Persecution and Rescue: The Politics of the “Final Solution” in France, 1940-1944

Citation preview

Page ix →

Abbreviations ADAPAkten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik ANArchives nationales BArchBundesarchiv BdSBefehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD CDCCaisse des dépôts et consignations CDJCCentre de documentation juive contemporaine CGQJCommissariat général aux questions juives GestapoGeheime Staatspolizei GMRGroupes mobiles de la réserve HSSPFHöherer SS- und Polizeiführer JOJournal Officiel MBFMilitärbefehlshaber in Frankreich MEFMinistère de l’économie et des finances MPIMinistère de la production industrielle OB WestOberbefehlshaber West OKHOberkommando des Heeres OKWOberkommando der Wehrmacht PQJPolice aux questions juives RAMReichsaußenminister RGBl.Reichsgesetzblatt RSHAReichssicherheitshauptamt SCAPService du contrôle des administrateurs provisoires SDSicherheitsdienst SECSection d’enqûete et de contrôle SipoSicherheitspolizei SOLService d’ordre légionnaire UGIFUnion générale des Israélites de France

VOBlFVerordnungsblatt fГјr die besetzten franzГ¶sischen Gebiete Page x →

Page xi →

Preface to the U.S. Edition This book was initially planned as part of a comparative study on the implementation of the Holocaust in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Not only did the study become too voluminous for an extended book chapter, but it developed into a story revealing paradoxes peculiar to the French case yet nevertheless illuminating when it comes to the dynamics of state-sponsored mass crime in general. As a result, I decided to develop the study into a separate book, originally published in German in 2010 by Konstanz University Press. The German occupation of France from 1942 to 1944 claimed the lives of some 80,000 Jews. Between March 1942 and August 1944, 77,000 Jews were deported from France to Auschwitz and other extermination camps, where almost all of them were murdered in gas chambers or perished through forced labor, hunger, and violence. Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people perished in the internment camps on French soil, were shot as hostages, or were killed as resistance fighters. Yet around 75 percent of the approximately 320,000 Jews who were registered in the occupied part of France in the fall of 1940 and in the unoccupied part of France in 1941 survived. It is common knowledge that the French government, which took up residence in the spa town of Vichy in Burgundy after the military defeat of France in June 1940, did not put up resistance when the Germans asked for support in the persecution and deportation of the Jews. On the contrary, it initiated its own persecution agenda, in the form of anti-Jewish laws, and did not hesitate to place the French police and administration at the disposal of the Germans for raids against and deportations of Jews. French collaboration forms the focal point of non-German research on the subject, beginning with the trailblazing books by Serge Klarsfeld, on the one hand, and Robert Paxton and Michael Marrus, on the other. German scholars, by contrast, consistently Page xii →emphasize that the focus on French coresponsibility should not overshadow the original German guilt. These contrasting approaches notwithstanding, the relevant research literature confronts, explicitly or implicitly, a dual paradox. One paradoxical aspect is the apparently low level of Jewish victimization in France, where deportees comprised 25 percent of the Jewish community in 1940, compared with 49 percent in Belgium and 76 percent in the Netherlands. At first glance, this level is puzzling, given both the anti-Semitic ideological stance of the Vichy regime and its willingness to collaborate with the Germans in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” A second paradoxical aspect is the conjecture that the relative independence and autonomy of the French government and, as a consequence, the dependence of the German persecutors on French police forces and French administrative support imply not only that Vichy was jointly responsible for the fate of the 80,000 Jewish victims but also that it contributed in some way to the rescue of the majority of the Jews living in France during the German occupation. How these facts and figures should be interpreted remains a matter of both scholarly and political controversy in present-day France, a controversy to which a German scholar has, for obvious reasons, not much to contribute. Ignoring the paradoxes outlined above, however, is not an option either. Taking the substantial differences in levels of Jewish victimization in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands as a point of departure, my own approach to the topic was initially based on hypotheses concerning structural analysis, particularly on concepts of network analysis. These initial assumptions chiefly concerned the relative power of the core group of perpetrators, the SS and the Gestapo, within the respective occupation regimes.1 The assumption that there was a positive correlation between the relative strength of the SS and Gestapo apparatus, on the one hand, and the relative degree of Jewish victimization in a given country or territory under German rule during World War II, on the other, seemed to be well founded. This hypothesis worked well for Belgium and the Netherlands. The high victimization rate in the Netherlands was bound up with the fact that the SS was able to establish its own institutional model in which both the separate vertical integration of the police services and the exclusion of the Jews from the ordinary domestic jurisdiction were fully implemented. In Belgium, by contrast, the SS and Gestapo apparatus remained part of the general military administration for almost the entire period of German occupation, and the administrative treatment of the Jews remained, to a certain extent, a matter of local discretion. Page xiii →Viewed from this perspective, however, the French case proved to be even more puzzling. Initially,

the SS and Gestapo apparatus in France was weak in important respects. The Wehrmacht, which was in charge of the overall occupation administration, was in a particularly strong position and was determined to prevent the SS from acquiring any competences at all. From the fall of 1941 onward, though, the SS in France continuously gained in strength, culminating in an outright turf battle with the Wehrmacht over security issues and related competences, in which the SS ultimately prevailed. The result was the installation of a senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer) and, accordingly, a separate hierarchical pillar that remained part of the German military administration formally but was directly subordinated in practice to the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) and to Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and head of all German police forces. The increase in SS power did lead to immediate steps to enforce the “Final Solution,” but that was only a temporary development. After an initial wave of large-scale arrests and the deportation of more than 40,000 Jews in 1942 alone, the monthly deportation rates fell significantly from October 1942 on and never reached the initial level again. Of course, the counterintuitive parallel between an increase in SS power and a decrease soon afterward in the intensity of deportations could have had additional causes, such as more Jews going into hiding, a decreasing inclination of local police forces to collaborate in the persecution, or even insufficient transportation capacity. But there is clear documentary evidence that the deceleration of the pace of deportation was directly connected with the decision by the upper echelons of the SS to contain the political costs incurred by the Vichy government as a result of the massive deportations in the summer of 1942. Thus the increase in the power of the SS and the ultimate decrease in the deportations were causally linked in a paradoxical way that defied my initial assumption of a positive correlation between the strength of the perpetrator and the level of Jewish victimization. The newly acquired strength of the SS was primarily political in nature—which forced the SS to accept compromises for the sake of its overall political influence in France. As a result of those compromises, the lives of the majority of the Jews living in France were saved. The escalation in the persecution reached a critical juncture when the Vichy government came under pressure from just a handful of nevertheless particularly influential dignitaries of the Christian churches, who, in July and August 1942, expressed their revulsion at the wholesale arrests and deportationsPage xiv → of Jews, including women and children, more than 12,000 of whom were herded together in the VГ©lodrГґme d’Hiver in the middle of Paris. The present study, therefore, is intended as a contribution to explaining the multiple paradox of the containment of the implementation of the “Final Solution” in France under conditions of a collaborating anti-Semitic domestic regime and the increasing strength of the core group of perpetrators in the guise of the SS and Gestapo apparatus. The theoretical argument on which this contribution is based is that structural analyses of power and influence have to be complemented by causal process tracing that focuses on the actual causal mechanisms linking institutional structures to the conduct of perpetrators and their accomplices. The principal finding is that the course of the persecution of the Jews under German occupation between 1940 and 1944 was shaped not by the positional strength of key actors as such but by the very interaction between those actors, with manifest and latent bargaining functioning as the core mechanism. Two pieces of literature that had not yet been published when the German edition of this book was in the making proved to be particularly helpful in sharpening this argument. One was Charles King’s plea for the analytical disaggregation of the Holocaust in the sense of investigating what he calls “the microfoundations of violent politics” and their reaggregation to mass crime.2 Another methodological pointer was provided by Peter HedstrГ¶m and Petri Ylikoski in their article “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences,” in which they differentiated situational, action formation, and transformational mechanisms.3 These two papers provided the basic orientations for more precisely conceptualizing the linkage between the structural conditions of the German occupation regime in France between 1940 and 1944 and the actual behavior of perpetrators and accomplices. The empirical contribution of the present book is connected, at least indirectly, to the French debate over the culpabilitГ© de Vichy—Vichy’s guilt—insofar as the analysis of the relevant causal processes reveals that the rate of Jewish victimization in German-occupied France was not “low” but actually significantly high. The percentage of the Jews who became victims over the course of the implementation of the “Final Solution” in France was “low” only in international comparison. However, once we compare the initial with the advanced phases of the persecution and collaboration, it becomes clear that Vichy could have said no at

the very outset. In June and July 1942, the French government independently decided to make French police forces and French administration available for the arrest and deportation of the Page xv →Jews, just as it autonomously decided to revoke, in part at least, this kind of collaboration in early September 1942. As a result, the SS leadership in Paris found itself compelled to report to Adolf Eichmann in Berlin that because of political concerns on the part of the Vichy government, a “deportation of substantial contingents of Jews is not possible.” What is more, the fact that Vichy initially decided to support the Germans in the deportation of the Jews was connected with the definition of the immediate target group—foreign and “stateless” Jews—which, in turn, was the result of xenophobia combined with anti-Semitism as a central feature of Vichy ideology. These ideological motives notwithstanding, the more astute actors within the Vichy government had recognized that the SS was willing to make concessions in exchange for French collaboration in what the Germans called “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” So they asked for more autonomy, better equipment, and larger training facilities for the French police forces. Vichy collaboration in the “Jewish Question” was thus driven by both ideological and pragmatic-utilitarian motives. But the pragmatic-utilitarian motives ultimately prevailed when collaboration proved to be too costly in political terms. This is why, when it comes to the methodology of case studies, the French case in the history of the Holocaust is both “typical” and potentially “influential.”4 What is typical is the connection between ideological and pragmatic-utilitarian motives as the decisive driving force of complicity in a mass crime. The potential influence of the case analysis, however, stems from changing and partly counterintuitive behavioral patterns among the accomplices. In certain phases, ideological and pragmatic-utilitarian motivations reinforced each other; in other—decisive—phases, the pragmatic calculus of Vichy prevailed over its general ideological inclination. This is why the very same key figures on the French side decided to attenuate the support for the German persecution measures that they had willingly granted at earlier stages. It follows that to ignore Vichy’s contribution to the ultimate failure of the “Final Solution” in France is just as misleading as to deny Vichy’s responsibility for the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews at the request of the Germans. What may make these findings ambivalent for the internal French debate is not the reconstruction of the historical facts as such but their significance for coming to terms with what Henry Rousso has called the “Vichy Syndrome”5 and the related challenge to present-day identity building. Vichy, as Olivier Wieviorka has concluded, continues to be a metaphor for Page xvi →French identity.6 However, causal analysis and identity building may collide. Identity-building efforts are prone to adopt schematic categorizations of actors and behavioral patterns. The present study, by contrast, attempts not only to qualify structural analyses but also to underline the ambiguity of role patterns and thus the opportunity to reverse a chosen course of action. What is significant about Vichy is not “Vichy’s guilt” but the variation between complicity and latent or overt obstruction and the corresponding different degrees of responsibility. What is significant about the German persecutors is not their unrelenting drive to persecute but the flexibility they exhibited in implementing that drive and their ability to forge tactical compromises. What is significant about the passive observers such as the churches—who initially behaved as classic bystanders—is not their timidity but the transformation of the passivity of key figures among the clergy into declared opposition to the deportations. My claim is that we fail to do justice to the normative impulse of genocide research—that is, causal analysis for the purpose of learning and prevention—through insufficient differentiation. Categorizing actors according to fixed role patterns may facilitate the search for identity and the construction of counteridentities, but it obscures our view of role change and hence of another important dimension of causal analysis, namely, how mass crimes can be averted or, at any rate, mitigated. It is not just the accomplices who are ambivalent figures. In many cases, as Saul FriedlГ¤nder established at an early stage in research on the Holocaust,7 even those who oppose the crime turn out to be ambivalent. Their motives are not necessarily any more noble-minded than the motives of the accomplices are necessarily criminal. The argument of the present study is that the majority of the Jews in France survived because the mobilization of moral norms by key actors, specifically a small number of nevertheless influential representatives of the two Christian churches, shifted the power calculation of the accomplices without whom it would not have been possible to initiate the “Final Solution” in France. From September 1942

onward, the government in Vichy refused to implement Eichmann’s deportation program as it had been planned and agreed on, and the SS found itself unable to break the increasingly stubborn passive resistance. This shows that morality is not powerless in the face of genocide. The thesis is that moral norms become a power factor when moral and political judgment coincide and when key players have the ability and the opportunity to influence the opportunistic political calculations of the indifferent and the accomplices.

Page xvii →

Acknowledgments This book’s more inclusive studies on the persecution of the Jews in Western Europe that were conducted since 2000 were sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation as part of the research project Holocaust and Polycracy in Western Europe, 1940–1944. JГ¶rg Raab, now at Tilburg University, was my closest advisor in planning this project, particularly when it came to the analysis of the persecution networks. In my research on France, I collaborated for many years with Martin Jungius, whose reconstruction of the history of the economic persecution of the Jews in France from 1940 to 1944 appeared in Germany in 2008 under the title Der verwaltete Raub and in France in 2012 in a French translation entitled Un vol organisГ©: L’État franГ§ais et la spoliation des biens juifs 1940–1944. His advice and help were absolutely indispensable to me. Jean-Marc Dreyfus was an energetic supporter from the very beginning and, since then, has consistently provided indispensable advice. Marc Oliver Baruch preserved me from misjudgments in a number of instances and served as a role model when it came to connecting a source-based history of events with a political-historical assessment. Michael Mayer undertook the laborious task of reviewing the passages on the first phase of the deportations of Jews and on the preparation of the ultimately failed denaturalization law and provided me with helpful comments. Vicky Caron gave me important pointers on the history of the Catholic Church in France before and during the German occupation of 1940–1944. Sven Reichardt and Lutz Klinkhammer drew my attention to recent studies on the history of Italian fascism that were helpful for understanding the conduct of the Italian occupying power toward the Jews in southeastern France. From this project’s initial preliminary considerations, Stefan Martens, deputy director of the German Historical Institute in Paris, accompanied the entire undertaking—and, naturally, the studies on France in particular—with his wise counsel, Page xviii →practical suggestions, and, not least, warmhearted hospitality. To all of those mentioned in association with this project, I would like to express my very special thanks. Insa Meinen consistently supported me with countless suggestions and forms of assistance during our cooperation on two research projects. I am especially grateful for our stimulating discussions, especially since we did not always agree—for instance, in our valuation of how much the Catholic Church, as compared to military and geopolitical factors, influenced the government in Vichy. The valuation proposed here is that the moral protest alone would not have had any effects without the mechanisms of power, which, it should be noted, the Vichy regime itself provided. But a small number of prominent representatives of the Christian churches, though not the churches per se, nevertheless played a greater role in mobilizing the power for the good than I was originally willing to acknowledge. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, the companions, from its inception, of my research on the Holocaust in Western Europe, with whom I worked in close partnership in completing the comparative study on France, Belgium, and the Netherlands during their guest scholarship at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg / Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Konstanz in 2012. They took upon themselves the equally laborious and commendable task of reading the entire German manuscript prior to its translation into English. I am grateful to them for correcting some inaccuracies, as well as for references to additional sources and publications and to matters to which I had previously attached scant importance, such as the diplomatic pressure exerted by the US government on the Vichy regime after the first major wave of deportations in 1942. In addition to the German Historical Institute, I would also like to express my gratitude to another Parisian institution, the Fondation pour la MГ©moire de la Shoah, which generously funded the team workshops of the research project Holocaust and Polycracy in Western Europe, 1940–1944, as well as occasional translations and the coding of documents for the parts of the overall project on network analysis that do not feature in the present study. I remain indebted to Alexander Schmitz of Konstanz University Press for the professionalism, considerateness, and diplomatic persistence with which he saw the original version of this book through to publication. Iris

BrГ¤uning, a student assistant in my department, performed the numerous corrections and cross-checks of sources reliably, accurately, and with immense patience. Sonja Wassermann helped me to draw up the biographical Page xix →notes on the key players. Simon Fechti helped in producing the graphics, drew up the index of persons, and also provided numerous forms of technical assistance for the US edition. Tim Vogler was responsible for converting the deportation statistics into charts. Moritz Heuberger was responsible for locating many of the English-language editions of books cited, checking the quotations, and providing the relevant page references. Annette Flowe, Maria van Nieuwland, and RГ©ne Nebel prepared the index and provided technical support. Ariane Loeb of the archive service of the MГ©morial de la Shoah, Paris, provided me with amiable assistance in procuring source material. Claude Singer, director of the education service of the MГ©morial, was decisively supportive in obtaining the copyright for the reproduction of most of the documents and photographs used in the present edition of the book. To all of them, I would like to express my warmest gratitude. Angelika DГ¶rr supervised the entire manuscript, made numerous unspoken corrections, supervised the work of student assistants, delayed the overdue notices of the library and especially their enforcement, coordinated the acquisition and return of hundreds of books and printed sources, and put up with my dilatoriness, my spasmodic style of work, and the chaos in my office. There are few people to whom I am more indebted. It is with utmost appreciation that I express my gratitude and acknowledgment to those who made the US edition of this book possible. Ezra Suleiman, a friend for decades and personally involved in both Jewish and French recent history, established the contact to the University of Michigan Press. There, Melody Herr oversaw the project with stringency and enthusiasm, the stimulating effects of which were mutually reinforcing. Susan Cronin carefully provided indispensable technical assistance while Jill Butler Wilson took care of the tedious task of copyediting the entire manuscript that was coordinated by Mary Hashman. The Volkswagen Foundation generously funded the translation of the book from the German original. The decisive work on the US edition, however, was done by Ciaran Cronin, my translator. This involved not only putting what I had written into flawless English prose but also discussing countless details of terminology, wording, and style, which required our exchange of dozens of e-mails and files back and forth. All this was done serenely and expeditiously—at least on Ciaran’s side—for which I am extremely grateful. The German manuscript of the present book and the revised version for translation were written mostly in Switzerland, in the Seeburg in Kreuzlingen. I will always associate it with this wonderful place on the shores of Lake Page xx →Constance. I would like to express my thanks to the canton of Thurgau and to the city of Kreuzlingen for their hospitality. I beg the pardon of the Seepark administration for occasionally riding my bicycle on unmarked paths. None of this would have happened without the invitation to become a fellow at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg / Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Konstanz, which has the use of the Seeburg as one of its two locations. I am extremely grateful to Fred Girod, the manager of the institute, and his colleagues Ana Mujan, Daniela GГ¶pfrich, Christina Thoma, and Judith Zwick, for support that always struck the right balance between concern and leaving me to my own devices. Within my family, the writing of this book met with special interest and support, to which the sad subject matter and the reports from the sources contributed. I am grateful to my wife, Christiane, and my daughter Verena for cross-checking and critically commenting on the introduction. I thank Alexander and Leonie for their curiosity and their forbearance when I did not always come home punctually. All remaining factual errors and weaknesses are entirely my responsibility. Some twenty years ago, when I started thinking about what ultimately became the subject of the present book, I met an American colleague, a guest professor at my department, with whom I shared my first vague ideas. Although not at all in the same field, he took a spontaneous interest in my research and he told me why. His Jewish mother was deported from France under German occupation in World War II. During the round-up prior to deportation, she literally tossed her baby boy, probably just a few weeks old, into the arms of a French woman standing at the curbside of the road. The mother, according to all likelihood, was among those murdered in the gas

chambers. The boy, however, was rescued and grew up without knowing his date of birth or original name. His name does sound French though and although we lost sight of each other after the brief encounter in Konstanz I kept thinking, time and again, of the unlikely rescue of Richard Ned Lebow. Which is why I dedicate this book to him in profound fondness and appreciation.

Page 1 →

Introduction: Power, Power Sharing, and Mass Crimes Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely. —Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government Monopoly in the sale of ordinary goods and services is socially inefficient because it restricts output or supply. . . . This elementary argument has rarely been turned on its head. If monopoly in the supply of “goods” is socially undesirable, monopoly in the supply of “bads” should be socially desirable, precisely because of output restriction. —James A. Buchanan, “A Defense of Organized Crime?”

Subject and Objectives of the Study On Sunday, 23 August 1942, in the third year of the German occupation, a pastoral letter by Archbishop JulesGГ©raud SaliГЁge was read from most of the pulpits in the Catholic churches of the archdiocese of Toulouse. SaliГЁge protested against the deportation of thousands of foreign Jews from the unoccupied part of France. Many of these people had sought refuge in France against persecution by the Germans. Most of them had been held in detention camps by the French authorities. From there, the Jews—men, women, and children—were taken in buses and trains to the demarcation line between the unoccupied and occupied parts of France and were handed over to the German police under the direction of the Gestapo. After internment in the Drancy transit camp near Paris, the onward transport to Auschwitz followed some days or sometimes just hours later, under inhumane conditions in overfilled wagons. Most of the Jews were murdered in the gas chambers Page 2 →immediately upon arrival in Auschwitz. The key passage from SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter read as follows: There is a Christian morality and there is a human morality that imposes duties on us and recognizes rights. These rights and duties correspond to human nature. They come from God. One can violate them but no mortal has the right to suppress them. That children, women, men, fathers, and mothers are being treated like a herd of cattle and are being carted away to an unknown destination—it has been reserved for our era to witness this sad spectacle.В .В .В . The Jews are men and women, just as the foreigners are men and women. One cannot do anything one pleases to these men, to these women, to these fathers and mothers. They also belong to the human race; they are as much our brothers as the others. A Christian must not forget this.1 This appeal was not directed against the organized mass murder that began with the deportations. The archbishop was unaware of the scale of the crime that had commenced in plain view. SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter was guided by a simple moral impulse. He was outraged by the fate of the people earmarked for deportation, the brutal conditions under which they were taken from the camps or arrested, and the fact that this was all being conducted with the approval of the French government in Vichy and exclusively by French authorities and police. In other words, it was taking place in the unoccupied zone of France, where the German occupying power had not stationed troops or a police force and hence was not in a position to conduct or enforce the arrest and deportation of the Jews on its own. Nevertheless, SaliГЁge’s appeal did not contain any political statement or demand in the narrower sense. In particular, it did not make any direct accusation against the government in Vichy or the French authorities and police. Despite this, it had a profound political impact. It marked nothing less than the turning point in the persecution of the Jews in France in the years of the German occupation from 1940 to 1944. The pastoral letter of the archbishop of Toulouse ensured that other church dignitaries also made their protest public and that protests that had previously reached the leadership of the Vichy government through confidential channels now acquired public resonance. This directly affected the domestic political power base of the Vichy regime. Among the

latter’s identity-founding acts had been the demonstrative break with the French laicist republican tradition in the summer of 1940. The Catholic Church was grateful to the regime for this. It was Page 3 →among the most loyal partisans of the “new order” and of Marshal Philippe PГ©tain as a person. Senior Catholic clergymen had even followed with approval the anti-Jewish laws enacted by the Vichy government on its own initiative since 1940. Thus the massive protest against the deportations of the Jews did not just come unexpectedly. It impinged on the loyalty of a bastion of the power and hence the internal cohesion of the Vichy regime. However, the potential political difficulties were not only a problem for the head of state, PГ©tain, and the head of government, Pierre Laval. The German occupiers in particular depended on political stability in France as the precondition for exploiting the French economy for their own war effort and for a resource-efficient deployment of their own troops. In the summer of 1942, the latter appeared about to achieve victories in the Russian theater and North Africa that would decide the outcome of the war, as a result of which the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” would look after itself. If the French government, Germany’s reliable collaborator, could be assisted by temporarily slowing down the mass deportation of the Jews, this represented, even from the perspective of the SS, a minor disadvantage by comparison with a domestic political crisis. In precisely these terms, the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD [Sicherheitsdienst], or BdS) in Paris, Dr. Helmut Knochen, telegraphed the section head in charge in the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), Adolf Eichmann, on 25 September 1942. Eichmann’s deportation plan for France would never again be resumed in the form envisaged. Around 240,000, or 75 percent, of the 320,000 Jews registered in France in the fall of 1940 and in the summer of 1941 survived the German occupation. The number of victims as a percentage of the Jewish population was relatively low,2 but 80,000 people nevertheless fell victim to the persecution. They were thrown at the mercy of the German perpetrators by the Vichy government and its authorities or, especially in the final year of the occupation, were captured by the German special task forces and removed from their hideouts. Between March 1942 and August 1944, some 77,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz and other extermination and concentration camps, where they were murdered in the gas chambers or perished through slave labor, starvation, and daily violence. Between 3,000 and 4,000 Jews perished in the detention camps on French soil.3 Explanation is needed for both the relatively high rates of survival among the Jews living in France at the time of the German occupation and the deaths of 80,000 human beings Page 5 →whose only “offense” was that they belonged to a social minority defined as a target group for persecution by the ordinances of the German occupiers and the laws of the French government in Vichy. Page 4 → Fig. 1. Monthly figures of the Jews deported from France and from the Netherlands under German occupation, 1942–1944. The persistent decline in the numbers of deportees in France from September 1942 onward is clearly discernible. It was a result of considerations of political expediency on the part of the SS, which relinquished the immediate implementation of the deportation plan developed by Adolf Eichmann after the French head of government, Pierre Laval, had drawn their attention to the protest of high-level church dignitaries and the negative domestic political impact of the deportations. Around 77,000, or 24 percent, of the Jews resident in France in 1940 would nevertheless be deported to Auschwitz, where virtually all of them were murdered in the gas chambers or perished as a result of forced labor, hunger, and violence. In the Netherlands, by contrast, the deportation rate was 73 percent (102,000 of 140,000). (Data from Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz : Le rГґle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France—1942, vol. 1 [Paris: Fayard, 1983]; Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 [2006]: 437–73. Copyright Wolfgang Seibel.) The present study has two objectives. First, it attempts to explain why the very same actors who radicalized the persecution of the Jews a short time later went on to contain it. The central thesis of the study is that the dynamic of the mass crime committed against the Jews under the German occupation in France from 1940 to 1944 was steered by the ambivalence of the power-sharing arrangement and that the radicalization or containment of the

persecution depended on whether the key actors on the German and French sides who were competing for shares in power were forced to include the effect of moral norms in their calculations, even though they did not share these norms themselves. Second, the study is concerned with the conclusions to be drawn from this finding. The implementation of the “Final Solution” in France reveals general mechanisms that operate to galvanize or neutralize the efforts of the perpetrators and their indispensable accomplices. The primary factor was the logic of reciprocity in negotiation systems, the willingness to accept immoral bargains, and the limits to which such bargains are subject. These mechanisms can be analyzed if we follow Charles King’s recommendation to “disaggregate the Holocaust”4—which, in turn, is unavoidable if one takes seriously the slogans “Learning from History” and “Never Again.” The complex configurations surrounding the mass murder of the Jews are not likely to occur again, but the elementary mechanisms of organized mass crimes are as ubiquitous as the chances for intervention.

Premises This book’s analytical approach is based on a variety of preliminary assumptions concerning the nature of the Nazi dictatorship, the properties of occupation regimes, and the related incentives that shaped the behavior of the relevant key actors. The assumptions are based on both empirical evidence and theoretical considerations. A Fragmented Persecution Machinery In the first place, it is important to realize that neither the occupation regime in general nor the persecution machinery of the Holocaust in particular was Page 6 →a meticulously organized, monolithic apparatus based on a hierarchical system of command and obedience. The persecution apparatus brought to bear against the Jews was part of the National Socialist “polycracy”—a system of power sharing with the Nazi Party (NSDAP) apparatus, the Wehrmacht, the bureaucracy, the economy, and the SS as its chief pillars—and the persistent rivalry and the struggles for power that shaped it. The SS, the central agency of the persecution and terror, was initially merely one of these rivaling authorities. But its influence increased continually from the beginning of the war onward, and its leadership left no doubt that it regarded itself as the decisive power elite in a Europe under German hegemony.5 The history of the Holocaust in general and of the Holocaust in Western Europe in particular is impossible to understand without bearing in mind the role of the SS as a political actor. From the summer of 1940, the SS first had to struggle to achieve the position of power in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands that it had already achieved in the Reich and in the Polish territories occupied since September 1939. The persecution of the Jews served as an important means in this power struggle in which the SS leadership sought to reconcile the political goal of relative dominance with the organizational goal of an effective administration of the persecution. For this reason, conventional notions concerning the role played by bureaucracy in planning and realizing the persecution and extermination of the Jews need to be relativized. Weberian concepts of bureaucracy as the backbone of a totalitarian machinery of state and as a smoothly functioning tool of a political leadership, such as those underlying earlier studies on the role of the administration in the Holocaust,6 tend to be misleading. Closer to the reality of the National Socialist terror apparatus are contributions to the theory of bureaucracy that emphasize the competition for power and influence within and between administrative bodies7 and that do not neglect the network-like structures of the persecution apparatus.8 The system of National Socialist polycracy was complemented under the conditions of an occupation regime by power sharing between the occupying power and the domestic authorities, a dynamic founded on the fact that the occupying power depended on the administrative and economic resources of the occupied country. This dependence was especially acute in the case of France because of the strategic importance of the country for the German conduct of the war.9 In June 1940, after the quick and resounding military victory, Hitler had personally seen to it that the terms of the cease-fire left France with a government of its own, an unoccupied part of the country, Page 7 →intact forces in the colonies, its navy, a functioning domestic security apparatus, and administrative sovereignty. In so doing, he overruled more far-reaching demands by Italy that would have adversely affected France.10 Italy saw France as a rival in the Mediterranean region and North Africa that had to be held in check. It also jealously guarded its competences in its own occupied zone in southeastern France. In 1942 and 1943, this would save the lives of tens of thousands of Jews who would otherwise have been arrested

and deported by the French police under the collaboration agreements with the Germans. Hitler, as he reiterated in his Directive No. 18 for the further conduct of the war in November 1940, wanted to “cooperate” with France “as effectively as possible for the future conduct of the war against England” and, in particular, to prevent the colonies from going over to the British camp or, what would have amounted to the same thing from a military perspective, to the de Gaulle camp.11 That meant leaving France in possession of corresponding material resources and allowing it a government that enjoyed the respect of the military in the colonies in particular. According to Hitler’s own assessment, a government under the leadership of Marshal Philippe PГ©tain offered favorable preconditions for this purpose, and the German side accepted that the representatives of the French government and administration stubbornly attempted to wrest competences and shares of power from the occupying power in negotiations. This was especially true in the pivotal domain of the police, control over which was, from the German point of view, decisive for implementing the persecution measures against the Jews. These circumstances—particularly the substantial room for action of the Vichy government; Hitler’s strategic deliberations concerning France; and the comparatively moderate stance of the Italian occupation power toward the German persecution measures against the Jews, ultimately ending in obstruction—have already been emphasized in detail in existing research.12 The research has been less thorough in addressing the ambivalent character of the actual power-sharing arrangement between the German occupiers and the Vichy regime and its implications for the persecution of the Jews. Researchers who have studied the political and administrative relations between the Germans and the French with regard to the persecution of the Jews have mainly depicted the German and French measures as being either mutually complementary or a product of direct collaboration. While German authors tend to underscore the primary responsibility of the Germans for the crimes committed against the Jews,13 French authors since the literally groundbreaking studies by Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton14 or, Page 8 →above all, Serge Klarsfeld,15 emphasize the coresponsibility of Vichy.16 Recent studies draw a more finegrained picture, though. Michael Mayer, in his comparative study of the roles played by the German and French ministerial bureaucracies in drafting the anti-Jewish legislation, points to the fact that the German occupying power in France was fundamentally unable to permanently cross the threshold separating segregation policy from extermination policy, because of its dependence on the French administration and police.17 While the classic accounts by Marrus and Paxton or Klarsfeld underlined how Vichy’s anti-Jewish policy, however limited, essentially dovetailed with its genocidal German counterpart, Jacques Semelin conversely emphasizes how the mutually reinforcing effects of Vichy’s reluctance to comply with outright mass murder, on the one hand, and the help and rescue efforts of countless French men and women, on the other, substantially reduced the rate of Jewish victimization.18 What both the classic and the more recent studies only implicitly address, however, is the institutional and political nature of the occupation regime as such and how it shaped the implementation of the “Final Solution” in France.19 Those topics are the focus of the present study. Its basic premise is that the powersharing arrangement between the German and French authorities gave rise to diverse forms of interaction that, in turn, had ambivalent effects on the persecution of the Jews. While the German efforts to execute the wholesale deportation of all Jews remained relentless, Vichy’s share of power was used for both supporting and restraining those efforts, depending on what appeared to yield the best obtainable gains in a complex bargaining pattern. The two quotations at the beginning of this introduction allude to this ambivalence. The conventional assumption formulated by Rudolph J. Rummel—“Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely”—implies that the concentration of power has the effect of unleashing mass crime. James Buchanan, by contrast, draws our attention to a rival hypothesis: that it is power sharing and competition for power, not a monopoly on power, that increases the “output” of crimes.20 Both theses hold for the path followed by the persecution of the Jews in France between 1940 and 1944. Power sharing, not the monopolization of power, shaped the relations between the occupying power and the domestic authorities in this area as well. Sometimes, the dynamic of power sharing had the effect of unleashing persecution; at other times, the absence of a German monopoly on power had the effect of containing persecution. Rivalry and competition dominated during the first Page 9 →phase of the occupation until the start of the planned deportations in July 1942, with the result that the French side pressed ahead with the

measures against the Jews in the economic domain in particular, in order to avoid having to surrender the relevant competences to the German bureaus.21 The phase of the deportations beginning in the summer of 1942, by contrast, was marked by a stable “state collaboration”22 in the police domain. However, this situation in particular extended the range of practical options open to the French side. The political bargain on which the German-French agreements rested continued to include inducements for the Vichy government to cooperate in the mass arrests and deportations of the Jews, but it simultaneously included a de facto veto option. Vichy exercised its veto option when the involvement in the mass arrests and deportations became too costly in domestic and foreign political terms. The protest, at the domestic level, of a limited number of prominent church leaders and the pressure exerted, at the level of foreign policy, by the Allies—above all, by the US government, which continued to maintain diplomatic linkages to Vichy—made collaboration in the area of the persecution of the Jews increasingly unattractive for the French side from the summer of 1942. Both the homogeneity or compatibility of the objectives of “Judenpolitik” on the German and French sides and the formal division of labor therefore had only a relative influence on whether the power-sharing arrangement between the occupying power and the home authorities intensified or hampered the persecution of the Jews. Playing an important role instead were the relevant modes of interaction between the two sides, according to whether it placed emphasis more on rivalry or on cooperation, and the associated political cost-benefit calculation on the Vichy side. The result of this calculation and hence the question of the expediency of the collaboration with Germany in the domain of the persecution of the Jews acquired increased importance in the stable form of state collaboration than under the unstable conditions of unclarified questions of competence and mutual rivalry. In the formal negotiations over the extent of the involvement of French police forces and French administrative agencies in the arrest and deportation of the Jews, services and quid pro quos could be clearly specified—and so also could the point at which it seemed advisable for the French side to intervene and say no. This was the French case’s essential difference both from the occupation regimes in which the domestic authorities, to the extent that they still existed, operated under a more rigid dependence on the German occupying power—an example in Western Europe being the Page 10 →Netherlands23—and from what Timothy Snyder has described as the selfpropelling violence in the “bloodlands” of Central and Eastern Europe, where the formal legal relations between the occupying power and domestic actors played a subordinate role.24 The Blurred Distinction between Perpetrators, Accomplices, Collaborators, Bystanders, and Resisters The preceding premise leads to a second. Perpetrators, accomplices, collaborators, “bystanders,” and those engaged in resistance were not clearly definable groups in the process of the persecution of the Jews. The classification itself goes back to Raul Hilberg25 and still fulfills an important heuristic function. But it necessarily neglects the complex political and organizational conditions governing an occupying regime in which the persecution of the Jews was embedded and therefore also the constantly changing and internally contradictory configurations of the key actors and their logics of action. A first impressive illustration was Marcel OphГјls’s 1969 documentary Le chagrin et la pitiГ©, but subsequent scholarly studies have underlined the complex and sometimes counterintuitive character of occupation, collaboration, and resistance. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma made intelligible how the continuity of political misperceptions and a fragmented society shaped what he termed “the French kaleidoscope,” multiple patterns of national coping during and postliberation identity building after German occupation.26 Philippe Burrin described the various paths of political and societal accommodation pursued by a nation traumatized by defeat but determined to strive on.27 Ian Ousby contrasted the intricate reality of occupation with the legend of a resisting nation, a myth that was, as he put it, counterfactual and simultaneously belittled the real rГ©sistance.28 Thomas J. Laub, in his study of the German occupation regime in France between 1940 and 1944, analyzed the multifaceted tactical twists in occupation policy and the internal tensions and conflicts of the German occupation administration, the authorities in Berlin to which it reported, and the numerous satellite organizations in occupied France.29 In his book on the Touraine and the lower Loire valley between 1940 and 1944, Robert Gildea depicted not only the diversity of the reactions to the German occupying regime in mainstream French society and at the local administrative level but also the contradictions and inconsistencies in the conduct of particular groups and individuals.30 Julian Jackson offered a fine-grained account of, on the one hand, how the complex Page 11 →and contradictory reality of occupation and collaboration

was rooted in prewar French political history and culture and, on the other hand, how it left a haunting imprint on postwar collective memory.31 In fact, only two groups remained constant throughout the persecution of the Jews in France: the core group of perpetrators within the SS and Gestapo apparatus and their Jewish victims. Accomplices such as the Wehrmacht were neutralized in part in the power struggle with the SS, though in certain areas of the persecution, especially the “Aryanization,” they guarded their perpetrator monopoly jealously. At first, collaborators like Pierre Laval and police chief RenГ© Bousquet made every effort, through active involvement in the deportation of the Jews, to induce the representatives of the German occupying power to extend French administrative autonomy. But they later adopted a passive stance on the implementation of the deportation and marginalized the radical antiSemites within their own government apparatus. “Bystanders” such as leading representatives of the two Christian churches became mainstays of the public protest against the persecution of the Jews. The SS, which, as a strategic actor in France, first had to prevail in the power struggle with the Wehrmacht, split, in turn, into a strategically planning and operating group around the senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer), on the one side, and the team of anti-Semitic fanatics of the “Jewish Desk” (Judenreferat) of the Paris Gestapo headquarters and in Section IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office under Adolf Eichmann, on the other. Whereas the latter was anxious to implement the measures of the Wannsee Conference without further ado and without political deference to the collaboration government in Vichy, the former made compromises with Vichy and sometimes suspended Eichmann’s meticulously planned deportation program. Mixed Motivations and the Mobilization and Demobilization of Coperpetrators The third and most important premise on which the approach of this book is based concerns the rationality governing the actions of those involved. If the latter acted in shifting constellations, sometimes as perpetrators or accomplices and sometimes as “bystanders” or resisters, in the persecution of the Jews, the assumption that their actions were informed by constant—for instance, ideological or economic—motives is misconceived. This issue has prompted a sometimes heated debate.32 The scholars engaged draw either implicitly or explicitly on a thesis already formulated by Hannah Arendt in Page 12 →1951—first, that part of the essence of totalitarianism is that murderers need not be driven by murderous motives and, second, that diverse and often banal motives become the root of extreme violence at the moment when images of a social enemy are defined in the interest of regime cohesion.33 Applied to conditions in France, this means that the government in Vichy had its own anti-Jewish agenda that was largely independent of the collaboration with the Germans in the “Jewish Question.” There were ideologically motivated collaborators among the French anti-Semites, but they in particular were isolated by Laval and Bousquet prior to the deportations of the Jews, in an attempt to strengthen and unify the French administrative apparatus vis-Г -vis the German occupiers. The core authorities of the Vichy regime did not collaborate with the German occupation administration and the SS for the sake of the persecution of the “Final Solution.” To be sure, they wanted to use this opportunity to get rid of the foreign Jews, but their primary concern was to maintain or recover competences for their own administration and their own police forces. The logic of political utilitarianism that spurred collaboration also operated in the opposite direction once the circumstances changed. When Laval made a request to the SS leadership in Paris in early September 1942 to slow down the deportations of the Jews, he did so not on moral grounds but because of the threat posed to the domestic political power base of the Vichy regime by the pressure being exerted by prominent Catholic clergymen in the “Jewish Question.” At this point in time, the SS itself did not want to jeopardize its role as the exclusive negotiation partner of Vichy in all policing issues, by insisting on Eichmann’s deportation plans, and therefore made an accommodation with Laval. Nevertheless, both partners, Laval and the SS, had an alert cynical appreciation of the moral norms that shaped not only the conduct of the church dignitaries but also, in particular, the behavior of the population and the response of public opinion.34 It follows that the key actors were capable of learning, albeit to different extents; for this reason alone, they were not confined to one particular pattern of behavior. This does not mean, however, that their conduct was erratic or that the rationalities governing their conduct were themselves arbitrary. Three constant impulses that perpetrators,

accomplices, “bystanders,” and resisters followed in shifting constellations are identifiable: the implementation of the objectives of the persecution, the realization of relative gains in the struggle over competences and shares of power, and the norms of morality. Page 13 →The persecution of the Jews under Nazi rule in Europe followed a master plan involving uniform organizational and legal measures, which, to be sure, were not everywhere realizable to the extent desired by the German side. Aggressive, “eliminationist” (per Daniel Goldhagen) anti-Semitism was a precondition of this plan in the sense of a trivial necessary condition,35 but it was by no means a necessary condition for implementing it. Once this plan had been adopted, the radical persecution of the Jews, including their physical elimination from mainstream society, was a fixed political goal for all of those directly or indirectly involved, independent of their own attitude, and was an operational administrative plan since the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942. For the Germans involved in the persecution, this “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was simply the “will of the FГјhrer,” which, in the description of an influential strand of the literature, was to be implemented unconditionally.36 For the political and administrative elites in the occupied countries, the high political priority accorded to the radical measures against the Jews by the German side was likewise more important than the question of ideological proximity or distance. The momentum and vehemence of the persecution of the Jews was a result of the fact that one did not need to be either a Nazi or an anti-Semite in order to participate in the persecution. On closer inspection, this diagnosis is far more disturbing than the notion that the perpetrators and their helpers had to have had murderous motives. If the boundaries between the perpetrators and their accomplices were fluid, perpetrators and accomplices could be indistinguishable when it came to the banality of their motives. “The trouble with Eichmann,” as Hannah Arendt wrote in her report on the court proceedings in Jerusalem in 1961–62, “was precisely that so many were like him, that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.В .В .В . This normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”37 This normality was far more terrifying, therefore, than if the participation of so many accomplices in the persecution and extermination of the Jews had been rooted exclusively in the ideological impulse of anti-Semitism, as Daniel Goldhagen has proposed in an anti-Arendt vein. The threshold to participation and hence to the realization of a mass crime marked by an extreme division of labor must have been much lower—more banal—than shared anti-Semitic convictions. Opportunism or compatible interests often sufficed. This is analogous to what Stathis Kalyvas has called the “disjunction of Page 14 →identities and action” and “disjunction of center and periphery”: endemic political violence is mobilized first and foremost not through the official ideologies that serve justificatory and propaganda purposes at the “central level” but through the secondary motives of the numerous perpetrators of violence at the “peripheral level,” which can range from material enrichment to settling old scores.38 Similar mechanisms of mobilization necessarily form the core of quasi-industrialized mass crime, which is the unique characteristic of the Holocaust. Participation in the persecution of the Jews was likewise based on a wide variety of banal but ubiquitous motives—which explains the enormous scope and scale of perpetrator and coperpetrator mobilization. In essence, however, the banality and opportunism of coperpetrator motives is at once disturbing and reassuring. Unlike ideological zeal, opportunism is based on implicit calculation. Once circumstances change, coperpetrator mobilization may falter as quickly as it was unleashed. To overemphasize anti-Semitism as a motivational factor in the implementation of the Holocaust would be not only to underestimate the potential for mass crime in the midst of society but also to ignore the potential for intervention and neutralization. It is virtually impossible to change the mind-sets of zealous perpetrators, but it is possible to influence the opportunistic calculations of their accomplices. This is exactly what happened in France when domestic protest against the deportations in July and August 1942 changed Vichy’s political balance sheet in a way that made even Laval recalculate the costs and benefits of collaboration in the “Jewish Question.” Institutionalized Mass Crime, Permissive Environments, and the Limits of Moral Indifference A fourth premise refers to the consequences of institutionalized mass crime and the limits of moral indifference.

What makes planned, organized mass criminality especially murderous is the institutionalization of diverse practical inducements. It leads to the extensive mobilization of accomplices at the periphery through the mobilization of the many partial rationalities governing the actions of various authorities and administrative branches and their numerous personnel for the centrally planned persecution and extermination process. This is what fundamentally justifies Hans Mommsen’s characterization of the Holocaust as the result of a “cumulative radicalization,”39 a thesis that can likewise be traced back to Hannah Arendt’s analysis Page 15 →of totalitarianism40 and has been defended and empirically corroborated in similar forms by Christopher Browning,41 Philippe Burrin,42 Ian Kershaw,43 Arno Mayer,44 Christian Gerlach,45 and, recently, Timothy Snyder.46 Whether the partly cooperative and partly competitive interaction among the various peripheral authorities radicalized the persecution of the Jews, as Mommsen suggests, or hampered it, as Wehler assumes,47 depended on, among other things, the extent to which the partial aims of the authorities involved were compatible with the goal of the persecution and eradication of the Jews and on the pressure with which the core group of perpetrators within the SS and Gestapo apparatus insisted on enforcing the persecution measures.48 But all of this occurred in a permissive ideological environment. It was an “anti-Jewish culture”49 that prepared the ground of moral indifference in the wider society50 and led to a genocidal mentality among the core group of perpetrators, the SS and Gestapo apparatuses,51 which turned the Jews into a legitimate target of, initially, a wide spectrum of repressive measures and, ultimately, murderous violence. This points to the role of morality and the state in creating what Benjamin Valentino has called “genocidal conditions.”52 Excluding social groups from the “universe of moral obligation” as “enemies by definition” (per Helen Fein)53 with the legitimation of the state54 amounts, as Hannah Arendt observed, to making them into outlaws against whom anything is permitted.55 This literally “permissive environment” is an essential presupposition of the genocide—but in the sense of a necessary, not a sufficient, condition. Whether one participated in the collective crime or not remained, as Arendt observed, an individual decision and a question of individual responsibility.56 The exclusion from the universe of moral obligation was not irreversible. This is shown not only by the phenomenon of the numerous “righteous” individuals who risked their own safety and lives to rescue Jews57 but also by the mobilization of moral values in public opinion through which the scope for action of the accomplices was restricted, as it was in the summer of 1942 in France by the public protest of some senior church leaders.58 Finally, the Holocaust belongs to the category of political mass crimes in which the official authorization of moral exclusion turned out to be the decisive factor.59 The connection between the ideological exclusion of the Jews from the “universe of moral obligation” and the authority of the state and its coercive and organizational potential proved to be a sufficient condition for the genocide. But what is the “state” under the conditions of an occupation regime? An Page 16 →occupation regime that leaves the home government and administration apparatus essentially intact is not a “state” in the sense of a totalitarian regime such as Hannah Arendt had in mind but a power-sharing arrangement between the occupiers and the representatives of the occupied country. What proved to be decisive for the fate of the Jews, therefore, was, on the one hand, the extent to which the occupiers actually succeeded in exploiting this power-sharing arrangement with the representatives of the occupied country for the purposes of the persecution and, on the other, how far the exclusion of the Jews from the “universe of moral obligation” actually went. The leading representatives of the Nazi regime themselves assumed that the moral exclusion of Jews remained fragile, and they went to great lengths to continually reignite anti-Semitism among the wider population and among the intellectuals.60 The notion that the immorality was concealed by the impersonal nature and complexity of the bureaucratic machinery of persecution61 is thus quite misleading. The leadership of the regime was well aware that the division of labor among the authorities involved and their complexity as such could not really conceal the crime. This is why the mass murder was consistently kept secret and why euphemisms were used even in internal communication between bureaus.62 It was anticipated that the capacity for moral judgment of accomplices and “bystanders” was perhaps weakened by the political and administrative conditions under which the crime was conducted but that it was not really rendered inoperative. Whether accomplices and “bystanders” actually made use of their faculty of moral judgment, however, was a question not only of resolve and their sense of responsibility (in Hannah Arendt’s63 or Isaiah Berlin’s64

sense) but also of incentives and disincentives (in the sense of Stanley Milgram or Timur Kuran).65 Collaborators like the secretary-general of the French police, RenГ© Bousquet, had powerful incentives to suspend their faculty of moral judgment when the Germans made them attractive offers to strengthen their competences and to enhance their jurisdiction. By contrast, men like the cardinal and archbishop of Lyon, Pierre-Marie Gerlier, had nothing to lose by following their conscience and appealing to both the moral and the patriotic feelings of their fellow countrymen in the protest against the deportations of the Jews. However, the moral core of these appeals was entirely free of utilitarian considerations. It was the unconditional inclusion of the Jews in the “universe of moral obligation,” as expressed by Archbishop Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge of Toulouse in simple words: “[The Jews] Page 17 →also belong to the human race. They are as much our brothers as the others. A Christian must not forget this.” The power of morality expressed in the archbishop’s words was all the more remarkable for the fact that the stance of the Catholic Church on the measures taken by Vichy against the Jewish members of the population until the summer of 1942 was at least indifferent, if not approving.66 Both the perpetrators and the accomplices knew that they had to bear this in mind if they wanted to enhance or extend their own power. This developed into the decisive barrier against the unlimited exploitation of the power-sharing arrangement between the occupying power and the representatives of the occupied country for the purposes of the persecution. The transformation of “bystanders” into resisters changed the calculation of the perpetrators and accomplices in such a way that perpetrators on the German side became negotiators willing to make compromises, while the decisive—though not all—accomplices on the French side became passive abettors. That was sufficient to put a halt to the full implementation of the “Final Solution” in France. In this respect, the French case is a prime example of the mobilization and demobilization of accessories who help to launch a mass crime without intending to do so and who impede it even though they do not want to prevent it.

Research Design and Method: Identifying Causal Mechanisms and Critical Junctures, Establishing General Inferences In terms of theory and method, this study is a political science analysis of state-sponsored mass crime, informed by social science concepts of causality linking human action to structural conditions. It is, accordingly, not my intention to present another “history of the Holocaust in France.” Excellent comprehensive treatments of that subject already exist,67 including recent source-based studies in German,68 without which the present study would have been unthinkable. The premises explained above imply a research design that takes seriously both the structural and the individual, action-related factors that explain the progress of the persecution of the Jews in France (and to this extent, the arguments of both the “functionalists” and the “intentionalists” in Holocaust research focused on causal analysis).69 The Page 18 →point is, on the one hand, to analyze the institutional structures of the occupation regime and their implications for the form assumed by the machinery of persecution directed against the Jews and, on the other, to reconstruct the key political decisions that arose under the conditions of this occupation regime and were determining for the fate of the Jews in France from 1940 to 1944, particularly in 1942 and 1943. This leads to the question of how and to what extent the occupiers managed to exploit the power-sharing arrangement with the representatives of the occupied country for the persecution of the Jews. The related question is where the limits of this exploitation lay and how they arose. Aside from the causal analysis of the individual case, the task at hand is to formulate more general hypotheses concerning how “permissive environments” are associated with opportunities and constraints when it comes to triggering and impeding mass crimes. The type of causal analysis at work here therefore differs from a comparative study, with reference to key variables, of all countries occupied by Germany between 1939 and 1945, such as the study conducted by Helen Fein,70 and from the interpretive research that led to the general hypotheses cited above about the causes of the genocide of the Jews, such as those formulated by Daniel Goldhagen, Saul FriedlГ¤nder, GГ¶tz Aly, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Hans Mommsen, and many others. The objective is neither the examination of covariances using a large number of cases nor the examination of single influential variables; it is, instead, theory-driven process tracing based on a single case. This is done in a “structured and focused” way,71 a style of research that avoids

necessarily vague general interpretations, in favor of primary source-based analyses that render real actors and actual causal mechanisms visible. The study focuses on the implementation of the “Final Solution” in the narrower sense—that is, on the attempt by the Germans to implement the decisions of the Wannsee Conference in France, which began with the deportations in July 1942 and was thwarted, to all intents and purposes, by Head of State PГ©tain’s rejection, in August 1943, of a blanket denaturalization of Jews naturalized after a certain cutoff date. The study’s ontological premises take into account the characteristics of the occupation regime and its consequences in the shape of the “state collaboration” between the German occupiers and the representatives of the Vichy regime and its administration. This leads to a concentration on the formal and informal negotiations at the central level over the fate of the Jews living in France—above all, the negotiations between the representatives of the SS and the French governmentPage 19 → and police leadership. The success and failure of the “Final Solution” in France were decided precisely here. Yet the SS tried, before and after the agreements with their French opposite numbers, to arrest and deport the Jews wherever possible, and thousands of Jews, in particular children, were taken in and rescued by French people. The advantage of this study’s approach resides in its combination of microfoundation-based72 methodological individualism,73 system analysis,74 and historical process tracing.75 Perpetrators, accomplices, “bystanders,” and resisters were not anonymous groups. Their behavioral patterns were shaped by individual key actors to whom the responsibility for actions and omissions can and must be ascribed. The key players acted within an ideological and institutional context that constituted opportunities and constraints that, in turn, entailed the very causal mechanisms through which behavioral patterns were transformed into actual decisions. We usually take for granted that the decisions of key actors were aggregated to produce a final outcome through legal and organizational implementation, although we find significant exceptions in the Italian occupation zone in southeastern France from November 1942 through September 1943. Opportunities and constraints changed over the course of time, as did the positions and practical dispositions of the key players. Static assumptions concerning the position and relative strength of the perpetrators76 or the ideological and political attitudes of the accomplices and “bystanders” cannot do justice to these dynamics and their partly paradoxical effects. Thus, for example, although the SS prevailed in the internal power struggle with the Wehrmacht in France, its newly won strength as a political key player did not lead to a tighter “SS grip,” as one might assume following Helen Fein,77 but instead lent greater urgency to the requirements of reaching political compromises in the negotiations with the Vichy government and its police leadership. To cite a further example, the Catholic Church was an integral component of the Vichy regime, and its leading representatives expressly acknowledged the government’s right to enact “exceptional legislation” regarding the Jews.78 But this did not prevent leading churchmen from bringing about a swing in public opinion in favor of the persecuted Jews in the summer of 1942. Moreover, the attachment of the church to Vichy is the reason why this intervention was so effective. Clearly, therefore, structures, positions, and action strategies intermeshed in a partly counterintuitive way. Closer examination reveals, in addition, that the key players did not operate as executive organs of institutional roles, for example, and Page 20 →that a lot depended on their individual political and moral judgment and other leadership attributes—a notorious blind spot not only of functionalist and structuralist analyses but also of variable-based comparative studies. Fig. 2. Graphic depiction of causal mechanisms. (Adapted from Peter HedstrГ¶m and Petri Ylikoski, “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 36 [2010]: 59. Copyright Wolfgang Seibel.) The drawback of a single case study is supposedly the lack of a test of external validity, or, to put it another way, the absence of generalizability. This objection only applies to variable-based research in social science, however, against which it is also aimed in the relevant textbooks.79 One could conceivably make a comparison with other countries in which the “Final Solution” was initially launched only to be brought to a halt at a certain point in time, as occurred in Bulgaria, in Romania, and, above all, in Hungary in the summer of 1944.80 Parallels can, in fact, be established with the course taken by the persecution of the Jews in Hungary in particular. Here, too, the deportations were initiated in close collaboration with the home administration and police, only to be brought to

an abrupt halt by the government; here, too, the moratorium was brought about by political pressure, specifically that of the United States and a number of neutral countries.81 However, these superficial parallels between the two cases are less informative concerning generalizability than an in-depth analysis of the “systemic” features of a singlePage 21 → case. The premises elucidated above refer to such “systemic” features—namely, features of occupation regimes in general—and to related human action orientations. These features and orientations are generalizable because they are connected to mechanisms that, as Mario Bunge82 has explained while drawing on Jon Elster, Peter HedstrГ¶m, and Richard Swedberg,83 are system-specific and hence can also be found in similar systems. The “system” of an occupation regime that leaves a national government and the national administration intact rests on asymmetrical power sharing between the representatives of the occupying power and the representatives of the occupied country, based on mutual dependence in pursuing their respective goals.84 Operative here, therefore, is a mechanism of power rivalry, as well as cooperative mechanisms. Without cooperation, certain problems cannot be solved. But at the same time, the occupying power will be concerned at least to defend its power advantage, whereas the representatives of the occupied country will be concerned to extend their power. These action orientations have a “systemic” character in the sense that they will regularly occur in occupation regimes of this kind. Therefore, they are predictable and hence generalizable. The same holds for bargaining, the basic mechanism that integrates rivalry and cooperation.85 Bargaining combines the resolution of substantive issues with the endeavor to extend or to preserve shares of power.86 It is the central mechanism that drives power-sharing occupation regimes. Bargaining is also predictable and hence generalizable, as is compromise formation based on this mechanism. Bargaining partners take their orientation both from what is acceptable as regards solving problems and from what is acceptable as regards their mutual power relations. If the mutual dependency of the cooperation partners extends across an entire spectrum of policy fields—as in the case of the relations between the occupying power and the representatives of the occupied country—the result is typically package deals in which concessions in one sector are counterbalanced by gains in another. These negotiation or bargaining processes constitute the essential mechanism through which the cohesion of the “system” of a power-sharing occupation regime is assured. From the perspective of causal analysis, this is, at the same time, the essential causal mechanism linking causal factors with their effects.87 Hence this “systemic” and “mechanismic” perspective88 enables us to formulate generalizable answers to the key question of the extent to which the occupiers in France were able to exploit this power-sharing arrangement Page 22 →with the representatives of the occupied country for the purposes of the persecution of the Jews and how far the exclusion of the Jews from the “universe of moral obligation” actually went. The representatives of an occupying power and the representatives of an occupied country compete over a specific spectrum of key resources, but the outcome of this competitive relation cannot be predicted in advance. Among the key resources are raw materials and productive resources and control over manpower, infrastructure, administrative apparatuses, legislative competences, and law enforcement agencies. This situation was no different in the relations between German and French authorities in the years of the occupation. Because it was in possession of the manpower and the law enforcement agents and because the German dictator, out of military and geopolitical considerations, permitted it a government of its own, with its own legislative and administrative authority and its own armed forces in North Africa and the overseas territories, the French side had a comparatively strong starting position in the bargaining processes that were a feature of the everyday relations with the occupying power. The representatives of the occupied country could also impose their will in particular instances against a reluctant occupying power. They naturally sought to extend these opportunities, just as the German occupiers sought to restrict them to what was unavoidable. However, the power rationality of the French side differed in one important point from that of the German side. For the French side, the support of its own population and of societal groups was also an important factor. But it was even possible to capitalize on this in negotiations with the occupying power. Demands for material or symbolic improvements that strengthened domestic support could be brought to bear in return for concessions that benefited the occupiers. Conversely, precisely such concessions could occasionally be avoided by appealing to their domestic political costs. These limitations of the assumptions concerning the characteristics of an occupying regime and the action

orientations of its key players lead to the second methodological feature of this study, the specific character of causal process tracing. A historical explanation does not rest on unfocused narratives.89 If sufficiently wellfounded assumptions can be made concerning the essential features of the system, the patterns of the actions of key players, and causal mechanisms, the analysis of the processes in the course of which these elements presumably exercised their effects can concentrate on the formation of precisely these systemic features, mechanisms, and actions and how they operated.90 This book deals with the reconstruction of a limited Page 23 →number of key decisions that decisively influenced the fate of the Jews living in France between 1940 and 1944. It is concerned with turning points and critical junctures and with identifying necessary and sufficient conditions for those decisions that render these turning points and junctures identifiable as such.91 It is concerned, more narrowly, with the implementation of the decisions of the Wannsee Conference of January 1942 and hence with the question of why the SS was able to initiate the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France but was not able to enforce it as intended. This study examines in detail those bargaining processes that led to the critical junctures at which the representatives of the French side in the interaction between the SS and the French government decided, on 2 July 1942, to collaborate in the “Final Solution” and then, on 2 September 1942 and 24 August 1943, to tone down the collaboration. Causal mechanisms, as such, are undirected,92 and the statements by Rudolph J. Rummel and James Buchanan quoted at the beginning of this introduction acquaint us with the ambivalent effects of power sharing and bargaining. The effects could consist just as well in the intensification as in the containment of the persecution, and apparently both situations were the case in France. Therefore, this study leads to the further question posed by Benjamin Valentino: exactly what leads one and the same causal mechanism to unleash mass crime in one case and to impede it in another?93 It transpires that what finally made the difference was the mobilization of moral principles, access to systemic points of intervention, and the will and ability of a handful of key actors to use the potential of morality and the opportunity to intervene to save human lives—a lesson whose general validity and present-day relevance should be obvious.

Organization of the Book The account of the development of and interconnections between these practical rationalities and the decisions guided by them follows the key sequences of the events that were decisive for the fate of the Jews in occupied France. This involves four phases. During the first phase, the SS and hence the core group of the perpetrators prevailed in the power struggle with the Wehrmacht. This core group consisted of the apparatus of the Security Police and Security Service (Sipo/SD) in Paris, which was small initially but enjoyed a monopoly of policing Page 24 →matters from May 1942 onward. This phase came to an end with the appointment of a senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF) on 1 June 1942. The second phase marked the consolidation of the increase in power of the SS. This was the result of an arrangement with the government in Vichy. It was based on a compromise that epitomized the logic of collaboration in the area of policing. The German police leadership under the HSSPF, Carl Albrecht Oberg, conceded extensive autonomy to the French police leadership under the secretary-general of the police, RenГ© Bousquet. Vichy promised, in return, to collaborate in combating the “enemies of the Reich,” among which were the Jews. These accords were sealed with the so-called Oberg-Bousquet agreement of 8 August 1942, which marks the conclusion of this phase. The third phase was the briefest and yet was of catalytic importance when it came to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Following the first mass arrests of Jews in Paris and surrounding areas on 16 and 17 July 1942, senior Catholic clergymen turned in protest to head of state PГ©tain. The protest of the two Christian churches spread once deportations began from provincial regions of the unoccupied zone as well, as was envisaged by the Oberg-Bousquet agreement. With the protest of the church, one of the domestic political pillars of Vichy, the persecution of the Jews suddenly became a matter of regime cohesion. On 2 September 1942, the head of government, Pierre Laval, made a request to the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris to relax the timetable for the

deportations of the Jews, whereupon the Sipo/SD secured the support of Heinrich Himmler and suspended Eichmann’s deportation plan on 25 September 1942. The fourth and longest phase was marked by the further distancing of the government in Vichy from the collaboration with the German occupying power in the persecution of the Jews. It extended from the suspension of the deportation plan drawn up by Eichmann in September 1942 until the definitive refusal by PГ©tain to sign into law the long-pending resolution to deprive naturalized Jews of their citizenship and hence to give these Jews up for deportation. This refusal occurred on 24 August 1943 and marked the failure of the “Final Solution” in France as an administrative mass crime. The background was the erosion of Germany’s political power after the turning point in the war in 1942/43 and its repercussions on the stance of Germany’s Axis partner Italy, which refused to permit the Vichy authorities to proceed against the Jews in its own occupied zone in southeastern France. What followedPage 25 → was the attempt by the SS to implement as much as possible of the extermination plan by exerting pressure on Vichy, by deploying its own arrest units, and by mobilizing collaborators and informers. In the final phase of the German occupation, from the turn of the year 1943/44, radical elements of the French right forced their way into leadership positions in the administration and specifically also in the police. They took care, as far as was possible, of the business of the Germans when it came to the persecution of the Jews. The last deportation trains left France in August 1944. By this time, the system of state collaboration at all levels and the smoothly functioning exploitation of the French police for the persecution of the Jews were already things of the past. This book concludes with an examination of the logic of the persecution process and the implementation of the “Final Solution” in France, which includes a cautious comment on the internal French debate over the culpabilitГ© de Vichy, Vichy’s guilt. One should take to heart Ahlrich Meyer’s reminder that the core subject remains German guilt: “The Vichy regime—or, if you will, France—participated in the crime. But the Germans had planned it, and without the presence of the German Wehrmacht it would never have materialized.”94 However, once it had been launched on the basis of Franco-German collaboration, German and French contributions to the “Final Solution” were not additive but interactive in nature and, as a result, cannot be separated from each other morally or analytically. Moreover, it would be pointless to ignore the particular lessons to be learned from that interaction. The present analysis reveals how power and morality were interlinked in the developing relations between perpetrators and collaborators and how morally indifferent collaborators and even ruthless perpetrators could be forced to acknowledge the power of morality once the latter gained momentum both in circles close to the regime and in public opinion.

