Posters Artwork Documents

Incredibly, not a sick joke ...

\"Etat Francaise@

"Bad days are over - Papa is earning money in Germany". Propaganda image produced by the "État Francaise" collaborationist government at Vichy, promoting the advantages for French families where "Papa" went to work in Germany, 1942. Of course, some French people may have gone to work in Germany voluntarily. Many went under compulsion. In the early days of the Occupation, the Germans were sensitive to the sensitivities of the French administration, on whom they relied heavily to keep the country running, both in the "zone of occupation" and in the "free" Vichy zone. However, once they got the measure of the Vichy administration (not on the whole pro-German, but willing to do business with the Germans in order to retain some authority), the initial sensitivity faded. One consequence of this was that the requisitioning of horses (evident to Iréne Némirovsky as early as late-1940) expanded into the recruitment, then impressment, of young French people for forced labour in Germany. Whatever conflict of views as to the point at which Petain's regime became "collaborationist" in the modern sense, the undifferentiated support for the joys of "Papa's" engagement in the German workforce certainly meets this standard. Of course, for many young French men and women, the idea of being transported to Germany to labour in that country's economy was deeply unpopular. In the south of France in particular (where terrain favoured this option) many went "on the Maquis" for no more reason than to avoid the German labour draft. Many of these "maquisards" did little to damage the German war effort much beyond simply hiding in the hills. Others supplied much of the recruiting base for the active French Resistance movements that constituted a serious problem for the Germans by 1944. Best regards, JR.