Of contested legitimacy, it was headquartered in the town of Vichy in occupied France, but it initially took shape in Paris under Marshal Philippe Pétain as the successor to the French Third Republic in June 1940.

Pétain blamed a lack of men and material for the defeat,[4] but had himself participated in the egregious miscalculations that led to the Maginot Line, and the belief that the Ardennes were impenetrable.

[5] Nonetheless, Pétain's cautious and defensive tactics at Verdun had won him acclaim from a devastated military, and poet Paul Valéry called him "the champion of France".

[10] As President Jacques Chirac subsequently acknowledged, even Mussolini stood up to Hitler and in so doing saved the lives of thousands of Jews, many of them French.

In the wake of the Battle of France that culminated in the disaster at Dunkirk, the French government declared Paris an open city and relocated to Bordeaux on 10 June 1940 to avoid capture.

The terms of the armistice sketch out a "French State" (État français), whose sovereignty and authority in practice were limited to the zone libre, although in theory it administered all of France.

On the advice of François Charles-Roux, the Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs, and with the support of Maxime Weygand and Lebrun, Pétain stood firm, which led Laval to withdraw, followed by Marquet in solidarity.

[12] Pétain obtained the participation of the SFIO by bringing back Albert Rivière and André Février [fr] with the agreement of Léon Blum.

On 10 July 1940, the French National Assembly Assemblée nationale met in Vichy and voted to give absolute power to Pétain in the Constitutional Law of 1940, effectively dissolving itself, and ending the Third Republic.

Meanwhile, on 11 July General de Gaulle created the Empire Defense Council, which was recognized by the British Government as the legitimate successor of the Third Republic, which had allied itself with Great Britain in the war against the Nazis.

Nazi propaganda leaflet suggesting French workers travel to Germany to support the war effort on the eastern front (1943)[21] The voluntary relève, was replaced by the Service du travail obligatoire (STO) which began in August 1942 throughout occupied Europe.

[23] On 1 January 1943, Sauckel demanded, in addition to the 240,000 workers already sent to Germany, a new contingent of 250,000 men, before mid-March[25] To meet these objectives, German forces organised ineffectively brutal raids, which led Laval to propose to the Council of Ministers on 5 February 1943 legislation creating the STO, under which youth born in 1920-1922 were requisitioned for work service in Germany[26] Laval mitigated his legislation with many exceptions.

[35] After two years at the head of the Vichy government, Admiral Darlan was unpopular and had strengthened ties with Vichy forces, in an expanded collaboration with Germany which seemed to him the least bad solution, and had conceded a great deal, turning over the naval bases at Bizerte and Dakar, an air base in Aleppo in Syria, as well as vehicles, artillery and ammunition in North Africa and Tunisia, in addition to arming the Iraqis.

In exchange Darlan wanted the Germans to reduce the constraints under the armistice, free French prisoners, and eliminate the ligne de démarcation.

[42] With permission from the Germans, he attempted to call back the prior National Assembly with the goal of giving it power[43] and thus impeding the communists and de Gaulle.

[44] So he obtained the agreement of German ambassador Otto Abetz to bring Édouard Herriot, (President of the Chamber of Deputies) back to Paris.

[44] But ultra-collaborationists Marcel Déat and Fernand de Brinon protested against this to the Germans, who changed their minds[45] and took Laval to Belfort[46] along with the remains of his government, "to assure its legitimate security", and arrested Herriot.

[52] The Germans, wanting to present a facade of legality, enlisted other Vichy officials such as Fernand de Brinon as president, along with Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire, Eugène Bridoux, and Marcel Déat.

[53] On 7 September 1944,[54] fleeing the advance of Allied troops into France, while Germany was in flames and the Vichy regime ceased to exist, a thousand French collaborators (including a hundred officials of the Vichy regime, a few hundred members of the French Militia, collaborationist party militants, and the editorial staff of the newspaper Je suis partout) but also waiting-game opportunists[b] also went into exile in Sigmaringen.

[59] The length and extent of each colony's collaboration with Vichy ran a gamut however; antisemitic measures met an enthusiastic reception in Algeria, for example.

The German military administration cooperated closely with the Gestapo, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the SS, and the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo), its security police.

It also drew support from the French authorities and police, who had to cooperate under the armistice, to round up Jews, anti-fascists and other dissidents, and from collaborationist auxiliaries like the Milice, the Franc-Gardes and the Groupe mobile de réserve.

In February 1941, Free French Forces invaded Cyrenaica, led by Leclerc,[clarification needed] and captured the Italian fort at the oasis of Kufra.

[68] German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop complained to Mussolini that "Italian military circles ... lack a proper understanding of the Jewish question.

[73] President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull hoped to encourage elements in the Vichy government opposed to military collaboration with Germany.

The Americans also wanted Vichy to resist German demands for its naval fleet or air bases in French-mandated Syria or to move war supplies through French territories in North Africa.

France for a long time took the position that the republic had been disbanded when power was turned over to Pétain, but officially admitted in 1995 complicity in the deportation of 76,000 Jews during WW II.

[74][75] The police under Bousquet collaborated to the point where they themselves compiled the lists of Jewish residents, gave them yellow stars, and even requisitioned buses and SNCF trains to transport them to camps such as Drancy.

The international tribunal at Nuremberg called Vichy régime agreements with the Nazis for deportation of citizens and residents void ab initio due to their "immoral content".

Article 2: The following are therefore null and void: all legislative or regulatory acts as well as all actions of any description whatsoever taken to execute them, promulgated in Metropolitan France after 16 June 1940 and until the restoration of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.