Page 26 → Page 27 →

Part I Power-Sharing Occupation Administration and Persecution of the Jews

Page 28 → Page 29 →

Chapter 1 German Occupation and the Persecution of the Jews in Western Europe, 1940–1944 The establishment and exercise of the German occupation power in Western Europe beginning in May 1940 were initially shaped by the peculiarities of both the strategic situation and importance of these countries and the tactical preparation of a German occupation administration. The importance of the agriculturally and industrially highly productive Western European countries for the German war effort and a future “greater economic area” under German hegemony was obvious.1 The economic and geopolitical impulse of German rule, however, was eclipsed by ethnic aspects, especially as far as Belgium and the Netherlands were concerned. Also of importance was the extended preparatory phase of the military strategy in Western Europe. This dragged on after Hitler’s plan to launch an offensive in the West already in the fall of 1939, immediately after the subjection of Poland, had failed, in essence because of the opposing delaying tactics employed by the Army High Command.2 In contrast not only to the attack on Poland but also to the occupation of Denmark and Norway, the operative planning, training of the combat troops, and organization of the occupying power could be carefully prepared. This preparation, also as regards the occupation administration, was largely under the control of the Wehrmacht. In this regard, the latter worked closely with experts of the civilian Reich administration. The main purpose was to mobilize the economic power of the occupied territories for German purposes.3 From the point of view of the Wehrmacht,4 the SS apparatus was to be kept as uninfluential as possible, already for reasons of power rivalry.5 Moreover, the murderous terror exerted by the SS Einsatzgruppen in Poland after the invasion of September 1939 had triggered vehement protests among the Page 30 →upper ranks of the German military,6 which made the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres) determined to suppress any kind of SS influence on policing in the rear of advancing German troops in the West.7 The corresponding directive of the Army High Command put it succinctly: “No police forces are to be supplied from the territory of the Reich.”8 An additional factor was that the military victory over France in June 1940 not only brought Hitler to the zenith of his power but also again strengthened the position of the Wehrmacht, which had been fundamentally weakened within the power structure of the regime in 1938 by the splitting of its leadership structure. “In the West,” this contributed to a widespread dominance of the Wehrmacht in the occupation administration. Although the Wehrmacht also exercised administrative functions in the rear military areas in the war against the Soviet Union (in Serbia, Greece, and North Africa), it did so there under completely different conditions of an occupation situation defined primarily in military terms.9 In Western Europe, by contrast, the Wehrmacht established itself for a certain time as a regular occupation administration for which military considerations were only of peripheral importance and that had to accord priority to political and economic considerations. The withdrawal of the military commander in the Netherlands, General Alexander von Falkenhausen, on Hitler’s orders on 19 May 1940 and the appointment of a Reich commissioner for the occupied Netherlands—in the person of the former Reich governor in Austria, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who had served as deputy governor-general in the Polish “General Government” since October 1939, was a first encroachment on the original hegemony of the Wehrmacht in the occupation.10 SeyГџ-Inquart’s appointment was clearly due to the influence of Heinrich Himmler, Reich leader (ReichsfГјhrer) of the SS.11 The Wehrmacht and cooperating Reich administrative agencies were able to block Himmler’s plans to bring the Flemish part of Belgium under civilian administration and thereby to destroy the state integrity of the country from the beginning.12 As a result, Belgium, like France, remained under German military administration, conceived as a provisional arrangement for the duration of the war, though, in the Belgian case, this administration would be superseded in July 1944 for a couple of weeks by a German civil administration in the shape of a Reich commissariat.13 The strategic importance of the Western European countries suggested the model of a “supervisory administration.” However, this was more a retrospective construct. Werner Best presented the “supervisory

administration” as a variant of the “German sphere-of-influence administration” that left intactPage 31 → the domestic administration, including the national leadership level, so that the latter could be supervised with the aid of only a thin layer of German agencies.14 This was a plausible administrative variant for an occupation regime that counted on the productivity of the indigenous economy and its infrastructure and hence on mobilizing the competence and loyalty of the indigenous population. In fact, the concept of a “supervisory administration” is one of a series of attempts at systematization by which National Socialist lawyers attempted to endow the regime with a rationality that it by no means exhibited. The theorists and practitioners of the National Socialist state and its occupation regimes invoked the principles of “supervisory administration” and “unity of the administration” precisely because they were aware of the blatant violation of these principles.15 Considering the conditions in Germany itself and the erosion in the power of the regular administration there, which was already far advanced in 1940,16 the traditional functional elites of the Wehrmacht and the German supervisory authorities in the occupied western territories initially found themselves in a relatively strong position. This means, conversely, that the alliance between party apparatus and the SS (with the core of an integrated repressive apparatus that was rigorously hierarchized under the Reich Security Main Office founded in September 1939), which, in the meantime, was unquestionably dominant in the Reich vis-Г -vis the regular administration, first had to reconsolidate its power position in the occupied western territories. A clear indication of this was the fact that a senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF), the usual regional authority of the SS and police apparatus, was initially appointed only in the Netherlands. Both the influence exerted by Himmler on appointments to the upper echelons of the administration in the Netherlands and his repeated attempts to have a civil administration with an HSSPF established in Belgium indicate that he was well aware of the relative weakness of his position. The persecution of the Jews in Western Europe from 1940 to 1944 followed the pattern of institution building and progressive escalation established in Germany proper, in Austria, and in the Nazi-established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Among the regular institution-building measures was that of making the police independent of the regular administration, as this had been accomplished in Germany itself in the fall of 1939 through the department of the chief of the Security Police and the SD, commonly called the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Page 32 →RSHA).17 The escalation measures began with the definition and registration of the Jews and continued with the designation of their businesses, the designation of Jews themselves, the theft of their property, and their concentration in residential areas or camps. These measures were followed by deportation and extermination. In contrast to the conditions in Germany, the “associated” or annexed territories, or the occupied territories in Eastern Europe, however, the power of the persecutors in Western Europe was not limitless. This was due, in the first instance, to the internal contradictions of German policy toward the countries concerned. These contradictions not only brought to light conflicts between the German actors but also broadened the scope for action of the domestic actors. Both factors had ambivalent repercussions for the persecution of the Jews. The supposition that the power enjoyed by the SS and police apparatus in particular had profound repercussions for the persecution of the Jews is trivial. It is indeed evident that the initial position created by the respective occupation regimes for the SS and Gestapo to enforce the persecution measures, at least in the area of police repression, was of supreme importance.18 Furthermore, there developed different functional equivalents for the party apparatus of the NSDAP, which did not exist outside Germany, as an authority supervising the administration19—for instance, a general commissioner for special purposes (Fritz Schmidt) in the Netherlands and the embassy apparatus under Otto Abetz in France. Under these conditions, a vertical and a horizontal axis of power sharing emerged. If the aim was to husband German resources and to mobilize domestic resources on a sustainable basis, the German occupier also had to share the power, to a certain extent, with the home authorities.20 If the occupiers had wanted to monopolize power and to govern the occupied territories by pure force, as was the German practice in Eastern Europe, they would have had to accept a far higher level of political instability and a much lower yield of resources. Thus, providing

incentives for “collaboration” and hence relativizing hierarchy through a logic of exchange in which the home authorities also literally or figuratively got their money’s worth were expressly part of the repertoire of techniques of domination. In the horizontal axis, by contrast, in the relations of German actors among themselves, power rivalries developed of the kind that also marked the National Socialist system of rule in the Reich. To this were added the power relations between domesticPage 33 → actors in the occupied territories, relations that were truly obscure from case to case. The multidimensional character of the division of power in the occupied territories of Western Europe granted the key players considerable leeway for action, which they sought, to different extents, to exploit for their own purposes and goals. Even though these purposes and goals may have followed a general line (as was undoubtedly the case with the persecution of the Jews), they were heterogeneous and volatile when it came to specifics. In the context of a European hegemonic politics, the concept of a “supervisory administration” involved insuperable contradictions that would lead to frequent inconsistencies in the everyday reality of occupation. The goals of supervising the occupied country in ways that spared one’s own personnel resources, on the one hand, and of economically exploiting it, on the other, were, in the final analysis, mutually incompatible. Whereas “supervisory administration” meant power sharing between occupiers and home authorities, economic exploitation called for direct interventions in the domestic policy of the occupied country. These contradictions would have inevitably led to substantial problems in the occupation policy even if, in other respects, the German side had had clear strategic concepts for dealing with the occupied territories and unambiguous regulations regarding competences. But there was no such clarity. Instead, the polycratic pattern of power “imported” from the Reich papered over the tensions generated by the incompatibility between the occupation model and tactical goals of the occupation, and these tensions reacted back, in turn, on the polycratic structures, where they triggered constant shifts in power and hence instabilities. This could not fail to lead to permanent incoherence in the occupation policy. The epitome of the German “polycracy” from the perspective of the occupied countries was its lack of stringency and coordination. This was astonishing for contemporaries in the case of a regime that had the aura of a tightly run dictatorship and an effective administration.21 For the German side, ensuring political cohesion, internal security, and the economic exploitation of the occupied territory was of central importance. What relative weights should be accorded to these goals and how these overall objectives should best be accomplished, however, remained objects of internal disputes. At the tactical level of regional occupation regimes in Western Europe, the upper echelons of the German administration in the Page 34 →strict sense—in the Netherlands, the Reich commissioner; in Belgium and France, the military commander—were more oriented toward the political and economic overall objectives and hence adopted a pragmatic political stance. By contrast, the individual branches of power in the area of the economy and “internal security”—the most important being the bureaus overseeing the Four-Year Plan, the general plenipotentiary for labor deployment, and the SS/Gestapo—could afford partial policies with impacts on the general occupation policy for which not they but the regular heads of administration had to take responsibility. The individual branches of power could mobilize the support of central Reich authorities or of leading representatives of the regime, including Hitler himself, on a case-by-case basis.22 The primary interest of the leading figures in the French domestic administration was that the population be treated with consideration and that a long-term political and economic perspective for their own country be secured. However, heterogeneous ideological fronts and interests developed here too, depending not least on the course of the war and hence on the German power potential in Europe. A fundamental line of conflict was that between those who regarded collaboration with the German occupying power and those who regarded passive or active resistance as the appropriate strategy in the struggle to promote national interests. Precisely analogous to relations on the German side, the collaborators included ideologues and pragmatists, depending on whether the individuals concerned believed they should cooperate with the Germans on ideological grounds or for reasons of expediency. Under these conditions, a stable axis of cooperation was most likely to develop between the pragmatists on both

sides. This cooperation was threatened by the incoherence of the occupation policy on the German side and, naturally, by the organized resistance on the side of the occupied countries. Both factors were destined to destabilize the cooperative relations as the war persisted. In the occupied western territories, the expansion and intensification of the German war economy from the first half of 1942 onward23 led to an increased demand for labor and to more immediate interventions in the national economies concerned. In addition, there was progressive deterioration of the military position of the Reich from the fall of 1942 onward. These two factors reduced the willingness of the ideologically indifferent forces in the occupied countries to collaborate and strengthened the willingness of the opposition forces to engage in active resistance. Under these conditions, the room for maneuver of the “pragmatists” on the German side became progressively more restricted, and by the summer of 1944, the basis of cooperationPage 35 → on the domestic side had shrunk to the ideologically motivated collaborators. With this, there could be no real question of power-sharing relations, at least in the vertical axis. Like the rule of the National Socialist regime in the Reich proper, the final phase of the occupation was marked by a surge in coercion, violence, and terror in Western Europe. The systematic execution of the anti-Jewish policy was initiated in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the fall of 1940. The sequence of persecution measures and related stages of radicalization until the spring of 1942 corresponded, in essence, to those in the Reich until the onset of the mass deportations in the fall of 1941. This development took a more or less homogeneous course in Western Europe. However, there were profound differences in how the enforcing authorities were established, both in comparison to the Reich and among the three Western European countries. These differences, in turn, had lasting repercussions for the actual enforcement of the persecution. Already in the Reich, the authorities charged with enforcing the persecution of the Jews were centralized in varying degrees. The police side of the persecution was under the direction of the Reich Security Main Office and was implemented by the regional and local agencies of the Gestapo under its direct control. The SS and police authorities strove to realize this centralization also in the occupied Western European countries, though they met with very uneven success there. In the Netherlands, supreme police authority lay with the German general commissioner for security, who was simultaneously HSSPF and hence embodied the principle of the amalgamation of party organizations (SS, SD) and state police realized in the Reich Security Main Office and claimed the authority to issue directions to the Dutch police. In the Netherlands, however, a long-running, fluctuating conflict between the Reich commissioner, Arthur SeyГџ-Inquart, and his general commissioner for special purposes, Fritz Schmidt, on the one side, and the HSSPF, Hanns Albin Rauter, and the Reich Security Main Office, on the other, flared up over the—in Germany, long-established—jurisdiction of the SS and police apparatus for the persecution of the Jews. In Belgium, the police authority resided with the military commander, hence the Wehrmacht, until July 1944. In France, it was transferred in May 1942 to the newly appointed HSSPF, though he had to coordinate with the Vichy police command and, according to the August 1942 agreement with the secretary general of the French police (RenГ© Bousquet), refrained for the most part from issuing direct instructions to the French police. Page 36 →Nowhere, therefore, was the position of the SS and Gestapo originally uncontested. In fact, one cannot assume that a linear relation existed between a more pronounced hierarchization of the occupation administration and a greater centrality of the SS and Gestapo in the occupation system, on the one hand, and the level of implementation of the intentions to persecute the Jews, on the other. At least until the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the Reich Security Main Office and its branches in Western Europe were reliant on an indirect tactic to strengthen their position in the “Jewish Question.” Without exception, they attempted to connect the Jews with issues of internal and military security and political cohesion, hence with a domain in which their own formal and professional competence was as uncontested as was the political accountability of leading representatives of the regular occupation administration. If the Reich Security Main Office succeeded in making the latter, through glaring deficiencies in domestic and military security and political stability, look incompetent in the eyes of the upper echelons of the regime (if possible, of Hitler himself), it could hope for an increase in authority and power. This tactic would succeed at least in the Netherlands and France. In the Netherlands, political strikes in February 1941 lead to a strengthening of the position of the SS and Gestapo apparatus as regards

competences in the persecution of the Jews; in France, through attacks on Paris synagogues in October 1941, the SS provoked heightened tensions that ultimately resulted in the appointment of an HSSPF in May 1942. In the area of the economic persecution of the Jews, the competences were already spread over different administrative areas in Germany proper. The most important authorities, aside from the apparatus of the SS and Gestapo, were the so-called regional economic advisers (Kreiswirtschaftsberater) of the NSDAP, the financial administration and the plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan. This division of labor became important for the radicalization of the persecution only in 1938, however, by which time the displacement of the Jews from the economy, whether through exclusions from professions or through “Aryanization,” was already far advanced. At this time, the efforts of the SS leadership to concentrate competences in both the police and the economic persecution of the Jews in Germany proper were focused primarily on the plundering of the Jews in connection with the emigration. This pattern was translated to the deportations in 1941, though it there came into competition with the financial administration, which, as a result of the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941, subsequently succeeded in asserting its authority over the property of the deported Jews “forfeited to the Reich.” Page 37 →In the occupied Western European countries, the SS and police apparatus failed from the outset in its efforts to achieve a concentration of the repressive and economic persecution of the Jews. The regular occupation administrations did not allow their competences in the economic domain to be withdrawn, even where the Jews were concerned (the plundering of the Jews by the Gestapo in the immediate context of the arrests and deportations remained unaffected by this, of course). This reflected the primacy of the general occupation policy, whose overall objective focused on the economic exploitation of the occupied territories. The extent to which tasks and hence also power were divided between the German and the home authorities in the domain of the economic persecution of the Jews varied even more than in that of the persecution through police repression.24 In the Netherlands, all of the authorities involved in supervising the “Aryanization” and the confiscation of Jewish property were under German control and answerable to the commissioner general for finances and economic affairs. This held also in principle for Belgium, though a German foundation under Belgian law, the Brussels Trust, was used to manage the cash derived from the confiscation of Jewish property there, whereas the power of control over the accounts maintained in the trust lay with the SociГ©tГ© franГ§aise de banques et de dГ©pГґts. As a French institution on Belgian territory, the latter was subject to the enemy assets administration and, as a result, enabled the occupier to exercise more direct control by comparison with the Brussels Trust. In France, by contrast, jurisdiction for the persecution of the Jews in the economic area was entirely under French control. The separation between central payments authority and controlling authority also existed there: the frozen accounts for confiscated Jewish assets were maintained at the public Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations (CDC), whereas the power of control lay with the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (CGQJ). The German military commander maintained a liaison office at the supervisory body for the “Aryanization,” the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP), which was incorporated into the CGQJ in July 1941. Moreover, the Economics Department of the Administrative Headquarters reserved the right to appoint “provisional administrators” in large companies.25

Page 38 →

Chapter 2 The German Occupation Administration in France after the Armistice of 22 June 1940 Following the armistice between Germany and France, which was signed on 22 June and came into effect on 25 June 1940,1 French territory was divided into an occupied zone and a free zone, the latter with the seat of a panFrench government in Vichy. This division corresponded to the directives given to the German negotiators by Hitler, who accorded priority over other occupation policy considerations to the enduring split in the alliance between France and England. Of decisive importance in the case of a continuation of the war against England, according to Hitler, were the loyalty of the French colonies toward a mother country that had withdrawn from the war and, for this reason, the existence of a French government as a sovereign entity with its own territory.2 This was why the German side opposed the Italian demands that the French troops in the colonies be demobilized and that the French fleet be placed at the disposal of the Axis powers. On the sidelines of the German-Italian preliminary talks on the impending armistice with France that were conducted in Munich in mid-June 1940, Hitler mentioned the German plan to establish a “reservation” in the French colony of Madagascar for the Jews deported from Germany and from the territories occupied by Germany.3 The two northern dГ©partements, Nord and Pas de Calais, were placed under the authority of the military commander of Belgium and Northern France, with headquarters in Brussels. Alsace and Lorraine—more precisely, the dГ©partements Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin and the dГ©partement Moselle—came under the control of the NSDAP gauleiters for Baden and Saarpfalz, Robert Wagner and Josef BГјrckel. As heads of the civilian administration, they were in charge of the entire administration in the civilian area, which amounted to an annexation. In addition, from November 1942 until SeptemberPage 39 → 1943, Italy occupied seven dГ©partements and parts of three additional dГ©partements east of the RhГґne.4 As a result, the territory of the French state was divided into five areas under different administrations. After the Allied landing in North Africa on 8 November 1942, the Wehrmacht took control of large areas of the Free Zone by 12 November 1942. After the armistice between Italy and the Allies in September 1943, it took control of the dГ©partements that had been under Italian occupation until then. The first military governor of Paris, which was occupied by German troops on 14 June 1940, was General Alfred von Vollard-Bockelberg, followed from 30 June 1940 by General Alfred Streccius as head of the military administration. The commander in chief of the army, Walther von Brauchitsch, originally reserved the function of military commander for himself—an indication of the special status of France among the occupied territories in the West. It was only on 25 October 1940 that the reactivated General Otto von StГјlpnagel took over as head of the occupation regime. Under the title of military commander in France, he exercised control over five military prefectures (A, B, C, Bordeaux, and Paris), which were, in turn, in control of the field commands (Feldkommandanturen) and higher filed commands (Oberfeldkommandanturen) responsible for supervising the French administration at the dГ©partement and municipal level. Under the authority of the military commander were a command staff to lead the occupation troops and an administrative staff. Typical of the practice of military posting, the leadership of the command staff was subject to greater fluctuation than that of the administrative staff. Between 1940 and 1944, the command staff was led by five successive high-level officers (Auleb, Speidel, Kossmann, Linstow, and Krause), of whom the future supreme commander of the NATO troops in Europe, Hans Speidel, is the most important figure historically.5 The secret field police answered to the head of the command staff of the military commander in France until an HSSPF was appointed in the early summer of 1942.6 The administrative staff was headed until July 1942 by the former minister of the interior and the economy of WГјrttemberg, Jonathan Schmid. Bearer of the Gold Honor Party Badge (Goldenes Parteiabzeichen), Schmid could count as the representative of the NSDAP in the military administration in Paris. However, a representative

of the Berlin ministerial bureaucracy was appointed as his successor—namely, the former director of the Economics Department, Dr. Elmar Michel, a section head (later head of department) in the Reich Ministry of Economics who was assigned in 1940 to the military Page 41 →commander in France, where he operated under the official title of war administration chief.7 Michel was also director of the deactivation staff (Abwicklungsstab) of the military commander in France from September 1944 until the spring of 1945.8 Page 40 → Fig. 3. Map of the German military staff of April 1943 depicting the “previously” and the “newly” occupied territory of the French mainland and the territorial command structure of the Wehrmacht and the SD/Gestapo after the deployment of German troops that took place in November 1942 in the previously unoccupied zone. Both the German and the French sides maintained the legal fiction that the armistice of 22 June 1940 was itself not affected by the expansion of German and Italian military presence in southeastern France. The map depicts, accordingly, both the demarcation line between the northern and the southern zones and the thinner line demarcating the expanded Italian occupation zone that existed between 11 November 1942 and 8 September 1943, when the Italian armed forces surrendered to the Allies. A reckless manhunt for the Jews in the previous Italian occupation zone followed when the Germans took control. (Bundesarchiv-MilitГ¤rarchiv Freiburg RW 35 /27. Copyright Bundesarchiv.) The administrative staff was subdivided into the Administration Section and the Economics Section. From August 1940 to June 1942, the Administration Section was led by Dr. Werner Best, formerly director of Department II (Organization, Administration, and Law) of the Reich Security Main Office and Heydrich’s deputy and, from November 1942, Reich plenipotentiary in Denmark.9 He was succeeded by Dr. Franz Medicus, who assumed responsibility in September 1942 for the administrative group with the quartermaster general in the Army High Command and later coordinated the reporting of the deactivation staffs. From September 1943 to August 1944, the Administration Section was led by Dr. Wilhelm Gustav Ermert. Throughout the occupation, the Economics Section was under the direction of Dr. Elmar Michel, who, as mentioned, headed the entire administrative staff in personal union from August 1942 onward. Group 1, General Affairs and De-jewification, of Subsection Wi I, under chief military administrative counselor Dr. Kurt Blanke, played a central role in the economic measures against the Jews.10 The administration of the military commander, which was based in Paris and housed in the Hotel Majestic on Avenue KlГ©ber, comprised around 600 higher, 400 upper, and over 100 middle-grade military administrative officials, hence around 1,100 persons.11 However, the full extent of the German military administrative apparatus in France, including the Military Headquarters and the Administrative Headquarters of the Military Command in France and the administrative departments in the five military prefectures and in the field and municipal commands, was incomparably larger. According to a March 1942 survey conducted by the quartermaster general’s department of the Army High Command, it comprised 1,695 officers, 1,664 officials, and 18,269 noncommissioned officers and teams, hence a total of around 22,000 persons.12 In addition to this administrative personnel strictly representing the armed forces, there was the personnel of the various Reich administrations, which amounted to 24,000 according to the compilation of Nestler, as well as the personnel of the special representatives and the semistate or party organizations. Nestler estimates that the total number of people working for German bodies in France, exclusive of the occupying troops, was 80,000.13 Page 42 →Characteristic of the occupation relations in France was the peculiar status of the German diplomatic representation.14 Even before 10 May 1940, the Foreign Office was represented among the army groups and armies in the West by its own officials. Following this pattern, on the day Paris was captured, 14 June 1940, the Reich foreign minister appointed the former collaborator of his Ribbentrop Bureau, Otto Abetz, as the plenipotentiary accredited to the military commander in Paris.15 Hence, Abetz, who had become a member of the Foreign Office only in March 1940, belonged to the party cadres that Ribbentrop used to staff key positions in the diplomatic service.16 On 3 August 1940, Abetz was appointed plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office with the military commander in France, with the official rank of ambassador. In a letter of introduction to the head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, Wilhelm Keitel, Ribbentrop wrote that the plenipotentiary in Paris had “exclusive responsibility for dealing with all political questions in occupied and unoccupied France.”17 On 20 November 1940, the bureau of the plenipotentiary was elevated to the status of a German embassy in Paris,

thereby enhancing its political importance. The embassy was represented in Vichy by a bureau under the direction of Consul General Roland Krug von Nidda, with the addition, from December 1943, of the special envoy Cecil von Renthe-Fink, a kind of attaché accredited to the head of state, Philippe Pétain.18 Thus, the embassy was conceived as the political arm of the National Socialist regime in France. In fact, it played an active role in launching the persecution of the Jews and its ceaseless radicalization. The relevant embassy employees in this connection were embassy counselor Dr. Ernst Achenbach, as director of the Political Section, and legation counselor Carl-Theodor (Carltheo) Zeitschel, an advisor for “Jewish Questions” who was an active Nazi.19 Like Abetz himself, his deputy, Rudolph Schleier, was a lateral entrant to the diplomatic service who had earned his merits in the NSDAP Foreign Organization (Auslandsorganisation or AO).20 A peculiarity in relations with an occupied country was, further, the German Armistice Commission based in Wiesbaden, to which the French side had to send a delegation and which, over the course of time, as Hans Umbreit established, developed “increasingly into a clearinghouse for all affairs that were put up for discussion by one or the other side—without any limits as to theme.”21 In this regard, however, they were in a relation of rivalry with the German Embassy in Paris. The more “political” the matters under review were, the more probable it was that Abetz and his people would make them their concern.

Page 43 →

Chapter 3 The French Government and Administration and the “Collaboration” The Armistice Convention of 22 June 1940 did not annul the national sovereignty of France, nor did it affect the French constitutional system. On 10 July 1940, the National Assembly suspended the constitutional laws of the Third Republic and granted Marshal Henri Philippe PГ©tain, who had been head of government since June 16, “full powers for the purpose of proclaiming the fundamental laws [lois fondamentales] of the Г‰tat FranГ§ais through one or more decrees.”1 The spa town of Vichy, to which the ministers had traveled after a stopover in Bordeaux, became the seat of government and would soon become synonymous with the regime. At first energetically pursued, the plans to move the seat of government back to Paris—more precisely, on the model of the prerepublican era, to Versailles—failed in the fall of 1940.2 The French government was represented at the German Military Command by a delegate general. The first to hold this position was General BenoГ®t-LГ©on Fornel de la Laurencie, who was replaced in December 1940 by Fernand de Brinon at the behest of the German ambassador Abetz. The vice president of the Г‰tat FranГ§ais until December 1940 was Pierre Laval. He was succeeded by Pierre-Г‰tienne Flandin, who was replaced by Admiral FranГ§ois Darlan two months later under German pressure. The foreign minister was initially Paul Baudouin, to be succeeded on 27 October 1940 by Laval, who was himself dismissed as vice president and foreign minister on 13 December 1940. In April 1942, Laval returned to power with expanded competences. Holding an office that had not previously existed (Chef du gouvernement) and serving as minister of the interior, minister of foreign affairs, and minister for information, he had replaced PГ©tain as the central figure in the French government. Page 44 →Of further significance for the government structure of the Vichy regime was the restructuring of the economic steering apparatuses beginning in the fall of 1940.3 The new double economics and finance ministry ( MinistГЁre de l’économie et des finances, MEF) and the MinistГЁre de la production industrielle (MPI) went on to play an important role in the economic measures against the Jews. Thus, in December 1940, the MPI became the regulatory authority of the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP), the agency charged with selecting and supervising the administrators of formerly Jewish businesses, which would soon become a central agency in the economic “Aryanization.” The MEF, in turn, appointed the commissaires aux comptes, which exercised fiscal supervision over the work of the administrateurs provisoires. The relative autonomy and capacity for political action of the home officials and the political and ideological upheaval in the country set the occupation, governmental, and administrative relations in France apart fundamentally from those in Belgium and the Netherlands.4 In France, the military defeat led to a profound political rupture that was understood and propagated by its protagonists as the beginning of an ordre nouveau.5 Marshal PГ©tain, a proponent of an armistice in June 1940, had prevailed against the prime minister, Paul Reynaud, and was, for a brief period, his successor. From 16 July 1940, PГ©tain led a government in which the deputy prime minister, Pierre Laval, stood for a pronounced pro-German policy. The values of the new regime were nourished by the rejection of “individualism,” of social and political “egalitarianism,” of “cosmopolitanism,” and of parliamentary democracy.6 In the ideological domain, the envisaged “new order” exhibited a close affinity with the other European authoritarian and fascist regimes with regard both to the rhetoric of political rigorism7 and to the active role of the state toward the economy8 and toward real and fabricated political opponents. This ideological orientation acquired its dynamic from the fact that it identified the supposed causes of the catastrophe of June 1940. As PГ©tain put it in his radio address broadcast on 25 June 1940 following the declaration of the armistice, “La dГ©faite est venue de nos relГўchements.”9 In this perception, the Jews in particular were among the enemies of the new French state.10 The Vichy regime also had in common with the extreme right-wing regimes in Europe this pattern of stigmatizing a minority,

especially the Jewish minority, as the scapegoat for political problems and disasters. In France, this pattern was founded on an original anti-Semitism that Page 45 →had gained ground especially in the 1930s. It went along with the fear of foreign infiltration, whether because of an assumed dilution of French culture and identity or because of assumed threats to public security or adverse demographic developments.11 In the Vichy rhetoric after 25 June 1940, “Jews and foreigners” became the personification of the weakening of the state and society that accounted for the disaster of the defeat.12 In this sense, the measures taken against the Jews were described as being in the public interest and were justified by significant portions of the state and intellectual elite, among them some of the leading minds.13 Thus it is apparent, on the one hand, that the ideological factor played a decisive role in initiating the anti-Jewish measures on the French side. On the other hand, the logic of exclusion, as precisely formulated by Duverger (see n. 13), derived its power from the propagandistic connection of the topos of Jewish influence in key positions in politics and society with the trauma of the defeat. This issue linkage prepared the ground for all of the measures against the Jews up to the deportations to the extermination camps. Through the argumentative linkage with the public interest, the measures against the Jews could assume the character of justified measures that could be the taken for granted. Here the common sense of the political and administrative elites of Vichy found its counterpart in that of the German military administration.14 For the latter, “Jews and communists” were the supporters of potential resistance against the German occupying power (for the communists, this perception held in its pure form only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941). The discrimination and persecution measures were facilitated by this common sense. These measures had nothing in common with the extermination plans of the National Socialist government in Germany. Nevertheless, its genocidal plans could connect seamlessly with such preparations. The “collaboration” policy, as Robert Paxton has established,15 was a French project without a genuine German correlate. Through a pro-German stance in different variants, the French side hoped, in the long term, to ensure that the status of France would be respected in a postwar Europe dominated by Germany and, in the short term, to secure an improvement in some important areas of domestic policy, particularly a speeding up of the return of the prisoners of war, an easing of travel and trade between the occupied and free zones, and, not least, a strengthening of administrative autonomy, including that of the police. PГ©tain made declarations to this effect in the radio address following his meeting with Hitler in Montoire that had taken Page 46 →place on 24 October. On this occasion, PГ©tain introduced the concept of “collaboration” into the official political usage.16 Stanley Hoffmann is the source of the often-cited characterization of the relation as a “state collaboration,” which, in contrast to the ideologically motivated collaboration policy of the extreme right, was based on calculated interests and a policy of supposedly reaching rational compromises with the German victorious power.17 However, the German side was not willing to enter into more specific strategic or pragmatic commitments. On 11 November 1940, Hitler observed, in his Directive No. 18 for the further conduct of the war, that he wanted to “cooperate” with France “as effectively as possible for the future conduct of the war against England, ”18 which underlined the instrumental character he attached to the relations. In the second week in November 1940, Hitler duped PГ©tain both by personally ordering the deportation of the Jews from Baden and Saarpfalz into unoccupied France and, even more so, through the deportation of several tens of thousands of French citizens from Alsace and Lorraine. The latter measure was contentious even on the German side, because of the negative repercussions on public opinion and the willingness to collaborate in France.19 Pierre Laval, who had proven to be an especially fervent proponent of the “collaboration” during the preparations for the meeting in Montoire, was dismissed by PГ©tain on 13 December 1940 as a result of internal disputes.20 The German side inflated the incident into a breach of trust. During the course of the war, Hitler would refer several times to “December 13” when the topic of France and the credibility of the French pledges to collaborate were raised. The efforts of Vichy officials to prove the seriousness of their collaboration efforts became even more intensive. Moreover, the incident helped to ensure that Laval enjoyed an outstanding key position in relations between Germany and France after his return to power in April 1942.

Page 47 →

Chapter 4 Establishing a Machinery of Persecution From 31 July 1941, the “Chief of the Security Police and the SD”—the formal title of Reinhard Heydrich as head of the Reich Security Main Office—was officially charged by Hermann GГ¶ring, in his capacity as plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan, “to make all of the necessary organizational and material preparations for an overall solution to the Jewish Question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.” GГ¶ring’s directive continued, “Insofar as the responsibilities of other authorities are affected, they are to be involved.”1 As a consequence, Heydrich had chaired the conference of over a dozen high-ranking civil servants and NSDAP functionaries in an SS guesthouse on the Wannsee on 20 January 1942, whose purpose was the coordination of the genocide. The Jews in Western Europe were to be deported to the slave labor and extermination camps “in the East.” Whereas the legislative measures against the Jews in the occupied territories of Western Europe were enacted by the leadership of the general occupation administration, their implementation was a matter for the SS and Gestapo agencies. At the beginning of the German occupation of France, these consisted of just a single bureau of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) that enjoyed nothing more than observer status, which was indicative of the initially relatively weak position of the Reich Security Main Office in the Western European territories. Likewise, at the beginning of the occupation, no genuine regionalization was undertaken, especially none in the form of a senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF). The insignificant SD bureau in Paris took instructions from Brussels, where a special task force was established under the physician Dr. Max Thomas, in his capacity as representative of the chief of the Security Police and Security Service for Belgium and France,2 to whom the agencies in both Brussels and Paris reported.3 In November 1941, Thomas Page 49 →was transferred to the Ukraine as head of Einsatzgruppe C, one of the mobile killing squads behind the front lines. Page 48 → Fig. 4. Helmut Knochen, senior commander of the Security Police and the SD in France from 1942. (Bundesarchiv picture 101III-Alber-096–11. Copyright Bundesarchiv.) Knochen was thus formally answerable to the representative of the commander of the Security Police and the SD (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS) for France and Belgium, Thomas, who was officially based in both Brussels and Paris. As a result, Knochen’s agency formally lacked independence. However, given the cumbersome organization of the supervision and the overwhelming importance of France for German occupation policy in Western Europe, Knochen’s agency was actually more important than the higherranking agency in Brussels. The general competence for all security and police affairs lay in the hands of the military commander. In France, as in the other occupied areas of Western Europe, this gave rise to a rivalry between the regular occupation administration under the control of the Wehrmacht and the SS apparatus, specifically regarding competence in the “Jewish Question.” Knochen’s deputy, SS Major (SturmbannfГјhrer) Kurt Lischka, was in charge of this initially still small segment of Security Police/Security Service (Sipo/SD) activity in Paris. However, the desk officer for Jewish affairs (Judenreferent), SS Captain (HauptsturmfГјhrer) Theodor Dannecker,4 became the key figure. He arrived in Paris in September 1940 and reported directly to the head of Department IV B 4 in the Reich Security Main Office, Adolf Eichmann. Dannecker—for Klarsfeld, the “real architect of the anti-Jewish infrastructure”5—was head of Department IV J until the beginning of August 1942. A conflict broke out between him and Knochen in the summer of 1942, because Dannecker dealt directly with the French police stations and, when attempting to put some of them under pressure, paid no heed to the overall direction of occupation policy in the area of policing, which, meanwhile, was based on negotiated agreements between the German and French police leadership rather than on hierarchical order and obedience.6 In July 1942, Knochen used a minor disciplinary offense as a pretext to push through Dannecker’s dismissal.7 SS Captain Heinz RГ¶thke, formerly Dannecker’s deputy, was appointed his successor. Until May 1942, RГ¶thke had been war

administration advisor in Brest and, according to Klarsfeld, was “as militant an anti-Semite as Dannecker, although his hatred of the Jews [was] less compulsive.”8 The competences in the area of security and police in occupied France underwent a fundamental change in May 1942 with the appointment of an HSSPF, Carl Albrecht Oberg, and the promotion of Knochen to BdS. At the same time, police powers and competence for security questions were transferredPage 50 → from the military commander to the SS. The level of personnel of the German police forces under the command of the BdS—the Secret Field Police, Sipo/SD (including the Gestapo), and Order Police—is estimated to have been around 5,000 strong in 1942; by contrast, the number of French police in the occupied zone alone was 47,000.9 These proportions and the fact that the German police leadership had no control over the French police in the Free Zone make clear the supreme importance that had to be accorded to the general collaboration agreement with the French police leadership from the perspective of the SS. In the meantime, the preconditions for the collaboration were also favorable on the French side. On 18 April 1942, Pierre Laval’s reentry into the Vichy government led to the appointment of RenГ© Bousquet as secretarygeneral of the French police. Bousquet was a high-level administration official who was barely 33 years old and had previously been prefect of the dГ©partement Marne. Between June and August 1942, Oberg, Knochen, and Bousquet conducted intensive negotiations aimed at achieving a compromise between collaboration in security matters and protecting French administrative autonomy. Oberg and Knochen finally agreed to refrain from issuing further direct orders to the French police, while Bousquet pledged support in German security matters and in the struggle against “enemies of the Reich.”10 This included supporting the deportations of Jews of non-French citizenship. The most spectacular consequence of these consultations was the conduct of the large-scale raid on 16–17 July 1942, in the course of which over 13,000 Jews were arrested, of whom 7,000, among them 4,000 children, were held for five days under appalling conditions in the VГ©lodrГґme d’Hiver in Paris and were then deported to Auschwitz. Among the most horrifying episodes of the collaboration, however, was the deportation in August 1942 of several thousands of Jewish children, most of whom were separated from their parents and, after weekslong stopovers in French camps, were transported in cattle wagons to Auschwitz, where, without exception, they were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.11 In contrast to the persecution through police repression, the construction and maintenance of the machinery of persecution in the economic domain was the sole concern of the economic administration of the military commander. The representatives of the Reich Security Main Office were involved only peripherally. Nevertheless, from the fall of 1941 at the latest, economic and repressive police persecution measures would be closely intermeshed.Page 51 → The policy of the economic persecution of the Jews and the participation of the French authorities was presented in a circular by the head of the Economic Section of the Military Command, Elmar Michel, addressed to the district commanders and field commanders on 1 November 1940. In the measures to be taken against the Jews in the economic domain, two aspects are decisive. First, we must do what is necessary to ensure that the elimination of Jews [from the economy] endures even after the occupation. Furthermore, the German side cannot provide sufficient manpower to deal with the great number of Jewish enterprises. Both of these considerations have led us to involve the French authorities in the elimination of Jews. This will ensure that the French authorities share the responsibility and that the French administrative apparatus can be employed. Assuming that important German interests are not involved, therefore, French provisional administrators will also be used in the first instance. In principle, the aim will be to replace the Jews by French so that the French population also benefits economically from the elimination of the Jews and to avoid the impression that only the Germans want to take the place of the Jews. This approach involves the danger that lower-level officials will not perform the tasks assigned to them with the necessary zeal, out of a lack of conviction. Therefore, the task of the German military administration authorities will be to supervise and monitor carefully the activity of the French authorities in this regard.12

The appointment of the “provisional administrators” (administrateurs provisoires) and the establishment of an administrative apparatus for recruiting and supervising them were the main focus of the economic persecution of the Jews during the following months.13 The chief emphasis would be on liquidating Jewish businesses. The right of the administrateurs provisoires to liquidate Jewish enterprises was explicitly confirmed by law on 2 February 1941.14 The appointment of the administrateurs provisoires, insofar as it concerned the large number of small street shops, was initially the responsibility of the prefects, as the chief officials of the dГ©partements. When it came to the midsize and larger enterprises, the German military administration headquarters in Paris was in charge. In December 1940, in line with the suggestion of the military commander in France in the circular quoted above, a central supervisory body was created, the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP). This occurred de facto with the 9 December letter of the military commander in France to the MinistГЁre de la production Page 52 →industrielle (MPI) on the “application of the decree of 18.10.1940,” which stated that it was up to the French authorities “to centralize the selection of the administrators to be appointedВ .В .В . in higher-level authorities.”15 The SCAP was initially answerable to the MPI. There was a representative of the military commander with the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires from January 1941 onward, a full-time representative from May 1941. The body was divided into eight sections, each devoted to a particular economic sector. In the first half of 1941, at least the administrateurs provisoires for the midsize and larger enterprises were still selected and appointed either by the prefects or directly by the administration of the military commander. The selection of the administrateurs provisoires was coordinated with the respective comitГ© d’organisation. Thus, these selfgoverning bodies of the economy under the supervision of the MPI, which were newly created in the summer of 1940, were directly involved in the “Aryanization.” Parallel to the establishment of the SCAP and de facto in competition with the offices of the military commander, the desk officer for Jewish Affairs (Judenreferent) of the Security Service, Dannecker, pressed forward with plans for a central authority for all “Jewish affairs” on the model of the “central offices” in Vienna, Prague, or, shortly afterward, Amsterdam. In France, there could be no question of such a central authority under German direction, because of the guarantee of French administrative sovereignty in the Armistice Convention. The outcome was the foundation of an institution that was singular in German-occupied Europe, a national higherlevel authority for “Jewish Questions” in the shape of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (CGQJ), which was established by the law of 29 March 1941.16 The first to be appointed commissioner-general was Xavier Vallat, formerly parliamentary deputy of the ArdГЁche constituency, a declared anti-Semite, and SecrГ©taire gГ©nГ©ral aux Anciens combattants. The CGQJ had two headquarters, one in Vichy and one in Paris. It was answerable to the interior minister from April 1941 to May 1942, then directly to the head of government from May 1942. The CGQJ serves as an example both of the tensions and contradictions within the multidimensional division of powers in the interplay between the German occupying power and the Vichy regime and of the action orientations of those concerned.17 On the one hand, it was obviously an institutional expression of the official anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime. The establishment of a special administration for Jews would have been inconceivable without the predisposition of Vichy to “eliminate” the Jews Page 53 →from public life and from the French economy (as it was put at this time also—see above—in the usage of the German occupation administration) and without the corresponding signals, primarily through the French legislation against the Jews in the fall of 1940. The comparison with the conditions in Belgium, where the planned Commissariat royal aux questions juives did not come about,18 makes this obvious. On the other hand, the CGQJ was nevertheless established under German pressure and, as such, was an indication of latent interference by the occupying power in French administrative affairs. Finally, the assignment of competence to the CGQJ triggered rivalries with the already established authorities, particularly with the SCAP and the regular Vichy ministries.19 Fig. 5. RenГ© Bousquet, secretary-general of the French police from April 1942 to December 1943. On his right is the police prefect of Paris, AmГ©dГ©e BussiГЁre. (From Serge Klarsfeld, Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944 [Paris: Fayard, 2001], 403. Copyright Agence Roger Viollet.) Beyond that, the commissioner-general for Jewish affairs possessed a kind of general competence in a critical

field of occupation policy to which the traditional ministries of the Vichy government showed even less respect the more the ministries themselves strove to establish a stable axis of collaboration with the representatives of the occupying power and the more, in the Page 54 →process, the “Jewish Question” came into play. This was true of the newly created MPI. Its SecrГ©tariat d’état Г la rГ©partition, under its able secretarygeneral—and, from 1942, minister—Jean Bichelonne, supervised the comitГ©s d’organisation that in turn supervised the selection of the “provisional administrators” of the business enterprises falling under the German and French “Aryanization” provisions, resulting in overlapping competences with the CGQJ. This likewise held from 1942 for the general commission for the police under RenГ© Bousquet—like Bichelonne, a young, energetic technocrat—who streamlined and enlarged the French police force and, in the process, abolished the special police for Jews (Police aux questions juives, or PQJ) maintained by the CGQJ. Bichelonne and Bousquet each had a German counterpart in the person of comparably young and unscrupulous Nazi functionaries. In the area of the economy and the collaboration in mobilizing workforces for the German armaments industry, this counterpart was Albert Speer. In the police domain, it was Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office, and, after Heydrich’s assassination in June 1942, Helmut Knochen, commander of the Security Police and the SD in Paris. When it came to the “Jewish Question,” therefore, there was initially a quite unclear division of competences. From the French perspective, the question arose again concerning the integrity of the national administrative structures. From the German perspective, neither the occupied zone nor the Free Zone had a functioning administrative apparatus for implementing the economic measures against the Jews in the spring of 1941. New initiatives on anti-Jewish ordinances in April and May 1941—through which, first, Jews in the occupied zone were forbidden free access to the proceeds of their “Aryanized” businesses and, subsequently, bank accounts with “Jewish capital” in the occupied zone were blocked—accelerated the clarification of competences, the establishment of functioning institutions, and the expansion of the anti-Jewish measures in material and territorial terms on the French side. By a law of 19 June 1941, the SCAP was integrated into the CGQJ. Thus, the CGQJ remained essentially an “Aryanization” authority until the end of the German occupation.20 Of the 1,100 employees of the CGQJ in 1944, some 800 were involved in the “Aryanization” and the other economic persecution measures against the Jews.21 The public Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations (CDC) was the designated recipient of all of the proceeds from the “Aryanization” measures and from the remaining exploitation of Jewish property.22 As part of the latter, frozen accounts were established in the names of the Jewish owners in the CDC, and 90 percent of the proceeds from Page 55 →the sale of business concerns, real estate, securities of Jewish owners, and so on flowed into those accounts. The remaining 10 percent was used to finance the CGQJ.23 A further radicalization of the persecution and consolidation of the persecution machinery in the economic domain began in the summer of 1941. This development was connected with the radicalization of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as a whole.24 Assassination attempts on German military personnel and ensuing German reprisals—specifically, executions of hostages—created a tense situation, which the representation of the SD in Paris aggravated further, in the manner of an agent provocateur, through bomb attacks on synagogues. This provided the Reich Security Main Office with a lever to increase the pressure on the occupation administration under the military commander in France, Otto von StГјlpnagel. Instead of summary executions of hostages, the military commander, forced onto the defensive, proposed selective measures against “Jews and communists,” particularly deportations, and finally, on 1 November 1941, recommended the imposition of a “fine” of one billion francs on the Jews in the occupied zone. This fine was duly imposed through the “decree on a fine on the Jews” of 17 December 1941.25 Funds for the fine’s payment were to be raised by the Jews in the occupied zone in four installments on fixed dates, by 31 March 1942, and paid to the Reichskreditkasse (Reich Credit Bank), the central clearinghouse of the occupation administration, which was placed at the Banque de France in Paris.26 This constellation led to the perpetuation of the economic persecution measures far beyond the financial technicalities of the collection of the levy.27 In close cooperation between the French Ministry of Economics and Finance and the Association professionelle des banques, the Union gГ©nГ©rale des Israelites de France (UGIF),

which had to collect the compulsory levy, was granted a credit in an effort to dissuade the occupying power from intervening directly on this occasion too—especially as it involved the sensitive banking sector. In principle, the balance of the account in the CDC with the proceeds of the “Aryanization” and other property transactions accumulated on the basis of the law of 22 July 1941 was to be drawn upon to pay the compulsory levy, although, at this point, the account did not yet yield the sum of one billion francs.28 A law of 16 January 194229 sanctioned the extension of credit to the UGIF. Through a government ordinance of 21 March 1942,30 the UGIF was then authorized to draw upon the frozen accounts at the CDC to repay the credit. The CGQJ and the Ministry of Finance, here the Page 56 →Administration des domaines, cooperated closely in processing the sale of all kinds of Jewish property to replenish these accounts. In the final analysis, therefore, the so-called fine lent further impetus to the radicalization of the economic persecution measures directed against the Jews. It ensured that the spoliation of Jewish property by the state was firmly institutionalized, particularly through the close cooperation between state authorities and banks. In the final stage, these efforts of the French side ran parallel to the plans by the SD and the Gestapo to initiate the systematic mass deportations of Jews from France and to the streamlining of the organizational preconditions through the appointment of Oberg as HSSPF in May 1942 and the promotion of Knochen to BdS. Nevertheless, economic motives played a subordinate role in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” through deportation. The primary issue for all of those concerned was instead a political one. On the German side in 1942, the objective of the deportation of all Jews was a directive from the very highest level. That was sufficient as motivation for the persecutors and as an argument toward the French authorities. However, the Sipo /SD apparatus first had to achieve the requisite position of power and organizational control, both vis-Г -vis the German military administration and vis-Г -vis the government in Vichy. Therefore, the prehistory of the mass deportations that began in June 1942 is, above all, proof of the political capabilities of the SS.

Page 57 →

Part II The SS as Political Actor

Page 58 → Page 59 →

Chapter 5 The SS in the Power Struggle with the Wehrmacht Administration, 1941/1942 By comparison with the Netherlands and Belgium, the increase in power of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA) relative to the initial situation in the summer of 1940 was the greatest in France. Nevertheless, the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” met with the least success in France. Both of these facts were primarily due to a Franco-German consensus among the professional police technocrats, epitomized by the Oberg-Bousquet agreement of August 1942. The balance of interests underlying this agreement—which involved the RSHA and the senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF) answering directly to Himmler as Reich chief of the SS and police, on the one hand, and the representatives of the Vichy government, on the other—was a matter of occupation policy in general and did not bear directly on the persecution of the Jews. Notwithstanding the rigor demonstrated by Heydrich and his man in Paris, Helmut Knochen, in the power struggle with the Wehrmacht—they were directly responsible for the disavowal of Otto von StГјlpnagel and his resignation in February 1942—they proved equally flexible and, in a literal sense, diplomatic in their dealings with the Vichy authorities. This line was continued by the HSSPF appointed in May 1942—hence, by Oberg. However, his contemporaries left no doubt, also in their statements after the war, that Knochen, promoted to SSStandartenfГјhrer (SS colonel) and commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS) simultaneously with the establishment of the office of an HSSPF, was pulling the strings in the operative area and was superior to Oberg in intellect and as a political tactician.1 Page 60 →In RenГ© Bousquet on the French side, Oberg and Knochen now found a partner cut from the same cloth.2 Like Heydrich (born in 1904) and Knochen (born in 1910), Bousquet (born in 1909) belonged to a young political-administrative elite who combined driving personal ambition and an orientation to professional effectiveness with unscrupulousness. Primarily due to his determination to rationalize the French police apparatus, his professionalism, and his willingness and talent for reaching both technically and politically effective agreements, Bousquet became a “privileged interlocutor”3 for the higher and supreme ranks of the SS and Gestapo. Their paths crossed after fundamental political changes as well as alterations affecting personnel and organization had been made on both the German and French sides in the spring of 1942. These involved, on the German side, the exclusion of the military commander from policing matters through the monopolization of jurisdiction by the SS and, on the French side, the return to power of Pierre Laval in April 1942. To understand the importance of the Oberg-Bousquet agreement—which finally came into effect in August 1942—for how the persecution of the Jews unfolded in France, one must first examine how several decision-making arenas and sequences of events overlapped.

Initial French and German Persecution Measures The anti-Jewish measures introduced on both the French and German sides through ordinances and administrative decisions from the fall of 1940 onward represent the first arena. At first, they did not lead to any more far-reaching organizational measures.4 Since July 1940, the Vichy government had enacted a series of laws whose effects were directed primarily against the Jews, among which was the law of 22 July 1940 decreeing the reexamination of all naturalizations that had been granted since 10 August 1927.5 This early measure is particularly important for the assessment of the later Franco-German negotiations on the summary expatriation of Jews. With the law of 23 July 1940,6 French nationals who were living outside French territory “without official mission of the relevant authority or other legitimate motive” lost their citizenship, and their property was confiscated. Jews bore the brunt of these measures, as would be noted with approval in the deactivation report of the Department for Economic Questions at the Administrative Headquarters of the Military Command in France for 1944/45.7 There is a noteworthy parallel to the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of Page 61 →25 November 1941,8 in

accordance with which Jews who “normally resided abroad” were deprived of both their citizenship and their property.9 With the Vichy ordinances of 17 July, 14 August, and 10 September 1940,10 Frenchmen whose fathers were not French were excluded from the public service (ordinance of 17 July) and subsequently from all liberal professions. Jewish immigrants or their children were profoundly affected by these measures. The same holds for the Vichy law of 10 September 1940,11 which adopted an ordinance of the German commander in chief of the army of 20 May 1940 for the rear military areas under military administration,12 according to which a provisional administrator (administrateur provisoire) could be appointed for companies with absentee owners. This constituted an important foundation for the “Aryanization” policy subsequently pursued by the Vichy authorities largely at their own initiative. The first French measure directed explicitly against the Jews was the annulment on 27 August 1940 of the law of 21 April 1939 making anti-Semitic propaganda in the press a punishable offense.13 The anti-Jewish measures reached an initial climax with the Vichy anti-Jewish laws proclaimed on 3 October, adopted on 4 October, and published on 18 October 1940.14 What came into effect was the first Statute on Jews of 3 October 1940,15 containing a French definition of the concept “Jew” (which counted as “Jews” individuals who had at least three Jewish grandparents or, alternatively, who had two Jewish grandparents and a Jewish spouse). In contrast to the ordinance issued a week earlier by the German military commander (see below), this statute spoke not in terms of “Jewish religion” (religion juive) but expressly in terms of Jewish race (race juive). Because of the first statute, Jews were excluded from the civil service and the army, from all public offices, from public companies, from teaching at public schools, and from a series of cultural and journalistic professions. With the law of 2 June 1941,16 the statute was replaced by a considerably more comprehensive version that simplified the definition of the concept “Jew”—counting as a “Jew” a person who had at least three grandparents who practiced the Jewish faith—and extended the occupational bans to broad areas of the private sector. A further law of 2 June 194117 obligated “Jews,” as defined by the Statute on Jews, to furnish the prefecture with jurisdiction for them with a written itemization of their family circumstances, their occupational situation, and their financial circumstances. This was connected with a law published a few weeks later, on 22 July 1941, mandating the handover and public administration of Jewish assets. In addition, on 4 October 1940, the Vichy government had enacted a Page 62 →“Law on Foreign Nationals of the Jewish Race,” according to which foreign Jews could be confined to camps or compulsory residential areas (rГ©sidence forcГ©e) at the directive of the prefect in charge.18 This created the basis for the establishment of those camps from which, from July 1942 onward, tens of thousands of foreign Jews were deported from both the occupied and the unoccupied zones and handed over to the German Security Police/Security Service (Sipo/SD).19 As regards the measures against the Jews on the German side, Otto Abetz, who, at this time, was still serving as plenipotentiary of the Foreign Office with the military commander in France and not yet as ambassador, called on representatives of the military administration, in a conversation on 17 August 1940, to forbid Jews from entering the occupied territory and to explore the feasibility of “removing” the Jews living in the occupied zone and of possibly confiscating their property.20 Abetz had sent Ribbentrop a corresponding note. Once the Administrative Headquarters of the Military Command had sounded out “what was legally and politically feasible”21 and had also called on the commander in chief of the armed forces to introduce anti-Jewish measures, Abetz’s initiative led to the first decree of the military administration “on measures against the Jews.”22 This decree, enacted on 27 September 1940,23 defined the “Jews” according to the religious affiliation of their forebears, introduced compulsory registration for Jews and the compulsory marking of Jewish businesses, and forbade Jews from reentering the occupied zone from the unoccupied zone. The second decree of the military commander on “measures against the Jews,” enacted on 18 October 1940,24 marked the launching of the economic persecution by the German side. The decree defined as “Jewish” any companies with Jewish owners or, in the case of joint-stock companies, any company in which one-third or more of the capital was held by Jews or in which one-third or more of the seats on the supervisory boards were controlled by Jews. Moreover, it was decreed that a “provisional administrator” could be appointed for the companies thus classified as “Jewish.” The corresponding term kommissarischer

Verwalter was a German translation of the French administrateur provisoire. The basis for this was provided by the “provisional administrator decree” of the Army High Command of 20 May 1940, which the French government had adopted with the law of 10 September 1940. In the spring of 1941, a further wave of economic decrees followed, subjecting the Jews to strict controls over their property that were implemented by the Vichy authorities. With the Vichy law of 22 July 1941,25 all Jewish assets were Page 63 →registered and administered by the public Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, under the direction of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (CGQJ), which had been established in the meantime. The ordinances and administrative measures against the Jews primarily served to support strict police controls and restrictions on their mobility, but from May 1941, direct repressive measures primarily targeted against nonFrench Jews were also taken. Based on the law of 4 October 1940, the French police imprisoned around 3,700 Jews in Paris on 14 May 1941, deporting them to the Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande detention camps run by French authorities in the occupied zone. On 20 August 1941, the Paris metropolitan police conducted a large-scale raid, in the course of which 3,022 Jews, mostly non-French nationals, were arrested based on arrest lists26 and were confined in the Drancy internment camp. Among the arrested Frenchmen, a large proportion were lawyers and intellectuals, including 50 attorneys accredited to the Paris Court of Appeal (Cour d’appel). In a second wave of arrests, on 21–23 August, 1,210 non-French Jews were arrested.27 The communist agitation following the German invasion of the Soviet Union and attacks on members of the Wehrmacht served as a pretext on both the German and the French sides.28 Finally, on 12 December 1941, 743 Jews were arrested by German field gendarmerie and members of the Sipo /SD, in collaboration with French police units in Paris, as part of a series of retaliatory measures following attacks on German institutions and military personnel. To this must be added 300 internees from the Drancy camp. These 1,043 Jews, predominantly upper-middle-class Parisians, were brought to the CompiГЁgne camp. The measure was connected with the imposition of a “fine” of one billion francs as “atonement” for the attacks. It was followed on 15 December 1941 by the execution by firing squad of “100 Jews, communists, and anarchists” (as it was put in the communiquГ© of the military commander of 14 December 1941), of whom 53 were Jews, mostly members of communist and socialist organizations. The over 1,000 Jews who were arrested and detained in CompiГЁgne under appalling conditions were deported to Auschwitz on 27 March 1942. They formed the first of 79 transports sent to the extermination camps to which around 77,000 Jews living in France would fall victim.29 The transport of 27 March 1942 was followed until 17 July 1942 by five further transports from the CompiГЁgne, Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande camps, comprising a total of 6,000 Jewish deportees, most of whom—around 80 percent, according to the data provided by Klarsfeld—were dead within 10 Page 64 →weeks. The first mass murder of Jewish deportees by gassing took place on 19 July 1942, to which 375 of the 999 deportees from the seventh convoy from Drancy fell victim.30 Between the early fall of 1940 and the summer of 1942, therefore, the persecution of the Jews in France followed the basic pattern of identification, registration, exclusion from professional life, “Aryanization” of companies, confiscation of property, and marking (the Star of David badge was introduced in the occupied zone on 7 June 1942). The German military administration as well as the Vichy authorities and their police were involved in these persecution measures from the outset. Congruent objectives functioned as a radicalizing factor in this process as much as did the wrangling over competences. During the first phase of the German occupation until the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the government in Vichy pursued an independent and active anti-Semitic policy whose primary goal was the exclusion of the Jews from the economy and public life and from the civil service. When, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the occupiers declared communist resistance to be a new security risk, they could also count on the basic willingness of the French police to collaborate in this area. If an extensive homogeneity of objectives and the collaboration based on a division of labor were already an essential radicalizing factor, the dynamic of escalation was aggravated still further by the competition over competences between the German military administration and the Vichy authorities. This was made apparent from the outset by the economic persecution measures against the Jews,31 where the Vichy representatives were afraid that the Germans would exert direct influence over French economic life. The same logic would become apparent, from the spring of 1942 onward, in the police repression of the Jews in advance of

and during the deportations. RenГ© Bousquet became the symbol of police repression on the French side. The rivalries between the principal agencies involved—the Vichy authorities, the German military administration, and the Sipo/SD—formed a further arena in the escalation of the persecution. They led to the development of procedural routines and the formation of new administrative bodies. Although a consolidation in this respect was achieved in the area of the economic persecution of the Jews in the summer of 1941, such a consolidation in the area of police repression would not be achieved until the summer of 1942. In the area of the economic persecution, responsibility on the French side for selecting and supervising the “provisional administrators” Page 65 →appointed to manage the “Aryanized” Jewish companies lay with the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires (SCAP), which had already been established in December 1940 and developed into the de facto central French authority for the economic measures against the Jews.32 By the law of 19 June 1941, it was integrated into the CGQJ. The prompt French initiative and the rapid construction of the SCAP were a result of the determination on the French side to prevent the economic persecution of the Jews from becoming a vehicle of German influence over the French economy. With the designation, also in July 1941, of the Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations (CDC) as the central payments authority for administering confiscated Jewish assets, a robust institutional framework subject to direct German oversight in the occupied zone was established in the domain of the economic persecution.33 However, the everyday business of the “Aryanization” was conducted largely at the independent initiative of the French authorities. The institutional relations were considerably more complicated in the area of the police repression of the Jews. This applied to both the German and the French sides and to the relations between the German and French authorities. On the German side, all of the executive functions resided with the military administration, and the slender “command” of the Sipo/SD first had to fight to secure original competences of its own with the energetic assistance of the RSHA. The “Jewish Question” provided an ideal lever for asserting these claims. In a letter of 20 September 1940 to the Foreign Office departmental head in charge, the envoy (and SSStandartenfГјhrer [SS Colonel]) Martin Luther, Heydrich made an appeal for “extensive involvement of the command of the Security Police currently posted in occupied France, which has forces at its disposal with particular experience in dealing with the Jews.”34 With this appeal, Heydrich established a general authority of the Sipo/SD that, although vague, was nevertheless accepted, in principle, by the German military commander in France.35 The desk officer for Jewish affairs (Judenreferent) of the Sipo/SD office, Theodor Dannecker, subsequently used this authority as a platform for launching a whole series of initiatives that essentially boiled down to the transfer to France of the standard model of the RSHA for organizing the persecution of the Jews. These measures would include, in particular, the centralization and bundling of competences in “Jewish issues” on both the German and French sides.36 This project was bound to run up against the limits of the Armistice Agreement and the claims to authority of the military administration. A coalition subsequently developed between the members of the German EmbassyPage 66 → in Paris—specifically Carltheo Zeitschel, the legation counselor (Legationsrat) in charge of “Jewish issues”—and the office of the Sipo/SD as represented by Kurt Lischka and Theodor Dannecker, whose objective was to gradually extend competences in all “Jewish affairs” at the expense of the military commander’s administration. These efforts were not successful when it came to the economic measures against the Jews. In the case of the police repression, by contrast, they resulted, in the spring of 1942, in a monopoly of competences by the Sipo/SD—in other words, the SS—on the German side.

The “Hostage Crisis” The “hostage question,” in which the military commander maneuvered himself into the defensive vis-à -vis both the French authorities and the SS from the summer of 1941 onward, became the stage on which this drama unfolded. The process began with repressive measures by the military administration following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. This event ensured that clearly defined ideological fronts were restored on both the National Socialist and Communist sides. In a radio address delivered on 3 July 1941, Stalin had appealed for armed resistance and sabotage “in the areas occupied by the enemy” (by which were meant, of course, the occupied areas of the Soviet Union). On 15 August 1941, the underground communist

newspaper HumanitГ©, which had not attacked the German occupying power while it remained allied with the Soviet Union until 22 June 1941 and whose chairman Maurice Thorez had even deserted from the French army after France’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, called, in turn, for “the expulsion of the enemy from the hallowed ground of the fatherland.”37 Now the military commander himself, in a decree also issued on 15 August 1941, threatened to impose the death penalty for “communist intrigues” and duly lent this threat an anti-Jewish thrust. On 19 August 1941, a German field court-martial passed a death sentence on two young men, Henri Gautherot and Samuel Tyszelman, who had been arrested some days previously. Both were immediately executed, and the execution was announced throughout the entire Paris municipal area, using particularly conspicuous red or yellow posters. The following day, 20 August 1941, marked the beginning of the aforementioned large-scale raids in the course of which over Page 67 →4,200 Jews were arrested and taken to the Drancy camp. On the posters announcing the execution of the two young communists, the military administration made explicit that Tyszelman was a Jew. On 21 August 1941, a member of the German armed forces was attacked for the first time, presumably as a response to the execution of Gautherot and Tyszelman. A German marine was shot dead by two French attackers in a Paris Metro station. A public communiquГ© was duly issued on 23 August 1941, announcing that “all Frenchmen taken into custody for whatever reason, either by the German authorities in France or on their behalf, ” would be treated as “hostages from 23 August onward.”38 Following a further attack on a German noncommissioned officer, three of these French hostages were shot dead on 6 September 1941. The reaction of Vichy to this new escalation of the German policy of repression was telling. On 21 September 1941, instead of condemning the hostage executions, PГ©tain condemned the attacks on German soldiers, observing, “Ces attentats sont criminels.”39 Up to this point, therefore, the military administration and Vichy agreed, in principle, not only on who was to be identified as the common enemy—the communists and the Jews—but also on the appropriate way of combating them. As early as 23 August 1941, the Vichy interior minister, Pierre Pucheu, passed a law authorizing special courts to impose particularly draconian punishments, including the death penalty, on communist and anarchist offenders.40 The military commander, Otto von StГјlpnagel, nevertheless came under increasing pressure from Hitler and the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heers, or OKH). On 7 September 1941, a day after the execution of the first three hostages, the OKH informed StГјlpnagel by telex that the “FГјhrer” had expressed the view that “a German soldier is worth more to him than three French communists.” It continued, The FГјhrer expects that the most severe retaliatory measures be employed in such cases. He [Hitler] could accept the shooting of three hostages only as a first direct measure. If the murderer is not handed over without delay, at least 50 further shootings must be conducted—first and foremost leading communists! At least 309 new hostages must be identified. At the next assassination attempt, at least 100 shootings must be conducted for each German. It will not be possible to master the situation without such draconian retaliation. Please submit a telex report on the reasons that were decisive in confining the shootings to three hostages.41 Page 68 →Nine days later, there followed a general circular by the head of the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW), Wilhelm Keitel, with the subject heading “Communist insurgency in the occupied territories.” It stated that the “communist insurgencies erupting everywhere” in the German-occupied territories “since the beginning of the campaign against Soviet Russia” constituted “a mass movement under the unified leadership of Moscow to which the apparently minor isolated incidents in areas that have otherwise been quiet until now are also to be attributed.”42 It was also to be expected, the circular continued, “that nationalist and other groups will take advantage of this opportunity to create difficulties for the German occupying power by making common cause with the communist revolt,” thereby posing “a growing threat for the German war effort.” Because the measures to date had proven insufficient, the “FГјhrer” had decreed that from now on “the most severe means” were to be employed. It had to be borne in mind, in this regard, “that in many cases a human life in the countries concerned counts for nothing and that a deterrent effect can be achieved only through unusual severity. In these cases, the death penalty

for 50–100 communists must generally be regarded as suitable atonement for the life of a single German soldier. The way in which the punishment is administered must heighten the deterrent effect still further.” The circular went on to emphasize that “the political relations between Germany and the country involved are not decisive for the conduct of the military occupation administration.”43 These unequivocal directives from the very highest level placed the German military administration in France in a precarious position. The officers and officials of the German occupation authorities under Otto von StГјlpnagel had shown, through the earlier condemnations and executions and the associated propaganda, that they had no humanitarian scruples about brutally combating the resistance against the occupation regime. The connection that the OKW directive drew between the conduct of the war against the Soviet Union, communist insurgency, and the military situation as a whole was also perfectly in tune with the interpretations of the occupation authorities. To this was added the initially strong support for the German repressive measures by the government in Vichy. This support reflected not only the shared anticommunism of the German occupiers and the French government but, above all, the fact that the policy of collaboration pursued by both sides proved to be resilient even under crisis conditions. This resiliency was precisely the problem that the directives of Hitler and Page 69 →the OKW posed for the military administration. Since the OKW directive of 16 September 1941, the viability of the collaboration and hence the basis for virtually all of the ruling practices of the military administration were in abeyance. The basic support of the population and particularly of the functional elites in the state, society, and the church was of crucial importance for Vichy’s willingness to collaborate. On the one hand, the military administration was naturally not in control of the triggering moment for the automatism of attack and reprisal decreed by Hitler and the OKW; on the other hand, there could be no assurance that the distinction the OKH imposed between communists and anarchists, on the one side, and the remainder of the French, on the other, would prove to be effective. In fact, the relations between the occupying power and Vichy were plunged into a serious crisis at the end of October 1941, after two senior German officials were shot dead by resistance fighters in consecutive attacks on the 20 and 21 October.44 Otto von StГјlpnagel duly ordered the immediate execution of 100 hostages, accompanied by the threat to execute a further 100 hostages if the perpetrators were not caught within 48 hours. The details of these measures were the object of close and intense coordination with both the government in Vichy and the OKW, with Quartermaster General Wagner, who was in charge, receiving detailed directives from Hitler.45 Following the execution by firing squad of 50 hostages, both head of state PГ©tain and the acting deputy prime minister, Admiral Darlan, addressed the population in radio broadcasts,46 in which they did not devote a single word of criticism to the mass execution. Instead, the attacks were branded as “despicable acts of agents of foreign powers” (Darlan). Referring to the prisoners of war still in Germany, both PГ©tain and Darlan appealed for help in capturing the authors of the attacks. Despite this appeal, 50 further hostages were executed by German firing squads on the following day. In the fall of 1941, the mass execution of entirely innocent people was the dominant theme among the French population and, insofar as one could speak of such, the French public. This development was closely followed by both the government in Vichy and the German occupation administration.47 The reports of the leadership of the German military administration devoted particular attention to the negative domestic political repercussions of the hostage executions. The “Report on the Political Situation in France, October 1941” signed by the head of the command staff of the military commander, Colonel Hans Speidel, stated, “The execution by firing squad of initially 50 hostages already conducted triggered an unexpectedly Page 70 →hefty shock reaction among the French population. FrenchmenВ .В .В . are currently disturbed by the fact that people are being shot who are not directly responsible for the attacks.В .В .В . But the execution of a further 50 hostages if the perpetrators are not found can have dire consequences.”48 Ultimately, the Quartermaster General of the army, General Eduard Wagner, persuaded Hitler to postpone indefinitely the threatened second wave of hostage executions. The military commander announced this on 20 October 1941 in a communiquГ© addressed “to the French

population.”49

The “Hostage Question” and the Persecution of the Jews In autumn 1941, the “hostage question” had become the central political issue of German occupation policy in France. Its effect was nothing short of catalytic.50 On the one hand, it enabled the tactical dispositions of the two sides to emerge clearly also in the actors’ perceptions of each other. On the other hand, it led to a consolidation of occupation and institutional policy, an integral component of which was the further radicalization of the persecution of the Jews. The radicalization of the persecution of the Jews was undoubtedly the work of both of the key control centers of the German occupation regime in France, the specialist departments of the military commander in France and those of the German Embassy in Paris.51 The reaction to attacks and hostage executions revealed, in the first place, an almost unconditional determination on both the German and the French sides to continue the policy of collaboration. This was true of both Otto von StГјlpnagel and the agencies of the military commander in conjunction with Otto Abetz and the personnel of the German Embassy as well as of head of state PГ©tain, Deputy Prime Minister Darlan, and Interior Minister Pucheu. This line was never abandoned on the German side where the agencies in Paris were concerned—not even, tellingly, after the appointment of an HSSPF in May 1942. Hitler, by contrast, who presumably became personally involved in details of the German occupation regime in France for the first time during the “hostage affair,” had a tactical approach to the collaboration. Moreover, presumably in the fall of 1941, at the time of the supposed decisive battle before Moscow, German occupation policy in France was ultimately only a peripheral concern of the dictator. The disposition of the OKW and the OKH was shaped by a presumed Page 71 →global connection between the combat against the communist Soviet Union and, as it was put explicitly in the decree of 16 September 1941, the “mass movement under the unified leadership of Moscow” against German occupation policy in Europe. This perception was also the essential common denominator between the German military administration, on the one side, and the government in Vichy, on the other. Already at the very first signs of an intensification of resistance to the German occupying power following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, however, the military commander and the German Embassy in Paris explicitly made the Jews the target of more severe repressive measures. The driving force behind the setting of priorities at this time, from the summer of 1941, was not the OKW, the OKH, Hitler himself, or even the RSHA but, instead, the military commander and the German Embassy. This became apparent for the first time with the raid conducted on 20 August 1941. As the collaboration of the Paris police demonstrated, the German side could rely on the fact that the Vichy regime and its leadership would apply an anti-Semitic interpretive framework that reflected its own stereotypes, particularly when measures were directed mainly against foreign Jews, as was the case with this raid. Given this disposition, it is not surprising that the military administration, which came under massive pressure from Hitler and the OKW in the “hostage question,” brought the intensification of the persecution of the Jews into play as a supposedly more flexible and effective form of repression, by comparison with summary executions by firing squad. This occurred for the first time, as far as can be ascertained, in a telex of the military commander to the OKH on 1 December 1941, in which StГјlpnagel proposed the following “atonement measure” for a bomb attack on a bar frequented by German soldiers on 20 November 1941, in which three German soldiers were killed and two injured: Shooting of 50 Jews and communists from among the persons already in custodyВ .В .В .В ; imposition of a fine of one billion francs on the Jews of Paris; internment and deportation to the East of Jews who have come to our attention in a criminal or anti-German context. Here we initially thought of a figure of up to 1,000.52 In a further telex to the OKH following additional attacks on members of the Wehrmacht on 5 and 6 December 1941, StГјlpnagel proposed increasing the number of hostages to be executed from 50 to 100, and he furthermore suggestedPage 72 → “also deporting 500 young communists in addition to the 1,000 Jews.”53 In response,

the OKH informed the military commander by telephone on 12 December 1941 “that the FГјhrer has decreed that the last proposed atonement measures are to be carried out.” Already on 6 December 1941, the commander of the greater Paris region had received orders to imprison 1,000 Jews, which led to the raid on 12 December.54 The entire cluster of repressive measures—the imposition of a fine of one billion francs on the Jews, the execution of 100 “Jews, communists, and anarchists,” and the deportation of “a large number of criminal Jewish-Bolshevist elementsВ .В .В . to forced labor in the East”—was publicly proclaimed by the military commander on 14 December 1941.55 The 1,000 Jews arrested on 12 December 1941 would then form the first contingent of the deportations to Auschwitz that began on 27 March 1942.56 Thus there was a direct connection between the “hostage question” or “hostage crisis” and the radicalization of the persecution of the Jews—with regard both to the repressive measures themselves and to the streamlining and reorganization of the machinery of persecution. The measures that the military administration took against the Jews were thus indirectly connected with the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” conclusively agreed on by the administrative leadership of the Reich at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942: the extermination of the European Jews by deportation and mass murder. It was not by chance that the military administration and StГјlpnagel in person got it into their heads, in the conflict with the OKW in the person of Keitel and with Hitler himself, to propose escalating the persecution and deportation of Jews. Corresponding initiatives had repeatedly been launched by the German Embassy in alliance with the Paris office of the Sipo/SD vis-Г -vis the military administration, where they had a dependable ally in the person of the head of the department for legal affairs and administration, Dr. Werner Best.57 The military administration adhered meticulously to the established pattern of persecution of Jews in the territory of the Reich—for example, with the imposition of a “fine” of one billion francs and the preparation of a mass deportation of Jews.58 The imposition of the “fine” of one billion francs to be raised by the Jews in the occupied zones led to a consolidation of the machinery of persecution also in the economic domain.59 A decisive factor in this regard was the apprehension on the French side that the occupying power could take control of the French banking system as collateral for the billion-franc fine.60 The Page 73 →economic persecution of the Jews became almost the paradigm of French efforts to implement the anti-Jewish measures in a way that dissuaded the Germans from intervening more extensively in the state and administration and that, according to what was hoped for in Vichy, might even lead to the repeal of the German ordinances.61 As in Belgium and even in the Netherlands, the Sipo /SD apparatus, in sharp contrast to the practice of naked robbery in the occupied territories in Eastern Europe, had no say in the area of the economic persecution of the Jews.

