I am currently reading HR Kedward's Occupied France which is a history of Vichy France and German occupied France from 1940-44. Vichy of course was Marshal Petain's attempt to restore some honour to France and try and make the best of a bad situation in the face of defeat in 1940 though it is likely he totally misjudged the political reality of the time and expected a German occupation like the Franco-Prussian War and for France to pay a part in the new Europe, instead he got an idealogically based occupation and a Hitler who lost interest in France once his attention went east.
Anyway Vichy's form of collaboration is now genuinely regarded by historians as being different to that of the French fascists to whom has been given the name collaborationism (Kedward 1993 p41). This attempts to distinguish between the fascists' ideologically based collaboration and the more pragmatically and nationalistic based flavour of the Vichy regime.
Petain and other Vichy leaders thought it was better to protect French sovereignty if they carried out the arrest of resisters, the deportation of Jews and other acts to assist the Germans instead of the Germans doing it themselves. Their argument was this could act as a "shield" to protect the French people from a greater repression at the hands of the Germans (though of course it is unlikely the resisters, Communists, Jews et cetera who suffered at Vichy's hands really considered this a good thing) who would take the law into their own hands.
Vichy tried to keep it's brand of collaboration distinct from the French fascists though in reality there was a great deal of overlap and no shortage of fascists and Nazi supporters in Vichy. It is interesting to imagine what might have happened if Britain had fallen and there was a British "Vichy", would British people have tried the same brand of collaboration? The nature of resistance is something i will return to another time.
Another page on this subject is here.
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