After France's entry into World War II, authorities transferred the men to the camp of le Vernet and began to intern "suspicious and undesirable foreign women" in October 1939.

[2] Following the Battle of France, Rieucros fell in the southern unoccupied zone and the Vichy regime assumed control of the camp from Third Republican authorities.

As the Spanish Civil War came to a close in the first months of 1939, the armies of soon to be dictator Francisco Franco drove nearly 500,000 refugees north across the border with France.

As a result, the majority of the interned populations in France on the eve of World War II were the first victims and opponents of European fascism, allowing for a near seamless takeover by the collaborationist Vichy regime when the Third Republic fell to Nazi Germany in June 1940.

The most significant vestige of the camp today is a carved rock that depicts a soldier with a gun and the dates 1789 and 1939, marking the 150th anniversary of the French Revolution.