Vichy France - Fall of France and Establishment of The Vichy Regime - Conditions of Armistice and 10 July 1940 Vote of Full Powers - Vichy Government

Vichy Government

On 1 July 1940, the Parliament and the government gathered in the town of Vichy, their provisional capital in central France. Laval and Raphaël Alibert began their campaign to convince the assembled Senators and Deputies to vote full powers to Pétain. They used every means available, promising ministerial posts to some while threatening and intimidating others. They were aided by the absence of popular, charismatic figures who might have opposed them, such as Georges Mandel and Édouard Daladier, then aboard the ship Massilia on their way to North Africa and exile. On 10 July the National Assembly, comprising both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, voted by 569 votes to 80, with 20 voluntary abstentions, to grant full and extraordinary powers to Marshal Pétain. By the same vote, they also granted him the power to write a new constitution.

Most legislators believed that democracy would continue, albeit with a new constitution. Although Laval said on 6 July that "parliamentary democracy has lost the war; it must disappear, ceding its place to an authoritarian, hierarchical, national and social regime", the majority trusted in Pétain. Léon Blum, who voted no, wrote three months later that Laval's "obvious objective was to cut all the roots that bound France to its republican and revolutionary past. His ‘national revolution’ was to be a counterrevolution eliminating all the progress and human rights won in the last one hundred and fifty years". The minority of mostly Radicals and Socialists who opposed Laval became known as the Vichy 80. Deputies and senators who voted to grant full powers to Pétain were condemned on an individual basis after the liberation.

The legality of this vote has been contested by the majority of French historians and by all post-war French governments. Three main arguments are put forward:

• Abrogation of legal procedure
• The impossibility for parliament to delegate its constitutional powers without controlling its use a posteriori
• The 1884 constitutional amendment making it impossible to put into question the "republican form" of the regime

Partisans of the Vichy, on the contrary, point out that the revision was voted by the two chambers (the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies), in conformity with the law.

The argument concerning the abrogation of procedure is based on the absence and non-voluntary abstention of 176 representatives of the people - the 27 on board the Massilia, and an additional 92 deputies and 57 senators, some of whom were in Vichy, but not present for the vote. In total, the parliament was composed of 846 members, 544 Deputies and 302 Senators. One Senator and 26 Deputies were on the Massilia. One Senator did not vote. 8 Senators and 12 Deputies voluntarily abstained. 57 Senators and 92 Deputirs abstained involuntarily. Thus, out of a total of 544 Deputies, only 414 voted; and out of a total of 302 Senators, only 235 voted. Of these, 357 Deputies voted in favor of Pétain and 57 against, while 212 Senators voted for Pétain, and 23 against. Although Pétain could claim for himself legality - particularly in comparison with the essentially self-appointed leadership of Charles de Gaulle - the dubious circumstances of the vote explain why a majority of French historians do not consider Vichy a complete continuity of the French state.

The text voted by the Congress stated:

"The National Assembly gives full powers to the government of the Republic, under the authority and the signature of Marshall Pétain, to the effect of promulgating by one or several acts a new constitution of the French state. This constitution must guarantee the rights of labor, of family and of the fatherland. It will be ratified by the nation and applied by the assemblies which it has created.

The Constitutional Acts of 11 and 12 July 1940 granted to Pétain all powers (legislative, judicial, administrative, executive – and diplomatic) and the title of "head of the French state" (chef de l'État français), as well as the right to nominate his successor. On 12 July Pétain designated Laval as Vice-President and his designated successor, and appointed Fernand de Brinon as representative to the German High Command in Paris. Pétain remained the head of the Vichy regime until 20 August 1944. The French national motto, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood), was replaced by Travail, Famille, Patrie (Work, Family, Fatherland); it was noted at the time that TFP also stood for the criminal punishment of "travaux forcés à perpetuité" ("forced labor in perpetuity"). Paul Reynaud, who had not officially resigned as Prime Minister, was arrested in September 1940 by the Vichy government and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1941 before the opening of the Riom Trial.

Pétain was reactionary by nature, his status as a hero of the Third Republic notwithstanding. Almost as soon as he was granted full powers, Pétain began blaming the Third Republic's democracy for France's humiliating defeat. Accordingly, his regime soon began taking on authoritarian—and in some cases, overtly fascist—characteristics. Democratic liberties and guarantees were immediately suspended. The crime of "felony of opinion" (délit d'opinion, i.e., repeal of freedom of thought and of expression) was re-established, and critics were frequently arrested. Elective bodies were replaced by nominated ones. The "municipalities" and the departmental commissions were thus placed under the authority of the administration and of the prefects (nominated by and dependent on the executive power). In January 1941 the National Council (Conseil National), composed of notables from the countryside and the provinces, was instituted under the same conditions. Despite the clear authoritarian cast of Pétain's regime, he did not formally institute a one-party state, maintained the Tricolor and other symbols of republican France, and unlike many far rightists was not an anti-Dreyfusard.

The United States and the Soviet Union recognized the new regime, despite Charles de Gaulle's attempts, in London, to dissuade them. So too did Canada and Australia. Only the German occupation of all of France in November 1942 ended this diplomatic recognition.