Verdict On Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime

by Michael Curtis

Seeks to document the events that happened during the World War II Nazi occupation of France, investigating the collaboration of French forces with the Vichy regime, the circumstances that contributed to the persecution of the nation's Jewish population, and the history of anti-Semitic activities in France. 12,500 first printing.

Genres: History, France, Nonfiction, War, Holocaust, World War II, Grad School

440 pages, Hardcover

First published November 14, 2002

Reviews

[Dennis McCrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book because I’m still in the midst of trying to better understand how so many can sell their principles, even their souls for the proverbial pot of porridge. I’m writing this on March 23, 2025, 2 months after Trump’s inauguration and the chaos he and his sycophants are enabling is breathtaking. And the question I still have is how so many look at all of this and are happy they voted for this and happy with the results.

Turn the clock back to France, era 1940 to 1944. France has been defeated by Germany and is now under occupation. And the Vichy administration rules over the southern part of the country. Enabled by many loyal, corrupt and inept bureaucrats, the Germans do not have to waste manpower governing this area. The Vichy administration prove to be faithful and loyal administrators, even assisting the Nazis in the Holocaust, with minimal push back.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Curtis finds France guilty of horrendous, deep-rooted antisemitism that came to a head when France threw in its lot with the Nazis. A lot of people argue that the establishment of the Vichy regime was the best way for France to protect its people and preserve its independent statehood. Curtis, however, disagrees, arguing that many French were fascist to begin with, and largely agreed with the viewpoint that Jews and other foreign-types were a problem and should go away. (He also argues that the French were more okay with the "Israèlites," aka Jews who were French-born and more assimilated.)

I didn't finish this, unfortunately. He's got loads of evidence, although not so much about the feelings of the French populace in general. Curtis focuses on the views of non-Jews in the government; pre-war clubs and pamphlets that were part of the right-wing, socialist, antisemitic contingent; and opportunists who took advantage of both new capital and floating clients taken from Jews no longer allowed to practice their professions. Pretty depressing and eye-opening, as well as very, very detailed in its citing of legislation passed against Jews.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Vichy wasn't "neutral" in the arrest and transportation of French Jewish citizns and exiled Jews to concentration camps.One of the claims made by the author is that Francois Mitterand, a Vichy official at the time, was a close friend of the chief of police for Paris. Frehch police and in particular Paris gendarmes, often made the arrests and guarded the trains to the German border, thus freeing German manpower. The French police authorities weren't ordered by the Nazis to perform these functions, indeed they offered to do the dirty work. The Vichy Government raised no dissent. After the war, Mitterand kept up his friendhip with the former Parisian chief of police. And, after the war, France did not have a law that covered crimes against humanity and in many cases it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that prosecutions on that basis were followed through....

[Dennis Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime by Michael Curtis is a harrowing read. It describes a regime willing to sell its soul in obedience to the Nazi regime, so long as it was able to maintain its autonomy. Vichy France, nominally, tried to protect its own Jewish population. But it did so by rejecting the citizenship of newly naturalized Jewish citizens, demanding that the parents be French, and later by requiring five generations of French ancestry and meritorious service to the state of France. Local antisemitism left much of the French people indifferent to the plight of Jewish people, who only started to turn against the regime's measures when they thought the antisemitism went too far. Even then, their efforts were weak, inconsistent, and failed to adequately safeguard even native French Jews. Laws defining Jewish identity in France were harsher than in Germany, making the acceptance of French definitions even more deadly for the local Jewish population. When the Nazis thought extracting children was a bridge too far, one that was likely to enrage local French popular sentiment, authorities in Vichy advocated for the extraction and removal of Jewish children out of "humanitarian consideration." The portrait is dire, and despicable.

Yet, the driving force appears to be risk aversion. If we do not police ourselves and do what is required of us, then the Nazis might take what little power remains. If we do not adjust our outlook on policy matters, then we may be swept aside. Petain was not a fascist, and much of the early Vichy regime was not really fascist either. Even so, they acquiesced and supported fascist policies. And the population went along with it, and by and large supported the Vichy regime until the allies began to win battles close to home. While there were those that resigned, and those that sought to protect the Jewish people, these were very few. There was an American that sought to rescue the French Jewish population, only for the State Department from the US to encourage the Vichy regime to deport him. If anything, the Italians come across as better than Vichy, for they were known to ignore most of the requests and demands regarding the round up and deportation to extermination of the Jewish people.

