Occupation : The Ordeal of France, 1940-44

Defeat in 1940 left the French so chastened and demoralized that they readily supported the Vichy regime, committed not just to pragmatic collaberation but to finding scapegoats for the nation's disgrace. Jews, Communists, pre-war politicians from the Third Republic, school teachers and Freemasons all fell victim to a witch-hunt which left plenty of scope for private grudges as well. Resistance came late: de Gaulle's appeal in 1940 for France to continue to fight went largely unheard, and the Occupation was fourteen months old before the first German soldier was killed by resistants. The public mood changed only as the Reicht's original correctness gave way to brutality and as events outside France prefigured possible German defeat. Even as Liberation approached, resistance was still local, small-scale and divided, never the mass army of later myth. Different visions of who should inherit France complicated the persuit of collaberators and foreshadowed the chaos of post-war politics.