The Resignation of Otto von Stülpnagel and the Appointment of a Senior SS Leader and Chief of Police in the Spring of 1942 Things were very different with the persecution through police repression. Here the Sipo/SD representation under Helmut Knochen, which was still operating as the “Paris office” of the so-called representative of the chief of the security police and SD for Belgium and France, used the “hostage crisis” to rigorously extend its influence. In the process, Knochen exhibited a level of unscrupulousness that was astounding even by the standards of the adept officers of the military administration. Amid the escalating crisis in the “hostage question,” he had French collaborators conduct bomb attacks on Parisian synagogues in early October 1941. This developed into an acute conflict between the military commander, Otto von Stülpnagel, and the head of the RSHA, Reinhard Heydrich. In this conflict, the Quartermaster General’s department of the OKH initially supported Stülpnagel. Once light had been thrown on the matter, the latter called openly for Knochen’s dismissal.62 In a letter of 21 October 1941, the Quartermaster General’s department of the OKH63 addressed the chief of the Security Police and the SD (Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD), Heydrich, with an exact report on the incident itself and Knochen’s authorship. The specific accusation against the latter was that, even a day after

the attacks on the synagogues, he deliberately misled StГјlpnagel about the actual background of the attacks, in a written report to the military commander dated 4 October 1941.64 In this letter—and there can be no doubt that its details were coordinated with the officers and officials of the military commander in France—the OKH referred explicitly to the fraught security situation and the resulting difficult political situation in France. This situation was deemed especially difficult in light of the fact Page 74 →that, in recent times, “acts of sabotage and attacks of other kinds had become more frequent in the occupied French territories,” as a result of which “the harshest possible reprisals were inflicted on the French populationВ .В .В . and further reprisals were threatenedВ .В .В . should attacks of whatever kind be repeated.” The letter went on, The perpetrators and authors of the bomb attacks of 2/3 October could not be in any doubt, therefore, that their enterprise would have effects on nonparticipants and could have the most severe political consequences.В .В .В . The danger was all the greater because two German members of the Wehrmacht were injured in the attack and numerous others were placed in harm’s way. The political repercussions would have been immense if punitive measures had been imposed on Frenchmen and afterwards the true authorship had become known.65 The letter ended with the explicit request of the commander in chief of the army that SS-BrigadefГјhrer (SS Brigadier General) Thomas be relieved of his post,66 whereas, given the circumstances, the dismissal of Knochen was taken for granted: “The Army High Command assumes that it can count on the agreement of the relevant bureau that those who participated in the bombing attacks in the occupied Western territories, SS-Ostuf. [SS lieutenant colonel] Dr. Knochen and SS-Ostuf. Sommer, will no longer be employed there.”67 This assumption was far removed from reality. Heydrich responded on 6 November 1941, Because of the exceptional character of the measures to be conducted, the head of my Paris office [thus Knochen] did not inform the military commander. For, judged by past experience of the collaboration with the military commander, he could scarcely count on meeting with the requisite understanding for the need to conduct these measures in the conflict with ideological opponents.68 Heydrich did not fail to mention that he was fully aware of the political implications of the measures taken, especially as I have been entrusted for years with preparing the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe. I also accept full responsibility for this.69 Page 75 →This was an unmistakable indication of the strength of the feelings of the RSHA toward the OKH and, moreover, of what was regarded as the actual Achilles’ heel of the military administration in France under the command of the OKH: namely, the inability to guarantee internal security and hence to fulfill one of the core tasks of the occupation administration. In essence, Heydrich’s communication contained the twofold charge that the German military administration in France was professionally incompetent and ideologically unsound. Knochen’s dismissal was flatly refused.70 Heydrich’s statement was rounded off with the barely disguised hint that he enjoyed support from the highest political levels (“especially as I have been entrusted for years with preparing the Final Solution in Europe”).71 After this letter, neither the military commander in France nor the OKH could have had any doubt that Heydrich was bent on posing the question of power. It could not have come as a surprise that he was as clever as he was determined in going about this, given that Knochen certainly kept him well informed of the precarious position in which the “hostage question” placed the military commander both vis-Г -vis the French collaboration partners and vis-Г -vis Keitel and Hitler. It is improbable, however, that Otto von StГјlpnagel at least hoped to extend his scope for action vis-Г -vis Keitel and Hitler by redoubling measures against the Jews and thereby to take the wind out of the sails of Heydrich’s criticism of the lack of “understanding for the need to conductВ .В .В . measures in the conflict with ideological opponents.”72 These measures—the arrest and detention of 1,000 Jews on 12 December 1941 for the purposes of deportation and the imposition of the

“fine” of one billion francs—were too much part of the general trend toward escalating the persecution measures in advance of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” to serve this purpose. Nevertheless, with his statements, Heydrich had reiterated that the RSHA, with the backing of the highest echelons of the regime, also kept close tabs on the conduct of the military administration in the “Jewish Question.” By intensifying the persecution measures against the Jews, therefore, StГјlpnagel at least proved that, in this respect, he was entirely in line with Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich’s patron GГ¶ring. On 2 December 1941, in its response to Heydrich’s letter of 6 November, the Quartermaster General’s department of the OKH pointed out (with the reference “Presentation to the commander in chief of the Army, ” who, at this time, was still von Brauchitsch) that the “Paris office” of the Sipo/SD (thus Knochen) was answerable to the military commander in France. Given the fact that Knochen had made “a knowingly incorrect official report” to the Page 76 →military commander, the note continued, it was not possible “to expect the military commander to continue to collaborate with ObersturmbannfГјhrer Dr. Knochen,” and the Quartermaster General requested “instead once again his [Knochen’s] dismissal.”73 Thus the OKH picked up the gauntlet. However, the extremely dramatic events of December 1941 would entirely overshadow such skirmishes in an ultimately peripheral matter of occupation administration. The fifth of December 1941 marked the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive that plunged the Wehrmacht, particularly the army and its high command, into its first major crisis since the beginning of the war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor followed on 7 December, and Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December. Hitler dismissed the commander in chief of the army, Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, on 19 December. Unusually enough, the dictator himself now took over the leadership of the OKH. If the dispute between the OKH and the RSHA over the appropriate behavior of members of the Sipo/SD in occupied France had been relegated to a bagatelle by the force of events, this was exacerbated further by the weakening of the German military administration apparatus as an independent power factor. Otto von StГјlpnagel felt the effects of the changed situation directly. In a report prepared by the Ic Department (counterespionage) of the command staff and dated 15 January 1942,74 he presented a “compilation of the attacks and bombings in the period from 21.8.41 to 3.1.42” and stressed that the perpetrators represented “a limited circle of—chiefly youthful—communist criminals who were prepared to do anything.” Because it was “in no case proven” “that broader sectors of the population are involved in these attacks” and because “the atonement measures imposed thus far—curfew, hostage executions, deportations and finesВ .В .В . had neither affected nor deterred these communist common criminals,” StГјlpnagel concluded that “further collective measures, and in particular hostage executions,” would inevitably “outrage the legal sensibility of the French population” and “would have unwelcome effects for Germany, regardless of how categorically the French government and the overwhelming majority of the population reject communist common criminals and Jews, as the intellectual authors of such crimes.” The key passage of the report stated, In this situation, I cannot conduct further large-scale arrests and internments.В .В .В . I again request that in future the stipulation, nature, and scale of punitive measures should be left to me.75 Page 77 →And StГјlpnagel made a significant point of adding, As reprisals, I regard occasional deportations of a certain number of already interned communists and Jews to Germany or the East as practicable insofar as means of transport are available and this meets the requirements of the security police. Such a measure is sure to have a powerful effect.76 There could be no mistaking Otto von StГјlpnagel’s efforts to bring his previous approach to the “hostage question” into line with the basic thrust of the National Socialist policy of terror, both by presenting a detailed account of the actual conditions and political repercussions of the German reprisals and by aligning himself with the persecution model and language regulations laid down by Hitler and the OKW. Nevertheless, the OKH gave

him a clear rebuff. The Quartermaster General’s department informed him in a telex on 3 February 1942, Following a discussion with the FГјhrer, Field Marshal General Keitel declines to entertain the proposal from that source [the military commander in France] that it should be the sole judge and final decision maker on reprisal measures in cases of attacks and bombings as long as the measures proposed by that source do not conform in nature and scale with the basic stance of the FГјhrer.77 The telex goes on to specify that the attacks and bombings announced in the report of 15 January 1942 must be followed by “severe and deterring atonement in the form of executions of a large number of captive communists or Jews and perpetrators of earlier attacks and the detention of at least 1,000 communists and Jews for deportation.”78 This made it clear that Hitler, henceforth commander in chief of the army, with the support of the compliant Keitel, intended to turn the summary mass executions of hostages into a matter of principle. A particularly painful sideswipe for Otto von StГјlpnagel must have been the observation that his policy in the “hostage question” “did not conform to the basic stance of the FГјhrer.” That was entirely in line with Heydrich’s accusations against the military commander in France in the controversy over the synagogue attacks. At the same time, this statement revealed the change that the relations between the military commander in France and his superiors in the Wehrmacht had undergone. In the dispute with Heydrich, StГјlpnagel had Page 78 →still enjoyed the full backing of the OKH, which had itself called for the dismissal of the leadership of the Sipo/SD following the synagogue attacks of October 1941.79 But now that Hitler himself had assumed supreme command, it was clearly pointless to expect any support from within the OKH in disputes over basic questions of occupation policy once the relevant matter had become a political issue also in Hitler’s eyes. In this respect, it was only logical that Otto von StГјlpnagel should resign. He tendered his resignation on 15 February 1942.80 In his official letter to Keitel, StГјlpnagel cited health reasons for his resignation. But in a second, much longer letter to Keitel, marked as “private,” he detailed, in somewhat lachrymose terms, “the intricate and peculiar situation of the military administration in occupied France.”81 The details provided by StГјlpnagel read like a synopsis of Nazi polycracy in occupied France,82 which had had disadvantageous consequences for the military administration and the military commander, especially in the context of the “atonement measures”—in other words, the “hostage question” and particularly the hostage shootings, about which StГјlpnagel made no bones.83 General Carl-Heinrich von StГјlpnagel, Otto von StГјlpnagel’s distant cousin, was appointed his successor as early as 17 February 1942, though he arrived in Paris only in April. In the discussions he conducted in the OKH in the interim, it became clear, as Eberhard JГ¤ckel has noted,84 how much the relations of power and competences had shifted to the detriment of the military commander and his agencies since the summer of 1940. The military administration nevertheless met the demand for “severe and deterring atonement” specified in the letter of the OKH from 3 February 1942. In its bimonthly report for February and March 1942, the administration reported on the execution of a total of 95 “communists and Jews” and, in addition, on the fact that “the deportation of Jews for labor in the East ordered as an atonement measure” was carried out for the first time “on 28.3. [actually 27 March 1942] through the deportation of initially 1,100 Jews.” Here, too, there can be no doubt about the efforts of the military administration to focus the massive reprisals on the “communists and Jews”—the deleterious effects of all-out repression on the domestic political climate in France were depicted eloquently in the administration’s dГ©marches to the OKH—and, as it was stated explicitly in the report, to exploit the reprisals “for propaganda purposes in the press of the occupied and unoccupied zones.”85 Carl-Heinrich von StГјlpnagel was a logical choice as military commander in France, because, among other reasons, he had been head of the Page 79 →German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden from June 1940 to February 1941.86 When it came to expertise and tactical dispositions in dealing with the French authorities, he was presumably the most experienced senior general staff officer available to the OKW for the position. Tellingly, in his conversations with Quartermaster General Wagner prior to actually assuming office, Carl-Heinrich von StГјlpnagel placed particular emphasis on clear divisions of competences.87 This was hardly surprising in view of

the experiences of the military administration in France as recorded in Otto von Stülpnagel’s “private” parting letter to Keitel. At the same time, however, it was an admission that hardly anything was left of the initial political and administrative general authority of the military commander.88

Implementation of the Organizational Model of the RSHA for the Police Ultimately, therefore, Heydrich’s tactic of attrition was successful. The result was tantamount to an assimilation of the organization of the Sipo/SD to the basic model of the RSHA, an assimilation that went much farther in France than, for example, in neighboring Belgium. With Hitler’s decree of 9 March 1942,89 an HSSPF [senior SS leader and chief of police] was appointed in France, with the authority to issue directives and with a right of supervision over the French authorities and police forces. This marked the withdrawal of the domain of “internal security”—hence effectively all matters relating to policing—from the area of competence of the military commander. Furthermore, all of the units of the Secret Field Police (Geheime Feldpolizei) were placed under the command of the HSSPF, and the officials in charge in the military administration were integrated into the Security Police.90 With this change, the basic scheme of Nazi police organization was also implemented in France—namely, the separation of the police from the general administration and the concentration of police powers in a direct chain of command leading from the RSHA to the commanders of the Security Police and the SD. Helmut Knochen, who should have been transferred out of France at the behest of the military commander just a couple of months earlier on account of the synagogue attacks, was now promoted to commander of the Security Police and the SD (BdS), with the rank of an SS-StandartenfГјhrer (SS colonel). A clearer expression of the victory of the SS over the Wehrmacht is hard to imagine. Page 80 →Both the power struggle between the SS and the Wehrmacht in occupied France (which ended with Otto von StГјlpnagel’s resignation and the appointment of an HSSPF), and the repercussions of that struggle throw special light on the ambivalence of National Socialist polycracy in occupied Western Europe. The assumption that the increase in power of the SS and the almost complete translation of the organizational model of the RSHA for the police to the occupied zone led, in themselves, to a radicalization of the German repressive measures would be mistaken. Otto von StГјlpnagel had pursued a line of limiting the overall number of German repressive measures, on the one hand, and focusing these measures on the stereotypically singled-out target group of “Jews and communists,” on the other. With this concentration, he had sought to achieve the greatest possible overlap between the legitimation requirements vis-Г -vis Hitler and the OKW, on the one side, and preserving his basis for collaboration with Vichy, on the other. Heydrich had done everything in his power to exacerbate Otto von StГјlpnagel’s need to justify himself toward Hitler and Keitel, but now that he had won the power struggle, he showed no hesitation in adopting StГјlpnagel’s tactical approach within the framework of the Franco-German collaboration. At Carl Oberg’s inauguration as HSSPF on 7 May 1942, Heydrich astonishingly stated precisely what he had been able to read in the continued reports of the military commander in France since late in the summer of 1941 about attacks by the French resistance and the German “atonement measures.” The chief justice in the German military administration, Dr. Hans Boetticher, who was present, provided the following account of Heydrich’s remarks in an interrogation after the war: “In France, according to Heydrich, a different policy had to be pursued than in the East. In particular, he, Heydrich, was of the opinion that the system of hostage executions was out of place in France. Thus, in cases of resistance by the population, it was the foremost task of the HSSPF to establish the identity of the perpetrators and to punish them. Then this success can also be achieved. Then it will be possible to refrain from hostage executions.”91 According to the military administration’s own information and the—possibly dressed-up—reports of the newly appointed HSSPF, Oberg, the number of hostages executed fell from 471 in September 1941–May 1942 to 254 in June 1942–December 1943.92 In fact, a decrease, rather than an increase, in hostage executions was an indicator of success for the leadership of the Sipo/SD, because the decrease in the harsh reprisals could be explained by its own preventive measures and thus by the successful criminal investigationsPage 81 → and

targeted arrests of “Jews and communists.” An HSSPF did not generally have to fear being rebuked for his “lax” attitude toward the French forces of resistance. Yet only on this basis could the German military administration construct the actual system of terror (whose comprehensive character was founded on consensual relations between the German and French collaboration partners and an effective interplay between the bureaucracies on both sides) that was also indispensable for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France.93 The bundling of competences arrived at through the appointment of an HSSPF and the waning of the spectacular reprisals in the form of hostage executions were important structural and political-psychological preconditions for this development. Another contributory factor was the fact that even though the military administration, very much in keeping with Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel’s call for clear relations of competence on the German side in the field of policing, had to endure a major loss in power, it nevertheless found itself liberated from the most severe political burden of the past months—namely, the “hostage question.” Decisive for the further development of German occupation policy in the field of policing—and hence also for the course taken by the persecution of the Jews—was the formation of a stable axis of cooperation between Oberg and Knochen on the German side and the secretarygeneral of the French police, René Bousquet, who had assumed office more or less simultaneously with Oberg, on the French side.

Page 82 →

Chapter 6 Sectoral Balance of Power and State Collaboration in the Persecution of the Jews The Oberg-Bousquet Agreement of August 1942 All those who were aiming at an unconditional implementation of the core ideological objectives of National Socialism in France, particularly of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” must have thought that they were on the brink of achieving their objectives in the second quarter of 1942. This was true of the agitators in the German Embassy, first and foremost Carltheo Zeitschel; of the desk officer for Jewish Affairs (Judenreferent) in the Paris apparatus of the Security Police/Security Services (Sipo/SD), Theodor Dannecker; and, not least, of the militant French anti-Semites represented by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who was appointed head of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©rale aux questions juives (CGQJ) in March 1942. Within a few weeks, however, the protagonists of an immediate and radical “Final Solution” had been neutralized on both sides, the German as well as the French. Dannecker was transferred on a disciplinary pretext, Darquier was stripped of the antiJewish special police (Police aux questions juives, PQJ), and the CGQJ was reduced, in its effect, to a supervisory agency for monitoring the “Aryanization.” This occurred at the urging of the very same SS functionaries who, through intrigues just a couple of months before, had stripped the German military administration of its jurisdiction in policing. The central figure was Knochen, who his contemporaries already judged to be professionally and intellectually the clear superior of his direct supervisor, the senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF), Carl Oberg. The protagonist on the French side was the secretarygeneral of the police, RenГ© Bousquet, who bore a striking resemblance to his German pendant Knochen as regards both intellect and career path. The Oberg-Bousquet Page 83 →agreement, which was finally officially concluded on 8 August 1942, constitutes the nodal point of this development.

Actor Constellation and Tactical Dispositions on the German Side Characteristic of the disposition on the German side in the first half of 1942 was the overlapping of the preparations for the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and the consolidation of the position of power of the SS and Gestapo apparatus at the expense of the Wehrmacht in the shape of the military administration. The result was a tactical shift in course by the SS leadership in France, which found itself forced to place the impending mass deportations of Jews in the context of the general objectives of the occupation policy. This led to conflicts with the coordinator of the deportations in the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA), Adolf Eichmann, and within the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus itself. Here the protagonists were the pragmatists (or, to use Serge Klarsfeld’s term, “political realists”) Oberg, Knochen, and Hagen, on the one side, and the Judenreferent of the Sipo/SD in Paris, Theodor Dannecker, on the other. The conflict ended, significantly, with Dannecker’s dismissal in July 1942. One should note, therefore, the ostensibly paradoxical fact that the increase in power of the Sipo/SD—whose outward expression was the appointment of an HSSPF in France (Oberg) and the promotion of an individual who had until then been director of a mere Sipo/SD “bureau” (Knochen) to commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or Bds)—did not strengthen but, on the contrary, weakened the position of the narrower circle of persecutors of Jews. Until that time—that is, until June 1942—the preparation for the “Final Solution” had been promoted with maximum energy by Dannecker, in close coordination with Eichmann. These two men knew each other well, since they had worked together in the central department of the SD-Hauptamt (Secret Services Main Office) under Reinhard Heydrich from 1937 onward.1 Their immediate superior at that time had been Herbert Hagen. In the late 1930s, Hagen, born in 1913, served as director of the Department of Jewish Affairs (Judenabteilung) in the SDHauptamt, at the center of operations of the persecution of the Jews. Together with Eichmann and Dannecker, he organized training courses and lectures on the “Jewish Question” and traveled to Egypt Page 84 →with

Eichmann in the fall of 1937, where both attempted to cross the border to Palestine but were prevented from doing so by the British Mandate authority.2 Moreover, again with Eichmann, Hagen coordinated the persecution of the Jews in Vienna from March 1938 and in Prague from March 1939, and he arrived in Paris along with Knochen in June 1940 as a member of the Sipo/SD command. For almost two years, until May 1942, Hagen built up the Sipo /SD structures in the whole of western France from his base in Bordeaux. After Oberg’s appointment as HSSPF, Hagen became his personal assistant and, at the same time, was seconded to the BdS—Knochen—as director of Department VI, in which capacity he was head of intelligence gathering on the French government and French political parties.3 With Herbert Hagen, a key figure entered the inner circle of the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus. What qualified him for this role was the high level of his intelligence, attested by all postwar witnesses;4 his undoubted expertise in two key domains of SD activity, the persecution of the Jews and foreign espionage; his excellent relations to the two leading figures in these areas in Paris up to that time, Knochen and Dannecker; and, not least, his excellent command of French. Thus Hagen was predestined to operate as an “interface manager” and to acquire considerable personal influence in this function upon his return to Paris in May 1942 as a not-yet-29-year-old SS officer, an influence attributed to him particularly also by the representatives of the Vichy regime.5 Very similar in character was both the personality of the not-much-older Helmut Knochen (who became BdS in occupied France in May 1942, at the age of 32), and Knochen’s relation to his immediate superior, Oberg. Knochen, who had a doctorate in literary studies, had a brilliant career in the SD,6 was as polyglot as Hagen, and, having been on the ground since the summer of 1940, was already necessarily Oberg’s right-hand man in the operative area, the latter having been transferred from Radom in Poland to Paris in May 1942. Knochen’s nimbus in the SS apparatus was due to his participation in a spectacular commando action by the SD that had led to the capture of two British agents near the Dutch border city of Venlo in November 1939. The British agents were connected with the attack on Hitler in the Munich BГјrgerbrГ¤ukeller on 8 November 1939 by the German side. Hitler had personally conferred Iron Crosses First Class on the participants in the SD commando unit including Knochen.7 The latter was regarded as a protГ©gГ© of Reinhard Heydrich and was among the prime movers behind the—ultimatelyPage 85 → successful—attempts by the RSHA to wrest control over the German repression and security apparatus in France from the Wehrmacht. The third member of this group of young university graduates within the inner circle of the Sipo/SD apparatus in Paris was Kurt Lischka (born in 1909). Until the beginning of January 1940, he had been director of Gestapo department II B (concerned with religious groups, Jews, Freemasons, emigrants, and pacifists) in the RSHA. From there, he was transferred temporarily to the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle fГјr jГјdische Auswanderung), of which Adolf Eichmann became manager in October 1939, after which Lischka served for a number of months as head of the Gestapo in Cologne before being transferred to the Sipo/SD bureau in Paris in November 1940.8 He was Knochen’s deputy as BdS, and in January 1943, he became commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or KdS) in Paris, until he was transferred to the RSHA. In the summer of 1942, he had the rank of SS-ObersturmbannfГјhrer (SS lieutenant colonel). Among the leading SS personnel in Paris, Lischka was the one with the most practical experience when it came to conducting repressive measures of whatever kind, whether against the Jews or against political opponents of the National Socialist regime or of the German occupying power. This carried even more weight in view of the fact that his superior, Knochen, had no personal experience in police matters. From the beginning of the German occupation, the SS officer in charge of the persecution of the Jews within the Sipo/SD apparatus in the narrower sense was Theodor (Theo) Dannecker. He came from the same unit within Amt IV of the RSHA as Knochen and Hagen and, having been born in 1913, also belonged to the same age-group. When it came to education, intelligence, and personal disposition, however, he differed markedly from the agile university men who controlled the Sipo/SD apparatus in Paris.9 Dannecker had to leave the gymnasium (academic high school) because of poor grades and ultimately graduated from a vocational secondary school with an intermediate leaving certificate (Mittlere Reife). After graduating from the state commercial college, he worked for a time in his mother’s textile goods business. In 1932, he first became a member of the SS and shortly thereafter joined the NSDAP. As a member of the SS-VerfГјgungstruppe, he served from the end of 1934 in the

guard detail of the Gestapo prison Columbia-Haus in Berlin and of the Oranienburg concentration camp, before entering the SD Page 86 →in mid-1935, initially the SD-Oberabschnitt SГјdwest based in Stuttgart. In March 1937, Dannecker returned to Berlin as a member of the Jewry subdivision (Unterabteilung Judentum) in the “Ideological Opponents” (Weltanschauliche Gegner) department of the SD-Hauptamt. Dannecker was evidently an alcoholic. In 1935, he was reprimanded on disciplinary grounds for drunkenness while on duty and for making false entries in the guard book of the Oranienburg concentration camp.10 Apparently Dannecker owed the fact that he was admitted to the SD-Hauptamt in late 1936 to the fact that he had participated in a central training of the Jewish Desk (Judenreferat) of the SD in fall of the same year.11 This suggests that Dannecker belonged to the character type of the somewhat unstable, overassimilated zealot who seeks to compensate for a lack of self-confidence because of mediocre talent and for a lack of academic training as well as occasional professional misconduct and thus exhibits particular dedication in the tasks assigned to him.12 In this respect, he resembled Adolf Eichmann, his direct departmental superior in the RSHA, much more closely than he did the university graduates of approximately equal age in the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus. These divergences in character and intellect between the Judenreferent Dannecker and the leadership of the Sipo /SD in Paris were of little importance as long as the power of the Sipo/SD within the German occupation regime in France remained weak and as long as the measures against the Jews were essentially administrative in nature, took the form of sporadic raids and mass arrests, and were all ultimately taken in consultation with the Vichy authorities. In other words, the divergences were inconsequential as long as the treatment of the Jews had not become a contentious political issue in relations between the German occupying power and the national authorities and their representatives. This remained essentially the situation until May 1942, up to which point the progressive escalation of the persecution of the Jews in France had been conducted in close coordination between the Sipo/SD, the military administration, the German Embassy, and the Vichy authorities in charge. The key figure in the German Embassy was the counselor in the political department, Carltheo Zeitschel. He served as the embassy’s intermediary with both the general delegation of the Vichy government for the occupied territory, headed by Fernand de Brinon, and the Sipo/SD “command” or “bureau.” Zeitschel collaborated directly with Dannecker, whom he repeatedly supported vis-Г -vis both the military administration and the Vichy authorities.13Page 87 → Like Dannecker, Zeitschel worked in an environment in which he is likely to have encountered problems of acceptance. Within the Foreign Service, he was a lateral entrant from the Nazi Party. Zeitschel, who was born in 1893, was trained as a physician and had been a member of the NSDAP since 1923 and hence held the Gold Honor Party Badge (Goldenes Parteiabzeichen). He had been employed between 1925 and 1935 as a ship’s doctor, which qualified him in the eyes of his sponsor Goebbels to be head of the colonial policy department at the NSDAP headquarters (from 1935). For a brief period in 1939, he was consul in Nigeria, where he narrowly escaped internment by the British. Zeitschel was a member of the SS, where he held the rank of major (SturmbannfГјhrer) while active in Paris. He operated in this capacity in his correspondence with members of the Sipo/SD in particular. Zeitschel was the anti-Jewish “agitator” in the German Embassy who exerted pressure even on Dannecker to press ahead with the deportation of the Jews from France.14 Nevertheless, Dannecker saw himself as the protagonist of all anti-Jewish measures in France and behaved accordingly both toward the military administration and toward the Vichy authorities and their representatives. Despite all his zealotry and occasional clashes, especially with representatives of the French side, toward whom Dannecker, who, at this time, held the rank of SS-ObersturmfГјhrer (the equivalent to first lieutenant), seems to have behaved in a notoriously high-handed manner,15 the measures undertaken or initiated by him remained completely within the framework of the general program of the RSHA. The latter not only could count on the loyal support of the German military administration but also received further, radicalizing impulses following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and the resulting attacks on Wehrmacht institutions. Whereas a first large-scale arrest on 14 May 1941 carried out by the French police had resulted in the apprehension of some 3,700 Jews with foreign citizenship who were subsequently deported to internment camps in the unoccupied zone, some 4,200 Jews of both foreign and French nationality were arrested in the raids of 20–23 August 1941.

The ongoing anti-Jewish laws and ordinances, by contrast, were a matter for the Vichy authorities and the German military administration. The latter was also primarily responsible for supervising the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives,16 whose chief area of activity, after the incorporation of the Service du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoire that had been created in December 1940, was the “Aryanization” of Jewish enterprises.17 Dannecker Page 88 →provided a meticulous summary of the history and situation of the Jewish population in France as well as of the persecution measures by the French and the Germans, in two comprehensive reports that, as befit the subject matter and his personal temperament, highlighted his own merits. He wasted no opportunity to take sideswipes at both the German military administration and the Vichy authorities for dragging their feet on the “Jewish Question.”18 Even allowing for his excessive self-aggrandizement, Dannecker’s activity at this point in time was nothing other than a reflection of the regular policy of the RSHA in the conduct of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which was broadly in line with the general occupation policy of both the military administration and the embassy under Abetz. Temporary divergences between Dannecker’s intentions and the tactical disposition of the military administration arose in the spring of 1942, when Dannecker called for the immediate introduction of “compulsory identification”—thus the Star of David badge—in France. By contrast, the military administration, represented in this instance by Werner Best as head of the Administration Section, made a plea for postponing this measure on the grounds that, following the change in leadership of the Judenkommissariat from Vallat to Darquier de Pellepeoix, the French authorities could be expected to introduce the Star of David badge on their own account.19 Here Best referred to a corresponding assessment of the German Embassy. Following a series of attacks on members of the German Wehrmacht in late April and early May 1942, Knochen, in a conversation with Abetz, secured the consent of the embassy to the immediate introduction of the Star of David badge in the occupied territories, which Zeitschel promptly communicated to Dannecker by telephone on 4 May 1942.20 As a result, the Star of David badge was introduced on 7 June 1942 by decree of the military commander.21 Thus Dannecker’s erratic zealotry could indeed be successful in particular instances. In the first half of 1942, he was especially diligent in his efforts to demonstrate his indispensability for implementing the “Final Solution” in France, on the one hand, and to increase the deportations above the level planned by the RSHA in early 1942, on the other. This was, of course, entirely in accord with Eichmann’s intentions, and both men initially benefited from the newly established constellation in Paris, particularly the appointment of an HSSPF and the change in the leadership of the CGQJ from Vallat to Darquier. Largely as a result of a trip to Vichy in the latter part of February 1942 in the company of Zeitschel from the German Embassy, Dannecker, in Page 89 →a meeting in the RSHA on 4 March 1942, initially secured a commitment to deport 5,000 Jews during 1942,22 in addition to the Jews from the raid of 12 December 1941 still detained in the CompiГЁgne camp. But the deportation program was completely overhauled in negotiations between the “new men” on the German and the French sides beginning in June 1942. It was transformed into a compromise that shattered the dreams cherished in the meantime by both Dannecker and Eichmann, and as a matter of occupation policy, it was made contingent on the consent of the government in Vichy. The compliance of the military administration and the embassy with the planned introduction of the Star of David badge on 7 June 1941 was the final process in which the rivalry between the Wehrmacht and the SS still played a certain role in the implementation of the persecution measures. With the appointment of the HSSPF, these tensions were a thing of the past, at least when it came to the repressive measures in general and the persecution of the Jews in particular. That an entirely new chapter was to be opened was made clear by Reinhard Heydrich’s demonstrative weeklong visit in Paris from 5 to 12 May 1942. The ostensible occasion for this visit was Oberg’s inauguration as HSSPF. However, the very fact that Heydrich, as head of the RSHA, made an extended visit and conducted a series of negotiations with high-ranking representatives of the Vichy regime—particularly with the new secretary-general of the police, RenГ© Bousquet—sent a double message. It signaled, on the one hand, the claim to power of the SS in France and, on the other, the outstanding importance that Heydrich—and hence also Himmler and, moreover, Hitler himself—attached to the security situation in France and to the relations between the occupying power and French authorities in the key questions of occupation policy.23 From now on, the persecution of the Jews, in both its operative and political aspects, was

entirely under the control of the SS. At the operative level, the preparations for the deportation of the Jews were transposed to a new dimension, but at the political level, the fundamental question of the effectiveness of the French police organization and the reliability of the collaboration relations between the relevant German and French authorities was placed on the agenda. Heydrich had a clear perception of the dilemma of the occupation policy of, on the one hand, having to supervise the domestic security apparatus while, on the other, having only limited personnel resources at its disposal for this task. After all, he had been serving as acting Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektor von BГ¶hmen und MГ¤hren) since September 1941 and hence was himselfPage 90 → de facto head of an occupation administration. At Oberg’s inauguration, Heydrich, according to the testimony of those present, defended the position that “in France a different policy had to be pursued than in the East. In particular, he, Heydrich, was of the opinion that the system of hostage executions was misplaced in France. It amounted to an admission of failure on the part of the police. Thus the foremost task of the HSSPF in cases of resistance by the population was to establish the identity of the perpetrators and to inflict the punishment. He had to succeed in securing the involvement of the French police and then this success would also be achievable.”24 Not only did Heydrich thereby signal his determination to remove the most serious obstacle to a fruitful collaboration between the occupation administration and the Vichy regime, but he also laid down in advance the occupation policy guidelines from which the negotiations of the German administration with the leadership of the French police would take their orientation over the following months.

Actor Constellation and Strategic and Tactical Dispositions on the French Side Among the framework conditions for implementing the decisions of the Wannsee Conference in France was a complete overhaul of personnel, which had occurred in the first half of 1942 in the relevant authorities on both sides, the French as well as the German. The German military commander, Otto von StГјlpnagel, was replaced by his distant relative Carl-Heinrich von StГјlpnagel, and the authority for the security services was transferred to the newly installed HSSPF, Carl Oberg. The changes on the French side were even more sweeping. On 18 April 1942, Pierre Laval returned to power as head of government (Chef du gouvernement), a position newly created for him. He appointed RenГ© Bousquet, then not yet 33 years of age, as secretary-general of the police. Laval’s appointment was preceded by the resignation of Admiral Darlan as vice president of the Vichy Council of Ministers and thus de facto head of government. Just as, on the German side, the Wehrmacht in the person of the military commander had attempted in vain to achieve a stable political compromise vis-Г -vis the government in Vichy, Darlan failed in his plan to win German support for a strategic collaboration exploiting the French position in the overseas territories. The plan envisaged that, in return, the room Page 91 →for maneuver accorded France in the domestic political arena under the terms of the armistice would be progressively extended through agreements with the German side on legislative and administrative competences. On the German side, however, there could not be any question of a coherent policy toward France, with regard either to the linkage between strategic and tactical initiatives or to the coordination among the relevant actors. This was a reflection both of Hitler’s indecision over the role to be assigned France in the design of a postwar European system under German hegemony25 and of the notorious polycracy of the Nazi power structure. For support for the policy of strategic collaboration, the French side could count most readily on the ambassador Otto Abetz, though, in the face of Hitler’s unclear stance and the rivalries between the other German authorities active in France, Abetz shifted back and forth. Good relations to Vichy had value for Hitler himself and for the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) only as long and insofar as they were conducive to the German military objectives. Among these objectives in 1941 and 1942 was, besides ensuring political and police security in the rear area, a possible military contribution by France to the conduct of the war against Great Britain in the Mediterranean. On a superficial consideration, Darlan’s “Grand Design”26 seemed to be in complete harmony with these objectives, given that it was aimed at deriving the greatest possible utility for France from the weakening of Great Britain, which had been expelled from the European continent and was reliant on the aid of the United

States in defending the British Empire. Here the battle of Germany and Italy against the British—hence, since the first half of 1941, also especially in North Africa, a region in which France continued to maintain considerable numbers of troops under arms—played a key role. Darlan was prepared to support the side that, in his estimation, had the better chances of victory. In 1941, this was, to all appearances, the Axis powers. Therefore, Darlan strove to achieve a series of concrete military agreements with Germany as well as to conclude a peace settlement before the end of military conflict with Great Britain that would presumably end in a victory for the Axis powers. The envisaged settlement included rigorous measures against not only British but also German encroachments on French possessions and mandates in the Mediterranean region.27 Darlan met with Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 11 May 1941, in a situation marked by new and dramatic successes for the German war machine—namely, the conquest of the Western Balkans and Greece, including the expulsion of the British Page 92 →from the island of Crete. This meeting turned on reaching an understanding between the German and French sides to the effect that France would provide the Germans with logistical support and military infrastructure in North Africa. In return, France expected the German side to make concessions toward reducing the costs of the occupation, accelerating the release of its prisoners of war, and attenuating the inspection regime at the line of demarcation between the occupied and unoccupied parts of the French mainland, together with a number of further, more minor improvements in the situation of the French armed forces. Corresponding agreements between the OKW and Vichy were brokered over the following weeks and found their way into historical accounts as the “Paris Protocols.”28 By the time they were concluded on 28 May 1941, however, they had completely different strategic values from the French and German perspectives. Around three weeks prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the importance of the military collaboration with France or even of the French entry into the war on the side of the Axis powers had diminished to ancillary significance in Hitler’s eyes. The consolidation of Germany’s global power following the elimination of the Soviet Union and the subsequent concentric attack on the British power base in the Middle East was supposed to be completely independent of the support of an unreliable partner, such as France remained in the dictator’s eyes. Obviously, there could be no change in the fundamental asymmetry between the German and French assessments of the “state collaboration” justified on this basis. However, this did not prevent the men in the second and third tiers on both sides from repeatedly sounding out the room for maneuver in collaboration policy and from reaching concrete agreements in particular cases. This remained valid, at any rate, for the years 1941 and 1942, when both French support in securing the German flanks in the Mediterranean region and a resulting tactical deference to the domestic and foreign political constraints under which the government in Vichy operated had not yet lost their importance. An initiative by Darlan, presented by Jacques Benoist-MГ©chin, Darlan’s undersecretary of state for FrancoGerman relations, ironically on 14 July (Bastille Day) 1941, contained nothing less than the proposal for a dissolution of the armistice regime through the reestablishment of regular political and diplomatic relations between France and Germany. This was then supposed to form the basis on which the agreements contained in the “Paris Protocols” would be realized by both sides. Darlan’s diplomatic note was not Page 93 →judged worthy of an answer by Ribbentrop, let alone by Hitler. Ribbentrop instead instructed Abetz to string the French government along—by citing the fact that the German government was completely preoccupied by the war against the Soviet Union—and otherwise to act strictly on the basis of the Armistice Agreement.29 Thus Darlan’s initiatives led into a political dead end. That Darlan did not founder sooner and managed to remain in office until April 1942 was essentially due to the fact that the leadership of the government in Vichy, first and foremost Marshal PГ©tain himself, was deeply impressed by the dramatic turn of 22 June 1941. The same event that markedly weakened the interest of the German leadership in consolidating relations with France, the invasion of the Soviet Union, mobilized new support for Germany in Vichy, in the spirit of the joint combat against Bolshevism. This provided the climate, as we have seen, for PГ©tain’s and Darlan’s conciliatory stances on the

hostage executions by the German occupying power, in which the head of state and his deputy chimed in with the anticommunist propaganda of the German occupiers. The same spirit informed the execution of the large-scale raids directed against “Jews and communists” by the French police on 20–23 August 1941. At the same time, however, the hostage executions inevitably discredited the Vichy collaboration policy among broad sections of the population, while Darlan’s status within the administrative and military elite of the country was undermined by the failure—indeed, the counterproductive effect—of his high-flown plans for a new strategic beginning in Franco-German relations. The military and logistical concessions to Germany had, for the present, only led to the loss of the Syrian mandate territories, while substantive reciprocal measures from the German side had failed to materialize. Both Darlan’s insistence on fundamental political agreements and the success of the British offensive against the Italian forces in North Africa, which lent renewed urgency to securing the supply lines for the Axis troops through French-controlled Tunisia, led to a meeting between GГ¶ring and PГ©tain on 1 December 1941 in SaintFlorentin (DГ©partment Yonne, Bourgogne). The meeting brought no results for the French side, whereas the German side at least provisionally secured replenishment deliveries to the Africa Corps through Tunis.30 Thus Darlan failed because the “Grand Design” he was pursuing had lost its viability after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. He had been initially vested with the power and prestige of the commander of chief of the navy (which remained largely unscathedPage 94 → by the defeat in June 1940) and had been equipped with a geopolitical perspective typical for this position, but by the spring of 1942, he had become uninteresting for the German side and a disappointment for PГ©tain himself. He nevertheless remained commander in chief of the French armed forces even after his dismissal. Reluctantly, PГ©tain now again entrusted the leadership of the government to Laval, whom he had dismissed on 13 December 1940 yet who was highly valued by the German side as an unerring proponent of the FrancoGerman collaboration. This appointment signaled a tactical reversal on the French side. Laval had no truck with the geopolitical ambitions of his predecessor. He was content to make declarations of loyalty to the presumptive future hegemonic power Germany, yet from this supposedly stable basis, he worked tenaciously to exact concessions from the German side in numerous detailed matters of French domestic policy. The Franco-German police agreement of 8 August 1942 would assume central importance in this regard. Pierre Laval assumed the office of head of government (Chef du gouvernement) on 18 April 1942, while PГ©tain remained head of state, which entailed the right to issue a constitution and to designate his successor. Laval had been one of the most accomplished politicians of the Third Republic31 and had already been a symbol of the collaboration during his period in office as vice president of the Council of Ministers, which had ended abruptly on 13 December 1940. As such, he was again the man of the hour. The policy of the French equidistance from Germany and the Western Allies officially advocated by PГ©tain and by Darlan was outdated. The United States responded to Laval’s appointment as head of government by recalling their ambassador, Admiral Leahy, from Vichy.32 On 22 June 1942, the first anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Laval came out in support of a German victory.33 In the everyday business of government, Laval sought agreement with the German occupying power, based on political bargaining. He was optimally equipped to achieve this at the institutional level, because along with his appointment as head of government, he had secured for himself the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, and information. Laval, who, in Baruch’s judgment, was endowed with “excessive confidence in his political negotiation skill,”34 relied neither on the conservative forces of the “national revolution” nor on the ideologically motivated, quasi-fascistic collaborators. He relied instead on a regime of technocrats,35 the most important of whom Page 95 →were the “secretary-generals” for foreign affairs, general administration, and the police: Charles Rochat, Georges Hilaire, and RenГ© Bousquet, respectively. Bousquet was destined to play a key role, because he became the central figure both in securing public order—and hence for promoting political stability—and in relations with the occupying power. Bousquet was not yet 33 years old at the time of his appointment as head of all of the French police forces. When it came to his age, his career, and his habitus, he closely resembled his partners on the German side, particularly

Knochen and Hagen. At the age of 20, he was appointed a knight of the Legion of Honor through an exemption of the French president, after organizing and managing rescue measures as the head of cabinet of the prefect of the dГ©partement Tarn-et-Garonne during large-scale flooding of the Garonne valley. At the age of 23, he became the head of cabinet of the interior minister; at 30, secretary-general, thus head of administration, of the prefecture of the dГ©partement Marne, of which he was prefect from September 1940 onward; and in August 1941, regional prefect for the Champagne region.36 The German side also made no secret of the high regard in which it held Bousquet.37 The broad agreement with Bousquet in both technical and atmospheric matters was reconfirmed by Oberg and Hagen in their postwar interrogations.38 Bousquet defended the policy of French administrative sovereignty in a downright classical form under the regime of the Armistice Agreement. This was fully compatible with Laval’s general political line. The political bargain that Laval strove for in relations with the German occupying power translated at the level of the individual portfolios—particularly at the level of such a key portfolio as the police—into material offers of collaboration in the express expectation that administrative autonomy would be preserved and gradually extended. That disposition met with respect on the side of the SS. This was not only due to the positive impressions that Heydrich, Oberg, and Knochen had formed of Bousquet’s personality. The decisive point was that German interests were far better served by a French police enjoying extensive autonomy under a leadership loyal to the occupying power than by a French police subject to directives under strict but elaborate and conflict-prone German supervision—not to mention a regime under which police tasks would be performed extensively by German enforcement agencies. This was precisely the line endorsed by Heydrich during his visit to Paris in May 1942.39 What Bousquet offered in exchange was an effective police force that could be relied on to serve the purposes of the occupier as well Page 96 →as those of the Vichy regime. In France, this convergence of interests found its outstanding exponents in Bousquet, on the one side, and Oberg and Knochen, on the other.

Police Reform and Collaboration Policy In the police reform that he immediately set about realizing, Bousquet faced quite exceptional challenges, because the already deeply fragmented French police organization had undergone additional, politically motivated differentiations since May 1940 under the previous interior minister, Pierre Pucheu.40 Under the Vichy regime, two new units were created in addition to the constabulary (SГ©curitГ© publique), the criminal police (Police judiciare), the Brigades speciales (divided into the Section des affaires criminelles and the Section des affaires politiques), the counterespionage police (Direction de surveillance du territoire), the Police Г©conomique, the domestic intelligence service (Renseignements gГ©nГ©raux), the traditionally independent Paris police force headed by its own police prefect, the barracked riot police (Garde mobile), the municipal police (Police municipal), and the state gendarmerie. The units in question were the Groupes mobiles de rГ©serve, established in 1941, and the three political special units of the Services de polices anti-communiste, the Police aux questions juives, and the Services des sociГ©tГ©s secrГЁtes, created by Pucheu, also in 1941. A reform had been carried out in principle as early as April 1941, also under Pucheu, when overall authority for all police forces was conferred on the newly installed regional prefects. Under a police director adjunct to the regional prefect, three commissaires divisionaires had responsibility for the constabulary, the criminal police, and the domestic intelligence service.41 These measures proved less than conclusive, however, because the regional prefects were mostly unable to impose their will in the face of the ancien rГ©gime comprising both the prefects of the dГ©partements and the traditional police forces and their leaderships. Proving far more effective was the transfer of responsibility for the gendarmerie—the most powerful and besttrained regular police force, with 37,000 men in 1944—from the war ministry to the head of government, hence to Laval himself, by a law of 2 June 1942, at Bousquet’s urging.42 Given that Laval was overloaded with other responsibilities, this amounted to transferring control over the backbone of the French police to Bousquet. In Page 97 →May 1943, the 6,000-man-strong Gardes mobiles, which had until then likewise belonged to the portfolio of the war minister, was itself made subject to the secretary-general of the police. As a result, Bousquet was at the head of the bulk of the armed forces that remained under French control on the mainland under the terms of the armistice agreement.

In September 1943, responsibility for the prison administrations was likewise concentrated in the Ministry of the Interior. Furthermore, in April 1943, a “Direction technique des services de la police” was established within Bousquet’s area of responsibility as the central coordinating authority for all French police forces, as well as a central administration for the Groupes mobiles de reserve (GMR), the Vichy police’s elite unit (or, as Kasten notes, “praetorian guard”),43 which was more than 11,000 strong in 1944.44 Each unit of the GMR was assigned to a regional prefect, and notwithstanding the other problems of coordination that the prefects had to contend with in the police domain, the GMR represented the actual bastion of the power of these newly created administrative units. The specific purpose of the GMR was to combat possible domestic riots. Along with the militia (see below), the GMR proved to be a particularly brutal opponent of the resistance from 1943 onward.45 As a matter of principle, the Laval government—particularly Bousquet, as the secretary-general of the police—pursued a policy of centralization and unification of the police forces that was bound to be congenial to the German occupier as long as the latter could count on the political loyalty of the leadership of the French police. However, frictions arose when the internal contradictions within the Vichy regime and the political and social forces that supported it, on the one hand, and the contradictory expectations and demands of the German occupying power, on the other, affected the organization of the police. Characteristic in this respect was the development of the “Judenpolizei” (Police aux questions juives, or PQJ) created in October 1941, which operated as the executive organ of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (CGQJ).46 It was created largely at Dannecker’s urging, and under the new head of the CGQJ, Darquier de Pellepoix, who was appointed in March 1942, it developed into a special force whose fanaticism was matched only by its dilettantism. Bousquet was determined to carry out the disbanding of the PQJ, which duly occurred on 5 July 1942, just before the deportations began. Nevertheless, he had to pay heed not only to Darquier’s strong position with the Germans but also to the fact that among the members of the PQJ were many informants and volunteers whose services seemed indispensable for the arrest,Page 98 → internment, and deportation of the Jews that began with the large-scale raid of 16 and 17 July 1942. On 13 August 1942, the Section d’enquГЁte et de contrГґle (SEC) was called into being by Laval as a de facto successor organization. It was explicitly intended to satisfy Darquier and to ensure the continued availability of the personnel of the former PQJ to assist in monitoring the observance of the anti-Jewish laws and ordinances and their implementation. Although the competences of the SEC did not explicitly pertain to the actual arrest of Jews, it remained a feared auxiliary agency in support of both the Sipo/SD and the French police.47 Moreover, under the jurisdiction of the Direction de la police judiciaire in Paris, two more special police forces were involved in the persecution of the Jews from the fall of 1942 onward, the Service des affaires juives and the Service Permilleux, while the aforementioned Brigades speciales specifically targeted communists and thus many Jewish resistance fighters as well. The Service des affaires juives and the Service Permilleux were responsible for the arrest of more than 9,000 Jews in Paris and the Paris region, all of whom were handed over to Sipo/SD and deported.48 This, in fact, amounted to a “parallel police force.”49 Until the liberation in August 1944, the SEC remained the de facto independent police force of the CGQJ, into which it was incorporated along with the Services du contrГґle des administrateurs provisoires, which was in charge of the economic persecution of the Jews. The gradual establishment of the later notorious Milice, likewise a product of the internal contradictions of the Vichy regime, represented an even more significant dilution of the police monopoly of the state. Its roots lay in the LГ©gion franГ§aise des combattants, a mass organization of World War I veterans supporting the “new order.” Founded in August 1940, the legion had a membership of 1.5 million in 1942. It was forbidden in the northern zone. The Service d’ordre lГ©gionnaire (SOL), under the leadership of Joseph Darnand, arose out of the legion on 12 January 1942, as a kind of security service. The SOL was likewise forbidden in the occupied zone. Finally, the Franc-Garde was founded in June 1943 as the regular armed branch of the Milice, and Jean de Vaugelas became its commander. The Franc-Garde became the most important connecting link to the SS, and through it, the Milice recruited French volunteers for the Waffen SS, who were mainly deployed in the SS Charlemagne Division—some of them still served in the April 1945 battle of Berlin defending the government district.50 In exchange for its recruitment activity, the Milice acquired light arms, also for use within France, through the SS, hence Oberg and Knochen. Finally, from January 1944, the Page 99 →Milice was also authorized

to operate in the northern zone by the occupation authorities. Apart from its recruiting activity for the Waffen SS, the reason for this was the fight—of the Milice in general and of the Franc-Garde in particular—against the resistance. The Milice was originally Laval’s most important power basis while the Légion française des combattants still existed.51 After the Milice was officially established and became progressively militarized, it developed into a “praetorian guard”52 and soon into the epitome of the collaboration in its—in every sense—most unbridled form. At least by the time it was armed in late 1943, the Milice had established itself as an independent power factor that, during the remaining nine months of the occupation, was recognized as such on the German side by the SS and police leadership and was instrumentalized as far as possible. Consistently with this, in December 1943, Oberg pushed through Darnand as Bousquet’s successor in the function of secretary-general of the police,53 with the telling official title “Secrétaire-général au maintien de l’ordre.” To all intents and purposes, this marked the end of the model of state collaboration in the police domain.

French Police, German Interests, and the Dynamics of the Repressive Policy The structure of the French repressive apparatus under German occupation exhibited thus a contradictory picture. On the one hand, the occupying power sought to rationalize and centralize the domestic police and to nationalize the large communal contingents. In the process, it made preferential use of those professionals or able technocrats who could be regarded as loyal collaborators. In this connection, the German side regarded patriotic or even nationalist motives for collaboration as a more reliable source of support than ideological proximity to German National Socialism or, from June 1941, to the “struggle against Jewish Bolshevism,” especially when ideologically motivated collaboration went hand in hand with organizational amateurism. The driving force behind the German efforts was generally the RSHA—this is also clearly demonstrated by the French case. Nevertheless, as long as the military commander and his staff still enjoyed a monopoly over decisions in matters of policing, they were also able to exploit the weaknesses of the French police organization and to play the various rivaling authorities against each other. That the occupying power bypassed all governmental authoritiesPage 100 → in Vichy and their delegates in Paris and contacted the leadership of the Parisian police directly, as in the case of the raid on 20 August 1941, must have appeared to be an intolerable imposition to power-conscious and ambitious representatives of the Vichy regime, for all their willingness to collaborate in the political domain. On the other hand, through the rationalization and centralization of the police, the French side ultimately played into the hands of the occupying power. This dilemma exercised the police leaderships throughout occupied Europe wherever the German occupying power left the domestic administration and police organizationally intact. Moreover, the French case is also a concrete example of the fact that the police reform did not resolve the internal contradictions of a collaboration regime resulting from its unstable power base. The example of the LГ©gion franГ§aise des combattants and, later, the Milice is significant in this regard. Not only did Laval not want to do without these paramilitary forces after his return to power in April 1942, but he saw them as a mass base and countervailing power in the southern zone to the movements of ideological collaborators like DГ©at and Doriot, who operated in the northern zone without Vichy being able to exercise any appreciable influence over them. However, in this way, not only was the unity of the police organization undermined by the head of the Vichy government, but, even more so, it afforded the occupying power a further opportunity to play the “État FranГ§ais” and the “movements” supporting it off against each other. The drawback of the Milice—which, although audacious, was also regarded by the German side as unpredictable and undisciplined54—was counterbalanced by the advantage that it afforded a means of assistance and leverage both in the practical implementation of repressive measures and in power relations toward the state authorities on the French side who were actually supposed to be responsible. The arming of the Milice in the fall of 1943 with German assistance provides graphic proof of this. Moreover, the loyalty of the machinery of state toward the government in Vichy and its policy of collaboration continued to depend entirely on the military course of the war and the resulting prospects for the postwar system.

