[6] Most of the French public initially supported the regime, but opinion turned against the Vichy government and the occupying German forces as the war dragged on and living conditions in France worsened.

Pétain was constitutionally appointed prime minister by President Lebrun on 16 June 1940 and he was legally within his rights to sign the armistice with Germany; however, his decision to ask the National Assembly to dissolve itself while granting him dictatorial powers has been more controversial.

[22] Political scientist Robert Paxton analysed the entire range of Vichy supporters, from reactionaries to moderate liberal modernizers, and concluded that genuinely fascist elements had only minor roles in most sectors.

[42] Typical of Vichy anti-British propaganda was the widely distributed pamphlet published in August 1940 and written by self-proclaimed "professional Anglophobe" Henri Béraud entitled, Faut-il réduire l'Angleterre en esclavage?

Others, particularly Vice-Premier Philippe Pétain and Commander-in-Chief General Maxime Weygand, insisted that the responsibility of the government was to remain in France and share the misfortune of its people; they called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

[49] As per the terms of the Franco-German armistice of June 22, 1940, Nazi Germany effectively annexed the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine while the German army occupied northern metropolitan France and all the Atlantic coastline down to the border with Spain.

[60]The Constitutional Acts of 11 and 12 July 1940[62] granted to Pétain all powers (legislative, judicial, administrative, executive and diplomatic) and the title of "head of the French state" (chef de l'État français), as well as the right to nominate his successor.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull hoped to use American influence to encourage elements in the Vichy government opposed to military collaboration with Germany.

[69] US General Mark W. Clark of the combined Allied command made Darlan sign on 22 November 1942 a treaty putting "North Africa at the disposition of the Americans" and making France "a vassal country".

After the assassination of Darlan on 24 December 1942, the Americans turned again towards Giraud to whom had rallied Maurice Couve de Murville, who had financial responsibilities in Vichy, and Lemaigre-Dubreuil, a former member of La Cagoule and entrepreneur, as well as Alfred Pose [fr], general director of the Banque nationale pour le commerce et l'industrie (National Bank for Trade and Industry).

On 24 December 1941 Free French forces on three corvettes, supported by a submarine landed and seized control of Saint Pierre and Miquelon on orders from Charles de Gaulle without reference to any of the Allied commanders.

Many Vichy officials, such as Pétain, were reactionaries who felt that France's unfortunate fate was a result of its republican character and the actions of its left-wing governments of the 1930s, in particular of the Popular Front (1936–1938) led by Léon Blum.

A number of these joined the units of the Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme (Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism) fighting on the Eastern Front, later becoming the SS Charlemagne Division.

Along with the 15 March 1944 Charter of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), which gathered all Resistance movements under one unified political body, these reforms were a primary instrument in the establishment of post-war dirigisme, a kind of semi-planned economy which led to France becoming a modern social democracy.

After Liberation, some of its units were merged with the Free French Army to form the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS, Republican Security Companies), France's main anti-riot force.

Camp Gurs, for example, had been set up in southwestern France after the fall of Catalonia, in the first months of 1939, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), to receive the Republican refugees, including Brigadists from all nations, fleeing the Francoists.

Charged with the "study, in all of its aspects, of measures aimed at safeguarding, improving and developing the French population in all of its activities", the Foundation was created by decree of the collaborationist Vichy regime in 1941, and Carrel was appointed as "regent".

[citation needed] The Foundation was behind the 16 December 1942 Act mandating the "prenuptial certificate", which required all couples seeking marriage to submit to a biological examination, to ensure the "good health" of the spouses, in particular with regard to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and "life hygiene".

[citation needed] Carrel's institute also conceived the "scholar booklet" ("livret scolaire"), which could be used to record students' grades in French secondary schools and thus classify and select them according to scholastic performance.

[citation needed] Besides these eugenic activities aimed at classifying the population and improving its health, the Foundation also supported an 11 October 1946 law instituting occupational medicine, enacted by the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) after the Liberation.

Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses.

[citation needed] Scholars such as Lucien Bonnafé, Patrick Tort, and Max Lafont have accused Carrel of responsibility for the execution of thousands of mentally ill or impaired patients under Vichy.

[133] This fact has been used as arguments by supporters of Vichy; according to Paxton, the figure would have been greatly lower if the "French state" had not wilfully collaborated with Germany, which lacked staff for police activities.

"[143][144] Stanley Hoffmann in 1974[145] and then other historians such as Robert Paxton and Jean-Pierre Azéma have used the term collaborationnistes to refer to fascists and Nazi sympathisers who, for ideological reasons, wished a reinforced collaboration with Hitler's Germany.

Philip Manow argued that, "Vichy represents the authoritarian, antidemocratic solution that the French political right, in coalition with the national Church hierarchy, had sought repeatedly during the interwar period and almost put in place in 1934".

The centralised bureaucratic control of the French economy was not a success, as German demands grew heavier and more unrealistic, passive resistance and inefficiencies multiplied and Allied bombers hit the rail yards.

[166] Hitler ordered Case Anton to occupy Corsica and then the rest of the unoccupied southern zone in immediate reaction to the landing of the Allies in North Africa (Operation Torch) on 8 November 1942.

Vichy continued to exercise its remaining jurisdiction over almost all of metropolitan France, with the residual power devolved into the hands of Laval, until the gradual collapse of the regime following the Allied invasion in June 1944.

Those who had engaged in the black market were also stigmatised as "war profiteers" (profiteurs de guerre), and popularly called "BOF" (Beurre Oeuf Fromage, or Butter Eggs Cheese, because of the products sold at outrageous prices during the Occupation).

Executions without trials and other forms of "mob justice" were harshly criticised immediately after the war, with circles close to Pétainists advancing the figures of 100,000 and denouncing the "Red Terror", "anarchy", or "blind vengeance".