Chronological Index: Chronology of Repression and Persecution in Occupied France, 1940-44

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On May 10, 1940, the German offensive put an end to the “drôle de guerre” (“phony war”) that had begun in September 1939, an eight-month period during which France had entered the conflict but was not waging war. Until then, the French military High Command had chosen a defensive strategy; the Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) carried out by the Wehrmacht, or German army, demonstrated the failure of that option. On May 15, the French front was breached, and after the German attacks on the regions of the Somme (June 7) and Aisne (June 10), French defeat was complete. On June 10, the government left Paris, which the German troops entered on the 14th. One week later, they were in the city of Bordeaux. The French debacle was massive. More than 90,000 soldiers died in combat, 200,000 were wounded and 1,850,000 taken prisoner. At least 8 million panic-stricken people took to the roads in an exodus toward the South that revealed “the huge scale of this event, which one could not describe in its entirety,” as well as “the fragility of social structures and the magnitude of the crisis the nation was going through.” “Marshall Pétain, whom the majority of the French perceived as a last resort and the only solution for survival, imposed the political choice of an armistice on this stranded country.” (P. Laborie, p. 591 in Dictionnaire historique de la Résistance by François Marcot, Bruno Leroux and Christine Levisse-Touzé (eds.), Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 2006) It was signed with Germany on June 22 in the Compiègne forest, in the clearing of Rethondes, and with Italy on June 24. In this way, and not through surrender and continuation of the struggle in another form, the Vichy regime was imposed. Collaboration with Germany came with it. Officially, the Vichy regime was created on July 10, 1940, when both chambers of the French parliament voted to give full powers to Marshall Pétain. The new French head of State then controlled all instruments of government, both in the executive and the legislative branches.

France occupied zones 1940-1944 But the Armistice had other immediate consequences: the partial occupation of French territory and its division into several zones placed under the control of different political authorities (cf. maps). Germany occupied three-fifths of mainland France: the areas with the most economic potential and the Atlantic and Northern coasts. The Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich (MBF) (the German Military Command in France) was set up in Paris to administer this “occupied zone.” Otto von Stülpnagel took control of it in October 1940. The French government was established in Vichy, in the “free zone”; a “front line,” which became a “ligne de démarcation” (a demarcation or boundary line) separated these two “North” and “South” zones. The armistice signed with Italy led to a minor reduction of the size of the free zone under total control of the Vichy regime, as about 15 French communes (districts) – mainly in the region of Alpes-Maritimes – were administered by Italy.
Defeat and occupation divided the country still more, carving it up (E. Alary, 2003: 17-37). Before the armistice was even signed, the two départements (French geographical and administrative units) of the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais were added to the Military Command for Belgium and Northern France, based in Brussels (Militärbefehlshaber in Belgien und Nordfrankreich, MBB), and run by General von Falkenhausen. The June 22 armistice did not alter these dividing lines, which remained the same throughout the war.
It did not mention the de facto annexation of the three départements of Alsace and Moselle by Germany, which was taking place at the time, either; this was made official in October 1940. By June 20, Hitler had already named two Gauleiters (governors) for the civilian administration of these territories. Alsace was merged with Baden to form the Gau Oberrhein region, run by Robert Wagner; as for Moselle, it was associated to the regions of Saarland and Pfalz (Palatinate), and together they formed the Gau Westmark region, under Josef Bürckel’s control. French borders disappeared as the old boundaries of the Frankfurt Treaty of May 1871 were reinstated, and a German Customs service set up along them. The deportation convoys heading to Metz officially entered the German Reich at Novéant – Neuburg an der Mosel – on the border of annexed Moselle.
Another consequence of the defeat was that the German authorities maintained a “zone interdite” (“forbidden zone”) which they had created in summer 1940 in the North and East of the country, in order to prevent the return of displaced persons that had left during the exodus; it extended through 17 départements, all the way to the Swiss border. The perimeter of this zone was guarded until December 1941. Starting in April 1941, a forbidden coastal zone was created in the occupied area, all along the shoreline from the Basses-Pyrénées to the Nord, due to its strategic importance.
Finally, a significant new territorial change took place: the invasion of the southern zone on November 11, 1942 resulted in the occupation of all of French territory; the region east of the Rhône river valley and Corsica were left under control of Mussolini’s armed forces until the proclamation of the Italian armistice in September 1943. However, in the territories newly occupied by the Germans, the MBF’s authority was not immediately extended, in order to preserve the illusion of a sovereign Vichy government. These areas were qualified a “military operations zone,” and placed under the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief of the western front. To administrate them, he named a representative in Vichy, who was supposed to liaise with the French government, and a Commander of the military region of southern France, in order to administrate this sector according to the same directives issued to the Military Commander in the northern zone. In fact, the MBF’s services informally confirmed the rulings of the only military court set up in the southern zone (G. Eismann, 2007: 157).

This territorial fragmentation had essential political consequences, since it resulted in the creation of different occupation systems to administer areas that were part of France in 1939. There were two German military administrations (in the northern zone, run by the Command in Paris, and in the areas attached to the Brussels Command), a German Commander of armed forces in the southern zone after November 1942 (and an Italian Commander for the relevant occupied area), and two civilian administrations of the Reich for Alsace and Moselle. In these different zones, the Occupation was not managed identically; hence, neither was the persecution policy or the manner in which repression was run. The consequences of the evolution of the military conflict also differed in these zones. Therefore, this chronology does not include the histories of repression and persecution in the two départements administered by the German military Command in Brussels (E. Dejonghe, Y. Le Maner, 1999; L. Thiery, 2007), or in the three others annexed in effect to the Reich (P. Rigoulot, 1998 ; C. Neveu, 2007). However, we shall briefly summarize the nature and effect of such policies in these particular areas – which historians have not yet finished documenting to this day.

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