It was far from certain how the French police would behave following an Allied landing on French soil. Therefore, the reinforcement of the Milice and Darnand’s appointment as chief of the French police in December 1943 represented a logical safeguard for the German occupiers. Therefore, the differentiation of the French security forces that was watered down and revived more or less at will by the occupying power increased Page 101 →the effectiveness and brutality of the repressive policy in two ways. On the one hand, the mechanism of preemptive obedience remained in effect for the regular police forces, a mechanism whose source was the endeavor of the French police leadership to deny the occupying power the pretext for encroaching on French administrative competences. On the other hand, the German authorities, hence the Sipo/SD leadership under Oberg and Knochen, could fall back on the paramilitary and parapolice parallel structures of the militias and the SEC as soon as the capacities and willingness to collaborate of the regular police were insufficient. These were the structural and occupation policy foundations of the rapid radicalization and brutalization of the collaboration regime during the final phase of the German occupation.55 The reservoir of personnel of the SEC and the militias remained active also in the persecution of the Jews almost until the end of the German occupation. This was similar to the situation in the Netherlands and Belgium. There, especially in the second half of the German occupation, spies, informers, and ideologically motivated collaborators formed, as it were, the capillary system on the periphery of the machinery of persecution,56 whose center, the persecution of the Jews founded on state collaboration, became increasingly unstable as the end of the occupation approached.57

The Preparations for the Deportations of the Jews In May and June 1942, immediately following the double personnel change in the police leadership on the German and French sides, Bousquet’s disposition was devoted entirely to establishing orderly demarcations in competences between the occupying power and the French authorities, within the framework of a dependable political compromise. The presuppositions for this were created in his conversation with Heydrich in the second week of May 1942. Heydrich had the necessary combination of political and positional strength for this purpose and was very familiar with the counterproductive effects of indiscriminate repressive measures, particularly of the hostage executions—ironically enough, precisely through his conflict with Otto von StГјlpnagel, in which he had nevertheless confirmed his credentials as an agitator. Moreover, he recognized in Bousquet the fellow spirit he required on the French side as a politically reliable and professionally accomplished partner. When Heydrich was eliminated through an assassination in the protectoratePage 102 → of Bohemia and Moravia on 27 May 1942, Oberg and Knochen lost their direct champion in the RSHA. Nevertheless, in the meantime, the general policy line—granting extensive autonomy to the French police in return for guarantees of strict loyalty to the Reich and the security needs defined by its representatives in Paris—had won the backing of Himmler. Moreover, it was perfectly in line with the tactical dispositions of the young technocrats in the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus, Knochen and Hagen. Once the personnel and institutional issues had been consolidated on both sides, the “Jewish Question” immediately became the focal point of the collaborative relations between the Germans and the French.58 The participation of the French police in the raids in the run-up to the deportation became the litmus test both of the effectiveness of the French police and of the robustness of the agreements between the Germans and the French in the police domain. As regards the “Jewish Question” in particular, the RSHA counted on the cooperation with the senior French police officers, who were under pressure—partly self-generated, partly anticipated from the German side—to quickly achieve presentable successes in key areas of policing. The twofold logic of exchange and rivalry initially led to a mobilization of the anti-Jewish persecution mechanisms that the German occupying power would not have been able to achieve through hierarchical directives and with its own personnel. However, the SS functionaries who were in charge in the narrower sense—namely, Eichmann in the RSHA and Dannecker as Judenreferent in Paris—had difficulty coming to terms with the pragmatism that had become apparent, in the meantime, in relations between the leadership of the RSHA and the HSSPF in Paris, on the one side, and the Vichy authorities, on the other. Heydrich’s visit during the second week of May 1942 represented, in the first place, a support for the deportation plans that, in the weeks following the Wannsee

Conference, were in abeyance and generally guarded, mainly because of unresolved issues concerning citizenship and technical matters of finance and transportation. A conference of the desk officers for Jewish affairs (Judenreferenten) held on 4 March 1942 and a further discussion between Eichmann and Rademacher from the Foreign Office on 6 March 1942 dealt first, as regards France, with the deportation of the Jews arrested as hostages on 12 December 1941 and held in the CompiГЁgne camp, which was planned for 23 March 194259 (the deportation actually took place on 27 March). Dannecker had convinced Eichmann to specify an overall “quota for 1942” of a further 5,000 Jews, who should be “male, able-bodied Page 103 →Jews, not older than 55 years of age.”60 At this time, both Eichmann and Dannecker apparently assumed that the practice, based on the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, of automatically expatriating Jews once they crossed a frontier when being deported, accompanied by the simultaneous forfeiture of assets, would be carried out in France as well.61 The transportation costs were then supposed to be covered by the property confiscated from the Jews.62 This also corresponded to the practice within the Reich, and Dannecker noted that “a similar procedure should be agreed with the French state,” though it would have to be “preceded by an assessment of Jewish assets in both zones.”63 Therefore, Eichmann, who had developed this procedure for the annexed and occupied territories himself, wanted to apply it throughout Western Europe. It is significant that, given the political and administrative preparations required for this, the overall number of Jews to be deported from France in 1942 was fixed at not more than 6,000. In the spring of 1942, it did not yet occur to the German side to adopt the more “elastic” approach of initially deporting a large number of “stateless” and non-French Jews from both zones and to reserve the complicated political, legal, and administrative problems posed by a deportation of Jews of French nationality for a general regulation of denaturalization. Creating completely new framework conditions for this were the propagandistically staged visit of Heydrich—who came to Paris in May 1942 officially in his capacity as president of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)—and the appointment of an HSSPF (Oberg) on 1 June 1942. Probably taking advantage of the high level of political attention generated by Heydrich’s visit, Dannecker took the opportunity of a conversation with the head of the rail transport department of the quartermaster division of the German military administration in France, Lieutenant General Otto Kohl, on 13 May 1942, to address, with his characteristic pomposity, not only the transportation problem in the narrow sense but also quite generally the “Jewish problem.”64 In Kohl’s case, Dannecker, by his own account, was preaching to the converted. In his note of the same day, Dannecker proudly reported that the Lieutenant General, who was far above him in rank, had granted him one and one-quarter hours of his time, in which Dannecker had “given the general an overview of the Jewish Question and policy regarding the Jews in France.”65 Dannecker described Lieutenant General Kohl as “an uncompromising opponent of the Jews” who “backs 100% a final solution to the Jewish Question with the goal of the complete destruction of the enemy.”66 Kohl, according to Dannecker, “stated literally,” “If you tell me, вЂI Page 104 →want to transport 10,000 or 20,000 Jews out of France to the East,’ you have my assurance that I will provide you with the necessary rolling stock and locomotives.”67 This note by Dannecker was destined for Knochen and Lischka. Knochen added the marginal note “short telex to IV.”68 In response, Dannecker sent a telex “To the RSHA—IV B 4,” hence to Eichmann, on 18 May 1942 (with the handwritten addition “urgent—deliver immediately!”), reporting that Lieutenant General Kohl had provided assurances of “all of the requisite rail stock and locomotives for the transport of the Jews,” so that “at least ten trains can leave France in the near future.” He requested information “with reference to the various discussions” in the RSHA as to “whether and within what time frame a large number of Jews could be received and what camp could admit them.”69 Everything points to the fact that Dannecker’s telex prompted Eichmann to schedule another meeting in the RSHA—the second following the meeting of 4 March 1942—which had to be postponed a number of times and finally took place on 11 June 1942.70 Aside from Eichmann and Dannecker, ZГ¶pf and Asche, the desk officers for Jewish affairs (Judenreferenten) in the Netherlands and Belgium, also took part in this meeting. In the meantime, the deportation program originally agreed on, with a target of 6,000 Jews to be deported, continued. The first consignment of 27 March was followed by a second on 5 June 1942, in which 1,000 Jews were deported

to Auschwitz. Four further transports followed on 22 and 28 June and 17 and 19 July 1942, each of which conveyed around 1,000 deportees to Auschwitz. In the 11 June 1942 meeting, a deportation quota for France of 100,000 Jews was agreed on, an exorbitant figure in the light of the plans up to that point. For the Netherlands, the quota envisaged was 15,000; for Belgium, 10,000. In specifying this enormous deportation rate for France, however, which was supposed to be realized through about three transports per week beginning on 13 July 1942, Dannecker had got ahead of himself in several respects.71 One issue was the comparatively banal question of transportation capacities. Beside the paragraph in Dannecker’s conversation protocol stating that “Department IV B 4 of the RSHA—SSObersturmbannfГјhrer Eichmann—has decreed that the experts present are to appear in Berlin again on 2.7.1942 for the concluding meeting,” Knochen added the sarcastic marginal remark, “Speed, above all if by then the transportation problem is to be solved.”72 Most important, however, neither Dannecker nor Eichmann realized that the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France was a politicalPage 105 → matter to be handled at the highest level and that, in tactical questions, they could by no means count on the support of their own leadership. The “transportation problem,” hence the capacity of the French and German railway, initially seemed to represent the actual bottleneck from the German perspective. Dannecker—who, as a lower-ranking SS officer with the rank of captain (HauptsturmfГјhrer), clearly relished the opportunity to conduct negotiations with high officeholders and commanders on both the French and German sides—had presented a positively euphoric assessment of the railway capacity following his conversation with Lieutenant General Kohl on 13 May 1942. In the meeting in the RSHA between Eichmann and the desk officers for Jewish Affairs for Holland, Belgium, and France on 11 June 1942, this had contributed, in no small part, to the fixing of the high deportation quota for France. Even if the transportation issue proved to be less favorable than Eichmann and Dannecker had hoped, Dannecker’s assessment was nevertheless not altogether unrealistic, at least from a political perspective. When it came to the victims of the repressive measures conducted by the French authorities against the Jews (either independently or in preemptive obedience to the Germans), there was a certain homogeneity of interests between Vichy and the representatives of the SS and Gestapo from the outset. This concerned the foreign Jews who were interned based on the Vichy law of 4 October 1940. In a note on an official trip to Vichy, prepared on 20 February 1942 by the special adviser in the German Embassy in charge, Carltheo Zeitschel, for Ambassador Schleier, Zeitschel recorded the assessment of the consul general accredited to Vichy, Krug von Nidda, “that the French government would be glad to somehow get rid of the Jews without this attracting too much attention.”73 When Heydrich, in his conversation with Bousquet on 6 May 1942, remarked that transportation capacity would soon be available to deport Jews in the occupied zone from the Drancy camp, Bousquet asked whether the Jews interned in the Free Zone could not also be deported in a single operation.74 Thus, in the spring of 1942, the German side could scarcely have doubted the willingness of the government in Vichy and the French police leaders to hand over Jews who were not Frenchmen to the Germans to be deported by the latter. Bousquet’s query was all the more remarkable because it referred to the Jews living in the Free Zone. The RSHA and the SS and Gestapo apparatus in Paris must have concluded that consent to the deportation of the Jews from the Free Zone would not have to be exacted from the French negotiationPage 106 → partners with great effort but could be counted on as a voluntary advance concession. Moreover, Bousquet’s initiative conveyed a further message: Vichy had no moral reservations concerning the deportation of foreign Jews. The German side, so it seemed, did not have to reckon with principled opposition against the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” on the part of the French government and its authorities. In the discussion between Eichmann and the Judenreferenten for the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the RSHA on 11 June 1942, the “basic condition” was laid down “that the Jews (of both sexes) are between 16 and 40 years of age.” An additional specification was that “10 percent of Jews who are unfit for work may be sent as well.”75 Serge Klarsfeld has calculated that even assuming that all of the Jews between 16 and 40 living in France were arrested and deported, the deportation quota of 100,000 would barely be met.76 He has

also pointed out the enormous pressure to succeed to which the commitment of 11 June 1941 exposed Dannecker, especially since the introduction of the Star of David badge in the Free Zone could not be reckoned with for the time being and since the members of the particular age-group specified were in the best position to avoid arrest and deportation. Above all, even an approximate—let alone a complete—deportation of all Jews “of both sexes” between the ages of 16 and 40 living in the occupied as well as the unoccupied zone could be achieved only by including all Frenchmen in this age-group. Dannecker had taken this into account. In his note dated 15 June 1942, therefore, he stated (under the heading “Technical Execution”), “An agreement must be reached with the French government, either through direct or indirect negotiations, to pass a law declaring that, similar to the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, all Jews who are living outside French borders or who subsequently emigrate forfeit their citizenship and their right of return to the homeland.”77 This statement identified what was ultimately the decisive precondition for an actual “Final Solution” in France that would subsequently develop into the essential subject of negotiations—namely, the denaturalization of the Jews through a large-scale administrative procedure for the purpose of subsequent deportation. First, however, Dannecker was forced to make a drastic reduction in the deportation quota envisaged for France. In a note dated 15 June 1942 on the “technical implementation of further transports of Jews from France,” he cited the figure of 26,000 Jews in the provinces to be “removed” initially, “in the interest of clearing the coastal zone of Jews and in order to centralize the main Jewish problem in Paris.” Subsequently “it would be possible to concentratePage 107 → a further 15,000 Jews in the greater Paris region and to get the entire campaign started.” The note continued, “Assuming a rate of three trains per week, a minimum of three months is required in order to realize the program earmarked thus far.”78 The target quota for the transportations of Jews from the occupied zone alone was now provisionally set at 39,000. The main topic of a meeting on 16 June 1942 between Oberg, Knochen, and Bousquet was the planned agreements on the division of competences between the German and French police forces. Hagen took part in the meeting as note taker, though his transcript has not survived. From various additional notes from both the French and German sides, we know that fundamental matters of Franco-German competences, on the one hand, and the deportation of the Jews, on the other, were discussed. As regards the deportation issue, Oberg and Knochen were able to take Bousquet’s own queries to Heydrich in May 1942 as their starting point. Nevertheless, a marginal note that Knochen inserted after 16 June 1941 into Dannecker’s speaking notes for the Oberg-KnochenBousquet meeting states, “Bousquet is still guarded on the Jewish Question, was pushed hard on 16.6.”79 It is unclear what concessions Bousquet actually made to Oberg and Knochen on 16 June 1942 as regards the deportations. In his note of 26 June 1942 labeled “Further Jew transports from France,” Dannecker recorded that he had understood from the “note prepared by SS-SturmbannfГјhrer Hagen on the discussion conducted circa one week ago between SS-BrigadefГјhrer Oberg and SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen and the French secretary-general of the police, Bousquet” that “Bousquet is prepared provisionally to make 10,000 Jews available for deportation to the East.”80 Moreover, there are minutes by Dannecker’s deputy, Heinz RГ¶thke, likewise dated 26 June 1942, on a conversation between Dannecker, Bousquet’s representative in the occupied zone, Jean Leguay, and the representative of the German delegation at the Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden, Wilhelm. Dannecker added a handwritten marginal note to the minutes: “Bousquet gave instructions to state that there had been no talk of a provisional figure of 10,000 Jews in the conversation with SSBif [SS-BrigadefГјhrer] Oberg and SS-Staf [SS-StandartenfГјhrer] Dr. Knochen. (This statement is false!)”81 Overall, one gets the impression—especially from Knochen’s marginal note in Dannecker’s note on the meeting of 16 June 1942 (“Bousquet is still guarded on the Jewish Question”)—that Bousquet underestimated the dynamism and stubbornness with which the deportation of Jews was pursued on the German side and overestimated the backing of Laval in this matter. Page 108 →Everything points to the fact that, on 16 June 1942, Bousquet expressed himself toward Oberg and Knochen in a way that could only be interpreted by the German side as signaling a willingness to deport a considerable number of additional Jews—Dannecker, referring to Hagen’s minutes, specified the figure of 10,000. Of course, this in no way altered the fact that

Dannecker pressed for a speedy commencement of the deportations on the scale envisaged. However, at this time—in other words, in the second half of June 1942—no further binding agreements had been reached with the French side that went beyond the deportation figure of 6,000 Jewish deportees that had been fixed since the spring. A new meeting had been scheduled in the RSHA for 2 July 1942, and the regular deportations, in a rhythm of three trains per week, were supposed to start on 13 July. On 16 June 1942, just five days after Eichmann had met with his Judenreferenten in the RSHA, Dannecker had to confess meekly that the rail transport department was, as he put it in a letter to the RSHA, “not in a position to meet the commitment to provide rolling stock previously made by Lieutenant General Kohl.” The reason for this, he wrote, was the “preparations for the operation in the East” and “a major reorganization of all transportation-related German organizations in France,” which “would be completed only in a couple of days.” Prior to this, it was “not possible to make an accurate assessment of whether in the near or distant future the transportation of Jews on the envisaged scale, or even only in part, will be feasible at all.” 82 This alone was sufficient to discredit Dannecker in the eyes of his fellow SS officials; only a day earlier, in his note on the meeting in the RSHA on 11 June 1942, he had recorded the agreement that 100,000 Jews were to be deported from France in three consignments per week starting on 13 July 1942. 83 Nevertheless, Dannecker called in Bousquet’s representative in the occupied zone, Jean Leguay, on 25 June 1942 and dressed him down like in the times when, in the raids following attacks on German military personnel, the French police were treated by the military administration as the underlings of the occupying power. In his own note on the meeting with Leguay, Dannecker stated that he first reminded the latter of the pledge—really or allegedly—made by his superior on 16 June to deport “for the moment 10,000 Jews” and “asked him, given the urgency of the situation, to ascertain as soon as possible from his own government when one could count on these Jews actually being made available.”84 Furthermore, he wrote, he had “informed” Leguay that “by 29.6.1942 a concrete proposal was to be made” to Dannecker “in the matter of the arrest of a total of 22,000 Jews in the dГ©partements Seine Page 109 →and Seine et Oise.”85 Offhandedly, Dannecker now also extended the nominal circle of those to be deported by fixing the age limits as “16 to 45 of both sexes” and decreed “that among the Jews to be included at least 40% must be French nationals.” In the process, he would leave it up to the French side, Dannecker added in a naively magnanimous tone, “to take those Jews who were naturalized only after the world war,”86 by which he thought he could settle the political crux of the deportation issue in France en passant. Thus Dannecker committed the twofold error, as a subaltern member of the Sipo/SD apparatus, of putting on airs toward the representative of a key department of the Vichy government and, in the process, of decreeing politically highly sensitive measures that could not even be implemented under the circumstances, due to logistical and personnel shortages. Leguay did not make any objections in principle in the conversation with Dannecker on 25 June 1942, according to the latter’s account. Instead, according to Dannecker in his note of 26 June 1942, Leguay suggested that “it would be better to take more Jews from the unoccupied than from the occupied zone.”87 Assuming that Dannecker’s notation is true, Leguay’s suggestion would have cohered with the line exhibited by Bousquet in his conversation with Heydrich on 6 May 1942: that the main concern in Vichy was to be rid of the foreign Jews interned in camps in the Free Zone. Dannecker claims to have explained to Leguay in response, “I of course understand the French interest; on the other hand, however, the security of the occupation calls for arrests in the occupied territory in the numbers desired.” However, he left it up to them “to make Jews available from the unoccupied area beyond the figure of 10,000.”88 Evidently, Bousquet was informed by Leguay about his conversation with Dannecker on 25 June 1942. Leguay would have informed Bousquet not only of the deportation numbers and rigid deadlines demanded by Dannecker89 but also of Leguay’s impressions of the circumstances of the conversation and of Dannecker’s demeanor. Bousquet, in turn, had recorded the dispositions for the negotiations with the German side in a letter to Oberg of 18 June 1942. The letter has been transmitted in two versions: a detailed draft version90 and a shorter version that was actually sent and was supplemented by an attachment, in which the principles of the Franco-German collaboration in the area of policing were summarized from the perspective of the Vichy government.91 Both versions emphasize, on the one hand, the unshakable commitment to the collaboration92 and,

on the other, Bousquet’s determination to restore the autonomy of the French police.93 Page 110 →Thus it does not require a great deal of imagination to picture Bousquet’s reaction to Leguay’s report on the conversation with Dannecker. If only to save face toward Oberg and Knochen, Bousquet could not accept the stipulation of an SS officer with the rank of a captain. His report to Laval must have read accordingly. He handed Laval the telegram with Leguay’s report on the morning of 26 June 1941, prior to a meeting of the Vichy Council of Ministers on which the note-taker of the council prepared a handwritten account.94 This note states, This morning visit by Monsieur Bousquet, who brought a telegram. Monsieur Leguay had been called to a meeting by Captain Dannecker. According to Dannecker, the agreements require 10,000 Jews to be interned. Monsieur Pierre Laval declares that he never made such an agreement. A fundamental error. Decision by the German authorities to intern 10,000 Jews in the Paris region (40% French nationals). Laval’s response: I will personally provide an answer. It will be negative.95

Strategists and Henchmen I: Tensions within the SS Apparatus Leguay paid Dannecker a visit on 26 June 1942, with the message that Bousquet wished to speak to Oberg in person “about the 10,000 Jews from the Free Zone in question.”96 On 29 June 1942, Leguay again came to see Dannecker, who, as the latter recorded in his note on the meeting, had summoned Leguay in order to have him present “a preliminary plan for the Paris action.” But Leguay apparently presented nothing to Dannecker apart from the negative reaction of the French government announced by Laval during the meeting of the Vichy Council of Ministers on 26 June 1942. According to Dannecker’s note, Leguay, at any rate, “made clear that the French government is not willing to have the required number of Jews arrested in Paris under its authority until 15.7.1942.”97 Dannecker now went so far as to make a final threat. I proceeded to inform Leguay that he should contact the prefect of the Paris police directly because henceforth I will probably take direct personal control of the operation and that for this purpose I needed, for a two-week period beginning on a particular day, at least 2,500 [crossed out Page 111 →here is “2 ВЅ 000”] French uniformed police per day and an additional number of criminal police.98 What inevitably became a problem from the perspective of the SS leadership in Paris was less Dannecker’s naive brazenness toward his conversation partner Leguay (as the representative of the Vichy government in police matters) than Dannecker’s deviousness and disloyalty toward his own superiors. After all, his note was intended directly for Knochen. Only Knochen, if he had considered it opportune, could have initiated a measure such as demanding no less than 2,500 French police “and an additional number of criminal police” from the Paris police prefect. Therefore, Klarsfeld sees this statement by Dannecker to Leguay as a crude attempt to put pressure on Oberg and Knochen.99 That both of them had already repeatedly (most recently on 16 June 1942) impressed on Bousquet, in the strongest possible terms, the need to ensure the involvement of the French police in the upcoming mass deportations of Jews, at least from the occupied zone, in no way alters either the fact that the priority in the negotiations with Bousquet and with Laval lay on achieving a stable axis of collaboration between the police forces on the German and French sides or the fact that the French “essentials” outlined explicitly by Bousquet in his letter to Oberg had to be respected by the German side if success was to be achieved. By exerting pressure on Leguay, therefore, Dannecker not only discredited the higher SS leadership in Paris—through the revelation that, on the German side, the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. He also weakened Oberg’s and Knochen’s negotiation position vis-Г -vis Bousquet. On the one hand, he made the SS look like an ineffectual negotiation partner whose assurances concerning police autonomy apparently were not to be trusted. That already violated the new policy inaugurated by Heydrich in France. On the other hand, Dannecker’s behavior involved the risk that the flexible line that Oberg and Knochen were

pursuing in negotiations with the leadership of the Vichy police for strategic reasons would lead to a loss of face of the SS as soon as it became associated with technical adaptations in the implementation of the deportation program. This must have been precisely Dannecker’s intention. Perhaps Eichmann and his people in the RSHA had also given him the impression that he could confidently seek to gain the upper hand in dealings with Oberg and Knochen after the death of their patron Heydrich. Whether he was aware that, in doing so, he was undermining Oberg’s and Knochen’s work when it came to consolidating the power of the Page 112 →SS in France is a moot point. It is reasonably certain, however, that with his behavior toward Leguay, he had provided the decisive stimulus for his dismissal, which followed four weeks later. At the end of June 1942, Dannecker felt strong enough to confront simultaneously both the representative of the Vichy government in his area of responsibility and his own superiors. The assumption that this was connected with the power vacuum in the leadership of the RSHA is supported by the fact that, on 30 June 1942, Adolf Eichmann appeared in person in Paris. After Dannecker’s confession on 15 June that, at that point in time, it was impossible to say “whether in the near or distant future the transportation of Jews on the scale envisaged, or even only in part, will be feasible at all” (see above), Eichmann must have intervened energetically to ensure that the Reichsbahn made transportation capacities available for France. At any rate, his transportation specialist Novak telephoned Dannecker on 18 June 1942 with the message that, as Dannecker recorded in his corresponding note, “in spite of the difficulties identified in the FS [Fernschreiben, i.e., telex] Number 11291 of 16.6.1942 from this office, the Reich Ministry of Transportation has expressed its willingness to accept transports of Jews from France on a large scale.”100 In his response to Novak, Dannecker informed him that “there is not yet conclusive clarity concerning the number of Jews to be taken from the unoccupied territory” but that he could, at any rate, “name departure stations for initially circa 40,000 Jews.”101 He now had a binding obligation to Eichmann for at least this number. On 22 June 1941, the latter informed the special adviser in the Foreign Office in charge, Rademacher, that “from mid-July or the beginning of August of this year, special trains running daily with around 1,000 persons each would transport, to begin with, around 40,000 Jews from the occupied French territory, 40,000 Jews from the Netherlands, and 10,000 Jews from Belgium for labor deployment in the Auschwitz camp.”102 Thus, in the meantime, Eichmann had increased the deportation quota for the Netherlands from 15,000 to 40,000, apparently partly in order to make good the drastic reduction that had resulted for France according to Dannecker’s reports.103 When Dannecker, following his conversation with Leguay on 26 June 1942, had to inform Eichmann that the consent of the government in Vichy had not yet been granted, Eichmann apparently recognized that the entire deportation plan for France had begun to totter. He canceled the meeting scheduled for 2 July 1942 in the RSHA, planned as a follow-up to the discussionPage 113 → of 11 June, and informed Knochen by telex that he was coming to Paris in person on 30 June “in order to discuss final details”—specifically, as he was careful to note, on the orders of his department head, SS-GruppenfГјhrer Heinrich MГјller.104 This was the situation in which Dannecker thought he could flex his muscles by confronting Knochen on 29 June with the fact that he had just threatened Leguay with conducting the mass arrests required for the deportations planned for 13 July with the aid of the Paris police under his own direction. Eichmann first met privately with Dannecker in Paris and then met with Knochen accompanied by Dannecker. A note by Eichmann dated 1 July 1942 on his conversation with Dannecker has been preserved. It reads like a precautionary justification vis-Г -vis his superiors in Berlin in case the ambitious deportation program for France should prove to be a failure. Eichmann emphasized that the “discussion of individual open questions” he had conducted with Dannecker had revealed that the problems of implementing the deportation program were located exclusively in the unoccupied part of France—that is, in the area of responsibility of the government in Vichy—whereas the “implementation efforts in the occupied zone” were proceeding “smoothly and without a hitch.”105 Eichmann then appealed explicitly to the order of Himmler that had been conveyed to his section “by Head of Department IV” (MГјller) on 23 June 1942, “according to which all Jews resident in France were to be extradited as soon as possible.”

As he had already done in the last-minute announcement of his visit, therefore, Eichmann once again made clear that he was armed with directives from the highest authority. “In the light of the RF SS-order [i.e., the order of SS ReichsfГјhrer Himmler], therefore,” as Eichmann put it in his characteristically muddled locution, “there follows the unavoidable necessity of a corresponding exercise of pressure on the French government for stepping up to the further work.”106 He added, “Negotiations were also conducted to this effect with the commander of the security police and the SD, Paris, SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen.”107 As a precaution, Eichmann included everything in his note that, according to the guidelines of the RSHA, was relevant for a smooth “technical implementation” of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Europe: namely, “that the Jews handed over to the destination stations are to be regarded as stateless once they have set foot on Reich territory and, in addition, as having been stripped of all of their property rights.” Furthermore, he stated that “the pace plan thus far (three transports per week of 1,000 Jews each)” must “be increased significantly within a Page 114 →short timeВ .В .В . in order to free France of Jews as soon as possible.” Eichmann was careful to record how much pressure he had put on Knochen: “The possibly necessary and legal underpinnings for this [i.e., for the legal matters relating to nationality and property] must be pushed forward with corresponding energy by the bureau [of the Secret Police and the SD in Paris] because, in case of failure in this area, major inconveniences are to be expected in the area of foreign policy, which must be avoided at all costs in implementing the RF-SS order.В .В .В . The Paris bureau must ensure that the pace previously stipulated be maintained in the interest of the smooth conduct of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”108 Eichmann’s note of 1 July 1942 is a key document for interpreting the subsequent consultations between Oberg and Knochen, on the one side, and Bousquet, on the other. Everything points to the fact that, following his conversation with Knochen, Eichmann remained uncertain whether Knochen would promote the implementation of the deportation measures vociferously to the Vichy representatives—hence, in the first instance, Bousquet.109 If Eichmann had received the assurance from Knochen that he would “push through” the deportation program vis-Г -vis Bousquet at all costs,110 he would certainly have recorded this in his note. Instead, Eichmann wrote that “negotiations were also conducted to this effect with the commander of the security police and the SD, Paris, SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen.”111 Thus Eichmann speaks of Knochen as if he were a negotiation partner, which was unusual enough among members of the Sipo/SD. In plain language, this could only mean that the binding pledges that Eichmann had demanded of Knochen were not to be had and that, in this case too, Eichmann wanted to make clear to his superiors that he, at any rate, had not spared any effort. Eichmann stressed the twofold obligation of the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris—thus ultimately of Knochen—to deliver on the logistical and specifically also the political preparations for the mass deportations, and in doing so, he addressed, in a subordinate clause, the politically highly charged issues of the citizenship rights of the Jews and their “property rights.” This points to the fact that he saw himself in the position of an admonisher toward Oberg and Knochen. Naturally, Dannecker would have informed him that the appointment of an HSSPF and Knochen’s promotion to StandartenfГјhrer and commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS) had not automatically Page 115 →improved the chances of a speedy implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France. Klarsfeld points out the striking fact that during Eichmann’s stay in Paris on 30 June and 1 July 1942, Eichmann did not meet with Hagen.112 This is noteworthy because the latter had been Eichmann’s (and Dannecker’s) superior and instructor in the SD for two years and, as Klarsfeld puts it, “could have been a valuable support in that difficult and uncomfortable situation, given his anti-Jewish experience.”113 Klarsfeld interprets this as an indication that “Hagen had deliberately avoided contact with Eichmann” because, in the meantime, the “Jewish Question” had assumed less importance for him than the envisaged general agreements with the French side on police matters. In fact, one does get the impression that Eichmann, who, after all, had rushed to Paris on a kind of fire brigade mission specifically to get things moving, now wanted to be drawn as little as possible into the operative implementation of the deportation program, so as not to be made jointly responsible for its possible failure.

The Betrayal of Jews of Foreign Nationality by Laval and Bousquet on 2 July 1942 Eichmann was fundamentally mistaken if he had been apprehensive that Knochen was not an ideologically sound

member of the SD when it came to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”—thus, as Eichmann in fact indicated indirectly, that Knochen was more a negotiation partner than a fellow believer and comrade in arms—and hence that Knochen’s determination to push through the deportation program vis-Г -vis the representatives of the Vichy government could not be relied on unconditionally. On 2 July 1942, a day after Eichmann’s departure, the senior police officers on the German and French sides met once again in Paris for a consultation. It was the second meeting of this kind following the talks between Oberg, Knochen, and Bousquet on 16 June 1942. Participating on the German side were the entire leadership of the SS and Gestapo—Oberg, Knochen, Lischka, Hagen—as well as two representatives of the German military administration (von Schweinichen, Runkowski) and a further SS officer (Schmidt). On the French side, only Bousquet appeared, accompanied by an interpreter.114 That Dannecker was not among the relatively large group of German representatives Page 116 →suggests, as does the sequence of topics of discussion, that the “Jewish Question” was not originally intended to be among the central subjects of the talks.115 That the most urgent issue from the German perspective—namely, the preparations for implementing the mass deportation of Jews—was originally not intended to feature prominently in the meeting is shown by the fact that the course of the conversation on this issue only appears under agenda point 7, “Special Police,” in the detailed note prepared by Hagen. The main issue here was Bousquet’s concern to disband the “Judenpolizei” (PQJ) of the Commissaire gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, in the interests of a unified police organization. This was dealt with amicably with the agreement to follow Bousquet’s proposal and to establish a special department within the framework of the police as a whole.116 Knochen now raised the conversation to a level of principle. He stressed that “the HSSPF and he himself had the impression that the stagnation in this area is due to the fact that the French government does not have a unified position when it comes to combating these opponents [communism, the Jews, and the Freemasons]. This alone can explain why Pellepoix has not yet been granted a budget.”117 Bousquet could hardly take this lying down. First, he conjectured that the funds had been withheld from Pellepoix because the latter “has yet to present an organizational plan for assigning the requested funds.” Bousquet then made a striking assertion. He declared that Laval proposed, “based on an intervention of the Marshal,” that “the French police should not conduct the arrest [of the Jews] in the occupied zone. Instead he wishes to leave the conduct of these arrests to the occupation forces.”118 “For the Free Zone,” as Hagen’s note continues, “Laval proposed on account of the intervention of the marshal that at first only the Jews of foreign nationality would be arrested and handed over.”119 With this, Bousquet had rebutted the imputation that the Vichy government “did not have a unified position.” At the same time, he also reaffirmed the French line, which had been valid until then and was reconfirmed in principle by the Council of Ministers on 26 June 1942. This line was that the French police should not be employed in the occupied zone to conduct arrests under German orders—as it happens, this also corresponded to the principles that Bousquet had set forth in his letter to Oberg of 18 June 1942—but that it should hand over the Jews of foreign nationality from the Free Zone to the Germans. If things had been left at this, then it must have been clear to Knochen at this moment that the deportation plan of the RSHA, even in its reduced form, was obsolete. Bousquet’s suggestion that the occupying power should Page 117 →employ its own personnel in the occupied zone directly contradicted Oberg’s and Knochen’s objective for the negotiations. At this point, therefore, the conversation was unexpectedly teetering on the brink of failure. However, Bousquet, Oberg, and Knochen could not afford such a failure. Knochen therefore reiterated, “Vichy has not yet grasped the problem.” Bousquet countered that although the French side had nothing against the arrests of Jews as such, the conduct of arrests—thus arrests on German orders—by the French police and in Paris was “gГЄnant” (i.e., embarrassing). He added that this was also how the Marshal saw the matter.120 With this reference to the leadership of the French state, however, he presented Knochen with an opportunity to roll out the heaviest weaponry on the German side. Thereupon, the BdS [commander of the Security Police and the Security Service, Knochen] declared in turn that the FГјhrer for his part in his most recent speeches had stressed nothing more clearly than the unconditional necessity of a conclusive resolution of the Jewish Question. This is why this attitude alone will govern our measures, not that of the French government. Should the French

government oppose the conduct of the arrests, this will certainly not meet with the approval of the FГјhrer.

More “application of pressure,” as Eichmann had put it in his note of the previous day, was not possible. This signaled that the German side considered the conduct of the arrests of the Jews by the French police in the occupied zone to be a political matter of the very highest order. At this moment, Knochen and Bousquet had exhausted their hands. Bousquet had already achieved notable successes in the course of the conversation up to that point. Oberg had agreed to the establishment of police schools in the headquarters of the regional prefects, albeit not on the scale Bousquet desired.121 Bousquet had been able to fend off an initiative by Oberg to enter into direct contact with the leadership of the gendarmerie in Vichy, by appeal to his own competency and that of Laval.122 Above all, however, he had achieved a breakthrough with Oberg regarding his concern to be able to station the Groupes mobiles de rГ©serve (GMR) as a barracked riot police at the headquarters of the regional prefects.123 Finally, he had received permission to disband Pellepoix’s “Judenpolizei” (PQJ) as an independent special police force.124 Thus these concrete improvements that were of such concern to Bousquet had already been thrown onto the scales by the Germans when KnochenPage 118 → made his thinly veiled declaration that the involvement of the French police in the mass arrests and deportations of the Jews was the key issue in Franco-German relations, at least in the area of policing. Therefore, not only was the realization of the negotiation successes already achieved in jeopardy should Bousquet fail to reach at least a compromise with Oberg and Knochen on the issue of the deployment of the French police forces in the arrests and deportations of Jews in both the unoccupied and occupied zones. He also had to recognize that, for all of their exaggerations and inconsistencies, the massive demands of Dannecker, of which he had had to inform Laval eight days earlier, were not the idГ©e fixe of a zealot in Knochen’s area of responsibility. Instead, they were based on the rigorous general line being pursued by the occupation power toward the Jews, which Knochen now uncompromisingly promoted by explicitly appealing to the supreme political leadership of the Reich. As a result, it became very difficult for Bousquet to estimate his own leeway for negotiation. Would Oberg and Knochen actually allow things to go so far as to risk a breakdown in relations over the “Jewish Question”? Was he running the risk that the skillfully constructed framework of the Franco-German collaboration in the area of policing would collapse already in the incubation phase? Was there a danger that the promised extensive autonomy of the French police forces would not be realized and that the Germans would actually make use of the French police forces for their own purposes by circumventing Vichy and taking direct control of the prefectures in Paris and the regions, as they had done in 1941 after the attacks on members of the Wehrmacht? The least that was to be feared under such circumstances was that the loyalty of the French administrative and police apparatus would disintegrate under extreme strain—the opposite of what Bousquet was trying to achieve with his own grand design. For his part, Knochen was by no means in a more comfortable position. After all, Bousquet had appealed to his head of state. If it remained with the refusal of the Vichy government, as communicated by Bousquet, to deploy French police forces in arresting Jews in the occupied zone, Oberg and Knochen faced the same problem as Bousquet. They, too, were keen to establish stable cooperative relations with the French police—they must have regarded Dannecker’s threats against Leguay, as Bousquet’s representative, more or less as a hindrance. The failure of Bousquet’s police reform and an aggravation of the problem of loyalty within the French police apparatus in conducting arrests under German command, emphasized by Bousquet in Page 119 →his letter to Oberg of 18 June 1942, would also have been disastrous for Knochen. Finally, one month after the appointment of Oberg as HSSPF in France, the main concern was to demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the SS toward not only the French side but also the Wehrmacht, over which it had recently prevailed in a dogged power struggle. After all, there were two Wehrmacht officers sitting at the negotiating table. Thus Knochen found himself in the precise position into which Eichmann had wanted to maneuver him. If, at this

critical juncture, no concession could be extracted from Vichy concerning the participation of the French police in the mass arrests in the occupied zone, the deportation program was, for the present, a failure. The transport program of at least three trains per week could not be realized with the foreign Jews from the Free Zone, especially as uncertainty still prevailed in the communication between the German and French authorities over the overall number of Jews to be deported. It was clear, however, that the RSHA would have regarded Knochen as bearing primary responsibility for this failure. Eichmann will have known precisely why he had left the scene the previous day. In addition, the fact that Hagen did not meet with Eichmann may have had less to do with the waning of Hagen’s vigilance in the “Jewish Question”125 than with the fact that he, too, could have no interest in appearing, to the RSHA, to be one of the actors responsible for the uncertain fate of the deportation program in France. At any rate, the RSHA had been without a leader for a month. Now more than ever, Heinrich MГјller, who was known to be particularly unscrupulous even by SS standards, was the strong man there, and as “Head of Office IV,” he was Eichmann’s direct superior. For all of Knochen’s aplomb and, presumably, his contempt for the mediocre Eichmann—the Berlin counterpart of the tedious zealot Dannecker—Knochen must have been clever enough to take seriously the signals Eichmann sent out with his repeated references to the clear orders of MГјller and Himmler for a rapid implementation of the deportation program in France. This explains why Knochen risked everything. His remark “Should the French government oppose the conduct of the arrests, this will certainly not meet with the approval of the FГјhrer” was anything but a rather vague ultimatum126 or, as Klarsfeld thinks, “a warning to which such an experienced, determined, cold-blooded, and statesman-like official as Bousquet did not have to pay heed.”127 On the contrary, Bousquet will have understood that by referring to the extraordinary political importance of the involvement of the French police in the mass arrests in the presence of his immediate superior, Page 120 →Oberg, as well as Lischka, Hagen, and two Wehrmacht officers, Knochen was linking his personal prestige to this French concession. A negative decision on this issue would clearly have meant a loss of face for Knochen, with uncertain consequences for him and the new leadership of the Secret Police and the SD in Paris. Given Oberg’s inexperience and Dannecker’s unpredictability, Bousquet depended crucially on the collaboration with Knochen if he wanted to realize his program of recovering administrative autonomy from the occupying power in his area of operations. Furthermore, what were the operative political constraints? Militarily speaking, Germany seemed to be winning the war. Following the symbolic fall of Tobruk on 21 June 1942, the British troops retreated to the Egyptian border, less than 300 kilometers from Alexandria. In the Crimea, the German troops were on the brink of finally conquering the stronghold Sevastopol, as one fortified position after the other had fallen during the second half of June.128 Following these victories, Hitler had promoted the victorious generals, Rommel and Manstein, to field marshals. On 22 June, Laval had announced that he favored a German victory. Early in the summer of 1942, the more serious problem from the perspective of the RSHA, which, following Heydrich’s death, was now provisionally under the command of Himmler himself, was determining how to bring the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” to a conclusion while the combat operations still provided camouflage and, if necessary, justification for the mass murder.129 Although Knochen and Bousquet were scarcely aware of all of this in detail, presumably neither of them had any doubt that the energy and skill with which they pursued their respective agendas in the negotiations would have a major impact both on the position of the institutions they represented and, not least, on their own personal futures, under the conditions of German hegemony in Europe. Therefore, Knochen and Bousquet—two technocrats in their early thirties, both with brilliant careers, both poised to become still more powerful and influential provided that they played their cards right—faced each other on 2 July 1942 in a constellation that is familiar from the literature on game theory as the “game of chicken.” This circumscribes a situation in which actors try to bring their opponents to relent by credibly demonstrating their unwillingness to compromise.130 The logic of the situation dictated that the actor who had more to lose relented. That was Bousquet. Immediately following the reference to Knochen’s threatening interjectionPage 121 → (“Should the French government oppose the conduct of the arrests, this will certainly not meet with the approval of the

FГјhrer”), Hagen’s protocol states, For this reason, the following solution was agreed upon: Because, on account of the intervention of the Marshal, no Jews of French nationality should be arrested in France for the present, Bousquet declares his willingness to have Jews of foreign citizenship arrested throughout France in a single unified operation in the numbers we desire.131 With this, the dice had fallen. This was the moment, as Klarsfeld writes, “when the honor and ethics of the Vichy regime were lost forever.”132 Bousquet had consented to nothing less than the cooperation of the French police in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” That the arrests were supposed to be confined to “Jews of foreign citizenship” was at this moment of importance only for the French government. The latter had already received Laval’s communication, during the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 26 June 1942, that Laval was having the Jews with foreign nationality registered separately as part of the ongoing registration of the Jews.133 Two things were now decisive from the perspective of Knochen and the other senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris. On the one hand, the deployment of the French police for the arrests of the Jews was assured and, with it, the conditio sine qua non on which the implementation of the deportation program, as this was planned, depended. On the other hand, nothing further stood in the way of fulfilling the deportation quota, which, in the meantime, had been reduced to 40,000. Provisionally, therefore, Eichmann’s calculation was a complete success both tactically and in detail. It is an open question whether, on 2 July 1942, Bousquet had cherished the hope or the illusion that he could make a permanent exception to the German deportation program for Jews of French nationality. At first sight, at any rate, the agreement reached with the leadership of the Sipo/SD could be presented as a concession by the German side. After all, Laval had personally informed the Council of Ministers on 26 June 1942 of Dannecker’s demand that of the 10,000 Jews to be arrested in the Paris region alone, 40 percent had to be French citizens. Thus Dannecker’s independent initiative, however much it had impaired the climate of the collaboration in the short term, had ultimately played into Knochen’s hands as much as into those of Bousquet’s.Page 122 → The classical division of roles into the “good” and the “bad” cop had developed between Knochen and Dannecker. In this constellation, the role of the “bad” cop is to develop threatening scenarios, whereas that of the “good” cop is to achieve concessions that now appear to be the lesser evil to the individual being threatened. For his part, Bousquet could point in Vichy to the fact that he had “negotiated away” the arrest of 4,000 Jews of French nationality demanded by Dannecker from Leguay. If Dannecker had behaved “reasonably” from the outset and had not placed the collaboration relations between the Germans and the French under strain, therefore, Bousquet would have had less latitude to make concessions at the expense of tens of thousands of Jews living in France.134 In fact, notwithstanding Knochen’s and Bousquet’s mutual assurances, around 6,500 Jews of French nationality would be deported by the end of 1942, approximately 5,000 of them after 2 July.135 Above all, however, the German authorities in charge did not relax their endeavors to strip as many French Jews as possible of their citizenship and subsequently to have them deported.

Preparation for Administrative Mass Denaturalization As regards non-French as opposed to French Jews, a principle of differentiation (or, as the original French minutes of the meeting of the Vichy Council of Ministers on 26 June 1942136 put it, “discrimination”—a term as precise as it was ambiguous) was confirmed by the Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of PГ©tain on 3 July 1942. Laval reaffirmed his intention to press ahead with the registration of the Jews in the Free Zone in a way that would make it possible to distinguish between French and foreign Jews. He allowed that “special measures” could be contemplated regarding those Jews who had arrived in France after September 1939, hence after the outbreak of the war.137 With this, Laval intimated the possibility of a denaturalization of Jews who had only recently acquired French citizenship. Laval would demonstrate willingness to compromise toward the Germans on this issue. Over the coming months, the specification of a cutoff date for naturalizations of Jews that were to be revoked on pressure from the German side developed into one of the most important discussion points in the negotiations between the Germans and the French on the continuation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France. The minutes of the Council of MinistersPage 123 → meeting stated explicitly,

“The Marshal thinks that this distinction [between non-French and French Jews] is just and will be understood by [public] opinion.”138 This stance again conveys the impression that—in the perception of the Vichy government, or at least in that of Pétain and Laval, which was, in any case, decisive—particularly the issue of the nationality of the Jews to be deported and also the related issue of the possible denaturalization of Jews dominated the entire “Jewish Question” from the French perspective. A common thread running through the consultations and decisions both within Vichy and between the French and German sides is Vichy’s endeavor to, on the one hand, get rid of the Jews who had immigrated after World War I and, in greater numbers, in the 1930s, in the course of the collaboration with the occupying power in the “Jewish Question,” and, on the other hand, to affirm French administrative autonomy to such an extent that, at least to external appearances, French citizenship was respected by the occupying power and summary deportations of French Jews remained taboo. A Commission de révision des naturalisations had already been established in the French Ministry of Justice, based on the law of 22 July 1940, with the task of examining all naturalization cases since the passing of the naturalization law of 10 August 1927.139 In virtue of this stance, early in the summer of 1942, Vichy had de facto already established a three-class society among the Jews living in France. It comprised the “old-established” Jews, those Jews who had been naturalized based on the law of 10 August 1927, and the non-French Jews, who consisted of legal immigrants and refugees with or without legal status. The brief minutes of the meeting of the Vichy Council of Ministers on 3 July 1942 do not contain any details concerning the agreements reached between Bousquet and the representatives of the German occupying power on the previous day. In a handwritten addition reproduced in Serge Klarsfeld’s edition of the source material from the Calendrier, however, one can find an informative pointer to Laval’s outlook and mentality early in the summer of 1942: according to Laval, a distinction had to be made between the French Jews and, as he put it, the “scum” that the Germans had removed from the country themselves. Laval informed his fellow ministers that the German government intended to create a Jewish state in Eastern Europe and that he would not find it dishonorable if he were one day to transfer the countless foreign Jews resident in France to that Jewish state.140

Page 124 →Damn Burst and Turning Point: Laval Declares the Jewish Children Free to be Deported In the meeting on 2 July 1942, Bousquet had “announced a prospective meeting with Laval” for the second-next day “in order to implement the agreement on the arrest of the Jews,” as Hagen put it in his note.141 Such a meeting did take place on Saturday, 4 July 1942, specifically between Oberg, Knochen, and Laval. Before that, however, on the afternoon of the same day, what was actually the decisive meeting took place between the senior police officers on the German and French sides. This time, a much smaller number of Germans were present: Knochen, SS-ObersturmfГјhrer Schmidt (who had already attended the meeting on 2 July), and Dannecker. The French side was represented by Bousquet and the head of the CGQJ, Darquier de Pellepoix. Also present was the interpreter Dr. Wilhelm, who, notwithstanding his German name, was a member of the general delegation of the Vichy government for the occupied territories with the German military commander. With Dannecker and Darquier, those hard-liners on both sides who had been left out of the meeting on general police matters on 2 July 1942 were now present. Both had strained relations with the principal representatives on their respective sides. Dannecker had ensured that his immediate superior, Knochen, had come under pressure from the RSHA in the “Jewish Question.” Darquier was on the defensive vis-Г -vis Bousquet, who wanted to disband the Police aux Questions juives (PQJ) under Darquier’s command, a measure for which Bousquet had already won the pledge of the German side two days previously. Dannecker had prepared speaking notes for Knochen containing accusations against and demands on Bousquet that had already been superseded in part by the meeting of 2 July 1942. Dannecker’s tone was, as usual, gruff and overbearing.142 Dannecker was also the one who prepared the minutes of the meeting between Bousquet, Darquier, Knochen, Schmidt, and himself.143 According to Dannecker’s note, Bousquet reported that during the meeting of the Council of Ministers in

Vichy the day before, PГ©tain and Laval “had agreed that, to begin with, all of the stateless Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones would be deported.”144 When it came to the “practical implementation, ” Dannecker was essentially able to achieve the implementation of his demands recorded earlier in the speaking notes for Knochen. It was agreed that a commission would be established on the French side that was supposed to take care of the organizational implementation of the mass Page 125 →arrests in cooperation with Dannecker. Darquier de Pellepoix was supposed to chair the commission. This proposal, according to Dannecker, had come from Bousquet himself, who wanted to be represented in this commission by Leguay. Dannecker reports that Darquier gave the impression of being “almost aghast at the prospect of assuming such a responsibility.”145 In fact, it cannot be ruled out that Bousquet wanted to show up his opponent Darquier. After all, the German side in particular was counting on the core personnel of the French police to conduct this major police operation in a professional manner. Entrusting this complicated and politically important task to a layman like Darquier—who, beyond the hard core of the ideologically motivated collaborators, suffered the odium of submissiveness toward the occupying power—would lead, if the task went well, to Darquier being more strongly integrated into the anti-Jewish measures of the regular French police. If Darquier failed, he and his claims to an independent police force under the direction of his CGQJ would unavoidably be discredited in the eyes of the Germans. At the same time, Darquier’s appointment as director of the coordinating commission (later called the “Action Committee”) prevented Bousquet and Laval from appearing to their own police forces as the representatives of the French state with the actual responsibility for the mass arrests of Jews at the behest of the Germans. Laval was more interested in a smooth administrative resolution of the “Jewish Question,” and his unscrupulousness inspired a certain degree of amazement even within the SS apparatus, as emerges between the lines of the corresponding reports. On 6 July 1942, Dannecker submitted a report to the RSHA with the underlined remark “Urgent! Submit immediately!” The report read, The negotiations with the French government have led to the following result: All stateless Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones are being made available for deportation. President Laval has proposed that, when deporting Jewish families from the Free Zone, the children under 16 should also be taken. The question of the Jewish children left behind in the occupied zone does not interest him. Therefore, I urgently request a decision by FS [Fernschreiben, i.e., telex] as to whether, for instance beginning with the 15th Jew transport from France, children under 16 years can also be deported.146 Dannecker’s remark concerning the “deportation of Jewish families” with their children younger than 16 constitutes, in Klarsfeld’s words, “lines inscribedPage 126 → forever in French history.”147 After all, the statement comes from no less a figure than the French head of government. Laval would declare at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 10 July 1942, “Out of humanitarian considerations, the head of government—contrary to the original German proposals—has insured that the children, including those under 16 years of age, will be permitted to accompany their parents.”148 Even if Laval had believed, as he recorded in his handwritten addition to the note on the meeting of the Council of Ministers of 3 July 1942, that the Germans intended to establish a Jewish state somewhere “in the East” and that the children in question would be deported there along with their parents, it was quite obvious that Jewish children, should they be deported from France, would be placed at the mercy of a ruthless regime and its police and administrative apparatus. This followed from the principles that the German leadership pronounced would govern the treatment of the Jews within their sphere of influence and from the intention of the German government, which was clear to the French government, to follow the victorious conclusion of the war against the Soviet Union by erecting a regime based on violence and subjugation “in the East” (of which the conditions in Poland that had prompted wide public discussion in France at the time provided unmistakable impressions). As it happens, the “humanitarian considerations” put forward as a pretext did not prevent Laval’s police and the administration of the government of which he was the head from treating Jewish mothers, fathers, and their children “with extreme and often inhuman severity.”149

At the latest following the ultimatums presented by Dannecker to Leguay on 25 June 1942, Laval and Bousquet could have and should have rejected out of hand the German demand to extradite people, the majority of whom had previously sought refuge from persecution in France. But they had instead thrown the door wide open to the involvement of the police and administration of the French state in continued acts of organized inhumanity. Decisive in this action were not only technocratic calculation and the bargaining transaction of administrative autonomy in return for collaboration but also a fundamental contempt for human beings, as expressed in a completely unvarnished way in Laval’s remarks on the protocol of the Council of Ministers meeting of 3 July 1942. A distinction had to be made, he stated, between the French Jews and the “scum” that the Germans had first disposed of themselves.150 According to the Laval’s definition, the foreign or “stateless” Jews and their children who were now earmarked for deportation constituted this “scum.”

Page 127 →The Franco-German Police Collaboration in the Preparations for the LargeScale Raid on 16 and 17 July 1942 and First Delays in the Deportation Plan On 7 July 1942, Dannecker informed the Military Commander, the commander of the greater Paris region, and the German Embassy, on behalf of the BdS, that the “ReichsfГјhrer SS” had agreed “that, in view of an imminent final solution to the Jewish Question in Western Europe, a large number of Jews will also be deported from France.” The conclusion of the negotiations with Laval, Bousquet, and Darquier de Pellepoix had been that a record would be made of “all stateless Jews from the occupied and unoccupied zones of both sexes aged between 16 and 45,” with the stipulation “insofar as they were not living in a mixed marriage.” Dannecker’s letter, which was countersigned by Knochen, continued, “The occupied zone will yield a figure of approximately 22,000. How many Jews are eligible in the unoccupied zone is as yet unclear.” According to Dannecker, head of state PГ©tain and the French Council of Ministers had given their consent to the arrangement.151 This was the official report on the state of affairs at that time, which made clear that the deportations were to be confined, for the present, to the stateless Jews—which, in practice, meant mainly denaturalized German and Austrian Jews—and to some categories of foreign Jews, such as Czechs, Poles, and Soviet-Russians who had immigrated only in the 1930s. In his telex of the previous day to the RSHA, Department IV B 4 (hence Eichmann), Dannecker had opened with the topic of the deportations of Jewish children under consideration and had remarked apologetically “that, just to get the action started, there could be a question for the moment only of stateless or foreign Jews.”152 He added that “the Jews naturalized after 1919 or 1927 [inserted here is the handwritten note “in France”] will be dealt with later in the second phase.” The first meeting of the coordinating commission whose constitution had been agreed on three days earlier, at the meeting between Knochen, Dannecker, and Schmidt, on the one side, and Bousquet and Darquier de Pellepoix, on the other, was also held on 7 July 1942. The minutes of the 7 July meeting, prepared by Dannecker, referred to the commission as the “Action Committee.” The relative weights were now inverted by comparison with the high-level meeting of 2 July, which had the participation of the entire Sipo/SD leadership on the German side but only Bousquet on the French side. On 7 July, the German side was represented by Dannecker and his colleaguePage 128 → Heinrichsohn, the French side by no less than nine relatively high-ranking representatives of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, the police and the detention camps, the PrГ©fecture de police of Paris, and the prГ©fecture of the dГ©partement Seine. The leading figures were Darquier de Pellepoix, head of the CGQJ, and Leguay, Bousquet’s representative in the occupied zone. This composition signaled that the question was no longer about policy but about the practical execution of the deportations. The subject line of the minutes prepared by Dannecker reads, “Further Jew transports from France—First meeting of the Action Committee.” Dannecker began the meeting by covering his back and inquiring whether “all of the gentlemen present are authorized to represent their agencies, so that the decisions taken today are binding and that there can be no question of subsequent queries or changes of any kind.” The minutes record, “All of the gentlemen declared that they were vested with the necessary authorizations.” The minutes further record that the conclusion of the “Action Committee” that a total of 28,000 stateless and Russian Jews were to be arrested; “after subtracting the sick Jews, those not fit for transportation, and those who are too old,” this meant “a figure of 22,000 Jews for Paris.” The Jewish indexes maintained by the respective prefectures were supposed to provide the basis for the arrest operation. The “deportation of the Jews

to the East” was supposed to be conducted at a rate of four trains per week with 1,000 Jews each. The minutes continued, “The age range вЂ16 to 50 years old’ was specified.”153 Evidently, there was not yet any talk of deporting the children as well at the meeting of the “Action Committee.” Just two days earlier, Dannecker had sent Eichmann the telex with the message concerning Laval’s surprising offer, and he had not yet received a reply. He now recorded, “Children left behind will likewise be assembled in a single place and subsequently taken in charge by the Union of the Jews in France and transferred to children’s homes.”154 The Jews were to be “transported to the various town halls and then to the main assembly place (VГ©lodrome d’Hiver).” With this, the parameters were laid down for the mass arrests in Paris and surrounding areas, stipulating the arrest and deportation of initially 22,000 Jews. The next meeting of the “Action Committee” took place on the afternoon of 10 July 1942. Those present on the German side were Dannecker, Heinrichsohn, and Dannecker’s deputy, RГ¶thke, who took the minutes. On the French side, Darquier de Pellepoix was absent, but Leguay was present. Thus the CGQJ was not represented at this second meeting either. Attending instead were “further gentleman from the French police, a representative of Page 129 →the SNCF [SociГ©tГ© Nationale des Chemins de fer, the French national railway], and three representatives of the welfare services.” The details of the large-scale raid in Paris and surrounding areas, which would be conducted on 16 and 17 July 1942, were now fixed. The arrests were to begin at 4:00 a.m. Detainees with minor children were to be brought to the VГ©lodrome d’Hiver, the others to the Drancy camp. According to RГ¶thke’s note, Tulard, who was in charge of the Jewish index of the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police, estimated that there would be “circa 24–25,000 arrestees.”155 The upper age limits for those to be deported was raised once again, to 55 for women and 60 for men. In the interim, directly after the first meeting of the “Action Committee” on 7 July 1942, Dannecker once again demonstrated that he lacked any understanding of the broader significance of the agreements with the French police leadership within the context of occupation policy. Although the agreements of 7 July were purely organizational in character and met all of the demands of the Sipo/SD, Dannecker felt it necessary to take aim at Bousquet’s deputy, Leguay, in a separate note prepared for Knochen (with the pompous addendum “I urge that SS-BrigadefГјhrer Oberg be informed”). According to Dannecker, Leguay had declared in the meeting on 7 July that after the conclusion of the “negotiations currently being conducted with the HSSPF, ” “a subordination of the French police apparatus and of the occupation administration” would occur “only in isolated cases.” “In response,” Dannecker had “explained to Leguay that for the present the current situation remained unchanged and that the French police—especially in particular local cases or operations—were to carry out the instructions of this office, or of its subordinate Security Police (SD) commandos, without awaiting instructions from the secretary-general of the police as to the legality of this assignment. Especially when it comes to dealing with the Jewish Question, it cannot be tolerated that such a state of affairs should become established, whereby I added that the Security Police (SD) commandos [would] operate in every case at the directive and with the approval of the BdS.”156 To this message, Knochen, clearly at the end of his tether, added the marginal note “Why this endless search for trivialities?” This rebuke was understandable given that the preparations for the important matters—the general police agreement with the French side and the first general wave of mass arrests to be conducted in the course of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France—were proceeding without the slightest hitch. A day after the second meeting of the “Action Committee,” on 11 July 1942, Dannecker, accompanied by Heinrichsohn and the director of the PQJ, Page 130 →Schweblin, set out on a trip to inspect the Jews earmarked for deportation who were being held in the detention camps in the Free Zone. Therefore, it was left to Dannecker’s deputy, RГ¶thke, to deal with the consequences of a telex of the Foreign Office to the German Embassy that arrived on 10 July 1942 in response to a query sent by Abetz on 2 July. Abetz had stated in his query that “just as in Germany the inundation by Jews from the East and other foreign Jews provided a special stimulus to the anti-Semitic mood among the German people at the time,” so, too, “one can observe in France that the increase in anti-Semitism is largely due to the immigration of Jews of foreign nationality in recent years.” “Therefore,” Abetz continued, “it will be psychologically effective among the broad masses of the French people if the evacuation measures initially affect such foreign Jews and if, to begin with, the French

Jews are included only to the extent that the Jews of foreign nationality are insufficient to make up the specified contingent.”157 The Foreign Office (Undersecretary of State Luther) now responded with the directive “Priority deportation of foreign Jews in France is not as yet possible. As regards extending the resettlement measures to foreign Jews, this remains subject to further instructions.” There followed the addendum “Conduct of the evacuation should not now be delayed by this.”158 But delay is just what happened. Because of the directive of the Foreign Office, the group of Jews available for deportation was restricted to those who were definitively “stateless”. Thus, as far as the goal envisaged by Eichmann and Dannecker was concerned, the “evacuation” was considerably restricted. This is exactly what Laval reported, also on 10 July 1942, to the Council of Ministers in Vichy, though with reference to the unoccupied, “free” zone.159 It took four days before Dannecker’s deputy, RГ¶thke, informed the RSHA, hence Eichmann, in a telex drafted by his colleague Horst Ahnert, that because of the “agreement with the French government” according to which “initially only stateless Jews are available for the deportation of Jews from France,” the envisaged transport program could not be realized. The result was that “the first transport train planned for Bordeaux on 15.7.1942 cannot be filled and the next two trains cannot be made available at the planned departure stations.”160 According to the date stamp on the communication, RГ¶thke’s telex was sent at 10:55 a.m. “At around 7:00 p.m.,” according to a note by RГ¶thke from the following day, “SSObersturmbannfГјhrer Dr. [sic] Eichmann, Berlin, called and wanted to know why the transport train planned for 15.7.1942 was being canceled.”161 Even in the RSHA in 1942, a telephone conversation abroad connected manuallyPage 131 → was presumably an exception reserved for special occasions. Eichmann must have subjected RГ¶thke, who was several ranks below him, to such a dressing down that the latter was still, in his minutes the following day, reverentially conferring the title of doctor on Eichmann. At any rate, the head of department in the RSHA in charge of the deportation program within the framework of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was completely beside himself over the cancellation of one transport train. RГ¶thke recorded in his note, SS-OStubaf. [ObersturmbannfГјhrer] Eichmann pointed out that this was after all a matter of prestige. He stated that extended discussions had had to be conducted concerning the trains with the Reich Ministry of Transportation, which had been successful, and now Paris was allowing a train to be canceled. He had never encountered such a thing before. The matter is highly “embarrassing.” He stated that he did not want to inform SS-GruppenfГјhrer MГјller about the matter immediately because he was embarrassed. He said he might have to consider dropping France entirely as a deportation country.162 That this note by RГ¶thke for the files became a frequently quoted document in Holocaust research is due less to the importance of the incident for the conduct of the deportations in France than to the fact that it provides such valuable insight into the psychology of the chief logistical organizer of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Europe. Clearly, it was completely obvious to Eichmann that the possible exclusion of France from the RSHA program to deport “to the East” all Jews living in Western Europe would be felt to be a threat in the Sipo/SD office in Paris. That he was not afraid of making himself appear ridiculous with such a manifestly implausible pronouncement can be attributed both to his intellectual naivety and to the comparatively low status of his telephone conversation partner in this instance, RГ¶thke. The latter, a young university graduate from the Wehrmacht administration,163 took Eichmann’s remark so seriously that he recorded it in a note, and he attached such importance to the incident that, when he had succeeded Dannecker as head of Department IV J in Paris shortly afterward, he added the handwritten marginal note “HauptStuf. Dannecker telephoned with Eichmann in this matter and emphatically rejected all accusations against IV J.”164 On 16 and 17 July 1942, the most spectacular mass arrests of Jews during the German occupation were carried out by the Paris municipal police. FollowingPage 132 → the Franco-German agreements of 2 and 10 July, this action was directed against stateless Jews of both sexes, between the ages of 16 and 55 in the case of the women and between the ages of 16 and 60 in the case of the men. This sweeping raid, which took place under the eyes of the population of Paris,165 led to the arrest of 12,884 people, of whom 5,800 were women and 4,051 were children.

