France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise

From 1940 to 1944, the French people adapted in a variety of ways to life under the domination of Nazi Germany. This book offers the definitive study of the choices made by ordinary French citizens during that turbulent historical period, exposing for the first time the degree of their complicity with the Nazis.

How is it that France, the cradle of European liberty and birthplace of the Declaration of Human Rights, fell so swiftly to German domination in World War II? How is it that so many French willingly collaborated with the occupiers, participating in the murder of Jews and other so-called undesirables? Philippe Burrin, professor of history at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, confronts these troubling questions, looking beyond the usual motivations of "material self-interest" and "ideological convictions or connivance" to paint a complex portrait of French behavior under German rule. Hitler, Burrin writes, chose to allow the French government a certain degree of autonomy under the Vichy state, largely for strategic reasons: by allowing that measure of self-rule, he could free more soldiers for the war against the Soviet Union. For their part, the French leadership reasoned that a compromised self- rule was better than outright submission to the conqueror, even if it meant complying with disagreeable edicts. Some in the government and citizenry even viewed collaboration as an instrument of postwar advantage; as one French report of 1941 put it, "People continue to be delighted that both the Germans and the Russians are suffering heavy losses. They are hoping that eventually France will act as an intermediary for a compromise peace." France emerged from the war less powerful than the collaborationists had hoped, and today soul-searching questions about the nation's behavior during the Hitler years exercise the attention of historians and public intellectuals. Burrin's book is a solid contribution to the literature arising from this ongoing debate. --Gregory McNamee