A review by paulataua
Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order by Robert Paxton

4.0

I rarely find myself reading history books these days, but ‘Vichy France’ was a totally engaging experience. Paxton focuses in on the Vichy government during the German Occupation. Two things really struck me. The first was a growing awareness of why the ‘Vichy’ French felt the need to actually collaborate with Germany even when the Germans, to some extent, seemed fairly uninterested in that collaboration. Having been defeated and occupied, and I think believing, as most people did at that time, that Germany would soon win the war, it was important to insure against losing French land to their victors, losing their colonies to Germany’s allies, and seeing their economy destroyed in the post war peace talks. This was a genuine concern following the way France and the Allies had squeezed ‘the German lemon until the pips squeaked’ following the 1914-18 war. It was something I never really thought about before. The second thing that struck me was how that Vichy government used the occupation to push through their own nationalist, anticommunist, and racist policies by suggesting a German coercion that didn’t seem to have existed. I am always amazed to find out how fascistic and antisemitic the whole of Europe was between the wars, and how much we like to heap all our sins on Hitler and the Nazis. People are so naughty!