Zone libre

It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Philippe Pétain based in Vichy, in a relatively unrestricted fashion.

In November 1942, the zone libre was invaded by the German and Italian armies in Case Anton, as a response to Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa.

On 22 June 1940, after the Battle of France, Wilhelm Keitel, representing Nazi Germany, and Charles Huntziger, representing Pétain's government, signed an armistice at the Rethondes clearing in the forest of Compiègne, which stipulated in its second article: With a view to safeguarding the interests of the German Reich, the French territory situated to the north and west of the line drawn on the map here attached will be occupied by German troops.

Thence, it passes at a distance of twenty kilometres to the east of the Tours-Angoulême-Libourne railway line, then further by Mont-de-Marsan and Orthez, up to the Spanish border.

[1]When the Allies invaded North Africa on 8 November 1942, the Germans and Italians immediately occupied the remaining free part of France.

These laws barred Jews from many aspects of daily life including work and naturalization as French citizens.

Jews continued to be stripped of their rights and forced out of French society over the two years of existence of the zone libre.

[9] Official justification for the laws varied slightly but held with the top-down anti-Semitism characteristic of the Vichy government at this time.

The General Commission on Jewish Affairs stated plainly that these laws were justified in their moral humiliation of Jews and were completely of French origin.

[10][13] After the capitulation of Italy at Cassibile became public knowledge on 8 September 1943, the Italian armies retreated and the Germans united the southern zone under their own exclusive control.

The zone libre was also called the royaume du maréchal ("Marshal Philippe Pétain's kingdom") by the French author Jacques Delperrié de Bayac.