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France’s division into two zones left citizens unable to freely move across the demarcation line.
The arts were promoted to preserve Paris’s artistic reputation. Here the Paris Opera is decorated with swastikas for a German music festival.
German soldiers integrated themselves into life in France. It was a crime to harm them and retribution was swift and lopsided. Sometimes dozens of French people would be killed in response.
Young Resisters like Simone Segouin smuggled messages, blew up trains, and captured German soldiers. France awarded her the Croix de guerre for her heroism.
Underground pamphlets and newspapers like Combat skirted censorship laws and helped keep the Resistance connected.
1.5 million French soldiers were shipped to Germany as prisoners of war. Germany would sometimes exchange sickly POWs for healthy young French workers.
Allies bombed 1,570 French towns and cities, causing almost 70,000 civilian deaths.
After the Allies took France’s African colonies from Vichy, they were subjected to Nazi attacks like this 1943 air raid on Oran, Algeria.
Hateful exhibitions were held on “The Jew and France.”
Germany confiscated much of France’s production of basic goods, creating shortages. This led to rationing cards and farmers selling food on the black market.
Jewish-owned businesses were required to post the owner’s religion on the window.
French communists, like this unidentified man arrested by German officers, were often tried in Vichy’s sections spéciales courts. The only sentences these courts could give were life imprisonment, hard labour, or death.
Britain sank France’s navy in July 1940 out of fears of it getting into German hands.
Statut des Juifs (Jewish Law) stripped many Jews of citizenship and property, barred them from working in professions, and banned them from some public places. 75,000 Jews in France were ultimately deported to Nazi extermination camps.