The large proportion of women and children was attributed by Röthke himself to the fact that “mainly men were taken prisoner during the earlier arrest operations,” so that “more men than women took refuge from the arrest before it was too late.”166 The large number of children arrested—according to the definition of the foregoing Franco-German agreements, individuals under the age of 16—lent virulence to Laval’s “offer” to allow the Jewish children to be deported together with their parents. It is particularly revealing that some 3,000 of these children were French citizens born in France. The German and French police representatives returned to this point in a meeting on 17 July 1942, when the raid was still in full swing.167 They agreed, “The Jew children will at first not be separated from their parents but will be transported along with the latter to the Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande camps.”168 Of the Jews detained in the raid, 7,618 were first brought to the huge hall of the bicycle racetrack of the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where, in every respect, catastrophic conditions rapidly developed;169 5,266—singles and couples without minor children—were detained in Drancy. The Jewish detainees in the Vélodrome d’Hiver were first distributed to various camps on the periphery of Paris and in provincial areas of the occupied zone. On 19 July 1942, the first to transport left the Le Bourget / Drancy train station in the direction of Auschwitz.170

Strategists and Henchmen II: Dannecker’s Dismissal Dannecker, who returned to Paris from his tour of inspection to the camps in the Free Zone on 20 July 1942, had to acknowledge and officially record that there were far fewer Jews in the internment camps in the Free Zone than he had hoped and than Bousquet had suggested on repeated occasions. When it came to fixing the deportation quota for France in the various meetings with Eichmann, Dannecker had pinned his hopes on the mainly “stateless” or “foreign” Jews detained in those camps. In his note dated 20 July 1942 and headed “Journey through the Free Zone—inspection Page 133 →of the Jew camps,”171 Dannecker now had to concede that these hopes would not be realized. From the perspective of the SS, it must have been additionally frustrating that the “stateless” Jews in the internment camps in the Free Zone included numerous former German nationals who had been deported from the Palatinate and Baden as part of the so-called Wagner-BГјrckel Operation in October 1940 and who had, in the process, been denaturalized. As a result, scarce transportation capacity was not to be tied down with the deportation of those Jews who had been released from German control and who now not only had to be brought back but also had to be recognized as a French contribution to fulfilling the deportation quota. Above all, according to Dannecker, there could not be any question “of an implementation of the French law of 4.10.1940 enabling internment of Jews of foreign nationality in concentration camps.”172 The Gurs camp, for example, was, in Dannecker’s words, “a major disappointment in view of the fact that until now numerous reports from the unoccupied zone conveyed the impression that at least 20,000 Jews are imprisoned there.” The actual “prison population” was just 2,599.173 Therefore Dannecker continued to insist on extending the group of individuals among the Jewish population who were eligible for deportation. On 21 July 1942, he prepared “Discussion points for the consultation with the French secretary-general of the police, Bousquet,”174 with particular “reference to my note of 20.7.1942 on my official trip to the Free Zone.” In his discussion points, Dannecker first referred to the discrepancy between the transportation capacity for “provisionally 40,000 Jews” that was made available by the Reich Ministry of Transportation and the outcome of the “arrest operation of stateless Jews recently conducted in Paris.” Given that “the [arrested] children cannot be deported for the present,” he noted, “the number of Jews available for deportation is completely insufficient.”175 Dannecker went on, For this reason, a further Jew action must be started immediately. For this purpose, Jews of Belgian and Dutch nationality must also be considered in addition to the Jews of former German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian, Polish, and Russian nationality who have already been registered as stateless. It is to be expected, however, that this category will not be sufficiently numerous, so that the French will have no other option except to include those Jews who acquired French nationality after 1927 or also those that already acquired it after 1919.176

Page 134 →These remarks by Dannecker referred only to the occupied zone. For the Free Zone, he stated that he was forced to conclude on his journey that the senior police officers in charge—Dannecker was referring to the police commissioners in the regional prefectures—had not yet even received instructions concerning a “planned operation,” even though, “on several occasions,” he had “explained” to Bousquet’s deputy, Leguay, “that on our side we thought there was a firm commitment to begin deporting for a start 1,000 Jews from the Free Zone on 1.8.1942.”177 Probably mobilized by Dannecker, Darquier de Pellepoix also sprang into action. On 23 July 1942, he approached Laval and informed the head of the Vichy government that the number of Jews arrested in Paris and surrounding areas on 16 and 17 July 1942 was “far from” the figure “aimed at,” which “was based on the census lists at the Parisian PrГ©fectures de police.” He continued, “Discussions that I had today with the occupation authorities”—by which, given the state of things, he could only have meant Dannecker178—“have enabled me to establish their extreme dissatisfaction.”179 Darquier then referred to the transportation capacities made available by the German side and proposed “that all stateless Jews and those Jews who belong to the previously specified foreign countries and who fled to the Free Zone should be arrested.” Moreover, Darquier continued, “the Belgian and Dutch Jews could be arrested in agreement with the German authorities, and in general every foreign Jew who does not have a passport whose validity is beyond doubt and is of recent date.” Darquier concluded that “should the number still not be reached after implementing the two foregoing measures, it would be advisable to consider supplementing them with male and female Jews who acquired French citizenship after 1 January 1927.”180 Unsurprisingly, therefore, Darquier made Dannecker’s demands entirely his own. Just like Dannecker, Darquier resorted to entreaties and thinly veiled threats. I stress the urgency with which the unavoidably necessary measures must be conducted in order to implement the decisions taken in agreement with the German authorities. I am personally convinced that any delay or negligence in executing this eviction plan would have grave consequences and expose the French government to the danger of completely losing control over later measures of a similar nature.181 Three weeks later (14 August 1942), RГ¶thke added to the copy of Darquier’s letter in German translation the note “presented to StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Page 135 →Knochen with the request that he please take note. Director Galien182 wanted to demonstrate to us the вЂactivity’ of the General Commission [for Jewish affairs] with this letter.” It is possible that Darquier’s letter to Laval had been drafted by Galien, who has been described as “a man of average intelligence, an early informant of Dannecker, devious and unscrupulous.”183 Darquier’s or Galien’s remark that his government was in “danger of completely losing control over later measures of a similar nature” must have struck Laval as ridiculous given that a general agreement on matters of policing was on the brink of being concluded with the German side. Laval could easily reconstruct how the dГ©marche had come about. Presumably it was drafted in Darquier’s name by Galien in complete ignorance of the real relations of power within the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus and for the sole purpose of impressing Dannecker, whose pompous diction the letter to Laval imitates. On both sides, therefore, the politically less-talented figures distinguished themselves by their disloyalty and dilettantism. Dannecker was dismissed a little over a week later. As a result of his telephone message to Eichmann on 21 July 1942 that Knochen had “overthrown the entire concept [of the deportation],” he had become completely untenable for the latter. Now he had parked his service vehicle in a no-parking zone in a heavily drunken state. In his postwar interrogations, Knochen made no secret of the fact that he had been looking for a pretext to get rid of the tiresome, politically counterproductive Dannecker.184 Darquier, who had been stripped of his personal “Jew police” a few weeks earlier, had isolated himself further within the circle of influential collaborators on the French side.185

Delicate Collaboration Policy Work: The Struggle over the Terms of the Police Agreement The actual distribution of the weights in the calculus of power on the German and French sides and the respective

priorities in the police domain emerged clearly from the detailed written statements by the senior police officials on the German and French sides. On 23 July 1942, Oberg addressed a letter to Bousquet, which he formally declared to be a response to Bousquet’s letter of 18 June, though, in fact, it recorded the state of the consultations conducted in the meantime and prefigured the basic elements of the official agreement of 8 August 1942. Oberg’s letter struck an extremely conciliatory tone and must have been Page 136 →drafted by Hagen or Knochen, and a note included in the addendum records, in the style of a blanket clause, that the task of the agencies under the command of the senior SS and police leader (HSSPF) in the occupied territory of France was “to secure the war effort of the Reich, in particular to guarantee the security of the occupying troops, to combat and forestall all attacks against the German Reich in the present struggle for the liberation of Europe.”186 The French police, according to Oberg, were to fulfill this task as though it were its own. To this end, it was to use all of the means at its disposal, completely independently, to communicate all “useful information” to the HSSPF and to support him through collaboration in the pursuit “of all the enemies of the Reich” and in combating them on its own account. Furthermore, the French police and the agencies under the command of the HSSPF would collaborate in maintaining public order and security in the occupied territory, in which they had an equal interest. As a quid pro quo from the German side, the note signed by Oberg specified both the earlier briefing of the secretary-general of the police on all measures (“autant que possible”) bearing on the joint undertaking and the fact that all directives to the French police, unless special urgency dictated otherwise, would be issued through the official channels (“voie administrative”) so as to ensure that the French police received unified and energetic guidance (“direction unifiГ©e et Г©nergique,” with emphasis on the word Г©nergique). In addition, it specified that the German commanders of the Security Police (Sipo/SD) would collaborate closely with the regional prefects and their police forces, that reprisals such as executions and deportations would be conducted only against persons who were not subject to the French police’s own measures, and that political crimes not aimed directly against the interests of the Reich would be prosecuted by the French authorities (“insofar as a different regulation is not required in particular cases and the procedure leads to the anticipated results”). Finally, the note contained the pledges to provide the French police with better arms, to deploy the Groupes mobiles de rГ©serve (GMR), and to establish schools for training in “combating the common enemy.” This accorded, in essence, with the commitments that had already been made by the German side on 2 July. Viewed in the clear light of day, therefore, Oberg’s note detailed the commitment of the French police to combat, both independently as well as at the behest of the German authorities, all those who, according to the German definition, counted as “enemies of the Reich.” This naturally included the Jews. The French side, by contrast, thought that it was on the brink of concludingPage 137 → binding agreements that it would recover full administrative sovereignty over the police and that the occupying power would mostly refrain from reprisals, in particular from hostage executions, which, since the summer of 1941, had developed into the most severe strain on collaboration relations. On 18 July 1942, Laval reported in vague terms to the Council of Ministers on the negotiations between Oberg and Bousquet, but he especially emphasized that not a single Frenchmen had been shot by the occupying power since the month of June and that the Franco-German agreement included the renunciation of further hostage arrests and reprisals. In addition, he reported that Oberg had made pledges in the matters of the police school, the establishment of new police units, and the arming of the police.187 No other document reveals the disposition of the French side in the negotiations with the Germans as clearly as the note that Bousquet drafted for Laval on 26 July 1942. Bousquet had just returned to Vichy from Paris and evidently had delivered Oberg’s letter of 23 July to Laval. At any rate, he refers to Oberg’s “text” (by which is clearly meant the note included in the addendum to Oberg’s letter), to which he said he wanted to add a couple of remarks that he regarded as essential.188 Bousquet’s note was composed in a familiar, firstperson tone. From this, it is clear that the author was concerned not only to give as detailed an interpretation of the positions and intentions of the German side as possible but also, in particular, to present a differentiated account of the French options and of the justification of the line that should, in his view, be taken. Bousquet must have been concerned to prove his determination and ingenuity in representing French interests, after Oberg had described

him patronizingly in his letter as the personal guarantor of a “loyal collaboration” and of successful leadership of the French police in the sense of the envisaged agreement.189 In his note to Laval of 26 July 1942, Bousquet first plainly stated that the text transmitted by Oberg was far removed from his hopes. Even so, he went on, they now had a draft with which they could work and that presented the prospect of not being confronted with accomplished facts by the German side. However, Bousquet made clear, Oberg’s remarks did not even remotely confirm the independence of the French administration. Bousquet then went on to address a fundamental dilemma. He indicated that he had repeatedly made clear to the German side that the war being conducted by the Germans should not be confounded with the affairs of the occupation in France that were based on the Armistice Agreement, for which reason the French administration could not participate in the German war Page 138 →effort, even indirectly. The role of the French administration was confined instead to the correct application of the terms of the armistice. However, Bousquet continued, the German dialogue partners were not to be pinned down in this respect. It was evident that Bousquet was here addressing a problem that would also have arisen in this form in the case of any other occupying power that remained engaged in a war. The shared credo of the SS and the Wehrmacht was that guaranteeing the security of the German occupying power and hence particularly of the troops supporting it was an unconditional obligation, a concern that was covered both by the Hague Land Warfare Convention and by the terms of the Armistice Agreement. The real problem was not this but, instead, the formula “enemies of the Reich” used by the German side, whose application could be extended by the German occupation authorities, as they pleased, to any group of persons in the occupied territory. Bousquet did not address this issue in his detailed note for Laval, however, just as he did not so much as mention the most sensitive related matter—namely, the treatment of the “Jewish Question.” Bousquet’s real concern, in which he showed himself to be a political bureaucrat of the highest order, was to formulate an analogous blanket clause that would take account of French interests. In his opinion, it had to state that the occupation power had to make an undertaking to involve the French police only in tasks grounded in the obligations imposed on the French government by the Armistice Agreement.190 At the same time, Bousquet gave a sober assessment of the room for maneuver of the French side in this endeavor as he saw it. That the Germans wanted to define the competences of their own agencies in a precise manner, he wrote to Laval, was normal and desirable, insofar as it did not lead to a wide interpretation of the duties of the French government based on the Armistice Agreement. Things became more problematic (“plus delicate”) when it came to clarifying the remit of the French administration and the French police in their relations with the German administration—by which he meant the new Sipo/SD leadership appointed on 1 June 1942, with Oberg as HSSPF. But this was precisely what had to be achieved if the German demands on the French authorities were not to expand continuously. Bousquet then identified three conceivable solutions. The first consisted in the German idea of a progressive subordination of the French police. But that would amount to a flagrant violation of the Armistice Agreement. The second consisted in the recognition of the fact that with the establishment Page 139 →of the SS as the highest police authority on the German side, nothing else had changed in the relations between the German military administration and the French administration. Such a solution, according to Bousquet, might have been acceptable until August 1941—an allusion to the first German hostage executions—but now it would be “catastrophic, ” for it would amount to the recognition of intolerable abuses and would leave the government in a humiliating position, to put it mildly (“pour ne pas dire plus”). If one were to be forced to choose between these two possibilities, he argued, it would be better to tell the French people plainly that the government was not able to defend the common interests. With this, Bousquet had commented to the decisive point. The third option was “as limited a cooperation as possible within the framework of the Armistice Agreement.”191 The difficulty was precisely to reach binding agreements with the Germans on this basis and to bring them to refrain from the repressive measures conducted over the past year. Bousquet believed, as he stated, that he had brought Oberg to adopt this line. But he wanted to

avoid the deliberately general formulations in Oberg’s statement that left doubts or even threats hanging in the air. Nothing could be changed in Oberg’s accompanying letter itself. Instead, Bousquet proposed concentrating on the concrete agreements, specifically, above all, on three points. First, the formula that the French police should regard the mission defined by the German side as its own had to be struck out. Second, the “useful information” that, on Oberg’s conception, the French police was supposed to pass on to the German agencies had to exclude information likely to be harmful to Frenchmen. Third, a formula had to be found that made it clear that the envisaged agreements were a matter of implementing the relevant terms of the armistice, in order to be able to ward off possible abuses by the German side on this legal basis. Bousquet went on to remark on his impression that he had achieved a certain amount. But he noted that Laval himself, in direct discussions with Oberg, might be able to extract more concessions in the sense of the aforementioned points. In the final analysis, the implementation in the dГ©partements was, in any case, the decisive issue. Bousquet was convinced that the agreement under consideration would not, in itself, settle anything. Its success would depend crucially on the relations that would develop between the prefects—by which he evidently meant the regional prefects, with their wide-ranging competences in police matters—and the commanders of the German police forces. Page 140 →Almost a week later, Bousquet summarized his views, almost certainly after consultations with Laval, in a letter to Oberg. In an accompanying letter, he emphasized expressly that the relations between the German and French police had to be founded on absolute clarity (“nettetГ© absolue”). In his opinion, this clarity was the essential precondition for productive and effective cooperation. This is why, as he stated, he had summarized his reflections on Oberg’s letter of 23 July 1942 and the accompanying note, in turn, in a note of his own that he was enclosing. In this note, dated 29 July 1942,192 Bousquet took up both Oberg’s reference to the German war effort and the need to guarantee the security of the occupying troops, as well as Oberg’s formulation that the French police should recognize the resulting tasks as their own. Here, according to Bousquet, a very clear distinction had to be made between those tasks that the German police forces could acquire in their “war against the enemies of the Reich” and maintaining security and order, which was as much a task of the French police under the terms of the Armistice Agreement and in the performance of their natural role as it was a task assigned by the government. In the last-mentioned area, Bousquet emphasized, an effective and fruitful cooperation between the two police forces, the German and the French, was “logical and indispensable.”193 Bousquet then tried to restrict the expansive blanket clause concerning the German and French police jointly combating the “enemies of the Reich.” He did this by observing that the cooperation was essentially (“essentiellement”) directed against “anarchism, terrorism, and communism, and in general against all foreign actions apt to impair order and peace within France.”194 Thus Bousquet took pains to replace the German blanket clause involving an indeterminate legal concept—“enemies of the Reich”—with an enumeration of specific target groups. Beyond that, Bousquet wanted to make clear that the crime of disturbing peace and order could also only refer to metropolitan France (“intГ©rieur de la France”) and that French police involvement in suppressing such “disturbances” in locations under German command (e.g., in the North African territories) had to be excluded. Moreover, the explicit reference to “foreign” actions made clear that the French police should not again find themselves in the position of having to arrest French citizens at the behest of the occupying power, as occurred in Paris in August 1941. In this connection, Bousquet referred to his letter to Oberg of 18 June 1942, in which he had described these very measures as especially burdensome for the French police. Page 141 →All that was required, Bousquet continued (entirely in line with his explanations to Laval), was an addendum to Oberg’s note of 23 July 1942 clarifying that the German agencies would not demand anything of the French police that went beyond the framework of the French government’s obligations based on the Armistice Agreement. For the rest, he made clear the importance he attached to actual observance, at the regional and local levels, of the envisaged agreements. These agreements had to be communicated to the prefects and to all

French police stations. In conclusion, Bousquet made a number of proposals concerning formulations to clarify the exclusive jurisdiction of the French police and courts over crimes committed by French people, including political crimes insofar as these were not directed against the occupying power. Bousquet made no mention of the “Jewish Question,” despite the fact that, during the previous weeks, it had been the litmus test of the Franco-German collaboration in the police domain and the object of an extensive exchange of notes between him and Oberg. In purely administrative terms, these measures were actually beyond the scope of what Bousquet was trying to achieve as regards protecting the autonomy of the French police. The deportations focused on “stateless” Jews. That, at any rate, was the position enshrined in the official agreements, and the deportation of French citizens could be either shrouded in ignorance or, if it appeared opportune, made an object of protest toward the occupying power. From a technical point of view, however, the citizenship question now acquired an importance that was all the greater because the French side did not want to again face the dilemma of either provoking an extended conflict with the German police leadership or violating the principles recently agreed on to the effect that police measures against Frenchman by French police should not be conducted at the behest of the Germans. Since the raid on 16 and 17 July 1942, the arrests and deportations had been progressing “smoothly,” as it was regularly put in the relevant reports. The agreements concluded during the Franco-German discussions on 2 and 10 July 1942 unleashed the most extensive wave of deportations during the entire German occupation. Between 17 July and 30 September 1942 (the dates of the 6th and 39th transports, respectively), around 33,000 Jews were deported through the Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande, and Drancy transit camps.195 This figure amounted to 44 percent of the total number of Jews deported from France between 27 March 1942 and 17 August 1944. Since the second half of July 1942, the deportation program was in full swing. At this Page 142 →time, France was completely integrated into the processes of deportation and mass murder. The fundamental agreements between the Germans and the French in the area of policing were now at the point of being concluded. With his letter to Oberg on 29 July 1942, Bousquet had sought to secure the decisive prerequisites for a sustainable guarantee of French administrative autonomy in the area of policing, against all possible German intrusions. On 4 August 1942, his deputy and representative in Paris, Leguay, sent Hagen a correspondingly revised new version of the note that Oberg had included in his letter of 23 July. This was the final preparatory step leading to the formal proclamation of the Franco-German police agreement by Oberg on 8 August 1942. The 4 August version of the note contained the clarifications desired by Bousquet as he had set them forth in his letter to Laval on 26 July. In particular, the formulation that the French police should recognize policing duties associated with the war effort of the Reich as its own, which had been originally included in Oberg’s note, was now missing. The target groups to be prosecuted in collaboration with the German police were named individually (“communistes, terroristes, et les saboteurs”). The originally envisaged general reservation that politically motivated offenses “not targeted directly against the interests of the Reich” should be prosecuted if this was the only way to achieve the “desired results” had been deleted as well. The pledges to provide the French police with better arms, to create the Groupes mobiles de rГ©serve (GMR), and to establish police schools remained in place.196 Furthermore, this “definitive text” of the “note of Herr General Oberg, ” as he was known in the French records, contained the pledge of the secretary-general of the police, Bousquet, to provide prior information “as far as possible” concerning all essential measures affecting the joint work and, on the German side, to observe the French chain of command when issuing directives to the French police—hence to observe the route via the upper echelons of the administration and not to issue commands directly to French police forces—“except in cases of urgency.” Special mention was made of the prospect of a close collaboration (“collaboration Г©troite”)—regarding the conduce of all police measures—between the commanders of the Security Police and of the other SS commanders, on the German side, and the regional prefects and police forces under their command, on the French side.197 The recorded obligation of the French police was “to communicate all useful information” to the agencies of the HSSPF and to support the German authorities in combating the aforementioned “enemies of the Reich” through measures of its own Page 143 →and on its own responsibility. The decisive nuance in this regard—from

Bousquet’s perspective—was that, in contrast to the original version sent by Oberg to Bousquet on 23 July 1942, now there was no longer talk of the combat against “the enemies of the Reich” (“les ennemis du Reich”). Instead, with the formulation of the combat against “these enemies of the Reich” (“ces ennemis du Reich”), the duty of the French police was limited to providing support to the SS and Gestapo in combating the previously named groups (“communistes, terroristes, et les saboteurs”).198

The Proclamation of the Franco-German Police Agreement (Oberg-Bousquet Agreement) on 8 August 1942 On 8 August 1942, in the offices of the delegation of the secretary-general of the police in the occupied areas, Oberg and Bousquet held a meeting of the regional prefects and their police directors, together with the German commanders of the Security Police and the SD and of the occupied zone, to proclaim the agreement prepared over the previous weeks. As such, it was a relatively elaborate and symbolic ceremony, which could serve only two purposes. The first, clear intention was to emphasize the essentially political character of the agreements reached. The later so-called Oberg-Bousquet agreement could be understood as the epitome of a collaboration policy that was fruitful for both sides. The French side—headed by Bousquet and, behind him, Laval—could present the agreements as the culmination of French efforts to put an end to the enduring crisis in Franco-German police relations and its political complications that had been continuing since August 1941. For Bousquet, the agreement represented a major gain in prestige, which the 33-year-old, just over three months after his appointment as chief of all of the French police forces, clearly wanted to use to strengthen his authority vis-Г -vis the regional prefects and their police directors. Oberg, who took the occasion to express his confidence in Bousquet explicitly, did him this favor. Oberg stated that after his discussions with the secretary-general, he had the impression that the work of the French police could undergo a further marked improvement under the latter’s energetic leadership.199 With this, Oberg also addressed the second, operative function of the assembly. It lay in obligating the police officials present on the French and German sides to cooperate in the combat against “our joint enemies—communists,Page 144 → terrorists, saboteurs.” In this way, Oberg, the supreme chief of the SS and the Gestapo in the occupied part of France, not only adopted a new pointedly friendly tone but also, at the same time, appealed to the professional ethos of both the senior administrative officials and the police officers present on the German and French sides. He observed that the regulation of police questions, particularly combating criminality, had always been a matter of international importance. The visible expression of this was the creation of the international criminal police commission, Interpol, which had been presided over by “General Heydrich, who had fallen victim to a criminal attack.” Thus Oberg spoke first and foremost of combating criminality and even described the undoubtedly politically motivated assassination of Heydrich as a “criminal” act, in a clear effort to avoid all political connotations. Bousquet himself used the momentum of the assembly of 8 August 1942 by addressing a personal letter to the regional prefects and the prefects of the dГ©partements on 13 August. He issued a directive that the agreements officially sealed with the German SS and police leadership on 8 August 1942 should be forwarded to all affected agencies in the respective areas of operations. Significant here is the procedure chosen by Bousquet. In his circular, he included, on the one hand, the final version of the agreements edited by Leguay and, on the other, Oberg’s letter and note of 23 July, Bousquet’s own response from 29 July, and the text of Oberg’s address to the assembly of the regional prefects, the police directors, and the German commanders of the Security Police and the SD on 8 August. He was doing this, Bousquet explained, to facilitate the understanding of the agreement and to remove any doubt concerning its interpretation. Also discernible, however, is Bousquet’s need both to bring home to all of the prefects and their senior police officials his own contribution to safeguarding French police autonomy and to limit the target groups to be combated in cooperation with the German SS and police forces. This demonstration was apparently necessary in Bousquet’s eyes in order to convey the key message in a credible way that would actually be effective. This message was the explicit exhortation to demonstrate the capability of the French police to the German SS and police leadership. Bousquet bluntly addressed the logic of the political exchange underlying his agreement with Oberg. It had not escaped the notice of the addressees of the letter, he continued, that now that General Oberg had

provided the French police with the necessary moral and material means that it had been lacking, the French police forces had to Page 145 →demonstrate their actual effectiveness. “You are under an obligation,” he informed the prefects, “to exert the energetic influence on the police forces that you and I consider necessary under the present circumstances.”200 In his long note to Laval on 26 July 1942,201 Bousquet himself had remarked, in an almost melancholy concluding remark, that he was convinced that, at bottom, Oberg’s declaration did not regulate anything. The decisive issues were the actual execution and, above all, the relationship, in this connection, between the prefects and the German commanders.202 Following his circular letter to the prefects on 13 August 1942, there could no longer be any doubt concerning the direction in which Bousquet wanted this relationship to develop on the French side—namely, toward “energetic” collaboration.

Page 146 → Page 147 →

Part III Erosion of Power and the Emergence of Resistance

Page 148 → Page 149 →

Chapter 7 The Protest of the Christian Churches and the Suspension of Eichmann’s Deportation Plan The literature highlights that the main priority of Oberg and Knochen as well as Laval and Bousquet in their dealings concerning Jewish deportation was to achieve a general agreement on Franco-German relations in the area of policing and that, in their discussions in the early summer of 1942, both sides regarded their respective zealots’ and activists’ interventions where the persecution of the Jews was concerned as more or less disruptive.1 However, in the first larger round of discussions with Bousquet, on 2 July 1942, Knochen himself had stressed the major political importance of the “Jewish Question” for the German side in the strongest terms possible and had declared the conduct of the mass arrests of the Jews in the lead-up to the planned deportations to be nothing less than the litmus test of the resilience of the Franco-German police agreement (“Should the French government oppose the conduct of the arrests, this will certainly not meet with the approval of the FГјhrer”). This was followed by Bousquet’s pledge, as recorded in Hagen’s minutes, “to have Jews of foreign nationality arrested throughout France in a single unified operation in the numbers we desire” (see chapter 6, note 131). The agreement of 2 July 1942 had two grave consequences for the fate of the Jewish population in France. On the one hand, the French state declared that it was ready, in principle, to cooperate in the persecution of the Jews, through the involvement of French police forces and with the assistance of the concentration camps in the occupied and the unoccupied zones. On the other hand, nationality became the key issue in the implementation of the deportation program. This was the case, at any rate, from the perspective of Eichmann’s department. Page 150 →From Oberg’s and Knochen’s perspective in that summer of 1942, by contrast, the question of the nationality of the Jews to be deported was almost certainly not connected with the ultimate enforcement of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France. At this stage, Knochen, who tried, in his postwar interrogations, to give the impression that he had actually sabotaged the implementation of the deportation program,2 would have seen absolutely no point in weighing down an important project in occupation policy, that of consolidating Franco-German police cooperation, with a conflict with the representatives of the Vichy over the present scope of the persecution of the Jews—in other words, with a problem that would be resolved one way or the other as the Germans wished following a victorious conclusion to the war. Insisting, at that point in time, that the Jews of French citizenship should also be deported would have been a tactical error from Oberg’s and Knochen’s perspective. That Knochen was able to exert corresponding influence on Oberg, his superior, is no cause for amazement. Far more remarkable is that he was able to push through his tactical line vis-Г -vis the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA)—which meant, after the death of Heydrich in early June 1942, vis-Г -vis Himmler. Knochen managed not only to have the notorious troublemaker Dannecker dismissed, at the end of July 1942, but also to win Himmler’s approval for refraining, for the time being, from extending the deportation program to Jews with French citizenship. This amounted to the suspension of the deportation program for France that had been planned meticulously and assiduously by Eichmann, Dannecker, and the latter’s successor, RГ¶thke. On 25 September 1942, Knochen wrote to Eichmann, After the conclusion of the arrests of [handwritten here is the addendum “foreign”] Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones, an attempt was also made to have the Jews of French citizenship arrested. The political situation and the stance of President Laval do not permit a seizure without regard for consequences. A consultation was conducted by me with the French head of police, Bousquet. Based on the results of the discussion and the stance of Laval and with regard to the present situation, the HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer [senior SS leader and chief of police, i.e., Oberg] sent a telex to the ReichsfГјhrer SS [i.e., Himmler] indicating that, given PГ©tain’s

attitude, an operation would have very grave consequences. The ReichsfГјhrer SS agreed with the view presented and gave instructions that, for the time being, no Jews of Page 151 →French nationality are to be arrested. Therefore, a deportation of substantial contingents of Jews is not possible.3

On 1 October 1942, the deportations, which had been occurring at a rate of almost one every two days, were suspended. Since 27 March 1942, 39 transports had been conducted. Only 4 were conducted during the remainder of the year, all of them between 4 and 11 November 1942, with a total of 3,745 deportees. In 1943, 17 transports followed, with a total of 17,069 deportees; in 1944, 13 transports, with 14,833 deportees. By the end of September 1942, the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” as conceived by Eichmann, had, to all intents and purposes, ground to a halt in France.4

The Protests by the Churches following the Large-Scale Raid on 16 and 17 July 1942 In the perception of the Paris SS and Gestapo leadership, the domestic political opposition to the deportations of Jews had contributed decisively to their deceleration. On 22 July 1942, Cardinal Suhard of Paris, writing on behalf of the French Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (AssemblГ©e des Cardinales et ArchevГЄques), sent a protest note to PГ©tain in reaction to the Paris raids on 16 and 17 July. This letter of protest, which was composed in sharp and emotional words5 and addressed to the supreme representative of a regime that regarded the Catholic Church as one of the mainstays of its rule, had its intended impact. In his conversation with Oberg and Knochen on 3 August 1942, Laval cited “psychological reasons” for why an acceleration of the denaturalization of the Jews who had been naturalized in France after 1933 should be conducted only within the context of an “incremental procedure.” As the corresponding minutes report, it “would certainly look very good from the vantage point of Berlin if everything could be put into effect in the desired form,” but “the setbacks that would follow as a result would outweigh the benefits that would be achieved.”6 In arguing thus, Laval appealed to a conversation with the archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Suhard, “on the treatment of the Jewish Question in its current form.” Suhard, in Laval’s ambiguous words, “has shown extraordinarily great understanding.”7 According to Laval, his conversation with Suhard had dealt “primarily” with the “widely circulated claim that the children had been separated from the Jewish parents.” It remains an open question whether Laval had also reaffirmed his stance toward Page 153 →Archbishop Suhard that, precisely for this reason, it would be better to deport the children immediately with their parents. Page 152 → Fig. 6. Letter of 25 September from Helmut Knochen to Adolf Eichmann. Due to the “political circumstances and the position of President Laval,” wrote Knochen, the senior SS leader and chief of police, Carl Albrecht Oberg, had detailed to Himmler (here referred to as the ReichsfГјhrer) that given the attitude of Marshal PГ©tain, the arrest of Jews of French citizenship would have “gravest consequences,” and Himmler had adopted Oberg’s assessment. Therefore, Knochen wrote, “a deportation of substantial contingents of Jews is not possible.” This meant that Eichmann’s deportation plan was suspended as far as France was concerned. (CDJC XXV c-177. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) At any rate, between the spectacular large-scale raid in Paris on 16 and 17 July and Knochen’s de facto abandonment of Eichmann’s deportation program on 25 September 1942, Dannecker and, following his dismissal, RГ¶thke made every possible effort to implement the program as planned, the Vichy government and its agencies in Paris came under pressure specifically as the circumstances attending the deportations became publicly known, and Oberg and Knochen tried to conclude and implement the basic agreement with Bousquet, both for reasons of personal prestige and to ensure security and order in the rear of the occupation troops. Time and again, RГ¶thke raised the nationality issue and the need for a sweeping denaturalization and thus expatriation of the Jews with French citizenship. On 28 and 30 July 1942, in an internal note and a longer letter to the head of the command staff with the military commander,8 RГ¶thke presented a detailed overview of the transportation plans at the current state of the cooperation with the French police. In so doing, he referred to his contacts with Leguay and described the

difficulties involved in “mustering” the interned Jews from the unoccupied zone. The victims of the deportation were, as had been agreed, almost exclusively stateless Jews or Jews from those states from which the Germans themselves, as the occupying power, were deporting the Jews to the extermination camps. RГ¶thke described the transportation plans for the month of August and reported Leguay’s justifications explaining why the “transfer” of the Jews from the unoccupied zone was proving to be difficult.9 All things considered, however, Leguay held out the prospect of the deportation of 3,000 to 4,000 Jews from the Free Zone, albeit with a fortnight’s delay. RГ¶thke recorded that he had told Leguay “that making these Jews available could be considered as merely a first small advance.”10 Because of the place and time of the crossing of the demarcation line separating the unoccupied and occupied zones, RГ¶thke had to report to the command staff of the military commander. In a letter to the head of the command staff, Colonel Karl-Richard Kossmann, he stated that by the end of August 1942, “26,000 Jews will have left French territory.” There followed a terse remark: “With the consent of the RSHA, the Jew children will likewise be deported.”11 For Leguay, too, who, as Bousquet’s deputy, remained in contact with RГ¶thke in Paris, the deportation of the children was now one of the central problems of the operation, specifically from the cynical perspective prefiguredPage 154 → by Laval’s stipulation. In a note on a telephone conversation with the police director in the regional prefecture of OrlГ©ans on 3 August 1942, Leguay confirmed that it was also planned to deport the children, though he insisted on the transportation plan laid down by the German side. In this “disturbing document” (as Klarsfeld aptly describes it),12 Leguay minutely details the procedure through which the children were first to be separated from their parents and then deported in a separate transport. His sole concern was that the deportation of the children should be assured by the German authorities, particularly in the second half of August.13 Leguay’s text makes no mention of the predictable circumstances of the enforced separation of the children from their parents, the transport of the parentless children across Europe, or the fate awaiting them at the unknown destination. What the “separation and supervision of the children,” as Leguay coolly put it, actually meant was recorded by the chairman of the Union gГ©nГ©rale des IsraГ©lites de France (UGIF), Raymond-Raoul Lambert.14 In the RSHA, the matter was dealt with more concretely. In early August, when Leguay addressed his letter to the police director of the regional prefecture of OrlГ©ans, the German side had yet to clarify how the deportation of the Jewish children was to be conducted. A query by RГ¶thke’s deputy Horst Ahnert on 11 August 194215 was answered by SS-SturmbannfГјhrer (SS Major) Rolf GГјnther, Eichmann’s deputy in Department IV B 4, on 13 August 1942, with the indication that “the Jewish children can be divided up into groups step-by-step for the planned transports to Auschwitz. However, under no circumstances are there to be closed transports of children.”16 If the RSHA had its way, the transport of Jewish children to the gas chambers was to be conducted in an orderly manner. The planners of the mass murder in the RSHA knew what they were up to. Their main concern was not to inflict cruelty at the various locations involved in the deportation but to ensure that it proceeded smoothly. On closer consideration, the protest by senior Catholic clergymen was also directed, in the first instance, against the inhumane conditions under which the deportations were conducted.17 The Catholic bishops had not criticized the anti-Jewish legislation that Vichy began to issue late in the summer of 1940. On the contrary, they shared the view that there was in fact a “Jewish Question,” specifically in the shape of the wave of immigration from Eastern Europe since the 1920s and the overrepresentation of Jews among certain occupational groups.18 In particular instances, the Catholic bishops openly welcomed the anti-Jewish laws and ordinances of the Vichy Page 155 →government.19 The assembly of the cardinals and archbishops of the Free Zone had dealt with the “Jewish Question” on 31 August 1940 and, a couple of weeks before the enactment of the first Statute on Jews on 3 October 1940, had declared that a specific statute regulating the legal status of the Jews was “legitimate” as long as it was informed not by hatred and vengeance but by compassion and justice.20 In a telling episode, Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation was endorsed directly by the Holy See (even to the dismay of the papal nuncio Monsignore Valerio Valeri),21 when, in August 1941, PГ©tain had asked the Vichy ambassador to the Vatican, LГ©on BГ©rard, to sound out the Vatican’s reaction to the Jewish statutes, which were renewed and solidified by the statute of 2 June 1941. On 2 September 1941, BГ©rard reported that, according to

key figures in the secretariat of state, the Vatican rejected the racial definition of Jews on which the statute was based but had no objections against the anti-Jewish measures themselves. PГ©tain made extensive use of BГ©rard’s detailed report, especially in diplomatic circles.22 When, in October 1941, Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, the principal representative of the Catholic Church in the Free Zone, expressed his opinion on the Jewish statutes in critical terms to the Commissioner General for Jewish Issues, Xavier Vallat, the criticism, according to Vallat’s own testimony,23 was not directed against the legislation as such but against the way it was implemented: “Your law,” Gerlier is supposed to have said, “is not unjust but it lacks justice and charity in its enforcement.” Such mild criticism notwithstanding, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the French Catholic Church, with the endorsement of the Vatican, made its own contribution to the permissive environment that made the increasingly repressive measures against the Jews appear acceptable. The Declaration of Repentance that the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference would issue some 55 years after the mass deportations of the summer of 1942 referred to these circumstances and the resulting combination of “loyalism, conformity, and indifference.”24 However, that the protests of the French clergy remained confined to the external conditions of the anti-Jewish measures, especially of the deportations, in no way diminished the political pressure they exerted on the government in Vichy, particularly on PГ©tain himself. This was due to the crucial status of the Catholic Church as a mainstay of the regime.25 The loyalism and general indifference of the church in the “Jewish Question, ” on the one hand, and the enduring political effect of its singular protest in the summer of 1942, on the other, stood in a paradoxical relation. There could be no doubt concerning the loyalty of the senior Catholic clergymen to PГ©tain, Page 156 →and, as we have seen, there could be no doubt concerning the “understanding” of the Catholic Church for the essential elements of the Vichy’s anti-Jewish policy. These two facts now turned the protest of the cardinals and bishops even more into a political issue. Furthermore, it became apparent that even if the deportations were confined to non-French Jews and even if the organization of the deportation from the assembly camps went “smoothly,” the inhuman accompanying circumstances of the deportations would not remain hidden from the population. In the careful but forceful formulations of the higher representatives of the Catholic Church, moral protest with potentially broad resonance was combined with the political power potential that the Vichy regime had itself conferred on the church. This was clearly the perception of those who approached high-ranking Catholic clergymen in the attempt to win their support for determined steps vis-Г -vis the Vichy government. Among those were the head of the Conseil national de l’Église rГ©formГ©e de France, Pastor Marc Boegner, and the senior rabbi of Lyon, Jacob Kaplan. Kaplan met with Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon on 17 August 1942,26 and Gerlier addressed PГ©tain directly in a letter on 19 August. He found himself, Gerlier wrote, compelled to add his voice to the recent protest of the archbishops in the occupied zone, with Cardinal Suhard at their head, and was, for this reason, taking the liberty of beseeching the Marshal to spare those unfortunate people, as far as possible, the suffering that had already been inflicted on so many of them. Gerlier made clear that he was mindful of the complexity of the problem, the great difficulties that the government might face in this matter, and the efforts that the government had already made. He was also aware of the personal stance of the head of state. But as a bishop and a Frenchman, he could not think of the treatment that the deportees had suffered or would suffer in the course of the transports—which, as he was forced to conclude from the reports of an eyewitness, violated the elementary rights of every human being and the basic principles of compassion—without experiencing pangs of the heart.27 Neither Gerlier’s letter nor the protestation of the archbishops of the occupied zone to which he referred was destined for the public. Thus the declaration of the archbishops was not read from the pulpits during Mass either. Up to that point, only the criticism of the small but influential French Protestant community had seeped through to the public, though not by its own agency. In March 1941, Pastor Boegner had addressed a letter of solidarity to the chief rabbi of France, IsaГЇe Schwartz, and a critical letter to Admiral Darlan, deputy prime minister at the time (and a Protestant).28 Boegner also Page 157 →adhered to the stereotypes of the regime when he wrote sympathetically, with reference to Vichy’s anti-Jewish policy, of the impacts of the “over-hasty and unjustified naturalizations” of the 1930s29 and bemoaned that the Vichy measures were affecting oldestablished and recently naturalized Jews indiscriminately.30 This did not dissuade representatives of the extreme

right from denouncing Boegner’s letter in the anti-Semitic press as an example of the support among ecclesiastical circles for the Jewish cause and, in the process, first giving his protest wide publicity, at least in the Free Zone.31 Boegner now turned to PГ©tain in a letter dated 20 August 1942, in which, having described and evaluated in detail the deportation measures that, as he wrote, could not fail to outrage even the hardest of hearts, he concluded with a remarkable demand—namely, that the Marshal should ensure that France, which, as the Marshal himself had declared, had lost a battle in the war but not its honor, did not, through the measures against the Jews, inflict on itself a moral defeat of inestimable gravity.32 Boegner’s letter became internationally known through coverage in British and US broadcasts and through newspaper reports in the neutral countries.33 As a result, the most spectacular protest by the French clergy against the deportation of the Jews was the pastoral letter of the archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge, which was sent to the parish priests in his archdiocese and was read from the pulpits on 23 August 1942.34 Typically, the prefect of the dГ©partement Haute-Garonne based in Toulouse had informed Bousquet the previous day of the fact that the reading of the pastoral letter was imminent and had described how he and the regional prefect had tried to dissuade SaliГЁge from his plan.35 Archbishop SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter left nothing to be desired in its clarity. My very dear brothers! There is a Christian morality and there is a human morality that imposes duties on us and recognizes rights. These rights and duties correspond to human nature. They come from God. One can violate them,В but no mortal has the right to suppress them. That children, women, men, fathers, and mothers are being treated like a herd of cattle and are being carted away to an unknown destination—it has been reserved for our era to witness this sad spectacle. Why is there no longer any right of asylum in our churches? Why are we defeated? Lord, have pity on us! Our Lady, pray for France! In our diocese, these terrifying scenes have occurred in the camps at NoГ© and RГ©cГ©bГ©dou. The Jews are men and women, just as the foreigners are men and women. One cannot do anything one pleases to these men, to these Page 158 →women, to these fathers and mothers. They also belong to the human race; they are as much our brothers as the others are. A Christian must not forget this. France, beloved Fatherland, you bear the respect for the human person in the consciences of all of your servants and children. Chivalrous and generous France, I have no doubt that you are not responsible for these errors.36 SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter literally appealed to the conscience of the nation. Through its unambiguous patriotic plea, it confronted PГ©tain in a quite different way from Gerlier’s relatively moderate words, with the risk of an erosion of his personal prestige not only among the clergy but also among the Catholics who comprised more than 80 percent of the French population. Laval once again took a cynical view of the steps taken by the Catholic dignitaries. As his behavior toward the German collaboration partners in the following days would demonstrate, he was fully aware of the political implications of the continued protests by senior Catholic clergymen. However, he proved to be completely indifferent to the humanitarian aspect and to the human tragedies associated with the deportations of the Jews and so forcefully invoked by Archbishop SaliГЁge. When, on 24 August 1942, a day after the proclamation of SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter from the pulpits in the archbishopric of Toulouse, the Vatican nuncio in Vichy, Valerio Valeri, visited Laval, the latter declared that although he regretted the “draconian measures” against the Jews, political imperatives compelled him to get rid of the Jews because the latter were, after all, in large part responsible for the state in which France currently found itself and, in addition, were active on the black market. In his report to Curia cardinal Luigi Maglione, Valeri wrote that he had been forced to conclude that any reasonable conversation with Laval was futile and that one had to confine oneself to helping in particular cases, as he had tried to do in the past with success.37 To the secretary of the papal nunciature in Vichy, Carmine Rocco, Laval expressed his determination to have all non-French Jews expelled and also, if necessary, to have those who had found refuge in Catholic institutions rounded up and deported.38 Both in Vichy and within the Sipo/SD apparatus in Paris, the upsurge in criticism of the deportations of Jews within the Catholic Church was observed with great attention and an acute sense for nuances. During a meeting on 25 August 1942, Bousquet reported to Hagen that “contrary to previous reports,” he had “recently

encountered major opposition from Cardinal Gerlier and the archbishop of Toulouse concerning the conduct of the arrests of the Jews.” Whereas Gerlier, as Hagen continued in his minutes of the Page 159 →conversation, “only objected to the [mode of] implementation of these measures, the archbishop of Toulouse has written a pastoral letter, to be read from the pulpits in his diocese, opposing the implementation of the arrests of Jews. After he failed to reach an amicable agreement with the archbishop of Toulouse, he convened all of the mayors within the territory of the diocese of the archbishop of Toulouse and explained to them that they had to take all possible measures to prevent the pastoral letter from being read. Unfortunately, however, this had not been a resounding success because only around half of the mayors could prevent it from being read out.” 39 The reason for the heightened alertness to the protestations of the Catholic Church was the large-scale raid in the Free Zone planned for 26 and 27 August 1942, which had been under preparation for weeks. This was the parallel action to the large-scale raid of 16 and 17 July 1942 in the occupied zone, concentrated on Paris and surrounding areas. In addition to his complaints about the stance taken by senior Catholic clergymen and the unreliability of the lower ranks of the administration, Bousquet announced to Hagen, during a conversation on 25 August 1942, that he wanted “to be present in person in Vichy when the lightning action [schlagartige Aktion] was being conducted in the night of 26 to 27.8. so as to be able to deal with any difficulties that might arise himself.”40 On the same day, 25 August 1942, the pressure on the Vichy government increased as a result of a declaration of the Central Consistory (Consistoire central des IsraГ©lites de France), an organization established as a quasi-state institution in 1808, under Napoleon, and representing French citizens of the Jewish faith.41 The declaration of the Central Consistory was addressed directly to the “Chef de l’État FranГ§ais,” hence PГ©tain. According to the declaration, the Central Consistory expressed its outrage to PГ©tain that the French government was handing over to the German government thousands of foreigners—among them different nationalities but all of the Jews—despite the fact that they were not living in the occupied zone and had fled to France before the war to escape persecution. The Central Consistory, the declaration continued, protested in the strongest possible terms against both the violation of the right of asylum and the inhumane conditions under which the deportation measures were being conducted by the authorities in the Free Zone. There could be no doubt concerning the ultimate fate that awaited the deportees, for the chancellor of the Reich (Hitler) had predicted that the Aryan peoples would not be destroyed in the course of the present war and that the extermination of the Jews would be accomplished instead. The Page 161 →French citizens, such as the members of the consistory, could only observe with outrage that, for the first time in history, the French government was deliberately violating the right of asylum, respect for which had always been considered a sacred principle founded on a centuries-long tradition. The members of the consistory, almost all of them veterans of World War I, were compelled to alert the government to the fact that the persons threatened by the deportation included foreigners who had fought in the French army in that war; that France was now handing them over without defense was a scandalous measure for all war veterans, whatever their confession. The consistory made another compelling point: the fact that the deportations affected Jews indiscriminately, regardless of age and physical ability, could only confirm that the purpose was not to ship them to labor camps but to exterminate them systematically and without pity.42 Page 160 → Fig. 7. Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge, archbishop of Toulouse. (From Serge Klarsfeld, Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944 [Paris: Fayard, 2001], 819. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) It was striking that the protests from among both senior Catholic clergymen and the representatives of the oldestablished French Jews no longer only addressed the inhumane accompanying circumstances of the deportations but also accused the French government of violating international duties in a thinly disguised manner. This was true of both the pastoral letter of the archbishop of Toulouse and the protest note of the Central Consistory addressed to Laval in person. Little importance may have been attached to the latter in Vichy, especially as protest notes such as this were not made public. Whether and to what extent the reference to the violation of French political and moral traditions and the national duty of the government in the light of the open collaboration with the Germans may have been representative of the mood among the population was nevertheless difficult for the government in Vichy to estimate.

An unmistakable indicator of growing international awareness and diplomatic pressure was the intervention by the US chargГ© d’affaires Somerville Pinkney Tuck, who met Laval on 25 August 1942. Tuck warned Laval not to touch the assets of American Jews in France and made it clear that the recent deportations had had a profoundly negative impact on US public opinion.43 Laval took that initiative seriously enough to inform German ambassador Abetz, who, in turn, immediately reported to Berlin, affirming that Laval had rejected Tuck’s “interference in French domestic affairs.”44 On 26 and 27 August 1942, the large-scale raid designed to satisfy the German demands was conducted in the Free Zone. The outcome was disappointing for the Gestapo. On 29 August, the representative of the German police forces in Vichy, SS-HauptsturmfГјhrer and Kriminalkommisar Page 163 → Page 164 →(detective superintendent) Georg Geissler, reported to Knochen that 6,584 Jews had been arrested to date. However, an increase in the number of arrestees was to be expected, because the operation was still in progress.45 Page 162 → Fig. 8. Pastoral letter of Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge, archbishop of Toulouse, translated into German by the Gestapo. (CDJC XXV e-196. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) The raids on 26 and 27 August further intensified the wave of protests from the Catholic Church in particular. The bishop of Montauban, Pierre Marie ThГ©as, ordered a pastoral letter to be read out in his diocese on 30 August; in its clarity and protestation against the collaboration of the French authorities, his letter was in no way inferior to that of the archbishop of Toulouse, SaliГЁge.46 On 30 August, the presidents of both (de facto suspended) chambers of parliament, Jeanneney (president of the Senate) and Herriot (president of the Chamber of Deputies), addressed the chief rabbi of France through a letter of solidarity in which they spoke of the violation of the right of asylum and particularly of “the barbaric treatment that the children have to endure.” There could have been no doubt in Vichy, particularly in the case of a highly adept individual like Laval, that the arrest and deportation of the Jews had met with rejection—and indeed, to a considerable extent, with outrage—among virtually all groups within society except for militant anti-Semites. The reports of the prefects in the dГ©partements and regions for the month of August 1942 also made this perfectly clear.47 The situation came to a full-scale confrontation when, on 31 August 1942, the archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Gerlier, refused to hand over to the regional authorities 84 Jewish children who were in the care of the aid organization AmitiГ© ChrГ©tienne and whose parents had been deported to Drancy two days earlier. According to Laval’s policy, the children were supposed to be deported as well. When the manager of the organization, the Jesuit priest Pierre Chaillet, was called in by the regional prefect, he refused to hand over the children. The refusal was confirmed by Cardinal Gerlier to the police director of the regional prefecture. On the following day, the regional prefect, Alexandre Angeli, had Father Chaillet placed under house arrest.48 Typical for the relations of communication and power within the Vichy government, as well as for the administration’s assessment of the influence of the Catholic Church over PГ©tain, is a report sent to Bousquet in this context by his deputy in the Free Zone, Henri Cado, on 1 September 1942. It contained a brief account of the incident, including the observation that Father Chaillet, having judged insufficient the assurances provided by the authorities concerning the future fate of the Jewish children, had decided “to kidnap [kidnapper] the children by flatly informing the prefect that he would not reveal the place to which he had sent them [the children] until he had Page 165 →not received assurances from the government that they [the children] would not be deported to the occupied zone.” Thereupon Angeli, according to Cado’s report, had conducted a conversation with Cardinal Gerlier, who informed Angeli that he accepted full responsibility for Chaillet’s decision, because, in his estimation, he was faced with a moral obligation that was higher than the concerns of the government. Cado then mentioned that, as a result, Angeli ordered Father Chaillet to be placed under house arrest. Cado went on, “Because I assume that the stance taken by Cardinal Gerlier, which is diametrically opposed to the directives of the government, will be communicated directly to the Marshal, I believe it to be my duty to inform you immediately so that you can bring the matter to the attention of President [of the Council of Ministers] Laval.”49 On 2 September 1942, Cardinal Gerlier sent to the parish priests of his archdiocese a letter that came close, in tone and content, to SaliГЁge’s letter of 23 August, though Gerlier’s letter contained a number of telling

nuances. According to his pronouncement, the implementation of the deportation measures being then conducted against the Jews within the territory of the archdiocese was marked by such distressing scenes that the Catholic Church had the inevitable and painful duty to raise the protest of conscience. Gerlier again cited, above all, the fate of families torn apart. Nevertheless, his letter also contained a conciliatory gesture toward the regime in Vichy: noting that one must not forget that the French state had a problem to solve, Gerlier conceded that the difficulties confronting the government should be acknowledged.50 In this gesture was a further ambivalent allusion, for it remained open whether the “problem” meant was one between the French government and the German occupying power or one between the government and the Jews. Cardinal SaliГЁge had refrained from sending political messages to Vichy in his pastoral letter. By contrast, Gerlier, in a conversation with the regional prefect Angeli, reported by the latter,51 offered a revealing justification for the refusal to hand over the children taken in by Catholic aid institutions and earmarked for deportation: Gerlier explained to Angeli that the consistent stance adopted by the Catholic Church was also ultimately of aid to the French government, because it enabled the latter, in their exchanges with the occupation authorities, to appeal all the more credibly to the domestic political difficulties that handing over the Jews had prompted in France.52 At the end of his long note on the confrontation with Gerlier, Angeli recorded his impression, from a subsequent telephone conversation with the cardinal, Page 166 →that the latter was “extremely troubled” (considГ©rablement gГЄnГ©) by the confrontation with the Vichy authorities and had not been aware of the scale of the incident caused by the Catholic relief organization AmitiГ©s ChrГ©tienne. But, in fact, Gerlier exhibited a higher level of political intelligence than the regional prefect. He exploited what is known in the literature on negotiation theory as the “paradox of weakness”:53 the ability of the weak party, as regards its power base, to exact more far-reaching concessions toward pacifying resistance “at home” increases in proportion to the interest of the negotiation partner in reaching an agreement as such. Gerlier understood this logic and exhibited a remarkable grasp of the fact that as regards the deportation of the Jews from the Free Zone, Vichy was in exactly that position vis-Г -vis the German occupying power. This, of course, also made Vichy’s moral responsibility even clearer, a point that Gerlier addressed in plain words in his pastoral letter of 2 September, which was read out on Sunday, 6 September 1942. Who would wish to criticize the church in this dark hour, he wrote, for reaffirming in the strongest possible terms the eternal right of the human person, the sacred character of the inviolable familial bond, the right of asylum, and the peremptory demand of the fraternal compassion of which Christ provided testimony in his relations to his disciples? The honor of France, Gerlier wrote, consists in never surrendering these principles. Again, there followed a reference to the spirit of the Vichy regime, among whose loyal supporters Gerlier evidently wanted to remain counted: the “new order” could not be founded on violence and hatred; it could only be built in a spirit of respect for justice and in the benevolent union of hearts and minds to which the great voice of Marshal PГ©tain had appealed and in which the centuries-long prestige of the fatherland would once again flourish.54

The Concession of the SS to Laval on 2 September 1942 It is not known whether Bousquet followed Cado’s suggestion that he should address Gerlier’s obduracy with Laval. However, Bousquet, for his part, knew that Laval was due to meet both Abetz and Oberg in Paris on the following day, 2 September 1942. On this occasion, Laval again showed himself to be a cynical tactician who spoke in ironical terms of the opposition of the Catholic Church to the deportations of Jews in the Free Zone, while nevertheless presenting a forthright assessment of its political consequences to the GermanPage 167 → collaboration partners. The corresponding note for the files, composed by Hagen,55 recorded Laval’s explanation that Fig. 9. Head of State Marshal PГ©tain, Cardinal Suhard (Paris), Cardinal SaliГЁge (Lyon), and Head of Government Pierre Laval (left to right) at the seat of government in Vichy in 1942. (From Serge Klarsfeld, Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944 [Paris: Fayard, 2001], 1019. Copyright Agence Roger Viollet.)

the demands we made of him in the Jewish Question have met with extraordinary opposition on the part of the church in recent days. The leading figure in this opposition to the government is Cardinal Gerlier. Because he did not want to have Gerlier himself arrested, Laval declared that he had Gerlier’s right-hand man, the head of the Jesuits in the Lyon area, arrested on 1 September and had assigned him a “Residence Forcé” [sic]. Laval observed in this connection, with heavy irony, “And this is nevertheless a very great deal in a state that is under the leadership of Marshal PГ©tain.”56 But then Laval came to the key point. In view of this opposition from the clergy, President Laval requests that, as far as possible, no new demands should be made on him for the moment as regardsPage 168 → the Jewish Question. He stated that it is especially important that no prior demands be made on him as regards the number of Jews from the Free Zone to be taken into custody by Germany. Thus the demand had been made that 50,000 Jews should be delivered for the 50 trains available. He begs us to accept the absolute sincerity of his assurances that he will fulfill the promises he has made us in the Jewish Question. However, the handover of the Jews is not like a “single-price transaction” in which one can acquire an arbitrarily large amount of something at a single price.В .В .В . President Laval’s query as to whether, at present, the HSSPF had still further demands in this regard was answered in the negative. President Laval then reiterated his request that, in view of the difficulties that had arisen, no special pressure should be exerted in this matter.57 This nevertheless marked a decisive turn.58 Laval had, to all intents and purposes, announced the suspension of the collaboration in the implementation of the German deportation program. The plans developed by Eichmann—who had had another meeting in the RSHA on 20 August 1942 with the heads of department in charge of the “evacuation of Jews in the occupied foreign states” and had declared that “the current evacuation problem (deportation of stateless Jews) should be resolved by the end of this calendar year” and that “the deportation should be conducted in the coming months if possible at an accelerated rate”59—were, as far as France was concerned, no longer worth the paper on which they were printed. In the meeting on 2 September 1942, Oberg, as we have seen, had indicated that the SS and Gestapo leadership in Paris accepted Laval’s position in principle (“President Laval’s query as to whether, at present, the HSSPF had still further demands in this regard was answered in the negative”). Therefore, RГ¶thke, like Dannecker before him, failed in his efforts to rescue the deportation program by halving the scale originally planned. In a conversation on 1 September 1942 with the cabinet head of Bousquet’s representative in the occupied zone (Leguay), Thomas Sauts, RГ¶thke had once again pulled out all the stops. He informed Sauts of the demands of the RSHA: “Until 14.9 inclusive, three trains per week with 1,000 Jews each are to set out from Drancy. From 15.9 until the end of September, 1,000 Jews per day are to be deported from Drancy. From 1.10–31.10, 1,000 Jews are also to be deported every day.”60 In the left margin of his note, RГ¶thke drew a brace and added a handwritten note: “hence Sept. + Oct. = 52,000 Jews to be deported.” Beside it on the left, however, is a thick double line and, above that, in Knochen’sPage 170 → large forceful handwriting, the question “How?” Knochen, Lischka, and Hagen are included in the distribution list of the note. Page 169 → Fig. 10. Note from the files of the Security Police/Security Service (SD) in Paris on the meeting with the head of the Vichy government, Pierre Laval, on 2 September 1942. Referring to the protest by senior Catholic clergymen against the arrest and deportation of the Jews and to its effect on head of state PГ©tain, Laval requested that he not be presented at that time with demands from the representatives of the SS and the Gestapo for the involvement of the French police in more wide-ranging measures against the Jews. Oberg, senior SS leader and chief of police in France, agreed. (CDJC XLIX-42. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) Thus, in the perception of his superior, Knochen, RГ¶thke was laying things on much too thick. RГ¶thke seems to have done this in order to cover his back with the RSHA, on the one hand, and in order to exert pressure on his

superiors in Paris, Oberg and Knochen, on the other. “We know exactly,” he claims to have told Sauts, there are still, living in the unoccupied zone, tens of thousands of stateless Jews, as well as Belgian and Dutch Jews, who can also be deported. The numbers of Jews required for the deportation can certainly be provided from the unoccupied zone. Moreover, this is a matter of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe that is certain to be accomplished by the FГјhrer and Reichskanzler. SS-BrigadefГјhrer Oberg and SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen will also discuss this matter with the representatives of the French government in charge.61 The anticipated discussion duly occurred the following day, though with completely different results than RГ¶thke envisaged. As RГ¶thke recorded in the minutes of the conversation, he informed Sauts that “the program can be fulfilled provided that the French government pursues the matter with the requisite urgency.” Moreover, “it was established at the conference in Berlin on 28.8.1942 [between the desk officers for Jewish affairs in the occupied countries and Eichmann] that most of the European countries were far closer to the Final Solution to the Jewish Question than France.В .В .В . Thus a lot of ground has to be made up by 31.10.1942.”62 However, on 3 September 1942, there was another meeting of the leadership of the German and French police, attended by Oberg, Knochen, and Hagen on the German side and by Bousquet on the French side. The minutes were again taken by Hagen.63 At the meeting, Bousquet first reported, under the heading “Jew operation” (Judenaktion), that in the Free Zone during the previous weeks, “around 7,000 additional Jews had been arrested, so that a total of 12,000 Jews were being held in concentration camps.”64 This was clearly intended to be a sign of Vichy’s goodwill in the collaboration in the “Jew operations.” But now Bousquet, like Laval the day before, addressed the protests of the Catholic Church in detail. The most recent “campaign” against the Jews, he reported, “had run into difficulties because of the measures taken by the Catholic Church.” Hagen’s minutes quote Bousquet further as follows: Page 171 →As he had already mentioned at the previous meeting and as President Laval reported in detail during the meeting on 2.9, Cardinal Gerlier himself and the clergy under his direction have taken a stand, or have induced others to take a stand, against the measures taken by the state.В .В .В . Because of Gerlier’s stance, some of the clergy has gone so far as to have Gerlier’s appeals against the anti-Jewish measures of the state even read out at mass. In his minutes, Hagen made a detailed record of the Vichy authorities’ countermeasures mentioned by Bousquet—presumably also in order to insulate the Paris SS and Gestapo leadership against criticism from the RSHA:65 “In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Gerlier’s вЂright-hand man,’ the Jesuit priest Challeer [Chaillet]В .В .В . has been detained”; “at Bousquet’s instigation, the clergy active in Gerlier’s area has been informed by the prefects and mayors that masses would be prohibited by the police if such declarations were to be read out”; “In order to be able to deal with acts of insubordination by the clergy, therefore, the secretary general of the police [Bousquet], with the consent of President Laval, has instructed all prefects to freeze the allowances of the state for the Catholic schools if there is no change in the stance adopted by the clergy against the position of the state.” This activity was a signal to Berlin that Laval and especially Bousquet remained reliable collaboration partners. But then Hagen also came to the key point. On account of the difficulties caused by the clergy and taking into consideration the arguments already present by Laval on 2.9, Bousquet requests that he not be presented with any numbers in advance. In the period from 15.–30.9, it will probably not be possible to fill one train per day with 1,000 Jews, as demanded, even though Jews of Dutch and Belgian nationality are now to be arrested as well. Besides, Bousquet points out that, according to the directive originally issued by SSHauptsturmfГјhrer Dannecker, the Jews of Dutch and Belgian nationality were to be excluded. He will be able to fulfill the demands extending to 14.9 as agreed.66

This meant that the deportation program being pursued with maximum energy by RГ¶thke on Eichmann’s instructions was literally open to negotiation. Oberg’s and Knochen’s calculation looked entirely different from that of RГ¶thke and Eichmann. The SS leadership in France did not want the general agreement on cooperation in police matters to fail on account of more or less a couple thousand deported Jews. According to Hagen’s minutes, Page 172 →“Both the HSSPF [Oberg] and the BdS [Knochen] emphasized that there was complete understanding for this standpoint [of Laval and Bousquet] and that a corresponding arrangement would be made.” It was now clear, once and for all, that Eichmann’s rigid directives concerning the frequency of the deportations would come to nothing. For Bousquet and Laval, by contrast, Oberg’s and Knochen’s pledge amounted to a tangible enlargement of their room for maneuver. On the one hand, even after the discussions of 2 and 3 September 1942, Bousquet and Laval spared no effort in handing over as many Jews as possible to the Germans from the unoccupied to the occupied zone. In a secret telegram dated 8 September 1942, the leadership of the Police nationale, hence Bousquet, again expressly called on the prefects of the regions and the dГ©partements in the Free Zone to intensify the persecution measures.67 This explains why, over the following months, batches of deportations occurred repeatedly, though the numbers of the deportees remained far below those in the months of July, August, and September 1942.68 On the other hand, the reports of the authorities in charge of the operations left no doubt that an intensification of the persecution measures not only represented an abstract political problem for the Vichy government—because of the inevitable exercise of open repression and the increasingly critical reaction of public opinion, especially as a result of the protest of senior dignitaries of the churches—but also led to virtually unmanageable difficulties in implementing the arrests and deportations. It rapidly became apparent that the demands of the Germans could be fulfilled only through drastically extending the group of Jews earmarked for deportation and affecting Jews who had immigrated to France a long time before, many of whom had already acquired French citizenship. That such an approach would inevitably exacerbate the already highly critical public mood and the already vehement protest of representatives of the Catholic Church was at least as clear to the agencies immediately involved in executing the operations as it was to the leadership of the Vichy regime. Indicative of this is the report of the administration of the border and immigration police to Bousquet dated 1 September 1942.69 Under the heading “Roundup [regroupement] of certain categories of foreign Jews,” it states that fulfilling the current deportation plans would require the inclusion of persons who had entered France prior to 1 January 1936. Considering the unreliability of their own statistics, the continuing refugee movements, and the fact that many Jews had gone underground, the report continued, this date probably would have to be pushed back to 1 January 1932 or even to Page 173 →1 September 1931 in order to achieve even a minimum of 5,000 Jews still to be handed over in the occupied zone. However, such an operation would probably entail major difficulties of a material and moral kind, with the moral problems stemming from the “attitude of certain prominent figures” influential on a portion of public opinion.70 Striking about this assessment from the perspective of the leadership of a public authority is not only that the administrative side clearly identified the domestic political problems that the Vichy government faced as a result of its collaboration in the persecution of the Jews but also, in particular, how the “moral reasons” that were responsible for these difficulties in the opinion of the administration of the border and immigration police are classified. These are expressly ascribed to the conduct of “certain prominent figures”—meant, of course, are the church leaders—and thus not simply to the moral sensibility of the population or even the moral reservations of the administrative bodies responsible for the implementation, including the police. This makes clear, on the one hand, the political impact of the protest of the senior church leaders that was apparently clearly perceived and realistically interpreted by the administration and, on the other hand, the moral indifference of the administration itself. Another signal reached Vichy in mid-September 1942 that certainly did not leave PГ©tain and Laval unimpressed. On 16 September 1942, US secretary of state Cordell Hull, in a meeting with Vichy’s ambassador to the United States, Gaston Henri-Haye, denounced the surrender of Jews to the Germans, who, as Hull put it, had sufficiently announced and, to a substantial degree, carried out their intention to “mistreat,

enslave, and, eventually, exterminate these unhappy human beings in conditions of extreme cruelty.”71 This was an unmistakable signal that Vichy’s policy toward the Jews and the collaboration with the Germans were under close observation—a fact that gained importance to the extent that a military victory of the Allies became increasingly likely.

Disputes within the SS and the Suspension of the Deportation Program In early September 1942, the scope for action of the Vichy government was narrowed still further by the continued protests from within the Catholic Church in particular. That the protests were taken up outside the churches, Page 174 →that they gained attention abroad, and that they were formulated in a language that appealed simultaneously to humanitarian and patriotic norms played a major role in this process.72 The reports of the prefects in the regions and dГ©partements in September 1942 left no doubt about this.73 In turn, on 4 September 1942, the archbishop of Marseille, Jean Delay, wrote a pastoral letter that was read out two days later at Mass in the archbishopric. It spoke of having to “lend an ear to the painful outcry of Christian conscience” in the face of the measures that had been taken in recent days against men, women, and children whose only fault was that they were “of the Jewish race and foreigners.” Furthermore, Delay’s pastoral letter stated, We appreciate that the Jewish Question raises difficult national and international questions. We recognize that our country has the right to take all measures that serve the defense against those who, especially in recent years, have inflicted so much harm on the country and that it has the duty to punish those severely who abuse the hospitality that was granted them so generously. But there are limits to the right of the state. To arrest men, women, and children who have personally done nothing wrong for the sole reason that they are Jews and foreigners, to separate members of one and the same family and perhaps send them to their deaths, is this not a violation of the sacred laws of morality and the fundamental rights of the human person and the family, rights that come from God?74 Again, it is typical that a prominent Catholic dignitary formulated, on the one hand, his sharp protest against the deportations and, in addition, the inhumane accompanying circumstances by appealing to the Christian commandment of charity and the basic laws of humanity but expressed, on the other hand, his fundamental agreement with the anti-Jewish measures of the Vichy government in general and, in so doing, employed the xenophobia and anti-Semitism that PГ©tain had himself cited late in the summer of 1942 to justify Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation. However, this reveals, all the more clearly, the political logic of the influence exerted by these interventions. What PГ©tain must have felt most painfully was the protest of those whom the regime of which he was the leader could count among its most important supporters. Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon (though not, by contrast, the archbishop of Toulouse, SaliГЁge) had also employed the xenophobic and anti-Semitic clichГ©s in his statements. But this very fact and his well-known close relationship with PГ©tain only reinforced Page 175 →his role as the chief witness of the Catholic Church’s protest against the deportations of Jews as recorded in the arguments presented by Laval and Bousquet to Oberg and Knochen. If the highest representatives of the Catholic Church, who were among PГ©tain’s closest confidants and shared the ideological orientation of his regime, expressed themselves in such clear terms, the signal to the German side was that the domestic political consensus that provided the basis of political cohesion under PГ©tain’s rule was in jeopardy.75 But this, in turn, constituted the foundation of an active policy of collaboration with the occupying power and hence also indirectly of the newly achieved position of power of the SS in France. The latter ultimately depended on demonstrating that since the appointment of an HSSPF in May 1942, there was an axis of collaboration with the French police leadership and with the president of the Vichy Council of Ministers, Laval (who enjoyed German support), which guaranteed political stability and the security of the German troops who were in readiness to repel an Allied invasion. It was only logical that Oberg and Knochen, in their meeting with Bousquet on 3 September 1942, expressed their “complete understanding” for the latter’s request to cancel the strict schedule for the deportations and agreed to a “corresponding arrangement.”76 Neither his zeal nor his occasional temper tantrums were of any aid to RГ¶thke (Eichmann’s man in Paris),

once he realized that the ambitious deportation program was on the brink of collapse. On 8 September 1942, he took Bousquet’s representative in the occupied zone, Leguay, to task once again. By this time, the latter must have had detailed information about the results of the meeting on 3 September between Bousquet, on the one side, and Oberg and Knochen, on the other. Thus he knew that RГ¶thke’s superior was not insisting on the implementation of the deportation plans as originally agreed on and that all of RГ¶thke’s threats were pure bluff. Leguay curtly informed the latter that “only the transports from Drancy until 14.9 inclusive were assured.”77 Leguay now presented the same request to RГ¶thke as Laval and Bousquet had already articulated to Oberg and Knochen: namely, in RГ¶thke’s words in his minutes of the conversation, that “deportation operations should be suspended for the time being, at least until October.”78 It is significant that RГ¶thke still thought, at this point in time, that he could reprimand Leguay and throw his weight around in the same way as his predecessor Dannecker. RГ¶thke recorded in his minutes that in response to Leguay’s request, he “replied that this was out of the question, because the transport plan for September has already been laid down by Berlin in July Page 176 →and was already communicated to me in August. Come what may, the plan will be observed.”79 RГ¶thke also had to endure being put off by Leguay when it came to revoking the citizenship of Jews naturalized after 1933. According to RГ¶thke, Leguay responded, on being asked about this, “that he did not know when this law would be enacted.” He further noted that even after its enactment, “a long time will be needed to implement the required administrative work. Therefore, for the time being, the Jews affected by the law cannot be made available either.” RГ¶thke was unable to keep his frustration in check and noted, “All in all one gets the impression that, recently, the French government no longer thinks that it needs to collaborate closely in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe.” In a mixture of naivety and pomposity, he recorded, “Therefore, I consider it appropriate that it should be made clear to the French government in a drastic way that the Jewish problem must be solved, come what may.”80 He added, “I propose, therefore, that it be suggested to the French government that it immediately hand over all Jews naturalized after 1933, failing which large-scale raids would be conducted in the occupied zone for those wearing the Star of David, and that, following their internment, the latter would be deported whether they are French citizens or not.”81 Thus RГ¶thke felt the direct impact of the agreement concluded five days earlier between Bousquet, on the one hand, and Oberg and Knochen, on the other. That he clearly had not been kept informed by his superior is instructive in two respects. This points, on the one hand, to the segmentation of the SS and Gestapo apparatus in Paris. Whereas Oberg and Knochen were promoting the strategic goal of strengthening the SS as such and—for this purpose, as would soon become apparent—had won the support of Himmler, RГ¶thke, Eichmann’s henchmen in Paris, was pursuing the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” with amazing zeal through the most frequent deportations possible in France as well. On the other hand, Oberg and Knochen could have no objection to RГ¶thke, in his zeal, maintaining the rate of deportations at least as far as this was still possible under the circumstances that had arisen in the meantime. In this connection, both factions within the Paris SS apparatus accepted the risk that the occupation administration in general and the SS apparatus in particular would appear fragmented and uncoordinated to the French side. However, it is doubtful whether, in the second week of September 1942, Oberg and Knochen already could dismiss RГ¶thke’s pomposity as such and Page 177 →concentrate fully on the strategic cooperation with Laval and Bousquet. In any case, as we have seen, a shared administrative logic led both RГ¶thke and French agencies—such as the leadership of the Border and Immigration Police, as indicated in its report to Bousquet on 1 September 1942—to intensify or maintain the rate of deportation by extending the category of “stateless” Jews, as the German side had always demanded in principle, to the Jews who had immigrated and been naturalized since the 1920s by way of administrative denaturalization. In this respect, RГ¶thke’s “proposal” “that it be suggested to the French government that it immediately hand over all Jews naturalized after 1933” was politically unrealistic under the conditions that had developed in the interim and as regards the recommended repressive measures (“large-scale raidsВ would be conducted in the occupied zone for those wearing the Star of David badge,” and “following their internment, the latter would be deported whether they are French citizens or not”) was tantamount to the cancellation of the collaboration between the

leaderships of the German and French police that had just been consolidated. However, Oberg and Knochen were not yet able to exclude the possibility of RГ¶thke triggering a directive from the RSHA through Eichmann. That the head of Department IV, Heinrich MГјller, took a skeptical view of the developments in France and, after Heydrich’s death in early June 1942, may have been inclined to intervene in ways that would have been in the short-term interests of his area of operations but would not have served the long-term consolidation of the power of the SS in France must have caused Oberg and Knochen far greater concern than the erratic activities of RГ¶thke, whom they had firmly under control in Paris. For this reason, RГ¶thke’s restlessness, as expressed in an endless stream of notes and admonitions to the Vichy authorities to implement the deportation program, was presumably more than merely tiresome for Oberg and Knochen. On the one hand, in his notes, RГ¶thke made use of an argument that might have resonated within the RSHA, especially as he tried to create the impression—whether through ignorance or calculation—that the new, hesitant Vichy stance was a result of external interventions.82 On the other hand, RГ¶thke began preparations of his own for a large-scale raid in the occupied zone that was, in fact, intended to affect French citizens, particularly the 5,129 Jews for which Department IV J of the SD in Paris had lists. The documents in question, as RГ¶thke recorded in the corresponding note, were “lists of wealthy and influential Jews drawn up in in spring of 1942 on the basis of the Jewish indexes (professional indexes), in which a total of 5,129 Page 178 →Jews are listed.”83 But that was not all: “Following the arrests of the influential Jews, the police forces placed at our disposal will be used to arrest people wearing the Star of David. These arrests apply to all people wearing the Star of David, men, women, or children, who are found on the streets and squares of the dГ©partement Seine between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.”84 Thus RГ¶thke was planning the biggest coup of all. It was to be nothing less than a repeat of the raid of 16 and 17 July 1942, though it would this time be aimed indiscriminately against all the Jews found on the streets of the dГ©partement Seine, including Paris, who had to wear the Star of David badge since 7 June 1942. “In order to prevent the group of people to be arrested from gaining prior intelligence of the operation, as in previous raids, ” RГ¶thke continued in his note, “it seems to be indispensable to inform the French police—at any rate, the officers responsible for the execution—about the operation only at the last moment. In order to be able to strike suddenly, the mustering of 3,000 French police officers is regarded as indispensable for the dГ©partement Seine.” In order to make the character of the raid clear, he added, “This was the number of officers employed in the operation on 16 and 17 July 1942.” Thus the head of the “Jewish Desk” (Judenreferat) in the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus was actually going ahead with the operation with which he had threatened Leguay on 8 September 1942. After the foregoing protests by senior French clergymen, which RГ¶thke believed he could reduce to their utility for “enemy propaganda,” and after Oberg’s and Knochen’s explicit assurances to Laval and Bousquet, a renewed escalation of the arrests and deportations that was also supposed to be directed explicitly against Jews of French citizenship must have seemed politically hazardous to Oberg and Knochen, as well as counterproductive, in the medium term, when it came to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France. When RГ¶thke issued an execution memo (“Plan for the arrest operation 22.9.1942”) at his own initiative on 21 September 1942,85 Knochen put a stop to it. By telex, he instructed RГ¶thke not to conduct the raid.86 Instead, on 24 September 1942, a large-scale raid was conducted against Jews of Romanian nationality in Paris,87 after the German Embassy in Paris had conveyed the rather vague consent of the Romanian government.88 These arrests were conducted without further ado by the French police. Bousquet gave his assurance that Romanian Jews who crossed the demarcation line to the Free Zone in an attempt to flee the arrests in the occupied zone would be taken into custody and handed over to the Sipo/SD agencies in charge.89 Of the Page 179 →Jews of Romanian citizenship, 1,594 in total fell victim to the raid. Most of them were murdered after their arrival in Auschwitz a couple of days later.90 RГ¶thke’s unpredictability, evidenced by the fact that he made preparations for a major raid to arrest presumably well over 10,000 Jews with French citizenship with the aid of 3,000 French policeman without the consent of his direct superior, must have finally led Knochen to secure the personal support of Himmler for his

chosen course. The result was recorded in his telex to Eichmann on 25 September 1942, with the key statement “The Reichsführer SS [i.e., Himmler] accepted the view presented and stipulated that for the moment no Jews of French nationality should be arrested. The deportation of large contingents of Jews is therefore not possible.”91 With this, Eichmann’s deportation plan for France was canceled for the time being.

