His vehement antisemitism and hatred of left-wing politics led Auvity to welcome the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 and the collaborationist puppet government headed by Philippe Pétain, and he spoke out in favour of the Germans' imposition of forced labour on the French people.

[4] When Jules-Géraud Saliège, Archbishop of Toulouse, called for humanity towards the Jews, the prime minister, Pierre Laval, attempted to prevent the reading of the archiepiscopal letter in French churches.

[8] The prefect Henri Cordesse recorded in his memoirs that shelter was provided for Auvity at the Hôtel de Paris, the headquarters of the Kommandantur with a guard mounted by Armenians from the Ostlegionen chosen because they were unlikely to take notice of the demands of the population of Mende who wanted to "purge" their bishop.

Finally, François de Menthon, a fervent Catholic and Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government of the French Republic, ordered an investigation and concluded that it was too dangerous for Auvity to return to the diocese of Mende: "Many Catholics," he wrote, "think that Bishop Auvity has lost all authority, and consider that his return would not be without risk to his person, to public peace and to the peace of the Church".

[12] Auvity was then appointed titular bishop in partibus of Dionysiana and retired from public life to his hometown of Germigny-l'Exempt, where he died aged ninety on 15 February 1964.

[4] For the historians Patrick Cabanel and Annie Lacroix-Riz there is no doubt that Auvity, far from being a passive collaborationist obeying only the civil power, strongly supported Nazism.

[13] This is seen in his various positions in favour of the STO, of the Milice, of Joseph Darnand,[14] of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front,[15] and against the dissemination of the pastoral letter Et clamor Jerusalem ascendit[n 2] by the archbishop of Toulouse, exhorting Catholics to a duty of humanity towards the Jews.

[18] Auvity never raised any protest either against the inhumane conditions of internment of anti-fascists, Jews or "undesirable foreigners" at the Rieucros Camp[19] set up in the outbuildings of the former Mende seminary under his episcopate (1939).