Épuration légale
Only 791 executions were carried out, including those of Pierre Laval, Joseph Darnand, and the journalist Robert Brasillach; far more common was dégradation nationale ('national degradation') – a loss of citizenship privileges meted out to 49,723 people.
[1] Immediately following Liberation France was swept by a wave of executions, public humiliations, assaults and detentions of suspected collaborators, known as the épuration sauvage (wild purge).
[2] This period succeeded the German occupational administration but preceded the authority of the French Provisional Government, and consequently lacked any form of institutional justice.
[6] After Liberation, the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) led by Charles de Gaulle was faced with rebuilding the country and removing traitors, criminals and collaborators from office.
The French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN), which became the GPRF on 4 June 1944, issued an ordonnance in Algiers on 18 August 1943, setting the basis for the judicial purge and establishing the Commission d'Epuration).
In metropolitan France the official purge began in early 1945, although isolated civil trials and courts-martial, as well as thousands of extra-legal vigilante actions had already been carried out through 1944, as the nation was freed.
Women accused of "horizontal collaboration" were arrested, had their heads shaved, and were exhibited, and sometimes mauled by crowds for sexual relationships with Germans during the occupation.
Following the landings in North Africa in November 1942, some important civil servants loyal to Vichy, including Pierre Pucheu, a former minister of the interior, were detained.
[9] Three major types of civilian courts were set up: A fourth category, military courts-martial, had jurisdiction over French citizens charged with pro-German military acts and German nationals charged with war crimes, such as Pierre Pucheu, Vichy Minister of the Interior, and Nazi Germany's ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz.
[9] While the laws of 1939 included provisions against treason, the particular nature of events related to the Occupation of France made a number of offenses legally unclear, such as joining the SS or the paramilitary Milice.
More importantly, this prevented local Resistance movements from doing vigilante "justice" themselves, ending the "combative" period of the Liberation and restoring the proper legal institutions of France.
Indignité nationale was characterised as "harming the unity of France and neglecting one's national duty", and the sentence aimed in particular at prohibiting guilty individuals from exercising political functions.
The French concentration camps used by the Vichy regime to intern Jews, Romani, Spanish Republicans, Resistants and others, were now used to detain presumed collaborationists.
In Paris, these included the Velodrome d'Hiver, the Drancy internment camp (managed by the Resistance until the arrival of the gendarmerie on 15 September 1944) and the Fresnes prison, which held Tino Rossi, Pierre Benoit, Arletty, and the industrialist Louis Renault.
Tixier then stated on 30 August 1945 that although the war was not yet officially ended, further internments were prohibited except for cases of spying or major black marketeering.
For example, the General resident of Morocco, Charles Noguès, had been sentenced in absentia to 20 years of forced labour on 28 November 1947 but his indignité nationale was suspended on 26 October 1956.