Page 180 →

Chapter 8 Another Attempt: The Project of a Denaturalization Law It was logical that the efforts of the Sipo/SD, specifically of both RГ¶thke and Knochen, should now concentrate, on the one hand, on including as many Jews as possible from third countries in the deportation measures and, on the other, on the denaturalization—that is, the revocation of the French citizenship—of as many Jews as possible who had immigrated to France since the 1920s and had acquired French citizenship. The former measure was set in motion by Knochen’s circular decree of 5 October 1942 ordering the arrest of all Jews in the occupied zone who were of Belgian, Dutch, Romanian, Bulgarian, and “formerly Yugoslavian” nationality, as well as of all stateless Jews who had not yet been detained until then. Among the Jews targeted, as the circular explicitly stated, were all former German nationals who had been expatriated under the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941; nationals of the former Czechoslovakia and of the “former Polish state”; all Soviet, White Russian (Belarusian), Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian nationals; and “Jews of former Saarland, Danzig, or Luxembourg nationality”—men, children, and women, regardless of age.1 The resulting raid was conducted by the French police on 9 and 10 October 1942, when 1,742 Jews were arrested. On 5 November 1942, there followed the arrest of the 1,060 Jews of Greek nationality who could be captured. Following the suspension of all deportation transports in October 1942, a total of 3,745 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, in four transports, between 4 and 11 November 1942. Of those transported, 2,911 were murdered in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival in Auschwitz.2 By contrast, the second undertaking, the denaturalization of as many Jews of French nationality as possible, developed into a protracted tug-of-warPage 181 → between the German demands, concessions by the French, and PГ©tain’s ultimate refusal to sign the already drafted denaturalization law. The decisive military reversal in the war occurred during this period, thus between October 1942 and August 1943. In the summer of 1943, therefore, the dispositions of the leading representatives on the German and French sides were entirely different from what they had been a year earlier. Himmler, who, in September 1942, had given his consent to the suspension of the deportation plan drawn up by Eichmann and RГ¶thke in order to avoid placing the ObergBousquet collaboration axis under strain, insisted categorically, in a discussion with Oberg on 8 June 1943, that the French denaturalization law should be published immediately and that the deportations, which, as a result, could assume a larger scale, should be concluded by 15 July 1943. He did so with the revealing remark that “all possible events must be anticipated.”3 In fact, the months of July and August 1942 were marked by further disastrous military developments for Germany.4 Contributing to Germany’s rapidly deteriorating military prospects, already in the perception of contemporaries, was the destruction of Hamburg by repeated British bombardments between 24 and 28 July 1943 (Operation Gomorrah), resulting in more than 30,000 fatalities among the civilian population.5 The major offensive that had begun on 5 July to drive back the Russian salient near Kursk and regain the military initiative had to be broken off on 16 July. The reason for this was the Allied landing in Sicily on 10 July 1943, which prompted Hitler to meet with Mussolini (on 19 July) and subsequently to make massive redeployments of troops from the Eastern Front to southern Italy. On 22 July, the Seventh US Army occupied Palermo. The developments in Sicily became the trigger for the most dramatic political change on the “Axis” side since the start of the war: namely, the deposition of Mussolini by the Grand Council of Fascism on 25 July 1943. Since 29 July, Hitler had been kept informed of secret armistice negotiations between Mussolini’s successor in the office of prime minister, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, and the Americans and British. On 11 August, a month after the Allied landing, the last German troops left Sicily. When British troops landed on the Italian mainland near Reggio di Calabria on 3 September, the Italian troops did not offer any resistance but instead conducted themselves in de facto accordance with the armistice conditions that had been negotiated in the meantime. On 8 September 1943, Italy’s armistice with the Allies was announced unilaterally by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower. There Page 182 →followed the military occupation of most of Italy by German

troops and the disarmament of the former Italian allies, in the course of which disarmed Italian soldiers were murdered en masse, especially on the Greek islands until then under Italian occupation. The Italian-occupied zone in southeastern France was occupied by German troops—with grave consequences for the Jews living there. In late summer 1942, the domestic political situation, particularly the continued and increasingly energetic protests by prominent Catholic clergymen, had decisively shaped the conduct of the Vichy regime toward the German occupying power in the “Jewish Question.” Now that conduct was shaped by the external political circumstances, which were marked by the military developments and hence by the rapid erosion of German power on the periphery of “Fortress Europe.” These two motivations coincided in the person of head of state PГ©tain. He was impressed by the protest of supporting pillars of the regime—in particular, the Catholic Church—against the deportation of non-French Jews. Thus PГ©tain could anticipate how the public would react to the denaturalization of Jews of French nationality for the purpose of handing them over to the occupying power. The fundamental change in Germany’s military-strategic situation placed on the agenda the question concerning the future of France not only in the European postwar system but also, as regards the French colonial empire, within a postwar global order. It became apparent that Pierre Laval had backed the wrong horse when he had declared on 22 June 1942, the first anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, that he favored a German victory. The internal notes of the SS and Gestapo leadership in Paris left no room for doubt that the German side was fully aware of the increasing nervousness of the Vichy government and of the fact that support for the project of denaturalizations and deportations of Jews was dwindling as a consequence. When it came to the legalities of a revocation of the citizenship of Jews, the anti-Jewish measures of the German occupiers and of the Vichy regime revealed a commonality that, in principle, favored the implementation of the German demand. This concerned the Vichy government’s initiatives directed de facto, if not expressis verbis, chiefly against the Jews immediately after the government’s installation in the summer of 1940, without any involvement by the German side. On the side of the anti-Semitic French Right, the revocation of the citizenship of Jews had been placed on the political agenda since the early 1930s.6 The corresponding propaganda was aimed primarilyPage 183 → at the liberal citizenship law of 10 August 1927.7 The latter was replaced by a much more restrictive law in November 1938.8 The wave of xenophobic and anti-Jewish measures unleashed by the Vichy government led, at the end of July 1942, to the enactment of a law on the retraction of naturalizations and a law on the loss of citizenship of French nationals who had left the country.9 The law of 23 July 1940, by contrast, was directed, in the first instance, against the political representation of the French in exile, first and foremost against Charles de Gaulle and his retinue. De Gaulle was stripped of French citizenship by a decree from PГ©tain on 8 December 1940.10 Article 2 of the law of 22 July 1940 on the retraction of naturalizations established a commission charged with examining all naturalizations since the proclamation of the citizenship law of 10 August 1927. The composition of the commission was regulated by a decree of 31 July 1940 stipulating that the commission was to be composed of ten government appointees who were senior ministerial officials, under the chairmanship of a member of the Conseil d’État. The commission presented a proposal on which the minister of justice, as Garde des Sceaux, was to decide.11 The criteria on which the decision was based were formulated in vague general clauses and indeterminate legal concepts. A commentary published two days after the enactment of the law of 22 July 1940, in the semiofficial Journal des dГ©bats, quotes the justice minister (RaphaГ«l Alibert) as stating that the original citizenship law of 2 August 1927 had “opened the flood gates too wide” and had “facilitated entry into the French family for numerous foreigners who did not offer the desired guarantees.” He specified, “We wanted to alter this situation.” Stating that the French citizenship of those who had shown themselves to be “unworthy of belonging among us” through their conduct would be revoked, the minister explained, “The foreigners must not forget that being a Frenchman is something that must be earned.”12 A circular to the prefects on 10 August 1940 opened up considerable additional scope for discretionary judgment, with the formulation that naturalization could be revoked if the latter had been “conditioned more by the interest of the individual than by the common interest” or if the naturalization had been granted “in ignorance of objectionable actions.”13 Decisions of the commission for examining naturalizations were not

open to challenge. The law of 21 March 1941 only left open the possibility of applying for the retraction of the revocation of the original naturalization through a pardon of the justice minister.14 The remit of the commission covered the examination of all naturalizationsPage 184 → since the proclamation of the law of 10 August 1927. The provisions of the law of 22 July 1940 entailed that the immediate relatives of someone who had been expatriated could, in turn, lose French citizenship even if this had been acquired before 10 August 1927, even though the law stipulated that the direct revocation of citizenship could only apply to persons who had acquired French citizenship after this cutoff date. Thus the law was not only inconsistent in systematic respects but also opened up the possibility of retroactive application and plain arbitrariness. The ambiguities of the law of 22 July 1940 also made it difficult to assess its actual effects. When Justice Minister Gabolde responded to a query by RГ¶thke on 12 July 1943, he specified the figure of 510,690 persons who had been naturalized between 1 January 1927 and 4 June 1940 and who hence fell within the scope of the law of 22 July 1940. Two and half months later, on 26 August 1943, the commission for examining naturalizations corrected this figure upward. It now specified a figure of 650,000 persons affected, only to reduce the figure again, to 630,000, the following day.15 By contrast, in the nature of the case, the number of denaturalizations that actually occurred could be calculated more precisely. Leguay, referring to a communication of the representative of the Vichy government at the German Embassy in Paris, Fernand de Brinon, to Laval on 26 August 1943, named a figure of 16,508 denaturalizations that had occurred up to that point, of which 6,307 concerned Jews. One day later, however, on 27 August 1943, de Brinon cited to Hagen the figure of 17,964 expatriations for the period until 31 July 1943. Presumably, in this case also, the reason was that the denaturalization commission had hastily updated its figures for Brinon.16 With the law of 22 July 1940, Vichy had in a sense prepared the connection point from which the German efforts to enlarge the circle of Jews eligible for deportation could begin. If the plan was to increase the deportation quota by summarily denaturalizing Jews, the denaturalization commission constituted the most effective lever for this purpose.

Page 185 →

Chapter 9 Italy’s Stance and Its Repercussions for the Persecution Measures against the Jews in France The demand for a blanket denaturalization of all Jews who had acquired French citizenship after a certain cutoff date that was to be set as early as possible already featured in Dannecker’s and RГ¶thke’s deliberations when the initial difficulties with the implementation of the deportation program agreed on with Eichmann in the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA) on 11 June 1942 became apparent. On 25 June 1942, Dannecker confronted Leguay not only with the demand to be presented “with a concrete proposal by 29.6.1942 for the arrest of 22,000 Jews in total in the dГ©partements Seine and Seine-et-Oise” but also with the requirement “that among the Jews to be taken into custody, at least 40 percent should be of French nationality.” In this connection, Dannecker continued, “he would leave it up to the discretion of the French to take those Jews who were naturalized only after the world war.”1 Developments surrounding the Oberg-Bousquet agreement of 8 August 1942 continued without regard for this skirmish with Dannecker, who was ousted a short time later, presumably at Knochen’s urging. This agreement was based on restricting the deportations to “stateless” Jews and granting the French police force administrative autonomy as a quid pro quo for its involvement in combating “enemies of the Reich,” a category under which were specifically listed, at Bousquet’s request, “communists, terrorists, and saboteurs” but not the Jews. There followed the heated protests of senior Catholic dignitaries against the deportations of stateless Jews from the Free Zone commencing in August 1941 and Himmler’s personal suspension of the deportation plan agreed on by Eichmann and Dannecker’s successor, RГ¶thke, about which Knochen informed Eichmann in his telex of 25 September 1942. Page 186 →After the military occupation of southeastern France as well by German and Italian troops, the “paradox of weakness”—the narrowing of the de facto room for compromise available to the government in Vichy when it came to taking measures against Jews of French nationality at the behest of the Germans—took effect in a bizarre way beginning in November 1942. By refusing to take measures against Jews of foreign nationality, the Germans’ Italian allies provided the government in Vichy with an argument for rejecting more extensive measures against Jews of French nationality.

The Logic of Obstruction For the German side, especially the Sipo/SD leadership, which was brimming with self-confidence following its victorious power struggle with the leaders of the military administration in Paris and the appointment of a senior SS leader and chief of police (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer, or HSSPF), the situation in France was rendered precarious by the fact that the military logic of the occupation of the previously “unoccupied zone” called for the protection of the hinterland and hence, from the perspective of the SS, all the more urgently for the elimination of the Jews and of Jewish influence. It was precisely the military alliance and the joint struggle against the Americans and British, who had landed in North Africa on 8 November 1942, that constituted the bond between Germany and Italy. But increasing numbers of Jews now sought refuge in the Italian-occupied zone that extended as far as the Rhône, in which the Italian military agencies exercised control over the Vichy authorities.2 The Italian military commanders mostly prohibited the anti-Jewish measures of the Vichy authorities.3 In late December 1942, the commander in chief of the Italian Fourth Army forbade all prefects to intern Jews. He even ordered, “The headquarters of the army and the naval headquarters must intervene if necessary to prevent any possible attempt by the French authorities to implement these Vichy government directives.”4 The Italian consul general in Nice confirmed this to the Italian foreign ministry in Rome on 6 January 1943.5 Instructive was the justification offered for this by the chief of staff of the Italian Fourth Army, General Alessandro Trabucchi, to the prefect of the département Alpes-Maritime in Nice: the Italian government, he argued, could not tolerate

that persons involved in anti-German or anti-Italian propaganda should be removed from its supervision.Page 187 → For this reason, it could not consent to the French internment measures against Jews either.6 In the meantime, the RSHA did everything in its power to reactivate the original rhythm of transports to Auschwitz. On 19 December 1942, Eichmann sent a telex to Knochen with a query concerning “the possible scale of a resumption of Jew transports from France in the early months of the coming year,” noting that “intake capacities are available.”7 On 16 December 1942, the German Embassy had informed the command staff of the military commander, the supreme commander of the armed forces in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West), and the commander of the Security Police and the Security Service (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS), Knochen, “According to information received from the Foreign Office, the Italian supreme command has informed the OKW [Oberkommando der Wehrmacht] in Berlin on 4 December of the following: (1) orders have been given to arrest all citizens of countries hostile to the Axis in the part of French territory under Italian occupation. (2) All Jews and their families in the same area will be interned by the Italians.”8 However, this announcement remained without consequences. In a report to the Foreign Office on 22 January 1943, under the heading “Current status of the Jewish Question in the recently occupied territory, with particular reference to the capture and evacuation of stateless and foreign Jews,” the envoy from the German Embassy in Paris, Rudolf Schleier, observed that “reference must be made to the message [from the] Italian supreme command of 4 December to the effect that all Jews and their families would be interned by the Italians in the French territory under Italian occupation.” But he went on to say, in telegram style, “Current procedure of the Italians clearly not in accord with this.”9 In fact, the Italian Armistice Commission in France had communicated the following message to the French liaison officer with the permanent delegation at the Armistice Commission in Nice, Colonel Bonnet, on 30 December 1942: Information has reached us that the prefect of the [dГ©partement] Alpes-Maritime, following orders he has received from Vichy, has decided that the Jews of foreign nationalities must report to police stations. There they have been informed of the requirement to remove themselves for compulsory residence to other zones within three days. It seems that the same measures have been taken in other dГ©partements. The commander of the Fourth Army has informed the delegation in this connection that the Italian commander in Page 188 →chief has issued orders prohibiting the internment of people of the Jewish race by the prefects. The Italian government cannot allow persons who could indulge in anti-Italian or anti-German propaganda to be removed from its supervision. For this reason, it cannot consent to the aforementioned measures. Therefore, please advise the authorities in charge about this prohibition so that all of the regional and departmental prefects in the zone occupied by Italian troops are informed.10 On 14 January 1943, the prefect of the dГ©partement Alpes-Maritimes with headquarters in Nice sent the regime in Vichy an unusually detailed report concerning the “opposition to the application of various measures against foreign Jews mandated by the French government” in his dГ©partement.11 This “opposition” on the part of the Italian military administration could hardly be attributed to the lack of routine in the collaboration relations with the French authorities, in particular with the police authorities. More plausible, presumably also from the perspective of the Vichy authorities, was that the Italians wanted to preserve their freedom of action both vis-Г -vis the powerful German alliance partner and vis-Г -vis the Vichy administration, which now inevitably found itself confronted with an odious military occupation. For the time being, one way or the other, the behavior of the Italian military administration protected the Jews in southeast France. As a result, the reports from the senior Paris Sipo/SD officials to Berlin became markedly more nervous from January 1943 onward. On 9 January 1943, Hagen recorded, in a note on a conversation conducted the previous day with Bousquet, that Bousquet had declared himself to be unable, on account of the behavior of the Italians, “to implement fullyВ .В .В . the removal of all Jews from the coastal departments, the internment of the Jews of foreign nationality, and the concentration of the Jews with French citizenship.”12 It soon became clear that the matter had already become a high-level political issue, so that Knochen felt

compelled to request support in Berlin. On 13 January 1943, he reported by telex, directly to the head of Department IV in the RSHA, SS-GruppenfГјhrer (SS General) MГјller, that a “consultation” with Bousquet’s representative for the northern zone, Leguay, evidently triggered by Bousquet’s conversation with Hagen, had established that the Italian government had presented a diplomatic note to President Laval in which it declares the following: It raises no objections against the measures of the French government in the newly occupied territory with regard Page 189 →to Jews of French nationality (designation on the Carte d’identitГ©, ration cards, etc.). But it opposes any measure against Jews of foreign nationality, i.e., not just the Italian Jews are protected by Italy as a result but also at the same time all other foreign Jews. Laval communicates this officially and says that under these conditions he naturally finds himself in very serious difficulties toward the French and requests corresponding support.13 This made the dilemma apparent: no further measures against the Jews with French citizenship—for example, ones based on the denaturalization law of 22 July 1940—could be expected from the government in Vichy should measures against Jews of foreign nationality be prevented in the Italian-occupied zone. Thus the stance adopted by the Italians had the spillover effect of protecting the Jews with French citizenship throughout France, as was clearly recognized by Knochen and reported in detail to the head of the Gestapo in Berlin, MГјller. I kindly request that the Reichsfuehrer-SS be informed as soon as possible of this method being practiced by the Italians and that he ensure that this special treatment by the Italians is brought to an end in France. The treatment of the Jews of Italian nationality did not concern such large numbers, but it has also invariably created major difficulties because the other side does not understand that the Axis partner has not yet adopted our standpoint in the Jewish Question and correspondingly uses this as an argument against us. But if the Italians now come out in support of all Jews of foreign nationality, this makes it impossible to continue a Jew policy in our sense, that is, we cannot expect Jews of French nationality to be handed over to us for deportation over the coming months.14 At this time, in early January 1943, the prefect of the dГ©partement Alpes-Maritimes, Marcel RibiГЁre, had already written a note that Knochen would pass on to the RSHA shortly afterward as evidence of the correctness of his assessment. We owe to RibiГЁre’s report not only a complete inventory of the anti-Jewish decrees issued by the Vichy government in the coastal region of the Free Zone but also an insight into the mentality of the Vichy authorities and into the peculiar situation in which it found itself in view of the contradictory directives and expectations of its own government and of the German and Italian occupying powers. RibiГЁre refers to Vichy directives to remove all of the foreign Jews who Page 190 →had taken up residence since 1 January 1938 in the dГ©partements along the coast within a strip 30 kilometers wide and to deport them to the inland dГ©partements ArdГЁche and DrГґme; to marshal all able-bodied Jews between the ages of 18 and 55 “without consular protection” (hence “stateless” Jews) and those who had come to France from neutral countries after 1 January 1933 into compulsory labor gangs; and to add the stamp “Jew” to the passports or residency papers of foreign Jews. All three measures had been canceled by the Italian consul general in Nice, Alberto Calisse, RibiГЁre reported. This had led to a wave of sympathy among the Jews in his dГ©partement for the Italians, who, it was said, were protecting the Jews. RibiГЁre saw in this, in the first place, an attempt by the Italians to distance themselves from the German policy toward the Jews. He had received a confidential report that the Italian position went back to a personal fiat of Italian foreign minister Count Ciano, who showed an acute interest in this question. In agreement with the directives RibiГЁre had received directly by telephone from Head of Government Laval on the same day as RibiГЁre’s report was written, RibiГЁre had proposed to the Italian military and civil agencies that, in view of the great interest being shown by the Italian government in the question, the Jews should be admitted into Italy itself. To this proposal, he received the reply that there could be no question of this and that the Italian side wanted to maintain the status quo. The consul general then pointed out that his government wished to introduce the same legislation regarding the Jews in the Italian zone as was valid in Italy itself—namely, as he specified, a “humane legislation.”15 On 2 February 1943, Knochen forwarded RibiГЁre’s report, along with a letter drafted by RГ¶thke, to the head of

Department IV in the RSHA, MГјller, with the remark “I would be grateful if a translation of the report were to be made in the RSHA and presented to the ReichsfГјhrer SS as soon as possible, because it is extremely revealing concerning the attitude of the Italians toward the Jewish Question.”16 At around the same time, the German occupiers demonstrated their alternative model to the “humane” approach of the Italians, in a spectacular large-scale operation. The clearing and blasting of the port district of Marseilles and the deportation of the Jews detained there took place between 22 and 27 January 1943.17 This operation was carried out on a personal directive by Himmler, contained in an especially brutal order of 18 January 1942, whose details call to mind the clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto a couple of months later.18 The operation involved close cooperation between the Vichy Page 191 →police and the German police forces, primarily the field gendarmerie, and was conducted in the presence of Bousquet and Oberg.

The Persecution of the Jews in the Italian Zone as an International Political Issue In February 1943, the behavior of the Italian occupation authorities developed into a full-scale political issue, in which ideological goals, policing problems, and questions of prestige came together in shifting configurations for the Germans, French, and Italians. Officially, the Italian side also declared its willingness to accept the police logic of safeguarding the rear areas of the German combat troops that had occupied the Mediterranean coast since 11 November 1942. This found expression in the ambiguous message of the Italian Armistice Commission of 30 December 1942 that the commander of the Italian Fourth Army had prohibited the interment of Jews by the French prefects because the Italian government could not allow “persons who could indulge in anti-Italian or anti-German propaganda to be removed from its supervision.” At the same time, the Italians must also naturally have been concerned to demonstrate both their assertiveness vis-Г -vis the French authorities and their independence vis-Г -vis their German Axis partner. It was a stroke of luck that the Italian military apparently saw an opportunity to exact retribution for a prejudice cultivated by the German side—of the professional inferiority of their Italian brothers in arms19—through a demonstration of moral superiority.20 This resonated in a remark of the Italian consul general in Nice, Alberto Calisse, to the prefect RibiГЁre, affirming that the “humane” Italian legislation regarding the Jews—which, of course, was nothing more than a myth—would be adhered to in the Italian-occupied zone.21 For its part, the French side—government, administration, and police—found itself in the precarious position of not only being shown, by the Italian occupying power, to be inhumane and submissive toward the Germans but also being called on, by the German side, to implement the policing measures in connection with the persecution of the Jews, responsibility for which had been accepted in the negotiations of the summer of 1942, in the belief that these measures could be confined to foreign Jews. The French government was now presented with the bill in an unexpected way, by the closest ally of the German occupying power. It was now faced with the Page 192 →choice of either presenting itself to the German occupying power as incapable of implementing the ObergBousquet agreement or presenting itself to international public opinion as inhumane and, in addition, as an even more loyal vassal of Germany than Italy.22 The Germans, by contrast, faced a situation in which one of their declared key objectives, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question in Europe,” was jeopardized in France by, ironically enough, their closest ally, Italy, with whom they jointly occupied the country. Fascist Italy by no means acted in this connection in southeastern France from the “humane” motives that its officials and officers claimed for themselves and that they may even have followed subjectively in many cases. Instead, the senior Italian commanders wanted to show who ruled the roost. When it came to matters in their own occupied zone, they did not want their powerful German ally or especially the representatives of occupied France meddling in their affairs.23 The embassy in Paris and the mastermind of the Sipo/SD leadership, Helmut Knochen, reported to Berlin with political foresight and cynical clarity on at least the portion of this constellation that concerned the German options.24 On 22 January 1943, the envoy Schleier, then the senior German diplomat in Paris (due to an almost yearlong absence of the ambassador Abetz), informed the Foreign Office that he had received information from the SS Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) to the effect that “the Italian Armistice Commission was extending protection to the Jews of Italian nationality against the French anti-Jewish measures” (an

understatement, as we have seen, because the Italian Armistice Commission had rejected the measures of the Vichy administration against all Jews, in its 30 December 1942 message to the liaison officer with the French permanent delegation to the commission) and that Bousquet had declared “that as a result of this decision he was not in a position to implement fully the measures demanded by the German side.” “The embassy and the SD” were “in agreement that the Jewish Question can be cleared up once and for all in the newly occupied territory only if the Italians can be brought into line with our measures against the Jews.”25 Knochen would go into still greater detail in a report drafted by RГ¶thke to the supreme commander of the armed forces in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West, or OB West) on 3 February 1943. He wrote, “For urgent reasons of security policy, a removal of all Jews from all of the frontier and coastal dГ©partements of the newly occupied region must be insisted upon. In addition, German and Italian military interests in particular must call urgently for the Page 193 →removal of the Jews from these dГ©partements.” To the general staff of the OB West, who had direct responsibility for military cooperation with the Italian forces, Knochen wrote further, Therefore, I would be grateful if the urgent need to deport the Jews from the frontier and coastal dГ©partements into French dГ©partements inland were to be impressed upon the Italian commander in chief in southern France and if, in the process, it could be made clear that, in the interest of as comprehensive a cooperation as possible, such measures are necessary also for reasons of security policy. The borders and the coast in the southern French dГ©partements can be secured only mutually and through immediate concurrent measures.26 Knochen then came to the decisive point in his view. It must be added that the Final Solution to the Jewish Question decreed for Europe as a whole has been seriously obstructed throughout France by the conduct of the Italian authorities. Such a state of affairs is untenable in the long run. In particular, it is intolerable that the Jews, who are especially dangerous from the standpoint of counterespionage and security policy, are increasingly fleeing from the area of France occupied by German troops to the area occupied by Italy in order to continue their activities there.27 Knochen made clear that he wanted the Wehrmacht to intervene with the Italian military, by adding, “Please inform me about the steps undertaken there.”28 However, the general staff officer of the OB West in charge responded with a bare two-liner. OB West cannot make a decision if the Italian government appears to have different views. Please clarify the issue with the Italian government.29 That was a more-than-cool reaction to the three-and-a-half-page letter that RГ¶thke had drafted for Knochen, which had been classified as “secret.” Significantly, even the remark that the “primary reason” for the anti-Jewish measures of the Vichy authorities in the Italian-occupied zone lay in “securing the German and Italian troops in the coastal dГ©partements” could not impress any of the experts among the staff of the OB West. Rather, the military itself classified the operation as a priori political and regarded the military Page 194 →and “security policing” aspects adduced by the senior Sipo/SD officials as either pretexts or their own affair. Of course, Knochen himself was only too well aware that the problems in need of solution in connection with the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France were properly a political matter, specifically with regard both to the stance of the French and to that of the Italian government. Moreover, as his notes and letters reveal, he had a perfectly clear grasp of the interrelationship between the two positions. Knochen’s primary concern in the spring of 1943 was not to exert pressure on Vichy but to ensure that pressure was exerted by Berlin on the Italian government. His objective was to ensure that the stance of the Italian military on the treatment of the “Jewish Question” on French territory should not worsen still further the conditions for implementing the “Final Solution” in France. Knochen, who rigorously exploited every available scope for deporting

additional Jews from France, had to make clear to the RSHA what was and was not possible with regard to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France, under the military and political conditions prevailing in the meantime. For Knochen, the 32-year-old operational and intellectual mastermind of the SS and Gestapo in France, two levels of action presented themselves: a level of foreign policy proper toward the Italians—in conventional terminology, a diplomatic level—and a level of occupation policy toward the French. In both dimensions, he required the support and backing of the RSHA. In any case, foreign political pressure could be exerted on Italy only by the leadership of the RSHA, if possible by Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Himmler in person and, through their mediation, by Ribbentrop. As far as the occupation policy line toward the Vichy government was concerned, Knochen had to keep Eichmann and RГ¶thke in check so that the collaboration relations in the field of policing based on the August 1942 Oberg-Bousquet agreement were not jeopardized by an intensification of the deportation program with the inclusion of Jews with French citizenship. Even so, the Germans found themselves unexpectedly on the side of the Vichy government in the endeavor to impose the anti-Jewish measures against the opposition of Germany’s Italian ally. The tactical boundary conditions in the two areas, the diplomatic area and that of occupation policy, were not unfavorable. Threats to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” could not fail to mobilize the Foreign Office in Berlin as well as the RSHA, whereas the political and administrative collaboration of the Vichy regime, given that the landing of the Western AlliesPage 195 → on the European continent was undoubtedly imminent, was more important than ever in the German interest. For the present, Knochen had no reason to doubt the steadfastness of the government in Vichy and particularly of the French police leadership under Bousquet. Both Bousquet and Knochen continued to walk a fine line: both of them wanted to implement as much of their agenda as possible, but both of them could achieve this only if the system of collaboration remained stable. A reaffirmation of the German-French agreement on policing was already being planned, which would follow on 16 April 1943, this time in Vichy. The problem was that the implementation of the Oberg-Bousquet agreement, hence the recourse to Vichy officials and the Vichy police for the arrest and deportation of the Jews specifically also outside of the “old occupied” zone, made the conflict with the Italian occupying power all but almost inevitable. The latter did not want either the Germans or the French meddling in its affairs in its own occupied zone. This was a question of honor, not of whether to participate in the persecution measures against the Jews in the first place.

The German Pressure on the Italian Government and the Dilatory Handling of the “Jewish Question” in the Italian Zone In the second half of February 1942, a further aggravation of relations occurred in connection with the treatment of the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone, which culminated in a direct confrontation between the Italian military and the French administration. Parallel to this, the German authorities increased the pressure on the Italian government through diplomatic channels. Following an attack in Paris to which two German officers fell victim, SS-ObersturmbannfГјhrer (SS Lieutenant Colonel) Kurt Lischka, in his capacity as the Sipo/SD commander in Paris, demanded the arrest of 2,000 male Jews aged between 16 and 65 from the Paris police prefect. According to the agreements of August 1942, only “stateless” Jews, whose arrest was evidently regarded by the police leadership in Paris as precarious in organizational respects and with respect to its impact on public opinion, could be considered for this purpose. As a result, a directive was issued to the prefects in both the northern and southern zones by the general secretariat for the police, hence Page 196 →by Bousquet’s office, to conduct the arrests of the qualified Jews located in those zones.30 Raids followed between 18 and 21 February 1943 in no less than 34 dГ©partements.31 Prior to this, in the course of a raid carried out in the northern zone on 10 and 11 February, 1,549 Jews, a majority of them children, women, and elderly men, were arrested under particularly inhumane conditions and brought for deportation to the Drancy camp, from which they were deported to Auschwitz on 11 and 13 February.32 Once again the arrests provoked a negative response among the population, with the result that, on 6 March 1943,

PГ©tain charged Laval with investigating the specific circumstances of the arrest measures.33 The attempt to arrest 2,000 male Jews aged between 16 and 65 in the southern zone ended in complete failure in the Italian-occupied zone. Although arrests were made there by the Vichy police, the Italian military administration forced the French authorities, in part under the threat of force, to set the arrested Jews free again.34 This line was explicitly reaffirmed a short time later by the liaison officer of the Italian supreme command in Vichy, Brigadier General Avarna di Gualtieri.35 In Grenoble, the Italian general Lazzaro di Castiglione ordered the police director of the regional prefecture to release Jews who had already been arrested.36 General Castiglione was commander of the Italian Pusteria Division, which was under the command of the Italian Fourth Army. He reported to the commander in chief of the Italian Fourth Army, General Mario Vercellino, on the incidents in connection with the arrests of Jews in his area of command. Vercellino, in turn, sent a telegraph report to the Italian foreign ministry on 24 February 1943 about the incidents in the area of command of the Pusteria Division.37 Likewise, on 22 February 1943, Lischka as commander of the security police and the SD in Paris, recorded in a note that Leguay, Bousquet’s representative in Paris, had told him “that the Italian side had opposed serious difficulties to any arrest of Jews.” Lischka explained in detail, He [Leguay] cited as the most striking example that some foreign Jews had been arrested by the gendarmerie in Annecy and had been brought to the gendarmerie barracks. Thereupon the Italian military had demanded the immediate release of the Jews, though this was refused. As a result, the entire barracks was surrounded by armed Italian soldiers. Legay [sic] reported that, in this way, Italy had created serious difficulties for any arrest of Jews and that, in the knowledge of this fact, large portions of Jews had withdrawn to the Italian-occupied area.38 Page 197 →It was evident that the French police leadership wasted no opportunity to draw the attention of the Germans to the studious fulfillment of the obligations arising out of the Oberg-Bousquet agreement by the French police and to the torpedoing of the German-French collaboration in the area of “Judenpolitik” by, ironically enough, Germany’s Italian allies. The same line was taken by Leguay’s head of cabinet, Thomas Sauts, in a consultation to which RГ¶thke had ordered him for 23 February 1943. For his part, Sauts recounted the incident in Grenoble, and RГ¶thke recorded in his note, “S. acted very indignantly about this and observed that, in future, measures against the Jews could be conducted effectively in the unoccupied zone only if the Italians adopt a different attitude toward the Jews.” In his report to Berlin, Knochen made the implications of the Italian behavior clear with regard both to foreign relations and to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” In a report drafted by RГ¶thke on 22 February 1943 with reference to the situation in Grenoble, Knochen observed, The championing of the Jews by the Italians has once again proven to the French authorities that the German and Italian perceptions of the Jewish Question are absolutely different. I would like to draw attention again to the fact that the French government, which is approaching the solution of the Jewish Question only with reluctance, is actually being reinforced in this attitude by the measures of the Italian authorities. But apart from this, it is untenable in the long run that the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in the newly occupied area of France is being massively hampered and, in part, is even been rendered impossible, by none less than Germany’s ally Italy.В .В .В . If Italian military authorities at the highest level now also even protect the Jews against arrests by the French police, then this creates a situation in which not only the French authorities but even the French public as a whole is positively challenged to criticize the German-Italian relations in the most severe terms. But, apart from this, redoubled resistance must be expected in the future from the French government against all of our demands in the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. He went on to reiterate, in the strongest possible terms, Therefore, I respectfully urge that the Italian civil and military authorities in the recently occupied French territory be instructed by the Italian government as quickly as possible that they are not to

create any difficulties for the Page 198 →Final Solution to the Jewish Question in the area of France occupied by Italy. If this requirement cannot be enforced, it must be pointed out that today already there is a question mark over the final solution to the Jewish problem in France.39

There followed further reports along these lines.40 In a note of 6 March 1943 on the “present status of the Jewish Question in France,” RГ¶thke again described the “stance of the Italians in the Jewish Question” and cited a number of “particularly crass cases,” like the protection or even the release of Jews arrested by the French police by Italian troops in Grenoble and Annecy.41 He concluded with the observation A.A. [i.e., the Foreign Office] has been informed by RSHA (Eichmann) of behavior of the Italians; Reich Foreign Minister Ribbentrop wanted to broach topic of Italian attitude to the Jewish Question in negotiations with Duce. Notification of outcome of negotiations not yet received.42 The reports on the “untenable situation”43 that were sent continuously by RГ¶thke and Knochen to the RSHA and, in the end, regularly to Chief MГјller of the Gestapo, as well as the accompanying reports of the German Embassy in Paris, would indeed prompt Ribbentrop to act. On 25 February 1943, in a detailed letter, clearly drafted by Eichmann, to the Foreign Office,44 Chief MГјller quotes from a 29 January 1943 letter by Himmler to Ribbentrop in which the former called on the foreign minister to ensure “that the Jews of Italian and all other nationalities are removed also in the area of France occupied by Italy.” According to Himmler in the letter quoted by MГјller, “the continued presence of the Jews in the area under Italian control” was “the pretext for many circles in France and throughout Europe to tread more lightly in the Jewish Question, because it is pointed out that not even our Axis partner Italy is cooperating in the Jewish Question.”45 MГјller listed, by way of illustration, some of the interventions that had become known up that point by which Italian commanders and military agencies had opposed the measures of the Vichy administration against the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone, each case supported by the relevant complaints of the French authorities vis-Г -vis their own government or the German occupation authorities. MГјller ended his letter by pointing out the repercussions for the “Final Solution.” Page 199 →The stance of the Italians with regard to the implementation of the pan-European solution [to the Jewish Question] in particular has given rise to extraordinary difficulties for the measures we are striving to implement and has already rendered them impossible in part. This general Italian stance in the matter to be dealt with by us quite simply entirely thwarts the publicly declared demand made by the FГјhrer in every speech and proclamation.46 Ribbentrop held meetings with Mussolini in Rome on 20 and 25 February 1943.47 During their four-hour conversation48 on 25 February, Ribbentrop sought, at Hitler’s behest, first and foremost to depict the defeat in Stalingrad to the Italian ally in a favorable military and political light. But the “Jewish Question” and particularly also the situation in France were accorded not inconsiderable room. Ribbentrop observed that “even France had taken extremely useful measures against the Jews.”49 He was aware “that the Jewish Question often does not meet with the necessary understanding in Italian military circles, as is also, as it happens, occasionally the case among the German military. This was the only explanation for a command by the Comando Supremo that had revoked measures taken at German urging by the French authorities against the Jews in the Italian-occupied area of France.”50 The minutes of the conversation go on to record, “The Duce disputed the correctness of this report and attributed it to the French tactic of fomenting discord between Germany and Italy. The Jews, Mussolini stated, are in fact concentrated by the Italians in different camps. Nevertheless, he agreed with the remark of the RAM [Reich foreign minister] that the military does not have the correct sensibility for the Jewish Question. He attributes this, among other things, to differences in their intellectual training.”51 In a further conversation with the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Dino Alfieri, on 8 March 1943, Ribbentrop complained, at considerable length, about the Italian military leadership, not only over the inadequate performance of Italian troops on the Eastern Front but also over the political stance of the Italian supreme command (Comando

Supremo).52 Evidently Ribbentrop did not go into further detail in his conversation with Mussolini about the latter’s assertion, whether born of ignorance or of embarrassment, that the Jews were being interned in the Italianoccupied zone of France, all contradictory reports being merely attempts by Vichy to drive a wedge between Germans and Italians. A controversy in this question would not have served Ribbentrop’s interests, given that the primary purposePage 200 → of his visit to Rome was to keep the Italian ally firmly on Germany’s side in the wake of the defeat in Stalingrad.53 Nevertheless, by telegraph on 9 March 1943, he instructed the German ambassador in Rome, Hans Georg von Mackensen, to present himself in person to Mussolini and to deliver to him a wide-ranging diplomatic note with a series of references to the obstruction or downright suspension of measures by the Vichy authorities against the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone in France. This telegram by Ribbentrop contained complete quotations of the directives of 2 March 1943 issued by the Italian general di Gualtieri to the state secretary in the office of the head of government in Vichy, Admiral Charles Platon, annulling arrests and internments of both French and foreign Jews in the Italian-occupied zone, as well as Bousquet’s complaint about this to Laval, supplemented with accounts of concrete repercussions in individual dГ©partements.54 Ribbentrop’s directive to von Mackensen continued, In view of the importance of the immediate elimination of all foreigners and Jews in this region also in the case of an enemy landing (all of these persons are of course spies of England and America), we would be grateful to the Duce were he to immediately intervene in person and ensure that these intolerable circumstances are rectified through draconian orders.55 Von Mackensen was expected to inform Mussolini that Berlin regards as “a practical solution for rectifying the difficulties that have arisen” that Mussolini should issue a directive to the Italian supreme command that the latter must stop “tying the hands of” the French police in the Italian-occupied zone in implementing the measures against the Jews, that one should follow a proposal of ReichsfГјhrer-SS Himmler by removing responsibility for the “Jewish Question” from the Italian military command posts and handing it over to the Italian civil police, or that the ReichsfГјhrer-SS himself should take “direct control of the matter together with the French police in the Italian-occupied area as wellВ .В .В . so that Italian authorities would then have nothing more to do with it.”56 Ribbentrop evidently lacked the necessary imagination to grasp the damage to Mussolini’s authority that such “advice” would inevitably wreak among the diplomatic and military leadership of the Italian Axis partner. Even so, he made the acute observation in his telegram that the German side had “clear proof that the Italian military authorities and the Comando Supremo itself are apparently pursuing a policy in France that is diametrically Page 201 →opposed to the views and intentions of the Duce.”57 Less than five months before Mussolini’s dismissal by the fascist Grand Council, Ribbentrop was in fact negotiating with the representatives of a regime that was in a latent state of dissolution. On 5 February 1943, Mussolini had dismissed Foreign Minister Ciano. He nominally assumed responsibility for foreign affairs (in addition to the war ministry and the interior ministry), but in effect, State Secretary Guiseppe Bastianini was in charge. German propaganda sought to reinterpret the crisis of the Italian government, which practically coincided with the catastrophic news from Stalingrad, into an act of resoluteness on the part of the “Duce,” who now had taken an even firmer grasp of the reins, which the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Alfieri, reported with satisfaction to Mussolini.58 While Mussolini struck a radical pose in his conversations with Ribbentrop and von Mackensen, Italian diplomats and military leaders were doing precisely what Ribbentrop imputed to them—namely, subverting the political line of the “Duce.” On 7 March 1943, the Italian foreign ministry confirmed explicitly to the Comando Supremo that the arrests of Jews in the Italian-occupied zone in France were to be canceled, and it called for corresponding orders to be issued to the Italian Fourth Army.59 On the following day, the Comando Supremo telegraphed precisely such a directive to the supreme command of the Fourth Army.60 Significantly, in so doing, the head of the Comando Supremo, General Vittorio Ambrosio, specified that this was a question neither of negotiations nor of a request but of a plain and simple notification to the French government that the policy toward the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone was exclusively a matter for the Italian authorities. The Comando

Supremo requested that the Fourth Army should specifically ensure that arrests and deportations of Jews would not be conducted and that the nonobservance of the latter measures on the part of the French authorities should be regularly monitored.61 On 17 March 1943, General Avarna di Gualtieri, the representative of the Italian supreme command in Vichy, addressed, in turn, Admiral Platon, state secretary with the head of government, and reaffirmed that arrests and internments of Jews of whatever nationality were exclusively a matter for the Italian military authorities, based on their rights as occupying power. Insofar as arrests of Jews were carried out by French criminal prosecution authorities on the basis of general criminal law, these also had to be communicated to the Italian authorities, together with the corresponding evidence. The Italian supreme command, according to Gualtieri, continued to insist on revokingPage 202 → all arrests and internments of Jews that had been ordered up to that point by the prefects in the Italian-occupied zone.62 In the meantime, the local Italian military authorities had changed to at least creating the impression that they were also taking decisive measures against the Jews. Formally speaking, this was by no means in contradiction with the dГ©marches toward the Vichy government, given that, according to the Italian interpretation, they referred to the clarification of the competences between domestic authorities and occupying power. The antiJewish measures announced by the Italian side corresponded, in principle, to what Ribbentrop, in his telegraphic directive to von Mackensen in Rome on 9 March 1943, had called the second conceivable solution—namely, the carrying out of the measures against the Jews by the Italians themselves. Around this time, there was a constant stream of reports from the German diplomatic missions about initial Italian contacts with the Western Allies. On 13 March 1943, the state secretary in the Foreign Office, von WeizsГ¤cker—at the behest of Ribbentrop and referring to “several simultaneous reports” along these lines—called on the German missions in Rome and Bern to respond.63 On 14 March 1943, Hitler once again addressed himself in a multipage message to Mussolini, to whom he had already sent a practically memoir-like letter on 16 February.64 Whereas the letter in February had dealt with the overall military and political situation following the defeat in Stalingrad, Hitler turned now, in mid-March, to the situation in North Africa and the “bridgehead Tunisia.”65 This was the point of contact between the Italians and the Allies, and Hitler evidently sought—by word as well as deed (above all, the massive German reinforcements that arrived in Tunisia just in time to march into captivity with their Italian allies on 12 May 1943)—to impress Mussolini, on the one hand, and to shore up his domestic political base, on the other. The German authorities in charge in France were now gradually receiving reports that the Jews were in fact being arrested or interned in the Italian-occupied zone. On 13 March 1943, Lischka reported on this in a telex drafted by RГ¶thke. The German consul general in Marseilles had been instructed by the German Embassy in Rome that, according to information received from the Italian government, “all Jews in the zone occupied by Italy, even those of Italian origin, have been interned in the interior.” However, Lischka reported, the consul general had been informed “that this is clearly a false message and that the opposite is the case,” and the consul general had “answered Page 203 →[the German Embassy in Rome] accordingly.”66 On 19 March 1943, the Italian liaison officer with the German supreme commander of the armed forces in the West, General Mario Marazzani, informed Oberg’s adjutant Hagen “that the [Italian] Fourth Army had arranged the internment of the dangerous Jewish elements” and that, since 20 February 1943, “the restВ .В .В . had been assigned to compulsory residences.”67 On 22 March 1943, the German Embassy in Paris reported both to Oberg and separately to RГ¶thke that, according to a telegraphic report of the German consul general in Marseille, the police delegate with the Italian consul general, Petinatti, had related “that the measures against the Jews in the Italian zone had been in progress for about a week.”68 In fact, there was again reason for confusion on the German side. In a conversation that von Mackensen conducted with Mussolini on Ribbentrop’s orders on 17 March 1943, the latter had initially reaffirmed that Italy had given the French police a free hand in its measures against the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone.69 This corresponded to the first of the “three possibilities” that Ribbentrop had communicated to Mussolini through von Mackensen on 9 March 1943 as a German proposal for the measures to be taken against the Jews.70 It

was neither more nor less than what the Germans could expect based on an analogous application of the ObergBousquet agreement of August 1942 to the Italian-occupied zone, and von Mackensen must have been happy to be in a position to communicate this message to Ribbentrop, given that it represented a “clear solution” such as Ribbentrop had explicitly demanded in a further telegram on 13 March 1943.71 This fresh instruction regarding a conversation to be conducted by the ambassador with Mussolini had become necessary after the Italian foreign ministry had, in turn, informed von Mackensen, on 11 March 1943, “that on account of the French and foreigners of Jewish race or those to be regarded as dangerous, the Italian police authorities will take all necessary measures in the French areas occupied by Italian troops.”72 In this respect, the ministry continued, “the policy of interning the JewsВ .В .В . will be maintained; it has been ordered and already carried out.”73 Evidently, Ribbentrop’s fresh intervention was supposed to ensure that the German Embassy in Rome did not content itself with these messages from the Italian foreign ministry but instead continued to urge Mussolini to intervene personally as the Germans desired.74 Mussolini now actually held out the prospect of such a personal intervention,Page 204 → with his pledge to von Mackensen on 17 March 1943. Nevertheless, things remained in abeyance. It was no accident that Ribbentrop, both in his telegram on 9 March and in the one on 13 March, had ordered von Mackensen to inform Mussolini that the German side found it desirable either that the competences in the “Jewish Question” in the Italianoccupied French area would be transferred to the civil and police authorities or that the corresponding tasks would be assumed by the “ReichsfГјhrer-SS” along with the French police.75 By contrast, from the German point of view (based on its experiences until then), allowing the French police “a free hand” in the Italianoccupied zone to conduct the measures against the Jews only lengthened the chain of opportunities for contrary interventions. In this respect, the German side was trapped by its own political deference toward Mussolini. On the one hand, it would have preferred that Mussolini had decreed the simple transfer of competences in the “Jewish Question” to the Italian occupation administration, the military as well as the civil (particularly, if possible, in close coordination with the German police leadership in France—hence Oberg and Knochen), and that he had linked this with strict directives (“draconian orders”). In this way, it would still have been possible to capitalize on the state of suspension that had developed on the German side and to strengthen the position of the German police organs in direct collaboration with the Italian Axis partner. On the other hand, the German side could not literally prescribe to Mussolini the measures to be taken, and, above all, it could not raise any objections against an approach that it had been demanding from the Italian side for months—namely, not to further hinder the measures of the French police against the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone. Either way, the Germans had to reach an accommodation with the Italian military and the government in Vichy and its subordinate authorities, hence with two partners who were internally accused of continued unreliability or even obstruction in the measures to be taken against the Jews. This ambivalence in actual relations as well as in the Germans’ own assessments is expressed clearly enough in von Mackensen’s telegraphic report to the Foreign Office on his conversation with Mussolini of 17 March 1943. Realistically speaking, von Mackensen had to assume that a change in course in the treatment of the “Jewish Question” on Mussolini’s orders would be attributed to German influence by the Italian military agencies in charge and that this would touch on the sensitive issue of Italian sovereignty both Page 205 →toward the powerful German Axis partner and in the exercise of occupation power vis-Г -vis the French government and its administrative agencies. It was foreseeable that Mussolini would be confronted with this point of view by his foreign policy advisers and the Italian generals. In light of this, von Mackensen cleverly transformed the problem of the authority of the Italian occupying power in France into a problem concerning Mussolini’s personal authority vis-Г -vis his own military. In response to my observation that [the Italian commander in chief] Colonel General Ambrosio would certainly object that a corresponding order of the Duce would not be sustainable because it disavowed the Italian military authorities vis-Г -vis the French, the Duce shrugged his shoulders with a smile and a movement of the hand that could only be interpreted in the sense, “Only one person gives the

orders here, and that’s me,” which I also so interpreted without him contradicting me.76

This shows the diplomatic skill with which von Mackensen implemented Ribbentrop’s impositions. Since it was not possible, in any case, for the German side to monitor the actual implementation of Mussolini’s promised directives to the military agencies in the Italian-occupied zone of France, von Mackensen had now at least ensured that the dictator linked his personal prestige with them. Von Mackensen, not without a certain degree of self-conceit, also made this clear in his report to Ribbentrop. Should cases arise in the future that indicated that local military authorities are sabotaging the clearly stated will of the Duce, then, based on today’s conversation, I would always be in a position to appeal directly to Duce [sic].77 This also shows clearly that Mussolini placed his personal vanity above the moral and political prestige of the Italian military and hence ultimately above Italy’s foreign policy interests. It must have been equally clear to von Mackensen that this could only accelerate the erosion of Mussolini’s domestic political power basis and that Mussolini himself was blind for the perception of such risks, for his careful inquiry concerning Ambrosio’s possible reaction clearly points to this. The Ciano crisis of early February 1943 had already made clear that even his closest party supporters had begun to turn their backs on Mussolini. The events of 25 July 1943 would merely constitute the end point of this development.

Page 206 →Mussolini’s Decision of 18 March 1943 Among the old loyal party supporters of Mussolini was Guiseppe Bastianini, former ambassador to the United Kingdom, governor of Italian-occupied Dalmatia since June 1941, and state secretary of the Italian foreign ministry from 14 February 1943. As governor of Dalmatia, Bastianini, himself a fascist of the first hour, had refused to carry out the Germans request for extermination measures against the Jews living in Dalmatia.78 According to his own account,79 immediately following the meeting between Mussolini and von Mackensen, he received a telephone call from the latter, while he was still at Mussolini’s official residence in the Palazzo Venezia, with the information that the “Duce” had given his approval for the implementation of the arrests and internments of the Jews by the French police in the Italian-occupied areas of France. According to von Mackensen, Mussolini had asked him to communicate this decision to Bastianini and to call on Bastianini to forward it directly to the military commander of the Italian-occupied zone in France, so that the latter could take the corresponding measures. The arrests and internments of the Jews were then to be carried out immediately by the French police, with the support of Gestapo units. Mussolini’s procedure of having directives to his own state secretary communicated by a German diplomat was either completely dilettantish or designed to ensure that the German initiative once again came to nothing. Bastianini, at any rate, claimed to have requested additional clarifications, responding to von Mackensen that he did not accept directives from Mussolini through go-betweens. Minutes later, von Mackensen, according to Bastianini, appeared in his outer office, in such a hurry that he excused himself for being completely out of breath. He then admitted that he had acted on direct instructions from Ribbentrop, who was, in turn, under orders from Hitler. Bastianini responded that Ribbentrop’s procedure was completely unacceptable and that Ribbentrop would not tolerate the like in Berlin. Bastianini added, “Had I been present at your consultation with the Duce, I would have rejected, out of hand, a demand such as you have made because it constitutes an insult to Italy and to the Italian flag, under whose protection all those living in the French zone occupied by our troops find themselves.”80 Bastianini now held a consultation with Mussolini, in the late morning of 18 March 1943, evidently in the presence of Italian commander in chief Ambrosio.81 He claimed to have recalled the consequences of the concessions made to Ribbentrop for the prestige of Italy in France and elsewhere Page 207 →and, above all, the responsibility of Italy for those people—Bastianini specified the number “20,000 men, women, and children”—who were destined to fall victim to the measures of the French police, even though no blame

could be attached to them by the Italian military authorities in France. He argued that if all of those Jews, including the children, were spies, as the German side claimed, then the German police should present the evidence for this, so that one could form one’s own judgment.82 According to Bastianini, Mussolini expressed surprise about this aspect of the matter but objected that one could not forbid the police of the government in Vichy, which the Italian leaders themselves had recognized, from carrying out the raids. Thereupon, Bastianini had responded that in cases of a political nature of such importance, the French police could act only with the explicit consent of the commander of the Italian occupying troops.83 Whatever course Bastianini’s conversation with Mussolini on 18 March 1943 actually took in detail, the outcome was a new, important swing in the Italian position. In his postwar memoirs, Bastianini claimed to have proposed to Mussolini that the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone of France be removed to the hinterland as demanded by the Germans, not by the Vichy police and not to camps controlled by them, but under the supervision of the Italian civil police on the ground within the Italian-occupied zone. In making this proposal, he claimed to have pointed out the numerous hotels in Savoy, thus in the French dГ©partements Savoie and Haute Savoie, that were standing empty because of the war. Mussolini allegedly agreed to this with relief and, still in Bastianini’s presence, called the chief of the Italian police, Carmine Senise, whom he instructed to examine the viability of the corresponding measures. Bastianini further claimed that he informed von Mackensen of Mussolini’s decision, after returning to the Palazzo Chigi.84 Whereas Bastianini’s retrospective report, notwithstanding its dubious credibility in detail, at least presents an informative impression of the atmosphere surrounding these events, von Mackensen sent the Foreign Office a telegraphic report on 20 March on the actual consequences. As von Mackensen recounted, Bastianini had informed him that “in the question of how to proceed against the JewsВ .В .В . in the parts of France occupied by the Italians, the Duce had opted for our solution no. 2 and had issued the corresponding directives.”85 By this was meant the transfer of competences in the “Jewish Question” from the French to the Italian civil police, originally mentioned and also described as the preferred solution in Ribbentrop’s telegram to von Mackensen of 9 March. That von Mackensen nevertheless showed himself to Page 208 →be, as he said in his telegram to Berlin, “quite surprised” toward Bastianini presumably had less to do with the proposed solution itself than with the evident confusion on the Italian side, which pointed to precisely those internal conflicts that the German side had sought to neutralize by exercising direct influence on Mussolini. Von Mackensen was forced to conclude that this attempt had been a failure. In addition, Bastianini informed him that the purpose of the arrests and internments of the Jews actually intended by the German side—namely, their deportation—was by no means being pursued by the Italian side: to the question of what they planned to do with the Jews after their arrest and internment, “that is, whether a deportation was being considered,” Bastianini responded that “this was not intended for the present.”86 Thus, for von Mackensen, the events of this 18 March were a disaster, both politically and personally. Whereas he had proudly reported his success with Mussolini to Ribbentrop in the morning,87 he was now forced to concede sheepishly that the whole German approach of interning and deporting the Jews in the Italian-occupied areas of France with the help of the French police had been a failure. Equally embarrassing for von Mackensen was the fact that Mussolini, whose explicitness and steadfastness he had only just praised, began to waver under the influence of his advisers. To top it all, he also had to report to Ribbentrop that the Jews under the Italian occupation power would be put up in hotels in the French Alpine region.

