Admiral Darlan

 After the fleet was scuttled at Toulon on 27 November 1942, Darlan lost his great bargaining chip, one that he had used since June 1940

 The resistance in Algiers saw him as a naked opportunist and refused to accept his leadership

 The theory of the ‘monarchist plot’

The ‘Milice’

 On 30 January 1943, under the orders of Joseph Darnand, the Milice was created from the Service d’ordre légionnaire(SOL)

 It was a military organisation reaching a strength of 30,000 men by the end of the year, and was the worst and most repressive force that Vichy controlled

 It also had a stranglehold on the press and ran the state prisons

 Fighting the resistance

The STO

 On 4 September 1942, Vichy passed a law decreeing that all men from 18 to 50 years old, and all unmarried women from 21 to 35 years old, could be mobilised for work in the Reich

 The was known as the Service du travail obligatoire (STO)

 Vichy obeys orders

 Resistance and increasing German intransigence

[pic 7]

Unifying the Resistance

 Named as De Gaulle’s personal representative and delegate of the CNF, Jean Moulin was dropped into Vichy France on 2 January 1942

 De Gaulle gave him the task of commanding military forces and bringing about the unification of resistance groups

...