The continuity of governance, of regime, of industry, of society are the most damning thing to this book. The remnants of the French regime created Vichy, and when De Gaulle took over most of those who served in Vichy were kept in place. That there were a litany of figures that were political opportunists that changed with the times, profiting in some double dealing way only to shift later on. Very few of them were avowed fascists, and only a handful of senior people seem to have swore any oaths of loyalty to Hitler.

If I have one complaint about this book, it is that the narrative is overly long and repetitive. Its a third to half too long. The book also jumps around a lot, seemingly uncomfortable with a chronology. While the beginning is the beginning, and the end is the end, so much of this book feels like a collection of essays that rely on the same beats and points. Curtis also isn't the most reliable of authors, as there is a fair bit of editorializing as well.

If this book was 300 pages long, a little better organized, and a bit more pointed in some areas, then this would be an absolutely fantastic, if chilling, book.

84/100

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good general survey of Vichy France, focusing on the plight and fate of the Jews of France (not the same as French Jews, due to 20th century immigration from Germany and further east). As such it may seem blinkered when compared to more general histories like Robert Paxton's. Even so, Professor Curtis' judgment is quite fair. Of necessity, since so much literature by and about Vichy has never been translated, he uses much French sources, contemporary and modern.

Born as a face-saving rationale for defeat, a front maintained by mutual consent of Petain and Hitler, Vichy underwent a steady devolution in its four years of misery. At first "merely" conservative and anti-leftist, it morphed following the downs of German war policy. In this it paralleled Hungary: from a collaborating, autonomous ally, then falling under thumb of an outright fascist regime, surrendering to evil, destroying whatever legitimacy it once entertained. Ironic that Hitler thought such a defeatist "Weimar" regime would be acceptable to the proud French, when he'd so vehemently repudiated its like for his own country.

This account follows modern WW II historiography, in that the Axis and its allies are now judged through the lenses of the Holocaust. While such perspective is necessary, anti-Semitism per se is not what drove most of Petain's followers into his arms. A general anti-leftism, rightist Catholicism, and a strong desire not to repeat the 1916 butchery of Verdun (commanded by Petain) were the mainstream factors, with anti-Semitism rising in importance as the pressures from Berlin and the Resistance mounted. That atrocities against Jews escalated as Vichy lost support should caution judgments on the French as a people under this rule. Professor Curtis does not equate the two, despite the undercurrent of bigotry still surviving from the Dreyfus era.

The verdict: Vichy was a bastard satellite, struggling for a legitimacy it could never attain; a one-dimensional, rightist regime that, like a postwar "Peoples' Republic," could represent only one side of society. Was Petain a hero making the best of a bad situation, or a traitor? Like General Jaruszelski of Poland forty years later, a bit of both: saving his country from a worse fate at the time, but ultimately defeating himself.

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hesitate to list this as history. When the author takes issue with why the average French citizen didn't just stop the German occupation and prevent the policies of the occupation I have a hard time plowing through what was marketed as a book of history and what in actuality is a SJW hissy fit. It is easy to fantasize about what one would do in a situation, but looking at how quickly people surrendered their right to breathe fresh air when a quack doctor and a senile old pederast demanded it, I doubt many of the modern people would of opposed the Germans.

[Andrew Pfannkuche · Rating 5 out of 5]

While a slightly harder read Curtis tells the story of a vital part of World War II that is shamefully underrepresented. This is a great English language introduction to the French historiographic debate that has been raging since the liberation. Curtis does justice to a silence in English language histories, the Germans didn't murder Jews alone, the French helped, Europeans helped.

[Drake McCrary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not surprisingly it is a little dry but with the subject of Vichy so little covered in the United States I appreciated the insight. While it is fairly friendly to readers who are just picking the book up I do think it would be beneficial to read some things on post war Europe beforehand.

[Collins Roth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but a slow moving read.

[Vann Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult subject to shed light on. This piece does a good job.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a long read and worth it. Curtis writes for other historians because there are a lot of people and events that he "assumes" the others already know.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damning, but balanced look at Vichy controlled France. What is really good is the division of the book into different sections looking at all the different sections of society.