The Appointment of an Italian Police Officer for the “Jewish Question” and the Temporizing Obstruction of the Deportations The administrative essence of Mussolini’s decision of 18 March 1943 was the transfer of competences in the “Jewish Question” in the Italian-occupied zone in France from the military to the police. This is exactly what had happened in the German-occupied area almost a year earlier, through the appointment of a senior SS leader and chief of police. Thus, on the German side, the members of the Sipo/SD apparatus may actually have cherished the hope of making decisive progress in the arrest and, if possible, also in the deportation of the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone, in direct cooperation with a responsible police leadership. However, these hopes proved

to be in vain. The German side was simply unable to establish contact with a responsiblePage 209 → Italian police leadership. Reigning on the Italian side were not only chaos concerning competences in the “Jewish Question” but also the determination to circumvent the persecution measures as such. Already on 18 March, Mussolini appointed the chief of police of Bari, Guido Lospinoso, as the man in charge. Von Mackensen reported to Ribbentrop on this as well, not without adding, in his need to justify himself, that with Lospinoso, the “Duce” had chosen a police officer “known to him [Mussolini] personally as especially energetic.”88 Thus the German calculation seemed initially to be paying off. When, on 27 March 1943, Chief MГјller of the Gestapo personally traveled to Rome and there, as he subsequently reported, discussed “the Jewish Question in the recently occupied French territory with both the German ambassador and the chief of the Italian police [Senise] at the behest of the ReichsfГјhrer SS,” he declared himself to be convinced that “the Italian policeВ .В .В .В , in response to a clear and forceful directive of the Duce, have sent the general inspector [more properly, regional inspector] of the Italian police, Lo Spinoso [sic], and his deputy, Vice Questor Luceri, together with a number of colleagues, to the French territory under Italian occupation,” in order “to regulate the Jewish problem, as this has arisen, especially at the present time, in line with German conceptions, in close collaboration with the German police and, if necessary, the French police.”89 MГјller instructed Knochen “to make immediate contact with Lo Spinoso [sic] and to find out what his remit is.”90 MГјller’s concluding remark resonates with a veiled doubt—concerning Lospinoso’s actual presence in the Italian-occupied zone and the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures announced by Mussolini—that was not fortuitous. Over the following days, the Italian army insisted strictly on its competences in the “Jewish Question” toward the French authorities, various Italian authorities sent queries to senior Sipo/SD officials on the German side about who should initiate and carry out which measures against the Jews, and the Sipo/SD leadership made futile attempts to contact Lospinoso as demanded by MГјller. Thus the representative of the Italian supreme command with the government in Vichy, General Arvana de Gualteri, explained to the Directeur des Services de l’Armistice, Admiral Bourrague, Platon’s successor, that there had been no change regarding the content of the messages of 2 and 17 March and that the latter—namely, the reference to the exclusive responsibility of the Italian military authorities for “every issue connected with policy toward the Jews”—was neither a request nor a proposal but a precise notification addressed to the French government.91 On 3 April 1943, the Page 210 →dГ©partement Auslands-SD (Foreign Secret Service) of the BdS in Paris reported, in response to a query made by MГјller the previous day, “that neither the Italian Embassy in Paris nor the army in Mentone in charge knows anything about the arrival of the gentlemen [Lospinoso and Luceri] named in the telex.” It reported further that the Italian Embassy had itself sent a query to Mentone.92 On 7 April 1943, Hagen forwarded to his superior, Oberg, who was in Wiesbaden at the time, the message that, according to the information of a certain First Lieutenant Malfatti, the “Italian liaison officer” Lospinoso had already returned to Rome.93 The questions (as Hagen initially described them) that were posed by Lospinoso through Malfatti must have struck the representatives of the Sipo/SD as strange: Were the “measures to be taken against the Jews in the recently occupied territory” to be “carried out by the French”? Were mass internments of Jews with French citizenship being requested by the German side in the “recently occupied area”? Had mass internments of French citizens already been carried out by the German authorities? A short time later, the questions came not from Lospinoso but from the commander of the Italian Fourth Army.94 At any rate, RГ¶thke drafted a report for Knochen to Gestapo chief MГјller in Berlin, informing the latter that answers had not yet been given to Lospinoso’s questions or, as the case may be, those of the Italian Fourth Army, because it was thought that “given the attitude of the Italian authorities in the Jewish Question until now, addressing this after all important problem with a first lieutenant, or even providing first lieutenant Malfatti with answers to the questions, when it has been announced that Spinoso [sic] himself would conduct the negotiations,” had to be rejected “on principle.” Specifying that it was a matter for Lospinoso himself “to present these questions to us,” Knochen requested “immediate guidance as to how we should proceed.”95 On the same day, 8 April 1943, Knochen received Gualtieri’s letter to Bourrague of 29 March from Bousquet, confirming the exclusive authority of the Italian army in all measures against the Jews in the zone occupied by Italy.96

All told, the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris had to choose between suspecting chaos or obstruction on the Italian side. On 9 April 1943, MГјller first attempted to find a remedy. He informed Knochen, in response to Knochen’s telex of the previous day, that he had “requested the [German] police attachГ© in Rome to intervene with the Italian chief of police to ensure that Lospinoso either travels to Berlin or makes immediate personal contact with you.”97 But this attempt did not lead anywhere either. Page 211 →It soon dawned on the Sipo/SD bureaus that all that had changed, in practice, in the handling of the “Jewish Question” by the Italian military and civil authorities in southeastern France was that the Italians had, in fact, begun to transport the Jews from the coastal region inland. On the one hand, in so doing, the Italian agencies gave the impression that they were conducting the internment measures for reasons of military security, which corresponded at least approximately to the justification repeatedly forced on the alliance partner by the German side.98 On the other hand, Gualtieri insisted to the French authorities that the Italian authorities had the general competence regarding all measures against the Jews in their own occupied zone and that the Vichy authorities had to revoke the arrests and internments of Jews residing in the Italian-occupied area.99 On 4 May 1943, the regional prefect in Nice, Marcel RibiГЁre, received a directive from the Italian military authorities to provide, within three days, a complete list of the Jews of all nationalities, including “stateless” Jews, who had been arrested or interned by the French authorities and were currently in the Italian-occupied zone. The request contained precise instructions concerning the information to be included in the lists—among other things, the reason for the arrest or interment in each case—and the instruction that the Italian military authorities be informed immediately of all further arrests and internments under inclusion of the desired information.100 On 6 May 1943, the commander of the Italian troops in ChambГ©ry informed the prefect of the dГ©partement Haute Savoie that even the arrest of Jews subject to regular criminal prosecution was admissible only “after examining each accusation that provides the motive for the arrest.”101 On 14 May 1943, RibiГЁre complained to the interior ministry, to the regional representative of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, and to his colleague in charge, the regional prefect in Lyon, that the Italian directives made it impossible for him to implement “the decisions of the French authorities responsible for internal order and security.”102 The Sipo/SD offices in Lyon and Paris proved to be completely confused and irritated when the Italians did not take any sweeping measures against the Jews even after an attack on the Italian headquarters in Grenoble in which a general and three further officers were injured.103 The reports on the behavior of the Italians that reached Knochen from both the French side and from his own agencies in the provinces must have confirmed his impression that, notwithstanding the political declarations of intent on the Italian side and the appointment of an Italian plenipotentiary for the “Jewish Question” in the Italian-occupied areas of southeastern Page 212 →France (Lospinoso), the German and French police could still not count on the Italians in the persecution of the Jews—indeed, that downright obstruction had to be expected from the Italian side. Lospinoso himself remained a veritable phantom for the Germans.104 On 24 May 1943, Knochen, in a letter drafted by RГ¶thke, reported to Gestapo chief MГјller in the RSHA that the attempts to make contact with Lospinoso had proven to be fruitless, even though help had been sought from the Italian Embassy in Paris. He went on, “This has confirmed my supposition that certain Italian agencies are, at very least, uninterested in the solution of the Jewish Question in France and may even be employing a delaying tactic.”105 Knochen added the request that MГјller should again intervene personally with the Italian government. The distrust on the German side was heightened still further by the information that among Lospinoso’s close advisors was a Jew or “half Jew.” The individual in question was Angelo Donati, a businessman from Modena. He had been president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Paris from 1932 to 1939, before losing his position on account of the anti-Jewish laws of the fascist regime. Donati was a knight of the French Legion of Honor and maintained close contacts with Alberto Calisse, the Italian consul general in Nice, where Donati was the director of a French-Italian bank.106 Thus, in complete contrast to Lospinoso, the police officer who had just been transferred from Apulia to Nice, Donati had at his disposal an extensive network of personal contacts on both the Italian and French sides, which was evidently the reason why, presumably at the urging of Calisse, his services were utilized by Lospinoso. What could be more obvious, from a pragmatic point of view, than entrusting a wellconnected Jewish banker of Italian origin with regulating matters concerning the Jewish section of the population

in the Italian-occupied zone? That the approach of the German ally to the “Jewish Question” was not at all pragmatic but, instead, strictly ideological need not be of any concern to an Italian consul general. On 26 May 1943, the commander of the Sipo/SD task force in Marseille sent a telegram to RГ¶thke in response to his telex to the Sipo/SD command posts in Dijon, Lyon, and Marseille of 12 May, announcing that news had been received of Lospinoso’s arrival in Marseille and that “his most important associate is supposed to be the half Jew Donati.”107 Before forwarding the telex from Marseille to Knochen, RГ¶thke added the handwritten note that Donati might even be “100 percent Jew.”108 An undated report by the former head of the Section d’enquГЄte et de contrГґle (SEC), Jacques Schweblin,Page 213 → which, to judge by the endorsements of the Sipo/SD offices, must have been from the end of May 1943, confirmed the information about Donati.109 In the meantime, the Italian foreign ministry secured its flank against German influences, especially when it came to Lospinoso’s activity. The German advances toward achieving a close coordination between Lospinoso and the Sipo/SD offices in France—not least those made in person by Chief MГјller of the Gestapo—were met with delaying tactics by Rome. Furthermore, the Italians made clear that Lospinoso’s task was a highly political matter whose details could not be dealt with exclusively at the professional police level, as the German side desired.110 The senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris were left with no other alternative than to order the subordinate agencies in the “southern zone” to monitor the conduct of the Italians toward the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone as closely as possible and send “immediate and continuous” reports on it.111 On 31 May 1943, given this state of affairs, Eichmann undertook one of the many attempts of the RSHA to exercise influence through the Foreign Office on the Italian government and its treatment of the “Jewish Question” in the Italian-occupied areas of France. He made a request “for fresh query concerning meeting with Lo Spinosa [sic].”112 This initiative did not come to anything either. In the middle of 1943, therefore, the “Jewish Question” in the Italian-occupied areas of France was in a state of suspense, in which it was destined to remain until the separate armistice of the Italians with the Western Allies on 8 September. Italian and French agencies deflected responsibility back and forth, so that even deportations of the Jews from the coastal regions to the French alpine dГ©partements, which had been promised to the Germans, were conducted only on a limited scale.113 The Italian agencies could place the responsibility for this, in turn, on the Vichy authorities who wanted to claim the hotel capacities in the French alpine region for the evacuation of children from areas threatened with bombardment (and who presumably considered this to be much more appropriate given the practice, followed since 1940, of accommodating Jews in camps and under the worst conditions). The senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris were also amazed to learn that Lospinoso, on whom nobody on the German side had yet set eyes three months after his appointment by Mussolini, had met with Bousquet on 22 June 1943 to inform the latter of the current situation—among other things, of plans to intern approximately 7,000 Jews in MegГЁve, which Bousquet rejected. Besides this, Bousquet once again addressed the fundamental question of the Page 214 →division of competences, with the explicit indication that he “regarded it as more appropriate for the French police to conduct the measures against the Jews.”114 Since this would have countermanded Mussolini’s decree of 18 March 1943, Lospinoso had a welcome opportunity to make the political character of this issue clear to Bousquet as well and to announce that, first of all, he would “travel to Rome to clarify this question.”115 Again, Knochen was left with no alternative except to complain bitterly to Kaltenbrunner and MГјller over the conduct of the Italians and to request that corresponding overtures be made to the Italian government.116 When, finally, at the beginning of July 1943, a meeting with Lospinoso was scheduled to take place in the office of the Sipo/SD task force in Marseille, Lospinoso, without prior notice, instead sent an associate, who declared “that he could not take any decisions in matters regarding the Jews.”117 The commander of the task force in Marseille thereupon devoted over half of his report to complaints about the “Jew-friendly attitude” of the Italian authorities.118 A discussion on 21 July 1943 between Lospinoso and the representative of the SEC with the regional prefecture in Nice, Rombaldi, led, by contrast, to an agreement to establish labor camps for Jews in the Italian-occupied areas.119

The conduct of the Italian agencies was presumably of less political weight in the eyes of the collaboration regime in Vichy than the Sipo/SD representatives in Paris and Berlin feared. Accommodating several thousand Jews, among them many able-bodied men, in the hotels of a preferred French vacation area not only was a provocation for the SS but also posed a legitimation problem for the government in Vichy. The latter, on the one hand, was a prisoner of its own anti-Jewish agenda and, on the other, would have liked to use the hotels confiscated by the Italian occupying power for popular measures, such as accommodating children from areas threatened with bombardment.120 Röthke likewise observed, in his regular report on 21 July 1943 on the “state of the Jewish Question in France,” that he had “to date forwarded more than 20 reports . . . on the attitude of the Italians to the Jewish Question” and that there was “thus far no sign of a change in attitude on the part of the Italians.” Instead, “approximately 1,000 poor Jews from the Côte d’Azur” had been “brought to health resorts in the départements Isère and Savoie,” where the Jews were “subject to virtually no restrictions, but, on the contrary, are being put up in the best hotels.”121

Page 215 →Mussolini’s Deposal on 25 July 1943 and the Armistice between Italy and the Allies on 8 September 1943 On 24 July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism proposed to the Italian king Mussolini’s dismissal, which duly followed on 25 July. As a result, July 1943, which saw the landing of the Allies in Sicily, the resulting abandonment of the battle of the Kursk bulge, and the de facto collapse of the Berlin-Rome Axis, proved to be the most catastrophic month for Hitler since the beginning of the war. From a military point of view, securing the southern flank of “Fortress Europe” became the highest priority. The contingency plans for disarming the Italian troops and the assumption of their positions by the Wehrmacht were put into effect,122 with massive German troop reinforcements in Italy. Relations between Italians and Germans were now marked by deep distrust, even though, for the present, the Axis was not rescinded by the Italian side.123 However, von Mackensen’s reports from Rome leave no room for doubt that the reliability of these avowals was viewed with skepticism.124 The Italian military agencies in southeastern France protected the Jews against the persecution measures literally until the last minute. Not only could there no longer be any question of an agreement to deliver Jews to the French labor camps, but on 25 August 1943, the supreme command of the Italian Fourth Army expressly forbade local authorities to intern male Jews between the ages of 18 and 50 in labor camps of the “Organisation Todt.”125 The Italian authorities, which certainly were informed, at least by rumor, of the ongoing secret negotiations on a unilateral armistice with the Western Allies, made preparations for an evacuation of the Italian-occupied zone in France, with the inevitable consequence of German troops advancing into the abandoned positions or even of open hostilities between the former Axis partners. The Jews who had been transported to the alpine region were gradually brought back to the area in and around Nice.126 It was planned to repatriate the Jews with Italian citizenship and, if necessary, to transfer all of the Jews in the still existing Italian-occupied zone to Italy. According to the testimony of the new Italian foreign minister, Raffaele Guariglia, diplomatic relations between Germany and Italy practically broke down at the end of August. The initiation of hostilities by the German side was seen as possible at any moment. Guariglia acutely prophesied that the country was on the point of undergoing a double occupation, by the Germans in the North and by the Allies in the South.127 Page 216 →A large-scale plan to evacuate 20,000 to 30,000 Jews from the Italian-occupied area in southern France to North Africa, coordinated with the Allies, was thwarted by the premature and unilateral announcement of the armistice with Italy by the Allied commander in chief, General Eisenhower, on 8 September 1943 at 6:30 p.m. The German supreme command, which had been prepared for weeks for this eventuality, immediately began the military occupation of the former Italian-occupied zone in France.128 An unparalleled hunt for Jews began in the former Italian-occupied zone, of which Klarsfeld writes that “among all of the raids conducted in Western Europe, these were the most terrible.”129 One of the most notorious Jew hunters in the Gestapo, Alois Brunner, now hastened to Nice. Prior to this, he had conducted a months-long regime of terror in the Drancy transit camp north of Paris,130 and now he and his men

combed the Nice region for Jews, in order to have them deported immediately to Drancy and, from there, to Auschwitz. Brunner did not secure the support of the French police, however, and therefore remained relatively unsuccessful. A couple of months earlier, he and his henchmen had wiped out the entire Jewish community of Salonica,131 deporting over 50,000 Jews to Auschwitz. By the end of 1943, however, he managed to arrest and deport no more than 1,819 of the 20,000 Jews who, by Klarsfeld’s estimation, were living in southern France at the beginning of September 1943. Klarsfeld sees in this a paradoxical effect of Brunner’s fanaticism: “He did everything on his own and, as a result, was not as efficient as he otherwise could have been.”132 The operation of Brunner and his arrest units was no longer able to compensate for the failure of the persecution of the Jews in the zone occupied by Italy until 8 September 1943. If large-scale help and rescue on an individual basis played a crucial role in saving the lives of a majority of Jews in the provinces, this occurred in the former Italian zone, in the city of Nice in particular. Thousands of Jews were kept in hiding by ordinary Frenchmen which is why, despite Brunner’s frantic efforts, his raids were far less successful than intended.133

Page 217 →

Part IV Strategic Occupation Policy and the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”

Page 218 → Page 219 →

Chapter 10 Safeguarding the Collaboration at the Expense of the “Final Solution” The disposition of the Sipo/SD leadership toward the Vichy government was naturally shaped by the effort to implement the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as far as possible under the terms of the ObergBousquet agreement of August 1942. The agreement itself was not to be exposed to challenge, since, from the German perspective, it was the pledge of the policy of collaboration in the area of policing. Hence it was as much a symbol as the operative basis of the power of the SS and its development as the guarantor of the German claim to power in occupied France. The dramatic military defeats of the Axis powers and their allies between November 1942 and July 1943 and their geopolitical implications reinforced the political and implicit military importance of the SS in France still further. In the course of this development, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France remained one of the key objectives of German occupation policy in general and of the Sipo/SD apparatus in particular. However, it occasionally took a backseat to more general considerations of occupation policy. The considerations of the Germans were decisively shaped by the stance adopted by the government in Vichy, which, as regards the “Jewish Question,” was itself influenced by public opinion and by the social groups that supported the regime. The coincidence between the military turn beginning in the fall of 1942 and the indirectly related extension of the Italian occupied zone in southeastern France to the RhГґne played, as we have seen, a central role from the perspective of the senior German Sipo/SD officials. The obstruction of the local Italian military administration by the Vichy administration that was collaborating with the Germans, the directives from Rome that had been exacted by the German side, and the delaying tactics of the special representative of the Italian police (Lospinoso) not only prevented Page 220 →the carrying out of a deportation program that accorded with German conceptions in the Italian-occupied areas of France until September 1943. The stance of the Italians, who were, after all, Germany’s Axis partner and closest military ally, also reduced the willingness of the French government to collaborate in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” which the German occupying power was pursuing with maximum energy. The French police could not see any point in enforcing measures against the Jews, at the behest of the Germans, against domestic political resistance, when these measures were being all but demonstratively thwarted by the Germans’ Italian allies. The senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris were aware that the impact of an intensification of the persecution measures against the Jews in its own occupied zone and in the, as it was now known, “recently occupied” area in southeastern France would be seriously impaired as long as the Jews could attempt to flee to the Italian-occupied area.1

Further Tensions with the SS and the Project of a Denaturalization Law Under the circumstances, all that Oberg and Knochen could hope for in the “Jewish Question” was that the agreements reached with Laval and Bousquet would be observed. The essence of these agreements was the restriction of the deportations to Jews of non-French nationality and the respecting of the administrative autonomy of the French police, which, for its part, had to collaborate in the repression of “enemies of the Reich” when called on to do so by the Germans. Oberg and Knochen had to avoid allowing this arrangement to come under strain, if the SS—the Oberg-Bousquet agreement of 8 August 1942 being its inaugural achievement—was not to suffer a severe loss of prestige in France and, in addition, find itself in a position of not being able to enforce the repressive measures of the occupying power for want of personnel of its own. From Oberg’s and Knochen’s perspective, therefore, by far the most attractive option was to extend the circle of Jews available for deportation by administrative means, through the revocation of French citizenship. This was precisely the prospect held out by Laval in his conversation with Oberg on 2 September 1942, at least for the Jews naturalized after 1933.2 This disposition of Oberg’s and Knochen’s had led to a recent collision with Eichmann. The latter

arrived in Paris on 10 February 1943 with the news Page 221 →that the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, or RSHA) now wanted to proceed with the deportation of all Jews from France, including those with French citizenship. This was something that Oberg and Knochen could well do without under the circumstances. Therefore, Knochen immediately contacted Eichmann’s superior, Chief MГјller of the Gestapo, on 12 February 1943, in an unusually detailed telex. He stated that he found it necessary to explain once again the essential elements of the political and professional calculation of the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris regarding the “Jewish Question” in France. “The message of SS-ObersturmbannfГјhrer [SS Lieutenant Colonel] Eichmann concerning the evacuation of Jews of French nationality,” Knochen began in his report to MГјller, “leads me to take a brief stance on this issue and, in a description of the current state of things, to indicate the points that are necessary for implementing the program in order to ensure as few difficulties as possible through the French government.”3 It was a wellknown fact, Knochen explained, that the French government “has as a result of German pressure declared its willingness to have the Jews of non-French nationality arrested and also to have them handed over by the French police to the German police for deportation to the Reich.” However, the French government, “that is, above all, Marshal PГ©tain,” opposes “any attempt to extend the measures against the Jews to Jews with French citizenship as well.” All attempts to change the standpoint of the French government had met with failure. Knochen went on, If large-scale measures are now enacted against all Jews of French nationality, then setbacks must be expected at the political level. Just as, because of the overall military situation in other areas as well, it is considered that Germany will lose the war, this is especially the case in France where people expect that the Americans will ensure the return of North Africa and, on the other hand, also provide a guarantee of a strong France. In France, on account of this now especially strong “wait-and-see attitude,” attempts are being made not to permit any further measures against the Jews in order to show the Americans that the French do not want to follow the directives of the German government. They argue against the measures to the Germans by appealing to the Italians.В .В .В . If the Final Solution to the Jewish Question in France is now ordered, then it must be expected thatВ .В .В . PГ©tain will oppose this—that is, that he will forbid the carrying out of executive measures by the French police—or that he will threaten to resign.4 Page 222 →This report is a unique document because it reveals the thinking of the SS concerning political costs being generated by the “Final Solution.” Over the coming months, Oberg and Knochen would abide unwaveringly by the position outlined in Knochen’s report. On this basis, on 16 April 1943, through a further official agreement (called the “second Oberg-Bousquet agreement”), they would also succeed in consolidating the German-French cooperation in policing. A gray zone nevertheless opened up with regard to the Jews of French nationality detained in internment camps under German control in the northern zone, insofar as they had been arrested by the French or the German side for violations of the anti-Jewish ordinances. How sensitive this point as well was for Vichy had been recorded by Knochen himself in his telex to MГјller of 12 February 1943, drawing attention to the fact that a short time before, the French police had preferred to arrest 1,300 Jews with non-French citizenship and to hand them over to the Sipo/SD agencies, instead of having a corresponding number of Jews of French nationality “who had been detained for failing to wear the Star of David badge or other transgressions” deported from the camps in which they were already being detained.5 Knochen added that it was “clear that both categories of Jews will be deported in this case.” Given his nuanced description of the political repercussions of the deportations, he clearly had an interest in presenting himself toward the RSHA as the sophisticated “hard-liner” he actually was. But the deportation of Jews of French nationality remained a source of frictions between the Sipo/SD, on the one hand, and Bousquet and his agencies, on the other. On 25 March 1943, in a note for the files on the “Refusal of the French police to cooperate in the deportation of Jews of French nationality from the Drancy camp to Germany, ” Hagen reported a request from Bousquet that the German side not insist on the participation of the French

police in the deportation of “2,000 Jews, among them 1,500 with French citizenship.”6 Hagen noted, in addition, that in conveying this message, Leguay, Bousquet’s representative in the northern zone, had appealed to a decision by Laval. The transports in question were then, as Hagen recorded, conducted “with the exclusive involvement of German police forces.” However, Oberg had let Bousquet know of his “utter amazement” at the fact “that the French government had still not abandoned its вЂsentimental’ standpoint, in spite of the recent declaration by the FГјhrer on the Jewish Question.”7 The deportation numbers at issue here were of hardly any significance for the program of the “Final Solution” in France as a whole, so the incident Page 223 →recorded by Hagen had no further repercussions aside from Oberg’s verbal muscle flexing. On the contrary, it could only strengthen Oberg’s and Knochen’s resolve to insist that Vichy cooperate on the long-promised general solution involving a comprehensive denaturalization of Jews from a certain cutoff date, still to be determined, for the purpose of deportation.8 Knochen now also ensured that RГ¶thke and Eichmann had to comply with this setting of priorities. On 18 March 1943, Eichmann had sent a further query by telex as to “the scale on which the evacuation of Jews from France can be continued or how many special trains will be required in the near future.”9 On 27 March, RГ¶thke drew up another long-winded note, addressed to “SS-StandartenfГјhrer [SS colonel] Dr. Knochen, with the request for a decision.”10 To date, RГ¶thke wrote, the number of “Jews deported” from France amounted to 49,902. This represented merely one-seventh to one-eighth of the Jews living in metropolitan France. RГ¶thke then had the presumption to issue to Knochen, his superior, a political lesson in which he did not mince his words. The “deportation” of Jews from France must not come to a standstill, RГ¶thke wrote, “until the last Jew has left French soilВ .В .В . and, in particular, before the end of the war.” The decisive issue in this regard could be “not the will of some members of the French government, or even of the French head of state, but only the will of the FГјhrer.” The attitude of the French government was “Jew-friendly and hence completely irrelevant.” “Therefore, all Jews” had to be “captured and interned without regard to their nationality,” an approach that would likewise hold until 15 May 1943 for all Jews from the “recently occupied” territories insofar as they belonged to one of the “deportable nationalities” or were “stateless.” If, on the contrary, the French government cited the conduct of the Italians toward the Jews in their occupied zone, RГ¶thke continued, the Germans nevertheless had to insist on implementing the measures against the Jews in their occupied zone, especially as a change in the stance of the Italians on the Jewish Question had to be “enforced by the FГјhrer and the Reich foreign minister in the near future.” Besides, the French government had still not enacted the law, already promised by Laval in August 1942, concerning the revocation of the French citizenship of all Jews naturalized after 1933. RГ¶thke concluded that a “speedy mass deportation of Jews from France is necessary for the simple reason that the large mass of the population, in particular the French workforce, does not understand that non-Jewish workers are being taken to Germany for a compulsory labor draft, while anti-Semitic Germany does not ensure that, first of all, the Page 224 →Jews, and especially the rich and influential Jews, are not assigned to a useful productive activity as a matter of priority.”11 Knochen did not allow himself to be impressed by these reproaches of RГ¶thke, which skirted open disloyalty. On 29 March 1943, he made a curt reply to Eichmann’s telex of 18 March: “Special trains will not be needed for Jew transports in the immediate future.”12 “For political reasons,” he noted, measures against Jews of French nationality “can scarcely be implemented because of the attitude of the Marshal.” Besides, Knochen added, “the French side incessantly appeals to the stance of the Italians.” Finally, he concluded that an arrangement was imminent “through the creation of a law to the effect that all Jews who immigrated to France after 1932 can be [de]naturalized.”13 After the passage of the denaturalization law, “special trains would have to be employed regularly, for then it is estimated that approximately 100,000 Jews could be deported.” In this context, the figure of 100,000 Jews who would fall under a denaturalization law with a cutoff date in 1932 or 1933 was a complete fabrication and, as Klarsfeld conjectures,14 was mentioned by Knochen in order to pacify Eichmann. On the one hand, this was a confirmation of the line that Knochen had laid down in his telex to Eichmann on 25 September 1942. On the other hand, the question of the implementation of the “Final Solution” in France was now conclusively culminating in the passage of the denaturalization law.

For the time being, however, as RГ¶thke had rightly grasped, the deportation plans of the RSHA for France were thwarted once again. By comparison with the 43 transports in 1942, 8 transports had been conducted by 25 March 1943, followed by 9 transports by the end of the year and 14 further transports by the time of the liberation of France from German occupation in late August 1944. The “Final Solution” had become definitively bogged down in France. Indicative of this was the concession extracted from Mussolini by his diplomats and senior military advisers on 18 March 1943 to keep the responsibility for the measures against the Jews in the Italianoccupied areas of France under Italian control and, contrary to Mussolini’s earlier promise to the German ambassador in Rome, not to transfer it to the Vichy authorities collaborating with Germany. Knochen’s message to Eichmann of 29 March 1943, however, meant nothing less than that the German side was making the carrying out of comprehensive deportation measures in France contingent on the willingness of the government in Vichy to enact a denaturalization law. This law was supposed to strip of French citizenship all Jews who Page 225 →had been naturalized after a cutoff date (to be determined), so that they could be handed over to the Germans and deported as “stateless” in line with the existing agreements.

The Oberg-Bousquet Agreement of 16 April 1943 In the spring of 1943, Knochen did not want to jeopardize the German-French collaboration relations through the systematic deportation of Jews with French citizenship. After the collapse of his general plan late in the summer of 1943, he would prove to be an especially brutal persecutor of Jews. For the time being, however, he sought to renew the Oberg-Bousquet agreement, and once again, as in September 1942, he received Himmler’s backing for this. On 3 April 1943, Himmler traveled to Paris in person for an in-depth meeting with Bousquet. The “Jewish Question,” whose importance for German occupation policy in France RГ¶thke had stressed in his selfimportant note for Knochen just a couple of days earlier, played no role in this consultation.15 Instead, Himmler showed himself to be, as the envoy Schleier put it in his report to the Foreign Office, “impressed by Bousquet’s personality.” Schleier reported that Himmler “now clearly shares the view defended until now by Oberg that Bousquet is as valuable a collaborator in the context of police cooperation as he would be a dangerous opponent were he to be forced into the other camp. The ReichsfГјhrer is of the opinion that Bousquet is such a strong and active personality that he is certain to play a role in French politics again in future beyond the framework of his present activity as secretary-general of the police.”16 According to a report based on information by Laval and written by the German consul general in Vichy, Krug von Nidda, Bousquet, for his part, declared himself to be “very satisfied concerning the understanding for France [of the] ReichsfГјhrer SS, which exceeded even that demonstrated by Heydrich.”17 Himmler’s visit and his conversation with Bousquet therefore had an exclusively political character, both as regards Germany’s general occupation policy and when it came to the collaboration in the area of policing in particular. That Himmler did not broach the “Jewish Question” with Bousquet meant that also—or especially—the “ReichsfГјhrer SS” attached high priority to the role of France as a labor reservoir for the German war effort and, as regardsPage 226 → the role of the police, for securing the military rear areas given the probability of an Allied landing. Then, on 16 April 1943, just a couple of days after Himmler’s visit to Paris, the senior German and French police representatives held a meeting whose outcome has been called the “second Oberg-Bousquet agreement.”18 The foundation for the meeting was a convergence of interests that Bousquet and Himmler must have discussed on 3 April and that Bousquet recorded in a note ten days later. Since the “Anglo-American aggression in North Africa and the treason of certain high-ranking French personalities,”19 it had become increasingly difficult to distinguish those “criminal acts” that were directed against the German Wehrmacht from those directed against internal order and the French government.20 Now, Bousquet wrote to Oberg, one must prevent the French police from increasingly losing their sense that they are working for their own country and from instead falling into a condition of slavery after the defeat. In such a case, the French police force would doubtlessly remain loyal, but it would be passive. Bousquet wanted to ensure that the police would behave loyally toward the German side while at the same time actively performing the tasks assigned to it by the French government. The best means of ensuring this, in Bousquet’s view, was a solemn ratification of the fact that the collaboration between the

German and the French police was compatible with the independence of the French agencies of law enforcement. This position of Bousquet’s was perfectly compatible with German interests. The risk that the French police would slacken their efforts in view of the uncertainty created especially by the military successes of the Allies in North Africa and the massive promotion by the Americans in North Africa of officials and officers of the Vichy regime (above all of General Giraud, who had escaped from German war captivity in April 1942) had to be taken seriously by the German police leadership. Thus, just as on 8 August 1942, a joint event involving all Sipo/SD commanders and the police intendants of the French regional prefectures was held in the headquarters of the French interior ministry in Vichy on 16 April 1943. It opened with an address in which, as Bousquet desired, Oberg once again summarized the principles of the German-French collaboration in the field of policing, on the model of the agreements of August 1942, and declared, Each of the [partners in the collaboration] recognizes that the joint task in the [military] operation zone and the occupied zone is to use all available Page 227 →means to combat the communistterrorist attacks, foreign agents, and saboteurs, and particularly not only the individual perpetrators but also those who influence them: the Jews, the Bolsheviks, and the Anglo-Americans.21 Bousquet responded with a veritable eulogy of the German-French police collaboration, which he prefaced with an homage (which he explicitly designated as such) to Reinhard Heydrich: he had not forgotten the encounter he had had with Heydrich almost a year before, because of the outstanding intelligence and understanding with which the latter had greeted every nuance of his remarks. Bousquet also recapitulated the principles of the GermanFrench police collaboration, making explicit reference to the agreement of 8 August 1942. However, he stressed that the unease among the French police had to be kept in mind. This was the result, on the one hand, of inadequate equipment and, on the other, of the situation that had arisen as a result of “Anglo-American aggression in North Africa and the treason of certain high-ranking French personalities.” Bousquet explicitly confirmed Oberg’s definition of the common enemy: “terrorists, communists, Jews, Gaullists, and foreign agents.” In contrast to the agreement of 8 August 1942, in which “communists, terrorists, saboteurs” were individually listed as “common enemies,” now the Jews and the Gaullists were explicitly mentioned.22 Bousquet then introduced into his address an essential argumentative turn whose thrust would be instrumental in his resignation at the end of 1943. He claimed for the French police the right to conduct criminal prosecutions specifically in cases of attacks against the German military, because these, by their very nature, were directed just as much against the French government and its institutions, all the more so because the German police forces were always kept informed of the precise details of the French police measures in this area. Bousquet argued that one had to avoid falling back into those practices that the August 1942 agreement sought to remedy—by which he meant the German interference in French police competences—and possibly taking measures that could facilitate the foreign campaign to demoralize the French police.23 The breach of these principles led Bousquet to resign in December 1943. From late in the summer of 1943, the German police forces, the Sipo/SD as well as the field gendarmerie, switched back to summarily arresting and deporting Jews, among them French citizens, at their own initiative. The background was the definitive refusal by the Vichy government to enact a denaturalization law that would have permitted the wholesale expatriation Page 228 →and deportation of Jews. From that moment on, the leadership of the German police in France, with Knochen, who had been so “diplomatic” up to that point, in the vanguard, went back to conducting actions entirely on its own. As we saw in the case of the former Italian-occupied zone and the actions of Alois Brunner, these improvisations were not of equal effectiveness to the administrative mass procedures that Knochen had originally planned. Knochen could anticipate this problem in the spring of 1943. Therefore, during the first half of the year, between the second Oberg-Bousquet agreement in mid-April and the definitive rejection of a denaturalization law by PГ©tain in late August 1943, he and his fanatical and hence reviled colleague RГ¶thke concentrated their energies on the hoped-for French denaturalization law.

Page 229 →

Chapter 11 The Failure of the Denaturalization Law The summary denaturalization of Jews of French nationality for the purpose of their immediate deportation formed the point of convergence of various practical logics both within the SS apparatus and within the collaboration relations between the Germans and the French. Technically speaking, this measure would have remained within the framework of the general line agreed on by Oberg and Bousquet: only non-French nationals would have been deported, through the agency of the French administration and French police but on behalf of the Germans and under German oversight by the Sipo/SD forces, in both the northern and the southern zones. At the same time, the denaturalization law would have brought Eichmann’s deportation plans a decisive step closer to realization. It represented the last attempt to achieve the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France within the framework of the “state collaboration” (Stanley Hoffmann’s term) that had been solemnly reaffirmed by the meeting of the German and French police leaderships and their respective entourages on 16 April 1943, known in the literature as the “second Oberg-Bousquet agreement.” The establishment of the Commission for the Revision of Naturalizations in July 1940, on an independent French initiative, had already created a relevant institutional mechanism that must have made this solution appear all the more attractive, in practical administrative terms, in the eyes of the Germans. In a technical legal sense, the proposed law was actually a special law within the framework of the general denaturalization law of 22 July 1940. When it came to the division of competences within the Vichy government, this led to a tension between the Commissariat general aux questions juives (CGQJ), which was in charge of operations, and the central authorities in Vichy. Whereas the agreement over the wording of the law was again marked by broad harmony between the head of the CGQJ, Darquier de Pellepoix, Page 230 →and the “Jewish Desk” (Judenreferat) of the Sipo/SD office in Paris, hence RГ¶thke, the political decision to introduce the law remained contingent on an agreement between Laval and Bousquet, on the one side, and Oberg and Knochen, on the other. Not the least consideration in this regard from the perspective of Laval and Bousquet was to keep Darquier under control, given that he was prone to making hasty concessions to the German side without concrete political quid pro quos. In addition, of course, it was also a matter of safeguarding the general competence of the central authorities in Vichy.

The German Initiatives until the End of 1942 Already before preparations began on a formal bill on the denaturalization of Jews of French nationality, the “Jewish Desk” of the Sipo/SD—initially Dannecker and then, after Dannecker’s transfer on disciplinary grounds in July 1942, RГ¶thke—had repeatedly broached the topic of including Jews naturalized after 1919 in the deportation measures. This was done partly to give superiors pointers concerning possible demands to be raised in the ongoing negotiations with Laval and Bousquet on the collaboration between the leaderships of the German and French police and partly to provide Eichmann with information about the potential scale of the deportations even if they were formally restricted to non-French nationals. In his speaking notes for the meeting between Knochen and Bousquet on 4 July 1942, Dannecker had recommended instructing Bousquet that the French police were to “arrest Jews with French citizenship when ordered by the Germans, especially as we have explained that they can initially focus on the Jews naturalized after 1919.”1 Two weeks later, after the large-scale raid in Paris and surrounding areas on 16 and 17 July 1942, Dannecker reiterated his point in a further note.2 Knochen took up the issue in his meeting with Laval and Bousquet on 3 August 1942, the primary purpose of which was to prepare for the joint meeting of the German and French police leaderships on the occasion of the formal announcement of the Oberg-Bousquet agreement five days later.3 In response, Laval, as Hagen noted in his minutes, declared himself “to be in agreement in principle with such a procedure based on the information he had already received from Bousquet,” though he emphasized “that a gradual approach in the form laid down is necessary for him for psychological reasons.”4 Subsequent to Dannecker’s replacement, RГ¶thke, did not miss any opportunityPage 231 → to raise the issue

in his meetings with representatives of the French police.5 Laval, who, contrary to Röthke’s statement in his note of 1 September 1942, stated that he had by no means “promised” the enactment of a denaturalization law in his meeting with Knochen on 3 August, held out the prospect, in conversation with Oberg on 2 September 1942, that once the “stateless” Jews from the unoccupied zone had been handed over, “the transfer of the Jews who had acquired French citizenship after 1933” would follow.6 In this connection, both the German and French sides cited imprecise reference data and shifting dates—1919, 1927, 1933. Röthke went on to specify that the denaturalization issue should not be addressed only with a view to the prospective French law. He reiterated the exacting demand, already formulated by Dannecker, that all Jews with French citizenship naturalized after a certain cutoff date should be included en masse in the deportation measures, even in the absence of a legal basis and a corresponding administrative procedure.7 On 25 September 1942, Knochen brought the disputes with Röthke and Eichmann over the inclusion of Jews other than non-French Jews in the deportation measures to a provisional conclusion with a telex to Eichmann, whom he informed that Himmler himself had decreed “that, for the present, no Jews of French nationality are to be arrested.”8 With this decree, it became clear that seizures of Jews naturalized after certain cutoff dates in the 1920s or 1930s were out of the question without a formal denaturalization law.

The Competing Bills of the CGQJ and Bousquet A first draft of a formal denaturalization law was drawn up in late December 1942 under the direction of the Commissariat general aux questions juives. Its author was the special advisor in charge of legislative measures in the CGQJ, Jean Armilhon.9 The draft contained the provision to revoke the French citizenship of all Jews who had been granted it on the basis of the naturalization law of 10 August 1927 or one of the subsequent naturalization laws. In addition, non-Jewish wives of these Jews (there was no mention of husbands of Jewish women) were to lose French citizenship if they had acquired it through marriage to a Jew who had been naturalized on the basis of the said naturalization laws and who was henceforth stripped of citizenship. The same was supposed to hold for the children of both spouses. Finally, the bill precluded the acquisition of French citizenship by foreign Jews in the future.10 Page 232 →Armilhon’s bill was immediately forwarded by Darquier to Laval.11 However, it was not dealt with further within the Vichy governmental apparatus, as is indicated by RГ¶thke’s frustrated remark on the copy sent to him. Only in early April 1943, when contacts between the German and French police leaderships again became considerably more frequent with Himmler’s visit to Paris (on 3 April) and the impending second Oberg-Bousquet agreement (on 16 April), was there activity within Vichy on the denaturalization question. A few days earlier, on 29 March 1943, Knochen had again indicated to Eichmann that radical measures against the Jews in France could be realized only on the basis of the planned denaturalization law.12 Knochen will have alerted Bousquet to the connection between a new basic agreement on the collaboration between the German and French police and the enactment of the French denaturalization law. At any rate, on 12 April 1943, Bousquet sent to Oberg a bill of his own, which he explicitly described—probably in a conversation with Hagen, who prepared the corresponding note for the files—as an alternative draft to that of the CGQJ under Darquier and, moreover, one that had been coordinated with Laval and the minister of justice, presumably still Joseph BarthГ©lГ©my, who was succeeded by Maurice Gabolde on 26 March 1943 (the draft was submitted “with the explicit observation,” as Hagen added in his note, that it was “not directed against the person of Darquier de Pellepoix”).13 The new bill had been signed two days earlier by the new justice minister, Gabolde, and sent to Bousquet.14 It contained the provision that from the date of the publication of the law, all naturalizations of foreigners who counted as Jews under the relevant legal definitions were null and void insofar as they had occurred since 1 January 1932. Bousquet’s draft was watered down in three points by comparison with the CGQJ draft of 31 December 1942. First, the cutoff date was moved forward in time from 10 August 1927 to 1 January 1932, which meant a considerable reduction in the circle of persons covered by the law. In addition, there was no longer any mention of a blanket expatriation of the originally non-French wives of the Jews to be denaturalized or of their children. Finally, Article 2 of the law permitted exemptions modeled on the provisions of the renewed Statute on

Jews of 2 June 1941, specifically exemptions in favor of war veterans, holders of war decorations, members of the Legion of Honor, war widows, and war orphans (with a grace period of three months after publication of the law for applications for exemptions). The new draft of the denaturalization law duly spurred RГ¶thke into action.Page 233 → Once again he described the effects of the denaturalization law of 10 August 1927, claiming that it had brought about “an enormous simplification in the acquisition of French citizenship,” which “benefited the Jews in particular.”15 Knochen, for whom RГ¶thke’s note was intended, added the handwritten remark “Can scarcely be realized at once. Will be 1 Jan[uary] 1932.” Beneath this, Knochen noted in the margin (as an inspection order addressed to “IV B,” hence RГ¶thke), “Bill drafted by B[ousquet] otherwise okay? If yes, agreed, but note: take 1927 nevertheless as cutoff date; want to give it a try.”16 This was entirely typical of Knochen, who consistently combined tactical flexibility with extreme tenacity in the core questions of “Judenpolitik.” The fact that Darquier, the closest collaborator of the Sipo/SD apparatus in “Jewish issues,” had been simply pushed aside and once again duped by Laval and Bousquet seemed not to bother Knochen in the least. Over the following weeks, the efforts of the representatives of the Sipo/SD were concentrated on pushing the cutoff date back to 10 August 1927, the date included in the original bill drawn up by the CGQJ. In a brief statement on 10 May 1943, Hagen listed the changes that the Germans wanted to be made to Bousquet’s draft law, the first point being to put the cutoff date back to the date on which the citizenship law came into effect, 10 August 1927. In addition, an estimate was to be made of the probable scope of the envisaged exemptions. The blanket exemptions for Jews in German war captivity, Hagen wrote, could “not be accepted,” and the punishments envisaged for transgressions were “extremely mild.”17 Based on RГ¶thke’s information, 18 Knochen calculated, in a note for Oberg dated 21 May 1943, that according to relevant estimates, the number of Jews naturalized between 1927 and 1932 amounted to approximately 50,000 and, as a result, was “over twice the number of Jews affected by Bousquet’s draft,” which could be estimated at around 20,000.19 This initiative was, of course, expressly supported by Darquier, as RГ¶thke observed in a note, dated 29 May 1943, on a conversation with the latter.20 Oberg, in turn, wrote on the margin of Knochen’s 21 May note intended for him, “In agreement with 1927!” Knochen’s tenacity, flanked by Darquier’s repeated approaches to Laval,21 had the desired effect. The political conditions for this were favorable. After, in a cabinet reshuffle on 26 March 1943, Laval had removed from the government the last confidants of PГ©tain, among them Justice Minister BarthГ©lГ©my,22 PГ©tain redoubled his efforts to replace Laval by a loyal person with a corresponding entourage.23 On 24 April 1943, following a conversation he had conducted with Laval in Paris on the previous day, the envoy Page 234 →Schleier sent to Berlin a detailed telegraphic report on this (marked “extremely urgent,” evidently on account of Laval’s impending meeting with Hitler). Laval, Schleier reported, had prefaced his “detailed account” with the observation “that he finds himself at present confronted with a situation in every respect similar to that in the early evening of 13 December 1940.” Schleier concluded by observing, All of the agencies here agree that no successor government will exhibit the willingness and be able to maintain and continue the contributions made thus far by France to Germany on the same scale as the Laval government. I would like to point out, in this regard, that Gauleiter Sauckel expressly assured me, when he was last in Paris, that France alone has completely fulfilled its labor draft program.24 Hitler, who still had his hands full coping with the political fallout from the military setbacks on the Eastern Front and in North Africa (where the Army Group Africa would capitulate on 12 May 1943), held a series of meetings with representatives of the German allies and, on 29 April 1943, with Laval as well, together with Ribbentrop and the Italian foreign state secretary, Bastianini, in Schloss Klessheim near Salzburg. Directly before this, in a preparatory conversation with Bastianini, Ribbentrop had stressed two things regarding Laval and political conditions in France. Laval, according to Ribbentrop, was “committed body and soul to the Axis” and could not “reverse the course already taken.” Besides, the Germans had “at our disposal a French police force that has already severely compromised itself in the eyes of its fellow countrymen in the cause of the Axis, as

a willing instrument of a head of government wedded to the Axis.”25 Apparently, the “Jewish Question” and how it was being handled in the Italian-occupied zone in southeastern France did not come up in Ribbentrop’s meeting with Bastianini, who, given his direct influence on Mussolini, would have been the predestined addressee for German demands in this regard. It was clear where the priorities lay: Laval, Ribbentrop is reported to have said, “is the man who, with the aid of a French police that was seriously compromising [sic] in the cause of the Axis, would maintain order in the country until the final victory. Germany and Italy had to ensure that there are no essential changes in this situationВ .В .В . and that France makes the greatest possible contribution in terms of manpower and industrial production, that is, for the economic war.”26 Page 235 →The atmosphere in which the ensuing conversation was conducted already made it clear to Laval that he was head of the French government by the grace of Hitler.27 The latter had responded without delay to Schleier’s report, with a note to PГ©tain in which he blatantly warned that Germany would not tolerate a “repeat of events like those of 13 December 1940,” in other words, Laval’s dismissal as head of government.28 This sent the twofold signal that Hitler was especially attentive to what was going on in France and that Laval was in Germany’s debt. Laval’s quid pro quo was his consent to the “Third Sauckel Program,” in which entire age-group classes of predominantly young Frenchmen were registered for the labor draft in Germany. Presumably in order to enhance the visibility of this concession, Laval had requested a meeting in Paris with the “general plenipotentiary for labor deployment,” hence Sauckel, which took place in the German Embassy on 26 May 1943, in the presence of senior German officials and diplomats, among them Schleier and Knochen.29 Running parallel to this were the German efforts to have Laval and Bousquet put the cutoff date for the summary revocation of the naturalizations of Jews back to 10 August 1927. That was the publication date of the liberal naturalization law on the basis of which several tens of thousands of Jews had acquired French citizenship by 1 January 1932, the cutoff date specified in Bousquet’s draft. In the power struggles within the Vichy regime on which Schleier had sent a detailed report to Berlin on 24 April 1943, Bousquet was among Laval’s loyal supporters. According to Schleier’s testimony, Laval had even informed Schleier, in their conversation on 22 April 1943, that should Laval conduct a putsch against PГ©tain, Bousquet would support him with the police forces under his command.30 At the same time, however, the German side assumed that Bousquet likewise enjoyed the confidence of PГ©tain, who, as Schleier reported to Berlin on 23 April 1943, had “especially praised [reading “lobend hervorgehoben” for “lohnend hervorgehoben” in the original] the work of Secretary-General Bousquet” in his conversation with Oberg on 15 April 1943.31 Hence, one way or the other, Bousquet had to be regarded as a key figure when it came to securing domestic political stability in France in German interests. The admiring opinion of Bousquet expressed by Himmler during his visit to Paris in early April 1943 reinforced this view right into the inner power circle of the Nazi regime. The German side—both in the embassy and among the senior Sipo/SD officials—presumably did not regard it as an exaggeration when Bousquet expressed the fear that, as reported by the representative of the Foreign Office in Vichy, Krug von Nidda, “any successor Page 236 →of Laval” would “only be able to remain in government a couple of weeks” before “conditions would arise that would prompt Germany to appoint a вЂGauleiter.’”32 This explains the disposition of the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris when it came to insisting on the regulation of the cutoff date in the denaturalization law. On the one hand, the German side clearly did not want to put Bousquet in a tight spot in this matter, given that Bousquet had included the cutoff date of 1 January 1932 in his draft, which he had explicitly declared to be a counterproposal to the ideas of Darquier. This, at any rate, is how Knochen’s marginal remark on RГ¶thke’s note of 12 April 1943 (“Can scarcely be realized at once. Will be 1 Jan[uary] 1932”) should be read. On the other hand, it could be assumed that if Bousquet was not willing to make concessions, Laval would be, given his dependence on the goodwill of the German occupying power, which would have been obvious even if Oberg and Knochen were not necessarily aware of Hitler’s intervention with PГ©tain at this point in time. This tactic proved to be successful, at least when it came to the regulation concerning the cutoff date. In a consultation on 10 June 1943, Leguay informed RГ¶thke that the draft of the denaturalization law henceforth included as a cutoff date 10 August 1927. “He stated that if we had no further reservations,” as RГ¶thke put

it in his note on the conversation, “the law could already appear in the Journal Officiel in the very near future.”33 According to the information of the Germans, however, this turn of events was not Laval’s doing. On the contrary, the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris had received information from an informant about the “strong disagreement[s]” between Darquier and Laval.34 According to the informant, Laval had put his weight behind the “cutoff year 1932,” whereas Darquier had advocated the “cut-off year 1927.”35 Even the otherwise overzealous RГ¶thke now added the laconic comment “already out of date,” for Leguay had informed him on the previous day that the denaturalization law had been signed by Laval and Justice Minister Gabolde with the cutoff date of 10 August 1927. Probably Bousquet himself, therefore, had made the bill more extreme in the sense desired by the Germans. However, the “breakthrough” that met with great satisfaction on the Sipo/SD side was of limited value. On the one hand, the German side was aware that the essence of this large-scale persecution measure—namely, the uno actu expatriation and deportation of tens of thousands of Jews in the northern and the southern zones—would require major organizational efforts and, in any Page 237 →case, the cooperation of the French authorities and the French police. Following a pattern established by then, Eichmann sent an SS special unit to France to replenish the limited personnel resources at the disposal of the Sipo/SD. This unit was under the command of Alois Brunner, who, shortly before, had overseen the deportation of over 50,000 Jews from Salonica to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.36 On 8 June 1943, in a meeting with Oberg, Himmler, as recorded in Hagen’s note of 16 June 1943, not only had “ordered” that efforts should be made to persuade Laval to publish without delay the denaturalization law with the cutoff date of 1 January 1927 but had also stipulated that “all Jews affected by this law” should “be deported to the Reich by 15.7. at the latest, because, as the ReichsfГјhrer observed, all possible eventualities must be anticipated.” This issue should now “be regarded as having absolute priority by order of the RFSS.”37 On the other hand, a tug-of-war developed within the Vichy administrative bureaucracy over the wording of the law. Not only had Bousquet not consulted with Darquier—the commissioner-general for Jewish affairs—on the wording of the law, which he had explicitly represented toward the Germans as an alternative draft to the Armilhon/Darquier draft of 31 December 1942, but he had demonstratively disregarded the CGQJ. This and the watered-down content of the text of the law by comparison with the draft of the CGQJ, as well as the fact that it was not even supposed to be a law in the formal sense but merely a “dГ©cret” (comparable to an ordinance), remained a sore point with Darquier. Nevertheless, he could count, as always, on RГ¶thke’s support in this matter. On 11 June 1943, Darquier sent a letter to Laval and immediately forwarded a copy to RГ¶thke with an accompanying handwritten letter.38 He stated that he had taken care in his draft to list individually the original naturalization laws under which the naturalizations of the Jews in question had also occurred, whereas the new draft law merely spoke in general terms of the revocation of the naturalization ordinances, for which a dГ©cret was then supposed to suffice. The expatriation of the wives and children of the individuals affected was no longer envisaged, and Jews who were currently in war captivity were supposed to receive a general exemption from expatriation. Furthermore, the explicit provision included in Darquier’s draft to prohibit foreign Jews from acquiring French citizenship was missing. The following day, 12 June 1943, Darquier wrote another letter to Laval, in which he expressed a complaint about the circumstances under which Bousquet’s bill had been drawn up without the involvement of the CGQJ.39 Page 238 →Darquier’s protest did trigger a revision of Bousquet’s bill. However, it retained the simple form of a dГ©cret. The involvement of the CGQJ in the decision of the commission for denaturalizations was mentioned explicitly.40 Above all, however, the text of the ordinance now included 10 August 1927 as the cutoff date for the proposed denaturalizations (and thereby exceeded the expectations expressed internally by Knochen), and it again contained a provision to strip the French citizenship from the Jewish wives and children of those affected. It was clear to all concerned that the inclusion of the families of the expatriates would mean a drastic increase in the number of Jews actually cleared for deportation. This text was signed by Laval on 20 June 1943 and by Justice Minister Gabolde on 22 June. However, it was not forwarded to the German authorities in charge, in particular to senior Sipo/SD officials.41 Darquier forwarded the new version of the text of the ordinance of 26 June 1943 to RГ¶thke on his own initiative.42 In doing so, he seems

to have given the impression that the stiffer provisions were his doing. At any rate, on his copy of the draft of the ordinance, Röthke noted that it was the “improved proposal of Darquier that Laval no longer wants to implement.”43 On the one hand, the denaturalization project was indeed put on hold by the relevant authorities in the French government—in other words, by Laval and Bousquet. On the other hand, the planned arrest of tens of thousands of people throughout France on the same day called for massive preparations at the level of personnel and organization on both the German and French sides. This was especially true if, as Darquier envisaged in the new text of the denaturalization ordinance, entire families were to be expatriated and deported en masse. Later, in a meeting on 7 August 1943, Laval would claim that he had only signed the draft ordinance on 20 June by mistake, based on an imprecise report by Darquier.44

The Preparation of the Mass Arrests on the Basis of a Denaturalization Law The German side concentrated all of its efforts on preparing a raid that was supposed to be conducted simultaneously with the publication of the planned denaturalization ordinance. For the same reason, the French government initially had to be dissuaded from publishing the ordinance (or the “law,” as it was still called in the German correspondence). This was the procedurePage 239 → agreed on in an internal Sipo/SD meeting on 12 June 1943.45 For the rest, a detailed “arrest plan” regulated the implementation by the German and French police units in close collaboration with the prefectures and municipalities in charge of the arrests of the Jews and their families to be stripped—literally overnight—of their citizenship by dГ©cret.46 The plan already assumed that entire families would be deported, even though Bousquet’s draft of the ordinance, the official one at that point in time, did not foresee the expatriation of family members as well. Klarsfeld47 conjectures that this was why Darquier had amended Bousquet’s bill at RГ¶thke’s urging. However, that view assumes that Laval, who signed the new, stiffer draft on 20 June 1943, had actually allowed the new provisions concerning family members to be slipped in under his nose, as he would maintain to Knochen on 7 August 1943. It is more probable that an act of “incompetence” (as Joly puts it)48 led both Bousquet and Laval to overlook a certain detail of Darquier’s radicalization of the text of the ordinance, which was now, in fact, irreconcilable with the myth of protecting the old-established French nationals among the Jews. According to the new wording of the ordinance, Jewish wives of the affected Jews could be stripped of their French citizenship together with their husbands, even if these women had already been French citizens before the cutoff date of 10 August 1927.49 On this point, the new version of the ordinance signed by Laval on 20 June 1943 went beyond even the original draft of the CGQJ of late December 1942. This first draft had restricted the expatriation of wives of the affected Jews to foreigners, though non-Jewish wives would also have been affected if they had acquired French citizenship through marriage to a Jew naturalized after 10 August 1927. The internal Sipo/SD consultations of 12 June 1943 specified 24 and 25 June 1943 as the dates for carrying out the raid. In this connection, special emphasis was placed on the fact that “the Jews to be captured have to be deported to the East by 15.7.1943 at the latest by order of the ReichsfГјhrer SS.”50 Given the meager personnel cover on the German side and the extensive requirements of coordination with the French authorities, however, the deadline of 24 June for starting a large-scale raid throughout the whole territory of France—with the single exception of the Italian-occupied zone—became more unrealistic with each passing day. A further complication was that, in the meantime—thus following the internal meeting on 12 June—the Sipo/SD leadership had an urgent interest in seeing Darquier’s stiffer version of the draft ordinance actually being signed by Laval.51 Page 240 →When the deadline of 24 June approached and when it was clear that there were no circumstances under which the deportations of the expatriated Jews could be completed by 15 July as demanded by Himmler, Knochen cleverly shifted part of the responsibility onto the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA). In a telex drafted by RГ¶thke on 20 June, he made a direct request to Chief MГјller of the Gestapo to provide “at least 250 security police,” who, moreover, should be “fluent in, or at least have some command of, the French language.”52 This demand, especially as far as the required language skills were concerned, was probably deliberately unrealistic. Nonetheless, to be on the safe side,

Knochen added that “his own officers and men” were “currently deployed to the last man in the operation against communists, terrorists, saboteurs, etc.” and that, as a result, he “could not free up the personnel required” from his own resources. However, MГјller informed Knochen by telex on 2 July that he could not comply with the request for reinforcements. He observed that the “announced resumption of the action” [against the Jews] was nevertheless “extremely gratifying [sehr erfreulich], especially as the ReichsfГјhrer SS” had “recently called for an acceleration of the operation.”53 What can be read between the lines is that Knochen and MГјller were engaged in mutual blame shifting in anticipation of the failure of the planned raids. There were growing doubts on the German side as to whether the French police, including the leadership, would be willing and able to carry out a large-scale raid against the Jews, the largest of its kind since the beginning of the occupation, complex in administrative and technical policing terms. These doubts applied especially to the southern zone, where the possibilities for influencing the French authorities were slight and where the Jews had ample opportunity to avoid arrest by fleeing to the Italian-occupied zone. As it was put in the note on the internal Sipo/SD meeting on 12 June 1943, “In the recently occupied area”—as the Germans referred to the southern zone now also under German military control—“the registration operation stands or falls with the reliability of the French police.”54 That the Italian ally was not pulling its weight in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was, in the meantime, an established fact in the internal calculations of the Sipo/SD. In a meeting with Bousquet on 22 June 1943, Knochen and Hagen addressed practical questions of the implementation of the denaturalization law (though, as we have seen, this was, strictly speaking, an ordinance). On this occasion, according to Hagen in his minutes of the meeting drafted six days later, Bousquet and his representative in Paris, Leguay, responded that a Page 241 →compulsory registration of the affected Jews at the police stations in charge was being considered, as well as establishing a commission “that in approximately three months would throw light on all of the questions raised by this law [on the denaturalization of the Jews].” Bousquet received the answer that “this was admittedly a good theoretical but by no means a practical solutionВ .В .В . because, first, the Jews would not contemplate registering themselves and, second, all Jews, if at all possible, would stream into the Italian operation zone once the law had been published.”55 Therefore, the date originally aimed at for the start of the large-scale raids, 24 June 1943, passed without event. In the meantime, however, it was at least clear that implementing the denaturalization ordinance in the Italianoccupied zone would not actually be possible, because the Italian authorities wanted to take control of the measures against the Jews there themselves and to restrict them to internment in the hinterland, that is, in the alpine region. Bousquet had also drawn Knochen’s and Hagen’s attention to this in a further meeting on 23 June. This went back to his meeting a couple of days earlier with the Italian police officer in charge, Lospinoso, who, up to that point, had studiously avoided a meeting with the representatives of the Sipo/SD, which, in turn, led to one of the numerous complaints by senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris to the RSHA concerning the conduct of the Italian occupation authorities in the “Jewish Question.”56 Here the connection between the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France and the behavior of the Italian ally was once again put in a nutshell by the SS itself. The problem remained unsolved. On 7 July 1943, RГ¶thke did actually propose “henceforth a definitive deadline of 15 and 16 July 1943 for the raid, after,” as he put it ambiguously, “the preliminary negotiations with Bousquet and his negotiations with Lospinoso have taken up a considerable amount of time.”57 RГ¶thke continued, “Since no forces can be provided by Berlin, the action must be conducted almost exclusively with French police forces.” This addressed the operation’s organizational and resources aspects. In this way, the SS did not come to grips with the problem in occupation policy of the relationship with the Italian authorities and hence with the, as the Sipo/SD saw it, urgent need to block refugee movements by affected Jews into the Italianoccupied zone. Bousquet had, in the meantime, forwarded the denaturalization ordinance signed by Laval on 20 June 1943 to the delegation of the Italian occupation authorities in Vichy and had informed Oberg and Knochen of this.58 He, in turn, took the opportunity to make clear that he had his doubts about Page 242 →the implementation of the

denaturalization ordinance in the Italian-occupied zone in the sense agreed on between the German and French sides. Oberg and Knochen, who knew how right Bousquet was about this, nevertheless had to maintain appearances and thus informed Bousquet that he need not bother his head about the concerns of the German occupying power, or words to that effect.59 The implementation of the denaturalizations, arrests, and deportations now hung in the balance in three respects. In the first place, the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris reserved the right to authorize the publication of the ordinance, because the administrative and police preparations had not yet been concluded. In turn, on the one hand, these preparations were complicated by differences between the conceptions on the Germans and French sides, and on the other, the de facto impracticability of the denaturalization ordinance in the Italian-occupied zone was clear to both the German and the French authorities. Finally, until then, the German side had only received unofficial word of the draft ordinance signed by Laval and Justice Minister Gabolde on 20 and 22 June 1943. Thus the French government, for its part, reserved the right to officially inform the German occupation authorities. Even prior to this, the German side had suspected that the new “Jewish law,” as it was referred to for short in the German correspondence, was being pursued only halfheartedly by the French side and that Bousquet was not a reliable collaboration partner in this regard either. In the meeting on 22 June 1943, Bousquet, according to Hagen’s note, had declared that he was “not entirely up to date” on the matter and was “for the moment uninterested in the matter following its acceptance in principle by the justice minister.” Apparently in order to relate at least something of relevance to his Sipo/SD interlocutors, Bousquet added that “at any rate he had in the meantime discovered the real reason why the first Jewish law on denationalizations of Jews since 1927 proposed by Darquier de Pellepoix had been rejected. In the opinion of the justice minister, this law would have overthrown the entire foundation of existing French legislation on naturalization. In particular, it would have involved the revocation of the citizenship of all Italian citizens naturalized since 1920.” RГ¶thke dismissed this with the handwritten marginal note “This was a deliberate lie on Bousquet’s part!”60 and, in fact, Bousquet’s remarks did not correspond to the content of the bill submitted by Darquier at the turn of the year 1942/43. Nevertheless, the preparations for the raids now planned for 23 and 24 July 1943 continued between the midlevel German and French police officers.Page 243 → On 10 July, Lischka, the chief SS- and Gestapo official in the city of Paris, summoned the senior personnel of the PrГ©fecture de police to a meeting scheduled for 14 July. The invitation included instructions for the implementation of the planned raid, all of which crop up again in the minutes of the meeting of 16 July and hence were also agreed on in this form with the French police leadership in Paris.61 The senior Parisian police officers were confronted with the details of the planned large-scale raid for the first time at this meeting, whose scheduling for 14 July was willy-nilly fraught with special symbolic significance (this was not necessarily the intention of the Gestapo, and the police representatives of the “État FranГ§ais” could not acknowledge this to themselves). Evidently caught unawares, the director of the Department for Foreign and Jewish Affairs in the PrГ©fecture de police, Jean FranГ§ois, called on RГ¶thke again the following day. FranГ§ois reported that the PrГ©fecture de police wanted to compare the naturalization files with the Jewish index and to send the results to the Ministry of Justice, which would require one and one-half months to two months of intensive work. Apparently RГ¶thke only now confided in FranГ§ois the nature of the measures that had been decided within the Sipo/SD, which involved conducting the arrest, examination, and internment of the Jews uno actu upon publication of the law. FranГ§ois thereupon relented, because he acknowledged, as RГ¶thke noted, that “our plan was entirely feasible and would lead much more quickly to the goal.”62 In his minutes of the meeting, RГ¶thke again recorded the dates for the large-scale raid as “Friday and Saturday of the coming week, that is, 23 and 24 July 1943.” The meeting with the midlevel French police officers on 14 July 1943 reflected RГ¶thke’s preferred tactic of creating a fait accompli whenever possible. In any event, the measure had not been coordinated with Bousquet. Rather, the latter made a formal complaint, in a letter to Oberg on 20 July 1943, that the leadership of the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police had been summoned to appear by Lischka without the knowledge of the government (and without that of the police prefect himself, as Bousquet falsely added).63 This reflected a dilemma that could scarcely be resolved by Lischka und RГ¶thke, the Gestapo officers who were directly in charge on the German

side. The more concrete the preparation measures for carrying out the raids became and the longer they proceeded, the greater was the risk that information concerning the planned arrests would seep out. This is apparently what happened after the meeting on 14 July. In a note on 31 July 1943, RГ¶thke recorded the report of the police captain in the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police, Charles Page 244 →Permilleux, that although “preparations for the capture” of the Jews naturalized after 1927 within the jurisdiction of the police prefecture “were all but complete,” “today the Parisian Jewry has already received detailed information concerning the impending action.” RГ¶thke observed that there could “no longer be any doubt that the Parisian Jewry has been informed in the minutest detail, probably by the PrГ©fecture de police itself, about the arrest plan and that the Jews affected have already gone into hiding or will do so at the latest on the days of the arrests.” He concluded that it must “therefore be expected that the action will produce meager results.”64 Out of this developed, first in the areas formerly occupied by the Italians (from 8 September 1943) and then throughout France (from the end of 1943), the kind of persecution of the Jews beyond the scope of all official agreements with the leadership of the French police—namely, the conduct of arrests by regular German police forces and SS capture units without regard for jurisdictions and questions of nationality—which RГ¶thke and his predecessor Dannecker had always intended but which had until then been blocked by Knochen with the backing of Himmler, in favor of the orderly administrative solution. “The undersigned,” as RГ¶thke pronounced in his characteristically pompous tone, “will submit to the StandartenfГјhrer [Knochen] in the coming days, as a precaution, a further plan for the expedited capture of as many Jews as possible by German police forces and troops. The intention is to first arrest the Jews from the provinces of the old occupied territory in a lightening [schlagartig] operation without regard to any more or less arbitrary considerations of nationality. If necessary, the actions could also be carried out in this way in one or more command areas or in larger cities of the region of southern France (Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille).”65

Crisis of the Police Collaboration During July 1943, the German plan for the administrative “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France thus began to buckle due to its internal political and organizational functional flaws. At the level of the French government, hence of Laval and Bousquet, the incentives to collaborate with the Germans once again in a sensitive domestic political matter were dwindling. The mistrust on the French and German sides was growing—on the one hand, because the midlevel Sipo/SD leadership (Lischka, RГ¶thke) tried to create faits accompli on the technical levels of administration and policing Page 245 →and, on the other hand, because the denaturalization ordinance signed by Laval and Justice Minister Gabolde on 20 or 22 June 1943 was not officially forwarded to the German occupation authorities. The plans to arrest tens of thousands of Jews throughout the whole of France, so meticulously and elaborately worked out by the German side, were likely to come to nothing because the preparations could not be reliably kept secret on account of the delay and the unavoidable involvement of the French police. A year earlier, at the zenith of the German military triumphs in Russia and North Africa, the disposition of the Vichy government in a similar constellation would presumably have led them to hand over Jews of French nationality with as little fuss as they had handed over the foreign and “stateless” Jews beginning in July 1942. In this respect, July 1943 marked the decisive turning point. On 10 July, the Allies landed in Sicily. As a result, the decisive battle sought by Hitler in an attempt to recover the German initiative in the East (Operation Citadel) was aborted at the Kursk bulge. On 25 July, the Grand Council of Fascism ousted Mussolini. At the end of July, a major air raid by British bombers reduced a major German city, Hamburg, to rubble for the first time, with casualties among the civilian population (over 30,000 fatalities) at levels unknown in Germany up to that time. At that point in time, the government in Vichy had every reason to wind the collaboration with the German occupying power down to a level that could be justified in terms of preserving national interests in the case of an Allied victory. This clearly did not apply to the measures against the Jews, whose real purpose was to transform Frenchmen into non-Frenchman and to surrender them to the German occupying power. Also during the month of July, key representatives of the Vichy regime were forced to acknowledge the monstrous reality of the German persecution practice against the Jews, whose real character they had refused to believe until

then. Alois Brunner, who had been operating as director of the Drancy camp since 1 June 1943, had established a perfidious regime of terror in the camp. Information about the conditions in the Drancy camp, which had previously been run by the French police alone, reached PГ©tain, who forwarded it to Bousquet. On 20 July 1943, Bousquet felt compelled to address the official complaint to Oberg already mentioned. In a multipage script,66 Bousquet listed the crimes of Brunner and his closest collaborators: for example, the arbitrary deportation of detainees, among them numerous French citizens; the blackmailing of relatives of detainees, who, as a result, had “voluntarily” submitted to imprisonment; the construction of a “specialPage 246 → prison” in a basement with atrocious hygienic conditions; the cancellation of letters and of permission to receive a weekly food package; spiteful and cruel punishments; the transfer of seriously ill patients and women in childbed from the Jewish HГґpital Rothschild to the internment camp; and numerous measures designed to harass and terrorize. Bousquet explicitly emphasized that not only Brunner’s modus operandi in Drancy but also Lischka’s summoning of the Paris police prefect and his colleagues—by which Bousquet meant the meeting on 14 July 1943 to prepare the raid to be conducted upon publication of the denaturalization ordinance—were in breach of assurances provided by senior Sipo/SD officials.67 The thrust of the message was that the two Oberg-Bousquet agreements of August 1942 and April 1943 were being subverted by lower-ranking German authorities. This message could be read as implying that, in Bousquet’s view—the length of the message already suggested this—the entire basis of the German-French collaboration in the area of policing was at stake. It could not really have come as a surprise to Knochen, the actual addressee of Bousquet’s letter to Oberg, that his extremely capable partner on the French side, who resembled him in many respects, was demanding that the ground rules be observed. In fact, no one would present such a differentiated and insightful characterization of the motives of the French side after the moratorium on the denaturalization ordinance by Vichy as did Knochen in his notes. Conversely, Bousquet’s dГ©marche demonstrated once again that, although he had an acute appreciation of the moral dimension of the persecution of the Jews, his overriding impulse was not the fate of the Jews but the struggle for shares of power in the conflict with the German occupation administration. Of course, this was also the only dimension in which it was possible to negotiate with Oberg and Knochen. Moreover, the point of his descriptions of Brunner’s regime of terror in Drancy was by no means to put the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris under moral pressure but to highlight the negative repercussions that these practices and specifically the fact that they had come to the attention of PГ©tain were bound to have for the political support for the collaboration on the French side.68 Brunner’s regime of terror in Drancy and the fact that he had resumed the deportation trains from the camp69 led the president of the Jewish Central Consistory, Jacques Helbronner, to address PГ©tain directly and to point out the inhumane conditions in the Drancy camp.70 On 2 August 1943, he repeated this dГ©marche together with the chief rabbi of France, IsaГЇe Schwartz, in a detailed letter addressed to Laval, in which Helbronner also Page 247 →pointed out the arbitrary arrest of the chairman of the Union GГ©nГ©rale des Israelites de France (UGIF) in the northern zone, AndrГ© Baur.71 Baur had been arrested by Brunner’s men on 21 July 1943 and was himself imprisoned in Drancy after he had complained about Brunner’s regime to Laval. He would be deported to Auschwitz together with his wife and four children, where they were murdered.72 At about the same time, the police prefect of Paris, AmГ©dГ©e BussiГЁre, who had been initiated independently by Lischka and RГ¶thke into the deportations planned for after the publication of the denaturalization ordinance, noticed the legal pitfalls in the draft of the denaturalization ordinance signed a month earlier by Laval and Gabolde. In a letter dated 22 July 1943, he drew Justice Minister Gabolde’s attention to the fact that the text of the ordinance permitted the revocation of the French citizenship of wives of Jews even if the latter were of French origin and that, according to the proposed clauses, children of Jews could lose French citizenship even though they were not necessarily Jews in the sense of the relevant French laws and even though, by ethnic origin, they could be French citizens or be entitled to French citizenship.73 In a subsequently scheduled meeting with the police prefect on 26 July 1943, Gabolde reaffirmed that in signing the draft of the denaturalization ordinance on 22 June 1943, he had by no means intended to agree to the automatic imprisonment and deportation of the denaturalized Jews. In addition, he said that had he been better informed, he would under no circumstances have included in the ordinance the regulation depriving the French Jewish wives of denaturalized Jews of French

citizenship. Gabolde had instead demanded that the text of the ordinance, which was currently in the possession of the German authorities for examination, be withdrawn for reexamination,74 and this is precisely what had occurred the previous day.

Laval Cancels the Publication of the Denaturalization Ordinance Laval’s state secretary, GuГ©rard, informed Darquier de Pellepoix on 25 July 1943 that, on account of the possible “repercussions” of the law concerning the revocation of the naturalizations granted to Jews since 10 August 1927, the head of government requested that Darquier conduct a conversation with Laval during his next visit to Paris on the proposal and until then “defer Page 248 →any measures concerning the publication or implementation of this law.”75 This was the key sentence. The denaturalization law was de facto a failure, and with it fell the German plan to tackle the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in a relatively smooth large-scale administrative operation based on the two agreements between Oberg and Bousquet of August 1942 and April 1943. In the last week of July 1943, the actors immediately involved in planning the operation were hardly aware of Laval’s decision or its implications. The dramatic events in Italy, where Mussolini had been deposed on the same day, 25 July, must have overshadowed all other political perceptions and valuations. That Laval stopped the publication of the denaturalization ordinance on the day of Mussolini’s fall, Hitler’s most significant political blow since the outbreak of the war, could, as has rightly been pointed out,76 only have been a coincidence, but it was nevertheless a highly symbolic coincidence. Scarcely anyone else may have grasped as quickly as Laval the geopolitical consequences of the impending collapse of the “Axis” and that this collapse would inevitably have implications for the orientation of Vichy policy, even if it was still entirely unclear what kind of implications these would be and who would initiate them. The usurpation of the police leadership in Paris and in the dГ©partement Seine, about which Bousquet had complained in his letter to Oberg, continued on the same day, in a further meeting involving Lischka and RГ¶thke on the German side and the Paris prefect of police, BussiГЁre, and senior colleagues on the French side.77 A day later, RГ¶thke drafted a new note for the files, with the subject heading “Current status of the Jewish Question in France.” In it is no longer any mention of a deadline for carrying out the large-scale raids, which were actually planned for 24 and 25 July 1943. According to Klarsfeld, the deadline was postponed from 20 July to 9 August in the meeting.78 To all appearances, the administrative and technical policing preparations for the largescale raids continued until early August 1943. The collaboration relations at the senior level, notwithstanding Bousquet’s letter to Oberg of 20 July 1943, had not been permanently soured by that time either. Knochen, as we have seen, did not yet believe that German options were exhausted, even after Laval’s provisional “no” to the publication of the denaturalization ordinance. In late July 1943, a further meeting took place between the senior German and French police leaders at the highest level, on the occasion of the visit to Paris by Heydrich’s successor Kaltenbrunner and his discussions with Bousquet, in which, as already during Himmler’sPage 249 → visit in early April, the “Jewish Question” seems not to have featured.79 In the meantime, however, the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris were informed, presumably by Darquier, of the change in direction in Vichy regarding the denaturalization ordinance. On 4 August 1943, Knochen addressed Schleier, the chargГ© d’affaires of the German Embassy in Paris, in a letter drafted by RГ¶thke. Following a brief summary of the state of the preparations for the law (with reference to the agreement with the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police) and for the large-scale raids to arrest the Jews affected by the law and their family members, now planned for 9 August 1943, Knochen wrote, “As I have now learned, Laval does not want to have the law published or to have it come into effect on 9 August 1943.”80 There follows the request to insist, through the representative of the foreign office in Vichy, Consul General Krug von Nidda, on “support for the law, which has been prepared in meticulous detail, and that official notification of it be made immediately to the military commander and to me [Knochen] so that the law can be published in the Journal Officiel on 9 August 1943 at the latest.”81

It seems unlikely that Knochen, in signing off on what amounted to an exhortation to issue an ultimatum, cherished any hopes in this regard. The primary concern of the Sipo/SD chief in Paris remained to reach any agreement at all with Laval and Bousquet on a denaturalization law. Knochen could feel vindicated. Following the submission of the original bill authored by Bousquet, he had immediately warned against exaggerated optimism when RГ¶thke, in collusion with Darquier, had insisted on a cutoff date of as early as possible for the denaturalizations of the Jews. At the time, Knochen had made a plea for an “incremental” approach. In his view, Darquier’s meddling and the radicalizations of the denaturalization law at his urging had presumably merely led to foreseeable conflicts within the Vichy bureaucracy, to the detriment of the collaboration relations as a whole. The Sipo/SD leadership was now feeling these effects. Hagen addressed the issue in a meeting with Bousquet’s representative in Paris, Leguay.82 On this occasion, Leguay apparently revealed a complex web of tactical considerations, factual standpoints, and evasions on the Vichy side. That Darquier’s radicalized version of Bousquet’s bill allowed the possibility of also revoking the citizenship of spouses of French origin married to the Jews falling under the provisions of the law, Leguay reported, was “unacceptable.” He emphasized that Vichy had, after all, raised no objections against the publication of the first draft (by Bousquet)—an allusion to the fact that the publication had actually been held up by the German side in order to Page 250 →be able to conclude the administrative and technical policing preparations. In addition, as Hagen recorded, the preparations themselves (above all, the meeting with the Paris prefect of police scheduled by Lischka for 14 July 1943) were cited by Leguay, exactly like they were by Bousquet in his letter to Oberg on 20 July 1943, as evidence that the German intentions clearly went far beyond what the French side had associated with the project of a denaturalization law up to that point. The thrust of Lischka’s directives to the Paris prefect of police was clearly “to arrest the Jews falling under the law and deport them to Germany immediately upon enactment [of the law].”83 Hagen’s note continues, “Since it must be assumed that these measures are to be conducted in general, President Laval cannot declare his consent to them and has therefore instructed the prefect of police [of Paris] not to carry out the preparations taken by him until President Laval has had an opportunity to talk either with GruppenfГјhrer Oberg or with StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen.”84 This disclosure spoke volumes. Leguay, who initially sought to convey the impression that he was not familiar with the details,85 clearly had detailed information about the content and the official wording of almost every one of the recent positions taken by the French side. This was true of Bousquet’s complaint to Oberg about Lischka (20 July) as well as of the query by the Paris prefect of police, BussiГЁre, on how to deal with Darquier’s radicalized version of the denaturalization ordinance (22 July) and of Laval’s letter of 25 July ordering Darquier to put all measures leading to the publication or implementation of the denaturalization law on hold for the time being. Therefore, Leguay’s pretext of ignorance could only reinforce the presumption on the German side that they were being stalled by Laval and Bousquet. This was even more true of Leguay’s observation that Laval could not give his consent to the plan to arrest the Jews denaturalized on the basis of the planned law and to deport them to Germany immediately upon passage of the law, as though Laval had only learned of this proposal from the Paris prefect of police after the latter’s meeting with Lischka. Laval had, of course, known for a long time that the immediate deportation of the Jews was the sole purpose of the denaturalization law from the German perspective. In essence, nothing other than this had been the constant object of the relevant meetings he had conducted with Oberg and Knochen since the summer of 1942. The recent development on the French side must have confirmed Knochen in his original assumption that insisting on more extreme provisions in the denaturalization law, such as those pushed by RГ¶thke in close collaborationPage 251 → with Darquier, was not likely to lead to enduring success. He had handwritten the remark “Can scarcely be realized at once. Will be 1 Jan[uary] 1932” on RГ¶thke’s note of 12 April 1943, in which the latter had insisted on pushing back the cutoff date for revoking the naturalizations to include the period after the liberal French immigration law came into force on 10 August 1927.86 On the other hand, RГ¶thke may have felt emboldened to take this stance by Oberg’s marginal note on the position paper of the Sipo/SD legal department on Bousquet’s draft law (“In agreement with 1927!”), which was dated 21

May 1943.87 The regulation concerning the cutoff date now remained a stumbling block, assuming one wanted to take Laval seriously at least on technical grounds. Darquier’s “revision” of Bousquet’s bill of early June 1943, aside from widening the circle of persons to be expatriated to include the members of the families of the Jews to be denaturalized, had also put the cutoff date back in time, from 1 January 1932 (Bousquet draft) to 10 August 1927. To Hagen’s report of 6 August 1943, Knochen now promptly added the handwritten instruction “Now want immediate submission of simple law.”88 By the “simple law,” he could have meant as much the draft provided by Bousquet on 12 April 1943 (with a cutoff date of 1 January 1942) as the draft law signed by Laval and Gabolde on 20 and 22 June 1943 (with the cutoff date of 10 August 1927), of which, as was also lamented by Hagen in his note of 6 August, official notification still had not been provided. At any rate, Knochen’s remark (“submission of simple law”) referred to the removal of the regulation also to strip the members of the families of the expatriated Jews of citizenship, which Darquier had introduced into the wording of the law and whose implications had not been grasped by Gabolde, according to his own testimony. This had occasioned perplexity within the administration (e.g., in the case of the Parisian prefect of police), and Leguay had now explicitly declared it to be the stumbling block to Hagen. From Knochen’s perspective, it may be conjectured, all of the discussion to and fro over the draft of the law—which, after the government in Vichy had been brought so far that it was willing to entertain a draft law at all, had been precipitated, above all, by the two zealots RГ¶thke and Darquier—had only led to wasting the critical weeks in June and July 1943, with their cataclysmic changes in the military and geopolitical situation. At this time, precisely those “possible eventualities” arose to which Himmler had alluded in his conversation with Oberg on 8 June 1943 as the reason for his demand for immediate publication of the French denaturalization law and the completionPage 252 → of the deportations of Jews by 15 July 1943.89 Now, in August, the Germans found themselves in a situation in which Vichy was even less inclined to make concessions to the German side in the “Jewish Question” that were costly both domestically and in terms of foreign relations, because, at bottom, Vichy was in the driver’s seat. In view of the looming Allied landing in Western Europe and of the key position of the French economy in supporting the German war effort (on which Ribbentrop had placed so much emphasis in his conversation with the Italian foreign state secretary, Bastianini, on 29 April 1943), to precipitate a break, on account of the “Jewish Question,” with Laval of all people the most reliable among the collaborators at the highest political level, would have entailed risks that were difficult to calculate. Thus, from Knochen’s perspective, all that was left was to save what could be saved of the denaturalization law, which de facto meant to abandon the idea of a wholesale “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France. Two days after Leguay’s meeting with Hagen, Laval and Knochen met on 7 August 1943. During this meeting—according to the note that Hagen also prepared on this discussion90—Laval thematized not the question of the cutoff date or of the inclusion of members of the families of the Jews to be expatriated but, instead, the actual envisaged purpose of the expatriations, namely, the immediate arrest and deportation of the expatriates: “Laval declared that the deportation of the Jews deprived of French nationality that we seem to be pursuing with the preparations made in Paris”—another allusion to the meetings of Lischka with the Parisian prefect of police and his colleagues on 14 and 20 July 1943—“is jeopardizing the enactment of the law. He stated that he cannot expose himself to the charge of enacting laws in order to drive Jews into our arms.” This statement of Laval’s is reminiscent of the corrupt head of the Vichy police, Capitaine Renault, in Michael Curtiz’s film Casablanca, who has Rick’s Cafe shut down at the urging of the German SD major Strasser on the grounds that he is outraged to learn of the illegal gambling being conducted there—having earlier participated in it and enriched himself in the process. “Driving Jews into the arms of the Germans” was the sole purpose of the agreements reached by Laval and Bousquet on the French side and Oberg and Knochen on the German side, to which 52,000 Jewish deportees had fallen victim by August 1943. Knochen also felt compelled to officially remind Laval that the deportations of non-French Jews were merely in conformity with the agreements reached earlier.91 Laval’s decisive message, however, was that he had signed the version of the law radicalized by Darquier “by mistake based on Page 253 →a false report by Darquier.” Therefore he had to “cancel it

and restore the law to the state into which Bousquet had brought it.”92 However bizarre Laval’s justifications may have been, they at least left it open to the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris to insist that the law be enacted in “the state into which Bousquet had brought it.” There was clearly confusion on the German side, though, as to which draft Laval was actually referencing. Three days after Laval’s consultation with Knochen, Röthke presented a summary of the various stages through which the draft had gone,93 in which he alleged that Laval had consented to the enactment of the denaturalization law without the radicalizations subsequently introduced by Darquier and with the cutoff date of 10 August 1927. Röthke silently passed over Laval’s rejection of the immediate implementation of the law through arrests and deportations. Instead, he proposed a new date for the publication of the law and the simultaneous arrests: “18.8.1943 is proposed as a publication date. On the same day, the arrests of the Jews affected by the law would have to take place, starting in Paris. The necessary preparations for this have already been taken at the level of policing.”94 However, according to the note for the files prepared by Hagen on 11 August 1943, Laval had stressed “that the deportation of the Jews stripped of French citizenship . . . is jeopardizing the enactment of the law.” Röthke’s “proposal,” therefore, was once again mere propaganda. He may also have assumed that he could thereby put Knochen under pressure. After the consultation with Laval on 7 August 1943, he must have had scarcely any remaining illusions about French intentions to enact the denaturalization law. However, it would not have been consistent, either with Knochen’s temperament or with the need to ensure that he had backing within the SS apparatus, if he had contented himself with Laval’s now all-but-patent refusal to cooperate with the German deportation measures through legislation and police collaboration. Nor could he literally run after Laval, whom he had just met with in Paris, in order to badger him again.

“The French Government No Longer Wants to Work with Us in the Jewish Question” As a result of RГ¶thke’s proposal of 10 August 1943, Knochen sent RГ¶thke to Vichy, where he arrived early in the morning of 14 August.95 RГ¶thke, a subaltern SS officer, and HauptsturmfГјhrer (Captain) Georg Geissler from the Page 254 →Sipo task force in Vichy made their way to the president of the French Council of Ministers and the secretary-general of the French police in order to discuss the matter that, according to the German side, was one of the central concerns of occupation policy. It was clear that RГ¶thke’s mission was just a facesaving measure. RГ¶thke nonetheless prepared a note96 of no less than four dense typewritten pages on the meetings with Laval and Bousquet, in which he vented his frustration.97 Laval, when asked about the state of things, indicated the following: PГ©tain has been informed about the drafts of the law. He had been very indignant about the fact that, according to one draft, the wives and children of the Jews affected were also supposed to be denaturalized.В .В .В . We told Laval that we desire the expedited enactment of the Bousquet draft and that I had to report immediately to the BdS [commander of the security police and the security service, Knochen] and that therefore this report had also been sent. Thereupon Laval stated the following: a) When he signed the Bousquet draft, it had not occurred to him either that the affected Jews were supposed to be arrested. However, he had recently received confirmation of this from the BdS. [Knochen inserted a handwritten marginal note at this point: “typical; this is the whole point of the law—the old fox has known about this for a long time.”] I responded to Laval that the FГјhrer has issued a clear order on the Final Solution to the Jewish Question throughout Europe. To my knowledge, it had already been agreed a year ago with the French government that the solution to the Jewish Question in France was supposed to proceed by stages. After all, enacting a law on denaturalizing the recently naturalized Jews for the purpose of arresting and deporting them had already been discussed a year ago. b) Laval contended that he would still have to discuss the draft at the ministerial council scheduled for

17.8.1943. He stated that he would certainly be queried by several ministerial colleagues about the purpose of enacting such a law. The only answer he would be able to give in that case would be that the Jews in question were supposed to be interned and deported. c) Ultimately, however, the law was of such significance and its object was such that it could only be signed by the Marshal himself. NaturalizationsPage 255 → and denaturalizations, like amnesties, could only be decreed by the Marshal in his capacity as head of state. Besides, the Marshal had already shown an acute interest in the law, so that he would still have to consult with the Marshal at the earliest possible opportunity.В .В .В . d) Laval stated that the primary obstacle for him in any operation against the Jews was the stance of the Italians on the Jewish Question.В .В .В . e) Laval then addressed the issue that the law could be applied only in a form that first had to grant the affected Jews a three-month grace periodВ .В .В . to submit applications for exemptions in accordance with the wording of the law. Therefore, police measures against the Jews covered by the law could be taken at the earliest three months after passage of the law. In the territory of southern France, at any rate, he could not authorize any other treatment involving French police. If we already wanted to take measures against the Jews in the old occupied area prior to this, then he had to protest against this in his capacity as head of government. However, he stated that he is aware of how we are handling his interventionsВ .В .В . (evidently, Laval rightly had the wastepaper basket in mind). Therefore, he could not make the French police available for the arrest of these Jews in the old occupied area [= the northern zone] either; if we wanted to proceed with our own forces, then he could not prevent us from doing so. [Knochen’s comment in the margin: “He’s making a method of impertinence.”] I responded to Laval that we could not wait for the end of a three-month grace period. Besides, in my experience, all Jews affected by the law would make applications for exemptions within this grace period, on which decisions would then have to be made within a further grace period.В .В .В . Summarizing: The French government no longer wants to work with us in the Jewish Question. [In the left margin are three exclamation marks, evidently by Knochen.] It can be assumed that positions will be taken on the Bousquet draft at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers leading to its rejection. Furthermore, one gets the impression that PГ©tain wants to prevent the law coming into force, having certainly been assailed with protests against the bill by a Page 256 →whole series of Jews.В .В .В . Furthermore, one gets the impression that, in this case, Laval would welcome an intervention by PГ©tain. It is very comfortable for Laval to barricade himself behind PГ©tain, even though he reiterated during this meeting that, although he is not an anti-Semite, he is inherently absolutely not a friend of the Jews. On the same level is the alleged need to resubmit the bill to the Council of Ministers. There was no mention of all of this previously. One gets the impression that Laval is desperately seeking any opportunity to prevent the law from appearing, but at any rate, to stall it. Knochen, for whom the lengthy note was intended, signed off on it with the instruction “Stubaf. Hagen, kurzes FS an C.d.S.”—in other words, Hagen was to inform the chief of the security police and the SD (Kaltenbrunner) by telex (“FS” standing for Fernschreiben, or telex). RГ¶thke now resorted once again to the tactic of putting the French authorities under pressure, by claiming that, if necessary, the German side would arrest and deport the Jews on its own but, in that case, without regard to nationality.98 De Brinon reported to Laval that “RГ¶thke led us to believe that he would carry out mass arrests of French Jews in both zones if the current differences of opinion were not resolved soon.”99 On the one hand, this was RГ¶thke’s customary style and could scarcely be taken seriously, given that the Sipo/SD leadership, citing the heavy utilization of its own enforcement units in combating terrorists, communists, and so on, had submitted a request for personnel reinforcements to Berlin just a couple of weeks earlier and, once this request had been rejected by the RSHA, was definitively reliant on the collaboration of the French police for the “mass arrests” threatened by RГ¶thke. On the other hand, the practices of Alois Brunner and his henchmen, who had

been posted to the Drancy camp in early June 1943 by the RSHA, had given the French side a taste of how the SS dealt with the “Jewish Question” itself, when, as RГ¶thke had repeatedly threatened, it took matters into its own hands. The indiscriminate hunting down of Jews, as this would occur under Brunner’s command in the former Italian-occupied zone after 8 September 1943, the day on which the armistice between Italy and the Allies was announced, was, in fact, the tactic employed by the senior Sipo/SD officials once the summary administrative solution by way of the denaturalization law had definitively ended in failure. However, that RГ¶thke initially mentioned this prospect to Darquier and that the latter duly informed Page 257 →de Brinon about it suggests that RГ¶thke still cherished the illusion that he could use these two archcollaborators within the French government apparatus to exert influence over Laval and possibly even PГ©tain through threats. As usual, Knochen, for his part, followed a more subtle line. On 19 August 1943, he conferred directly with de Brinon, Vichy’s representative vis-Г -vis the German authorities in Paris. De Brinon reported on this to Laval, and the Sipo/SD intelligence service also secretly read this report. According to de Brinon’s report to Vichy, Knochen had declared “that he is not at all satisfied with the stance of the Marshal.” De Brinon also reported that the French police “have completed all preparatory measures [for the arrest and deportation of the Jews covered by the denaturalization law] in the occupied territory and especially in the Paris zone in agreement with the German authorities” and that Knochen “was even less able to comprehend that he was now being confronted with such a stance, especially in the case of the Jews who were of no interest to France, namely, the Jews who had recently acquired citizenship.”100 Knochen now, for the first time, made clear to the French side that he regarded as pretexts Laval’s technical and domestic political reasons for the delay in publishing the denaturalization law and suspected that the real reason lay in the changed military and foreign political circumstances. De Brinon reported, Dr. Knochen by his own admission felt compelled to declare that the stance adopted by the French side was presumably due to the current political situation and to the difficulties that, in the opinion of the French, the German government is currently facing. Thus he now already had to express all reservations concerning the consequences.101 The last sentence contained a much more serious threat for the addressees in Vichy than RГ¶thke’s customary muscle flexing. Knochen reminded the government in Vichy not only that the “Jewish Question” in and of itself was a political issue of the first order from the German perspective but that the German side regarded the conduct of the leadership of the French government in this matter as an indicator of the French stance under military and geopolitical conditions that were taking an unfavorable turn for Germany. Thus, in the meantime, what was conceived by the German side, at any rate in the minds of intelligent tacticians like Knochen and Hagen, as a discreet administrative measure for arresting and deporting a large number of Page 258 →Jews—namely, the denaturalization of tens of thousands of Jews who had immigrated to France since the end of the 1920s—had, in every sense, become an affair of state. The decision was in the hands of the head of state, who had, in effect, wrested control over it through his queries and to whom, as it happens, the responsibility had also been willingly shifted by Laval since the second half of July 1943. Exactly a year before, in August 1942, the protests of just a handful of senior Catholic clergymen had led PГ©tain to challenge, in principle, the cooperation of the Vichy administration and the French police in the deportations of the non-French Jews. At that time, at a meeting with Laval on 2 September 1942, the senior Sipo/SD officials had climbed down and suspended Eichmann’s deportation plan for France. Not only was the military situation for Germany excellent, with the foray of German troops into Egypt, on the Volga near Stalingrad, and in the Caucasus. At the end of July 1942 already, a smooth and effective measure had also been contemplated with Bousquet for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” namely, the passage of a French denaturalization law.102 Now, in late August 1943, both parameters had changed fundamentally. As a result, Knochen pulled out all the stops. He emphasized indirectly the vital geopolitical interests of Germany in the loyalty of the Vichy regime in a key question of occupation policy, he threatened to carry out the planned arrests and deportations without French aid, and he even did not shrink from bluffing, almost in the style of RГ¶thke. Only de Brinon remained available

to him as an interlocutor in this connection, however, and it is difficult to determine whether Knochen’s demarches chiefly served legitimatory purposes within the SS apparatus or whether he still had some hope that they would actually influence the French stance. At any rate, Knochen used a meeting with de Brinon on 23 August 1943 to point out that, as the minutes prepared by Hagen put it, “the German side was extraordinarily disconcerted by the rejection of the law [on the denaturalization of the Jews] already signed by Laval.” The minutes went on, “One gets the impression that this, after all very sudden, change is a result of the inferences drawn by the French government from the current political and military development.” De Brinon, who had informed Knochen that he had been summoned to a meeting by PГ©tain in Vichy for the following day on account of the denaturalization law, was to ensure “in the meeting with the Marshal that the law, which has already been accepted in principle, is implemented by the French side.” Hagen’s note went on, “Otherwise, we would find ourselves compelled to take our measures without the involvement of Page 259 →the French government. We have one regiment of Order Police at our disposal for the implementation which can be deployed at any moment.”103 The potential deployment of the regiment, as we know from Knochen’s own reports to the RSHA, was pure bluff. De Brinon, who was always servile toward the Germans, nevertheless hastened to assure Knochen “that he had already indicated to the Marshal what a bad impression the handling of the law had made on us [Sipo/SD].” De Brinon “promised,” Hagen noted, “to throw his entire weight behind the enactment of the law.”

PГ©tain’s Final Refusal to Sign the Denaturalization Law At around the same time as de Brinon was conferring with Knochen, PГ©tain received a reply from the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference in response to his own request. On 21 August 1943, the representative of the bishops’ conference with the government in Vichy, Monsignore Henri-Alexandre Chappoulie, wrote to PГ©tain’s chief of staff (the secretary-general of the Marshal of France), Jean Jardel, that the Marshal had shown him the honor of requesting his advice regarding a bill whose objective was to strip all Jews naturalized since 1927 of French citizenship.104 It was certainly not his task, Chappoulie wrote, to express views concerning the repercussions of this project in the secular domain, just as the cardinals and archbishops adhere unwaveringly to the policy of never interfering in political matters that did not affect them. It was apparent to Chappoulie, however, that the proposed legislation had momentous consequences in the social and humanitarian domain and that he was authorized to express his opinion about this here. Moreover, he was certain that this was also the opinion of his superiors. Chappoulie went on, without further ado, to identify the point about which Laval had still feigned obtuseness toward the representatives of the Sipo/SD a couple of days earlier. If the Jews naturalized since 1927 were to lose French citizenship by decree of the head of state, they would become stateless at a single stroke. The German occupation authorities would then proceed to deport them en masse, at least, as Chappoulie cautiously added, in the case of the able-bodied men. The result would be that families would be split up, children separated from their parents. Similar measures had already led to protests by senior church representatives in the past, among them the archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Suhard, in the name of the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference as a whole. A resumption of deportations would unleashPage 260 → a wave of emotions and outrage among Catholics, and the bishops would probably again find themselves compelled to raise their voices in protest. Moreover, the French government’s granting of citizenship to those who had been naturalized had been carried out of its own free will and in the knowledge of the fact that they were Jews, and the government could not now summarily revoke this citizenship by appeal to the same fact. However, Chappoulie then made a qualification that cannot be reconciled either with the tenor of his solemn moral protest or with his protestation that he did not want to interfere in the business of everyday politics: in his view, if the French state did not want to break its word to those who had been naturalized, a commission would have to examine each case individually and decree the loss of French citizenship for specific reasons, such as behavior detrimental to the French people by a specific person, and not on the blanket ground of race. To do otherwise would, in Chappoulie’s opinion, be incompatible with the principles of Christian morality that must find expression in all of the actions of a caring head of state who wanted to remain true to the spiritual values that

had constituted France’s greatness in the past and had ensured it a unique place of honor among the peoples.105 It can be left open whether PГ©tain merely wanted Chappoulie’s support for a decision he intended to make in any case or whether Chappoulie’s position provided the final impetus for this decision. Chappoulie did not pay a personal visit to PГ©tain but, certainly not without forethought, chose the indirect route via PГ©tain’s secretary-general, Jardel.106 Nor was there any public protest by senior Catholic clergymen similar to the one in the summer of 1942. Furthermore, Chappoulie’s response was not so uncompromising as it may have appeared at first sight. With the reference to a “commission” that could decide on the expatriation of Jews on a case-by-case basis, it alluded to the administrative mechanism established by the law of 22 July 1940 that had first made the project of the summary expatriation of Jews appear plausible and obvious to both the representatives of Vichy and the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris. Despite these qualifications, Chappoulie’s response provides an authentic impression of the reaction by the Catholic Church, particularly by senior Catholic clergymen, that PГ©tain would have had to contend with, for the reasons presented in detail by Chappoulie, should the denaturalization law be signed into law and published. To what extent Chappoulie’s moral arguments persuaded PГ©tain, by contrast, must also remain an open question. On 24 August 1943, PГ©tain ordered a definitive halt to the denaturalizationPage 261 → law. The decision is recorded in a letter to de Brinon on the same day. This letter was PГ©tain’s formal response to de Brinon’s report on his consultation with Knochen on 19 August. The Marshal, as the message from PГ©tain’s office put it, had been informed about this meeting “concerning the bill about the Jews.” The Marshal took the view that “he cannot sign this draft.”107 PГ©tain’s decision was hermetic as regards the denaturalization law as such, though his justification was instructive as regards its relativizations. Because of its “general scope,” “this version” of the proposed law, PГ©tain wrote in his 24 August letter to de Brinon, no longer allowed “a distinction to be made among the Jews, a certain number of whom have rendered services to France.” PГ©tain now inverted the argument employed a couple of days earlier by Knochen with reference to inacceptable political reasons for the hesitant stance of the Vichy government on the denaturalization law: it was the German authorities, argued PГ©tain, who “constantlyВ .В .В . pointed out the need to maintain order in France.” This allusion pointed out that it was not by accident that the German side found itself in a negotiation situation vis-Г -vis Vichy and that it was not in a position to issue directives, since, in a situation of dramatic military and geopolitical changes to the disadvantage of Germany, “order in France” could be upheld only by the government in Vichy, its administration, and its police. “In this respect,” PГ©tain continued, “the French government faces many difficulties and should not undertake anything that would be apt to offend public opinion and to make the tasks of government even more difficult.” It is clear that PГ©tain had in mind primarily the negative domestic political consequences of large-scale expatriation measures against the Jews and, as Chappoulie had again made clear to him, the mass deportations that would inevitably follow, with all of their negative effects on public opinion. PГ©tain did not give so much as a hint of making Chappoulie’s moral arguments his own. He instead reaffirmed the political logic of the collaboration with the “German authorities,” and only in this context did he take up the ideas that Chappoulie had, in fact, preformulated for him. The Marshal believes that he has already [provided] sufficient proof of his determination to work on amiable terms with Germany so that his sincere desire to deal with this matter too in the best way possible does not appear suspect. He is ready in principle to have the hastily conducted naturalizations reexamined and has even issued the requisite directives to the Ministry of Justice. He frequently signs decrees concerning expatriations of this kind. The Marshal Page 265 → Page 266 →has already had the Keeper of the Seals [Garde des Sceaux, the byname of the French justice minister] take all of the necessary measures to ensure that the reexamination of all naturalizations since 1927 is completed soon. He requests that you [de Brinon] make contact with the minister in this regard. The marshal also requests that you inform the German authorities and convey his assurance that his decision will

satisfy the senior German authorities.108

Page 262 →Fig. 11. Letter of 24 August 1943 from PГ©tain’s office to Fernand de Brinon, Vichy representative to the German authorities in France, pertaining to PГ©tain’s refusal to sign the denaturalization law. (CDJC XXVII-38. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) Page 263 → Page 264 → Fig. 12. Note from the files of the SS on head of state PГ©tain’s refusal, on 24 August 1943, to sign into law the denaturalization bill, already signed by Laval and Justice Minister Gabolde. The implementation of the law, until then the capstone project of Franco-German collaboration in the persecution of the Jews, would have made possible the summary denaturalization of all Jews who had obtained French citizenship beginning on 27 August 1927. In an accurate interpretation, the SS characterized PГ©tain’s refusal to sign the law as based on “a conclusion drawn from the current political and military development,” an allusion to the landing of allied troops in Sicily (10 July 1943) and the deposition of Mussolini (25 July 1943), which made allied landings on Corsica and the French mainland a pressing issue. (CDJC XXVII-39. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) This position is once again an absolutely clear expression of PГ©tain’s political philosophy and that of the regime he represented. First, the motive for vetoing a general denaturalization law was not ethical but pragmatic. It was a matter of upholding internal order within France. Second, PГ©tain explicitly emphasized his readiness to continue the collaboration with the German occupying power, which presumably had to have a fundamental interest in this maintenance of order. Third, PГ©tain reaffirmed the spirit of the expatriation law of 22 July 1940. In fact, according to PГ©tain, it was a matter of the expedited examination of the “hastily” (hГўtivement) granted naturalizations, which he himself was continually reversing in cases in which this was advisable. Nothing had changed in the xenophobic and anti-Semitic disposition that had shaped the government communiquГ© of 17 October 1940 when the first Statute on Jews was enacted.109 In essence, nothing had changed either in the willingness expressed in PГ©tain’s addresses of 11 and 30 October 1940 to collaborate with Germany within the framework of a “new European order.” Yet PГ©tain’s letter of 24 August 1943 throws renewed light not only on the major concern of the Vichy regime but also on that of the German occupation regime. The generous offer of collaboration in coping with the denaturalization problem at the administrative level, as also renewed by PГ©tain on this occasion with cogent pragmatic arguments, and the intentions of the RSHA and its representatives in Paris were worlds apart. The Germans wanted nothing less than the summary expatriation and mass deportation of the Jews that, in PГ©tain’s view, was out of the question. This was the essence of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Even though PГ©tain’s stance was illusory and reprehensible in moral and political terms, it was enough to condemn to failure the monstrous project of the Germans, which amounted to mass murder by administrative means. The senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris understood this perfectly well. Knochen promptly informed the head of the RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner. It is not clear whether, in doing so, he himself exaggerated PГ©tain’s stance or whether de Brinon portrayed it in an exaggerated manner. At any rate, accordingPage 267 → to Knochen’s report to Kaltenbrunner, Chappoulie had informed PГ©tain that the Pope was personally “very worried” that further measures against the Jews were being authorized by the Marshal in France. Chappoulie had added, “The Pope is personally concerned about the spiritual welfare of the Marshal,” and the Marshal was evidently deeply impressed by the visit of the senior clergyman.110 Knochen then went on to give a more or less word-for-word account of the position expressed by PГ©tain on 24 August. On PГ©tain’s declaration not to refrain, in principle, from expatriating the Jews but to accelerate that action within the framework of the existing general expatriation procedure, Knochen added the observation, “I explained to de Brinon that this form has practical significance only if the justice minister guarantees the most rapid implementation possible through a simple form procedure.”111 In the days that followed, de Brinon left no stone unturned in his efforts to persuade the Sipo/SD representatives that the announcement by the head of state that the expatriation of Jews based on the examination of particular cases would be decisively speeded up should be taken seriously. This met with undisguised skepticism on the

German side.112 At the same time, de Brinon, who was apparently in and out of the Paris Sipo/SD headquarters during these days, denounced his own government in conversations with the SS. He informed Hagen, in a conversation on 25 August, that he had “to assume, based on the most recent decision in the Jewish QuestionВ .В .В . that President Laval wants to shift responsibility for the entire Jewish Question onto the Marshal. A single line is discernible starting from the visit of Monsignor Chappoulie, who informed the Marshal that the Pope feared for the Marshal’s spiritual welfare if he, as had been reported, were to take further measures in the Jewish Question, leading to Laval’s behavior when it came to the anti-Jewish law.”113 Quite apart from his flagrant disloyalty, it seems not to have occurred to de Brinon that his complaints against his own government were difficult to reconcile with the protestations that no effort was being spared to expedite the expatriation procedure against the Jews based on the examination of particular cases. By monitoring of the letters and telexes between de Brinon and the government departments in Vichy, the German side knew that, by de Brinon’s own estimation, the work of the regular expatriation commission up to that point provided no grounds for optimism that the expectations of the Germans could be met with this mechanism.114 De Brinon, who had, in the meantime, made the denaturalization issue entirely his own (thereby de facto following in Darquier’s footsteps), exhibitedPage 268 → remarkable energy until the early weeks of September, though this seems no longer to have impressed anyone on the German side.115 On 6 September 1943, de Brinon had to admit to Knochen that PГ©tain’s “decrees,” which the latter had announced in a communiquГ© on 20 August, were yielding only modest results.116 Knochen informed de Brinon that, under the circumstances, the commission for the reexamination of the naturalizations had to set “quotas” for Jews to be denaturalized. Knochen specified that “should this prove to be of no avail,” the German side “would [make] a decision in which, as a matter of principle, no more exceptions would be made in accordance with existing French law.”117 The skirmishing between the senior Sipo/SD officials, on the one side, and the various representatives of the Vichy government, on the other, over the actual procedure to be pursued in the denaturalization question following PГ©tain’s refusal to sign the denaturalization law nevertheless produced an astounding result. Under massive pressure from the German side, for which de Brinon served as a willing lackey, a detailed calculation of the potentially relevant denaturalization cases was made for the first time in the Ministry of Justice. The result proved to be puzzling for the senior Sipo/SD officials in Paris. On 26 August 1943, de Brinon had still reported that under the law of 10 August 1927, “around 650,000 foreigners had been naturalized, an average of 40,000 to 50,000 per year” until 1939. “The preponderance of the foreigners were granted citizenship rights under the Popular Front government,” de Brinon had added, continuing, “It has been established, however, that, according to the investigations of the commission, around 30 percent of the 650,000 naturalizations were Jewish.”118 Less than two weeks later, on 8 September 1943, Justice Minister Gabolde informed de Brinon that the number of Jews naturalized between 1927 and 1940 amounted to just 23,648.119 The confusion triggered by this message at the Sipo/SD headquarters can be seen from a note drafted by RГ¶thke and initialed by Knochen that—unusually, given the otherwise generally immediate documentation of relevant procedures—was not drawn up until 25 September 1943. Without discussing the precise figures of the French Ministry of Justice, which the assiduous de Brinon had certainly passed on to his German collaboration partners, RГ¶thke observed, without further ado, “It is now certain that the promised measures for the denaturalization of the foreign Jews will not produce any significant results.”120 There followed some figures on the expatriations of Jews until 31 July 1943 (7,053 expatriations and 4,800 open cases) and the information that the accelerated procedures promised by the French Page 269 →in late August had merely led to a couple hundred additional expatriations. After the denaturalization question had been the main subject of the German-French negotiations in the “Jewish Question” for over a year, those at the Sipo/SD headquarters in Paris concluded, “Having examined the actual situation, .В .В .В it must be assumed that denaturalization represents only a small part of the Jewish problem as it currently exists in France. For there can be no doubt that, among the foreign Jews still living on French soil, those who were naturalized represent only a small minority.” There nevertheless followed the suggestion that the French government should issue “strict orders” for registering the foreigners (among

them the Jews) living in the southern zone—which, in the meantime, included the former Italian-occupied zone—as well as for “their expulsion from French territory.” Otherwise, the note continued, there was “no prospect of achieving an overview of the Jewish immigration to France and its composition.”121 For Röthke, who drafted this note, this may have confirmed what had always been apparent, in and between the lines of his numerous reports and notes, as the unshakable conviction of the “desk officer for Jewish affairs” in the Parisian Sipo/SD apparatus: namely, that all of the political deference and elaborate administrative preparations had only served to delay the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France permanently. In point of fact, as things stood, Röthke, Knochen, and Oberg could not tell whether facts or mere pretexts were concealed behind such extremely precise figures as those that Gabolde had provided to de Brinon. The figures provided by Gabolde contradicted all of the assumptions and provisional calculations that had been presented both by Röthke and by Darquier in elaborate arguments designed less to propagate the denaturalization law itself than to push back the relevant cutoff date as far as possible. It is therefore improbable that the information provided by the French Ministry of Justice was accepted by the Gestapo side as credible. It was nevertheless very well suited to backing up the argument that there was nothing left to be gained through orderly administrative agreements for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

“Upholding Order” The realizations and practical stimuli on the part of the Sipo/SD apparatus did not change, in the least, the dilemma that the German occupying power had no other option but to support the French government leadership that Page 271 → Page 272 →was now proving to be an awkward and unpredictable partner in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” There was a close connection between the bureaucratic organization that was supposed to remain the basis of the persecution of the Jews in France according to the will of the Vichy government and the upholding of public order as this had been invoked by PГ©tain in his refusal to sign the denaturalization law on 24 August 1943. This order, as all of those involved knew, depended not only on the support of the French police but also on acceptance by public opinion and by the supporting social pillars of the Vichy regime, among them, in particular, the Catholic Church. It was a zero-sum game: the potential gains that the Germans stood to make in the persecution of the Jews by opposing the temporizing reluctance of the government in Vichy and the open protest of the church could be forfeited once again at the level of domestic political stability and of the reliability of the French collaboration partners. Moreover, the decisive parameters of this game were not under the control of the SS, however much Himmler may have ordered Oberg in early June 1943 to bring the deportations of the Jews from France to a speedy conclusion. It did not help matters that in their dealings with the French interlocutors, not only the overzealous RГ¶thke but also Oberg and Knochen continually referred to Hitler and his personal will to realize the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Europe, as long as Hitler expressly supported PГ©tain and, in particular, Laval. Page 270 → Fig. 13. Account by the SS leadership in Paris of PГ©tain’s refusal to sign the denaturalization law, addressed to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt). (CDJC XXVII-40. Copyright MГ©morial de la Shoah.) In fact, it could not have escaped Oberg and Knochen where the political priorities of Hitler and the military leadership lay in late summer 1943 and what underlay PГ©tain’s equanimity and Laval’s selfconfidence. On 27 August 1943, PГ©tain met in his summer residence in ChГўteau Charmeil with the supreme commander of the armed forces in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West), Field Marshal von Rundstedt. The “two Marshals,” as they were respectfully referred to in the German records, spoke—initially in private and then in the presence of their closest collaborators (among them, on the French side, Laval)—almost exclusively about securing domestic political stability and guaranteeing public order “in case of enemy landings.”122 PГ©tain made a noteworthy pledge in this context: in this case, he intended to “issue a proclamation to the French peopleВ .В .В . to dissuade them from engaging in ill-considered actions against the German troops and their rearward supply lines.”123 PГ©tain and Laval called unanimously for reinforcement of the French police, including better arms to facilitate effective action against agents landing by parachute, “fanatical French elements,” and the perpetrators of acts of sabotage. “In both cases,” according to Rundstedt’s

report, Page 273 →“German interests are parallel to French interests.” In addition, “Marshal PГ©tain declared his determination to uphold domestic order at all costs also in our interest.” Laval had declared that “the FГјhrer personally told him during his penultimate visit to Germany, вЂFirst create an able police force.’” Rundstedt summarized, “I had the impression that the wishes expressed to me by Marshal PГ©tain and President Laval were sincere, also as regards our interests. In my view, prompt reciprocation in the points presented is justified and desirable in the interest of the German war effort in France.”124 This was therefore the concrete background of the connection between, on the one hand, the further procedure against the Jews via summary denaturalization and subsequent mass deportations and, on the other, the issue of “order” and of “public opinion” made by PГ©tain in his statement on 24 August 1943. Affected by the said acts of sabotage, by his own testimony, were the saving of the harvest (thus the food situation during the coming winter) and hence, in turn, the mood of the population and its loyalty toward the government. The incessant references of the representatives of the Sipo/SD to Jewish authors of acts of sabotage evidently made no impression on PГ©tain or Rundstedt. Especially considering Hitler’s consistent support for Laval, it would have been pointless, even ridiculous, if Oberg and Knochen—whose presence at the meeting on 27 August 1943, notwithstanding the virulent topic of public security and order, was evidently not considered necessary by the two Marshals —had taken an open stance against the Vichy government and its treatment of the “Jewish Question.” There could not have been any doubt within the SS that the continuing support enjoyed by PГ©tain within the French population and the fact that Laval had linked his political fate to that of the Reich, taken together, provided the best guarantee of French economic and political support of the German war effort. Under these conditions, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” through administrative channels, which had been synonymous for a year with the project of the denaturalization law, could not be realized.

Page 274 →

Chapter 12 “Wild” Persecution of Jews The failure of the denaturalization law, in whose passage both the German and the French collaboration partners were heavily invested, duly led to a process of erosion of the administrative collaboration in the persecution of the Jews. This erosion undermined the effectiveness of the persecution as a large-scale operation, but in terms of everyday life, the persecution was no less terrible for its victims. On the one hand, it became apparent that the threats repeatedly made by Knochen and RГ¶thke that should the denaturalization law prove to be a failure, the German side would conduct mass arrests of Jews using their own police forces, without the involvement of the French government, had neither a political nor a material foundation. Without the large-scale involvement of the French authorities and police forces, as in the case of the deportation of foreign Jews in July and August 1942, the Sipo/SD leadership was reliant on isolated operations, though these could assume larger proportions. An example of this was the raiding parties operating under the command of Alois Brunner in the former Italianoccupied zone after 8 September 1943. Their operation was facilitated by a tragic decree of the ministerial conference of the Italian government held on 28 August, that the Jews living in the Italian occupied zone should be concentrated in Nice and surrounding areas, where they began to arrive on 8 September in the expectation of an extended transitional period that, according to the plan, was supposed to facilitate their transfer to North Africa.1 This plan had been prepared by Donati and negotiated with the agencies of the Badoglio government as well as the Vatican and the Allied agencies accessible to Donati or his intermediaries in the Badoglio government. It was thwarted by the premature announcement of the armistice by the headquarters of the Allied commander in chief, General Eisenhower.2 There followed the military occupation of Italy for which the Page 275 →German side had been preparing assiduously since 25 July 1943, the day on which Mussolini was deposed, and of the Italian occupied zone in France, which caught the largely unprepared Italian troops and occupation authorities unawares. Following on the heels of the combat and occupation troops were the SS task forces, which, as Klarsfeld put it, immediately declared “open season on the Jews,” without paying heed to the citizenship of their victims.3 However, this wave of isolated actions remained the extent of the operation. The decisive point is that the French administration, with a few exceptions, increasingly refused to collaborate in the persecution measures against the Jews. On 3 November 1943, the interior minister—a portfolio also held by Laval—expressly forbade the prefect of Valence to provide the Germans with lists of the names and addresses of the Jews living in the dГ©partement DrГґme, albeit with the exception of the lists of stateless Jews and of those who were nationals of states at war with Germany or under German occupation.4 Thus Vichy abided by the logic of the agreements of the summer of 1942. Nevertheless, in a letter of protest to Laval, Oberg once again invoked the agreements of 8 August 1942 and 16 April 1943 in which the French government had committed itself to supporting the German occupying power in combating “enemies of the Reich.” Oberg now appealed to the standard argument “that the Jews are playing a prominent role in the terrorist organizations as well as in the dissemination of tendentious rumors and that, as a result, their presence poses a serious threat to the security of the German troops in France.”5 A similar conflict arose over Knochen’s demand on 20 November 1943 that the lists of the names and addresses of the Jews in all of the dГ©partements of the southern zone be handed over.6 The occasion was the refusal by the regional prefect in Limoges to, in Knochen words, comply with the “request of the commander of the Security Police” to have the regional prefecture’s list of the Jews living within its area of jurisdiction “checked.” As a result, Knochen had to “ask Bousquet to issue, without delay, a directive to the prefect of the southern zone to grant the German agencies the unrestricted opportunity to check the list of Israelites.”7 In his response, Bousquet coolly reminded Knochen of two facts: on the one hand, the fact that somebody was an Israelite—Bousquet used the French traditional designation instead of the word Jew, which was introduced into the language of French legislation only through the Jewish statutes of 1940—was not a reason for arresting them under French law; on the other, the authorization of the German occupation authorities to issue directives was confined to the occupied zone specified in the Armistice Agreement.8

Page 276 →It must have dawned on Bousquet in the fall of 1943 that, following the failure of the denaturalization law, Oberg and Knochen were interested, at most, in keeping up appearances when it came to the validity of the agreements of August 1942 and April 1943. In fact, as regards the persecution of the Jews, the Sipo/SD agencies in Paris as well as in the provinces arrogated the right to issue directives to the French police. Moreover, they also had Jews of French nationality arrested whenever any occasion or pretext presented itself, for example, transgressions of straightforward criminal laws.9 Indicative of the circumstances and atmosphere under which Bousquet’s telex to Knochen was written, the delegate of the interior minister—hence Laval—at the headquarters of the German occupation authority in Paris, Jean-Pierre Ingrand, who had had no problems with the arrest and deportation of foreign Jews, had protested vehemently to Bousquet ten days earlier over the arrest of French Jews by the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police at RГ¶thke’s instruction and had pointed out that the de facto surrender of French citizens to the German occupying power could not be justified. These circumstances, according to Ingrand, had to be remedied without delay. Otherwise the French government would incur a serious moral responsibility for itself and, above all, for its officials.10 Even Laval, in his (presumably deliberately) indirect answer to Oberg’s complaint about the refusal of the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police to hand over lists of the names and addresses of Jews of certain foreign nationalities, which he had de Brinon convey on 23 November 1943,11 recalled the fact that, notwithstanding the willingness of the French police to support the German security forces as effectively as possible,12 the Jews of French nationality were—according to the agreements reached (an allusion to the Oberg-Bousquet agreements of 8 August 1942 and 16 April 1943)—supposed to be excluded from arrests and coercive measures.13 But Laval had de Brinon expressly reaffirm the collaboration of the French authorities and police in the measures against Jews with foreign citizenship. In addition, de Brinon’s note again made a connection between the aid of the French government in the deportation of the foreign Jews and the hoped-for complaisance of the SS when it came to the Jews with French citizenship.14 The document as a whole once again outlined the general framework of the collaboration in the “Jewish Question.” It was evidently conceived by Laval not only as a clarification of what could and could not be expected on the German side but also as an indication of where the responsibility for the fact that the demands of the SS could not be fulfilled in every respect lay—namely, at any rate, not at his door.15 Page 277 →However, Laval’s references to the principles of the German-French collaboration in matters of policing could only have served as symbolic material for argumentation in November 1943. Their validity across all levels of the administration was being openly challenged by the Sipo/SD agencies in Paris and in the provinces. Nevertheless, relations did not break down across the board. It remained the case that whether and to what extent Jews with French citizenship fell into the hands of the Sipo/SD task forces depended to a large extent on the vigilance of the police commanders in charge on the French side.16 Because the mass arrests through administrative channels as envisaged by the denaturalization law were not carried out, the persecution became a matter of individual decisions and local circumstances. Those on the French side who were in contact with the Germans in any capacity concerning the administrative resolution of the “Jewish Question”—namely, Bousquet and, besides him, Darquier—were consequently pushed aside. By contrast, the position of Laval was strengthened once again. Despite his official affirmation of the agreements that exempted Jews of French citizenship from arrest and deportation, he would provide the indiscriminate persecution of the Jews regardless of age, gender, and nationality with repeated, even if not comprehensive, help of French police forces, which characterized the final phase of German occupation until the liberation in August 1944.17 In the latter part of November, PГ©tain’s second attempt in 1943 to rid himself of Laval also ended in failure. The underlying factor was the implicit rivalry between PГ©tain and de Gaulle over the return to republican principles and traditions after the end of the war.18 The ComitГ© franГ§ais de la LibГ©ration nationale, founded by de Gaulle on 3 June 1943 in Algiers, had committed itself to establishing the republican form of government in France, to all “French liberties,” and to the laws of the Republic, and on 3 November, it had founded a provisional constitutive assembly (the AssemblГ©e consultative provisoire). The political split within France had now been raised to a constitutional level and hence to a direct challenge to PГ©tain. In JГ¤ckel’s words, “a veritable race for the Republic now began in Vichy.”19 In response to

Laval’s initiative of 3 November 1943 to include some former parliamentarians in his cabinet and to lead France back gradually to the republican form of government (as he put it to the German chargГ© d’affaires in Vichy, Krug von Nidda), PГ©tain proposed to transfer the decision over his successor to the recalled National Assembly and hence to annul the provision that the succession would automatically fall to the vice president of the Council of Ministers, hence to Laval. That PГ©tain signed the necessary constitutionalPage 278 → act on 11 November, the 25th anniversary of the armistice of 1918, underlined the symbolic message, and he was determined to announce this in a radio address scheduled for 13 November 1943. Evidently he wanted to demonstrate French sovereignty and his own capacity to act not only toward his own population but also, in particular, toward foreign countries, specifically in view of the open rivalry with de Gaulle. PГ©tain could only hope that the German occupying power allowed him, as the French head of state, at least equal room for maneuver as the Allies granted General de Gaulle, as the head of a de facto French government in exile. The German diplomats in Vichy and in Paris cautiously recommend taking such a line.20 However, Krug von Nidda stressed, in his report to Berlin, that PГ©tain’s actual aim was to eliminate Laval.21 The radio address was postponed as a result of German pressure. Ribbentrop instructed Krug von Nidda, by telegram on 17 November 1943, to remind PГ©tain explicitly of Hitler’s message of 20 April 194322—in other words, not to undermine Laval’s position. In the meantime, PГ©tain had gone on “strike” by refraining from exercising his function as head of state.23 RenГ© Bousquet became the most prominent casualty of the November crisis. He was let fall by Laval when the latter, in response to massive German pressure, accepted figures from the French fascist right into his cabinet. Bousquet’s successor, now with the revealing designation “secretary-general for maintaining order” (SecrГ©taire gГ©nГ©ral au maintien de l’ordre), was Joseph Darnand, the head of the Milice that he himself had founded and that, under the name LГ©gion franГ§aise des combattants, had initially been Laval’s personal power base. The official changeover from Bousquet to Darnand occurred on 1 January 1944. This final, severe government crisis of the Vichy regime reveals the regime’s death pangs as much as do the haphazardness of German policy toward France and the resulting dilemmas. On the one hand, Laval once again received Hitler’s demonstrative support as an accomplished head of government who was also loyal toward Germany. On the other hand, with Joseph Darnand, Philippe Henriot, and Marcel DГ©at, Laval was forced to accept figures into his cabinet who were bound to weaken further both his authority within the government and the reputation of the government among the population. PГ©tain, who was the only figure within the French leadership who still enjoyed remnants of original support and the loyalty of social forces supportive of the state (e.g., the Catholic Church), emerged fundamentally weakened and resigned from the showdown with Laval and the occupying power. Page 279 →The new chief of the French police, Darnand, placed the Milice, a praetorian guard with the worst possible reputation among the population, in the service of the SS and Gestapo in fighting the resistance. “In early 1944, France was facing a civil war,” JГ¤ckel wrote.24 The positional advantage that the Germans, not least the Sipo/SD leadership, had hoped to achieve through the pressure on PГ©tain and Laval and the elimination of Bousquet, whose insistence on adhering to the letter of the framework agreements reached with Oberg had become an obstacle to a ruthless persecution of the Jews, was fragile. They were now even farther removed than before the November crisis from the primary tactical objective of ensuring political cohesion, internal security, and a reliable public order that had still informed the spirit of the meeting between Rundstedt and PГ©tain on 27 August 1943. Darnand’s Milice was now combating the Maquis alongside German troops and the SS.25 Heavily armed French and German security forces worked extensively hand in hand in this operation. Large-scale raids against the Jews in which the French police participated took place only where the relations between German and French police leaderships at the local level remained geared to smooth collaboration in this final phase of the German occupation as well.26 Thus mass arrests of Jews were conducted once again in Bordeaux, Poitiers, and Dijon in January and February 1944, executed by French police and targeting both foreign and French Jews.27 In Paris, local police forces launched a last massive raid, resulting in the arrest of no less than 1,200 foreign and “stateless” Jews, who were brought to Drancy for deportation.28 In Bordeaux, the secretary-general (chief

administrative officer) of the prefecture, Maurice Papon, oversaw the compilation of the deportation list.29 As a result, the deportation rate rose again in the first months of 1944. In the period of January through June 1944 alone, some 13,000 Jews were deported, as opposed to 17,069 during the entire year of 1943. A second large-scale raid in Paris, where the number of potential victims was highest,30 was initiated by the Gestapo on 26 February 1944 and ended in failure. The Parisian police prefect sent a query to Darnand asking how he should respond to the Gestapo’s demand to hand over in triplicate the lists of the Jews living in Paris and in the dГ©partement Seine.31 Darnand responded that the police prefect should inform the German authorities that this fell within the domain of responsibility of the government and that Darnand would be happy to address this issue in a meeting with Oberg.32 In fact, neither the handover of the lists nor the planned large-scale raid ever took place. As a result, the Sipo/SD task forces had to rely on isolated actions, which Page 280 →Knochen made a final attempt to systematize on 14 April 1944 by issuing an almost six-page “Instruction leaflet on increasing the numbers of arrests of Jews in the area of the BdS [commander of the Security Police and the Security Service] in France,” which must have been drafted by its cosigner Brunner.33 This contained the directive that all Jews were to be “arrested without regard to citizenship or other circumstances” and that “the entire family must be included” in the process.34 All Jews in French labor camps, penal institutions, prisons, homes, and sanatoriums were to be arrested. Detailed instructions were given for the “payment of rewards for information concerning hidden and disguised Jews.” The implementation of these comprehensive arrest measures encountered major obstacles. The French police de facto no longer provided support, and the German field gendarmerie withdrew its cooperation, presumably citing the fact that it was preoccupied with security measures in advance of the Allied landing whose imminence was, in the meantime, being signaled by massive Allied bombardments of the transportation infrastructure. Nevertheless, this closing phase counts among the most oppressive crimes of the persecution of the Jews under the German occupation, because, in the nature of the case, its specific victims were the elderly, the infirm, those in need of assistance, children, and mothers, who had the least opportunity and ability to go underground or flee. Although the numbers of arrests and deportations never again reached the levels of 1942, when 42,000 Jews were deported from France to Auschwitz, the numbers deported in 1944 in 14 transports until just a few days before the liberation (14,833 men, women, and children) were close to the number of victims for the entire year of 1943 (17 transports with 17,069 deportees).35 On 31 July 1944, the last transport heading to Auschwitz left Drancy railway station, comprising 1,300 victims. On 17 August 1944, a last transport with 51 victims left Drancy railway station for Buchenwald.

Page 281 →

Conclusion Negotiated Mass Crime and the Power of Morality People have a natural moral sense, a sense that is formed out of the interaction of their innate dispositions with their earliest familial experiences. To different degrees among different people, but to some important degrees in almost all people, that moral sense shapes human behavior and the judgments people make of the behavior of others. —James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense For only if we assume that there exists a human faculty which enables us to judge rationally without being carried away by either emotion or self-interest, and which at the same time functions spontaneously, that is to say, is not bound by standards and rule under which particular cases are simply subsumed, but on the contrary, produces its own principles by virtue of the judging activity itself; only under this assumption can we risk ourselves on this very slippery moral ground with some hope of finding a firm footing. —Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship” The physical annihilation of the Jews under German rule in Europe during World War II was the outcome of a master plan coordinated by the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or RSHA) and converted into an implementation scheme by high-ranking German officials from the relevant Reich ministries at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. That “Final Solution,” as it was known in Nazi terminology, combined the political will of mass murder with organizational and logistical rigidity. If and to what extent it could be implemented in the German-controlled countries and territories was not a matter of determination on the German side, which remained adamant and unrelenting. Rather, the implementation of Page 282 →the “Final Solution” hinged on political and institutional conditions that the Germans, despite relentless efforts, were not always able to control fully. From the German point of view, conditions in France were initially favorable. The Vichy government pursued its own anti-Jewish policy leading to legal discrimination of the Jews and to the spoliation of their property, including the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses controlled by French authorities. Moreover, the administrative infrastructure was intact and efficient. However, the stance of Vichy remained indeterminate concerning the very core of the “Final Solution,” the wholesale deportation of all the Jews from French soil. In July 1942, Vichy gave its consent to having the French police and administration organize the arrest and extradition, for the purposes of deportation, of tens of thousands of Jews, but in September, under heavy domestic political pressure, it de facto revoked this consent. The Vichy government, in the course of its collaboration with the German occupants, facilitated the deportation of 77,000 Jews. This same government, by virtue of its relative strength visГ -vis the Germans, was able to frustrate the full implementation of the “Final Solution” in France. Roughly 75 percent of the around 320,000 Jews living on French soil in 1940 survived the German occupation. Yet this meant that 80,000 Jews were deported and either were murdered or died in the internment camps. The crucial phenomenon in need of explanation is that the forces of annihilation were both unleashed and contained. The internal French debate on the implementation of the “Final Solution” during the вЂвЂњdark years” of 1940–44 revolves around the issue of la culpabilitГ© de Vichy (Vichy’s guilt) and the related ambivalence of French collective memory—a disunited memory, according to Olivier Wieviorka;1 fragmented and obsessive, as Julian Jackson has put it;2 and aptly characterized by Henry Rousso as “the Vichy syndrome.”3 While it is obvious that a German author has nothing to contribute to French national soulsearching, the present study does maintain that the quest for moral judgment and for determining moral guilt remains the driving force behind the continuing efforts to understand the Holocaust as an unprecedented mass crime and that the French case is a particularly significant example. At the same time, the analyses presented in

the previous chapters reveal that except for the core group of perpetrators in the SS and Gestapo apparatus, thinking in terms of guilt in the sense of the invariable moral failure of invariable groups is inappropriate. Rather, the analysis of varying behavioral patterns and variable degrees of responsibility is what matters when it comes to the more generalPage 283 → conclusions to be drawn from the history of the Shoah in France. What is more, those shifting patterns reveal not only behavioral ambivalences but also the very fault lines within the persecution process at which the enforcement of the “Final Solution” could have been and, at certain critical junctures, was indeed disrupted. So, on the one hand, the results of the present study are in line with the interpretation of authors like John Fox, LГ©on Poliakov, and Jacques Sabille or Gerald Reitlinger,4 who emphasized the overwhelming importance of Vichy’s decisions in general, including the decisions that rescued Jewish lives, regardless of the motivational background. By contrast, authors like Serge Klarsfeld,5 Susan Zuccotti,6 and, most recently, Jacques Semelin7 underlined the role of individual and societal rescue efforts. But the importance of Vichy’s room for maneuver in handling the German requests and thus of decision making at the national level for both the deportation and rescue of Jews was already highlighted in Michael Marrus’s and Robert Paxton’s seminal 1981 work Vichy France and the Jews,8 in accordance with the fundamental findings of Paxton’s 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order. Although he unnecessarily and misleadingly criticizes Marrus and Paxton, Alain Michel is right in accentuating the need to separate what was morally just and desirable from what was factually significant.9 What was significant, however, was not Vichy’s ambiguity as such but the societal basis from which it originated. The line pursued by Vichy in the “Jewish Question” was codetermined by the moral judgment of public opinion and civil society. This implies, on the other hand, that the emphasis of Klarsfeld, Zuccotti, and Semelin on the societal reaction to the persecution of the Jews is ultimately justified as well. Without the moral judgment of ordinary Frenchmen about what was clearly a crime against humanity, the public protest of just a handful of church dignitaries in August and September 1942 would not have generated a resonance that Vichy was not able to ignore.10 Therefore, notwithstanding the complex nuances of shifting behavioral patterns and variable degrees of responsibility, the French case in the history of the Holocaust also reveals the plain and elementary power of morality and how it can develop into a decisive political force even under ostensibly unfavorable conditions. This book reanalyzes the twists and turns in the course of which that basic logic unfolded. The analytical point of departure was presented in the form of several premises, referring to the fragmented nature of the persecution machinery; the blurred distinction between perpetrators, accomplices, Page 284 →collaborators, bystanders, and resisters; the mixed motivations of coperpetrators; the nature of institutionalized mass crimes in a permissive environment of anti-Semitism; and the limits of moral indifference. These premises underlay the assumption that between the decisions of the Wannsee Conference and their actual implementation, a system of causal links whose core was the bargaining mechanism shaped the interaction between the key German and French actors. The armistice of 22 June 1940 had left the French state with a considerable amount of discretion and competences, hence power. Accordingly, the discrimination, apprehension, and deportation of the Jews were not just a matter of a technical division of labor between German and French authorities but also part of a power-sharing arrangement. While the Germans were keenly aware that Vichy anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish legislation created a permissive environment that dovetailed with the all-too-well-known German determination to “solve the Jewish Question, ” they also knew that ideological motivation alone would not guarantee French collaboration. Instead, the very power-sharing arrangement of the occupation regime provided for a combination of ideological appeals, hierarchical pressure, and bargaining options. The bargaining options seemed to provide much stronger incentives for the French to collaborate than did ideological appeals of uncertain resonance or hierarchical pressure with potentially counterproductive effects. Spurring the French on to collaborate in the “solution to the Jewish Question” under German auspices through the prospect of gaining or recovering national power and competences was the objective of the smarter circles within both the German military administration and the SS and Gestapo apparatus in Paris. That policy proved to be disturbingly effective, but it nevertheless involved faultlines of its own. On the one hand, the Franco-German bargaining over how to deal with the Jews was a powerful mechanism that

triggered a comprehensive mobilization of coperpetrators, since it appealed not only to the determined ideologues and ideologically indifferent opportunists but also, primarily, to the soberly calculating technocrats ready to trade respect of moral values for relative gains in terms of competences and power. RenГ© Bousquet, secretary-general of the French police from April 1942 to December 1943, was the archetype of the latter figure, both a rival and an ideal counterpart in the eyes of Reinhard Heydrich and his right-hand man in Paris, Helmut Knochen. The important point here is that contrary to what is suggested by conventional assumptions (as Rudolf J. Rummel put it, “Power kills; absolute power Page 285 →kills absolutely” [cf. epigraph to introduction]), power-sharing arrangements do not necessarily mitigate the force of persecution. On the contrary, rivalry and competition among power centers might unleash even more destructive energy than might hierarchy and authoritarian fiat. On the other hand, the bargaining mechanism made the German policy vulnerable to intervention. Precisely because the implementation of Eichmann’s deportation scheme based on the results of the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942 had to be decided on at the central level of Franco-German negotiations, whether or not Vichy technocrats were ready to make French administration and police forces available for radical measures against the Jews was codetermined by the domestic political reaction. That reaction, in turn, was codetermined by the extent to which the very values of morality abandoned at the negotiation table by technocrats like Bousquet were reactivated in public opinion. What is revealing about the conditions in France is that the permissive environment of state anti-Semitism was counterbalanced by moral revulsion when the preparations for the large-scale arrests and deportations began in earnest in June and July 1942. The introduction of the Star of David badge on June 7 and, above all, the roundups preceding the wave of deportations starting on 16 July 1942 triggered a moral outcry that culminated in the famous pastoral letter of Archbishop SaliГЁge of Toulouse of 23 August 1942, with its pervasive political repercussions. The protest did not suspend the bargaining logic that shaped the Franco-German collaboration in police matters. Rather, that logic transformed Vichy’s concessions to the Germans into domestic political costs, which is why, in September 1942, Eichmann’s tightly organized deportation scheme was deferred. As clear and simple as the logic of power sharing, bargaining, and the limits of moral indifference may appear in retrospect, it in no sense led to a deterministic course of events. Instead, it unfolded in a contradictory process replete with paradoxes and counterintuitive turns. This process presents the real riddles that we have come closer to solving in the present study. They concern, above all, the actions of those who acquiesced in the initiation of the crime or actively participated in it but then subsequently hindered the “Final Solution” or positively sabotaged it. The actors in question were a small number of nevertheless influential dignitaries of the Catholic Church, the government in Vichy that they supported, and the Italian occupying power in southeastern France. These were the players who contributed decisively to the internal contradictions developing within the SS apparatusPage 286 → itself and to the SS being forced to accept restrictions on the persecution of the Jews in order to shore up its own power. Interestingly enough, the failure of the SS to implement the “Final Solution” in France was, to a certain extent, a consequence of its own success. The SS had established itself as a political player in a power struggle with the Wehrmacht in 1941/42 and now had to accept the constraints of having to reach compromises inherent in a power-sharing occupation regime. This meant that it had to assign preferences when it came to its own interests and that it had to make a realistic assessment of the opposing side’s scopes for action and of its possibilities for influencing the latter’s decisions in its own interests. These preconditions of political strategic capability need not have been satisfied, but they were indeed satisfied by the SS leadership in Paris. The latter’s main priority was to uphold security and order as proof of its competence in police matters, a competence that it had wrenched from the Wehrmacht. The measures for implementing the “Final Solution” also had to take a backseat to this priority, at least when those measures threatened to conflict with the supreme political objective. That objective, in turn, depended on domestic political stability in France and on the strength of the collaboration partner in Vichy. The result was a series of further paradoxes. The protest of the few but high-ranking Catholic dignitaries against the deportations of Jews in the summer of 1942 became the catalytic moment. It was founded on a priori moral judgment in the classical sense, triggered by the accompanying circumstances that escaped the control of the

German perpetrators and their helpers in Vichy. Spurring those clergymen into action was not the deportations as such but the fact that Jewish families who had been detained in the internment camps of the occupied and the unoccupied zones were torn apart in plain view—mothers and fathers separated from their children—and were bundled into buses “like a herd of cattle” (in the words of Archbishop SaliГЁge) and handed over to the occupiers.11 What turned the protest of Archbishop SaliГЁge, Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, and Bishop ThГ©as of Montauban into a crucial process, however, was not its moral impetus but the fact that it had a direct impact on the tectonics of the Vichy regime and hence on domestic political stability. The Catholic Church was able to make a decisive contribution to containing the “Final Solution” not despite but precisely in virtue of its support for the collaboration regime in Vichy. “The church did not collaborate with the occupiers, but it collaborated with Vichy, and Vichy collaborated with the occupiers,” as Г‰tienne Page 287 →Fouilloux observed.12 This logic continued to shape events: Laval’s rejection of the implementation of the Eichmann deportation plan at the beginning of September 1942 was effective not despite the fact that but precisely because he was a cynical collaborator who, as such, was indispensable for the German occupiers in general and for the SS in particular. The prevention of the persecution measures in the Italian-occupied zone blocked the “Final Solution” not despite the fact that but precisely because fascist Italy was Hitler’s closest ally. These counterintuitive effects were not an expression of erratic impulses of the key players but the result of rational political strategies that led to compromises. The German side was willing to make concessions when it came to French gains in prestige in questions of administrative competences and political symbolism, and the French side was willing to make concessions when such gains could only be had at the cost of supporting the aims of the German occupation policy. The Germans defined the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” as such an aim. Vichy’s willingness to make concessions also extended to this field, but it was not unlimited, because neither was the domestic political leeway for defending the compromises reached. Vichy was playing a two-level game. At the bilateral level, it could only make those concessions to the Germans that could be “sold” at the domestic political level.13 There is nothing unusual in the fact that Vichy observed this logic. What needs to be explained is that the SS accepted its terms. The key decisions were taken in July and September 1942 and ultimately in August 1943. The decisions in 1942 concerned the initiation of the mass deportations of foreign Jews from the occupied and the unoccupied areas of France with the cooperation of the French authorities and the French police, the cancellation of this unrestricted collaboration, and the German decision to accept the associated temporary suspension of the deportation plan drawn up and coordinated by Adolf Eichmann in the RSHA. These events took place on 2 July and 2 September 1942. Finally, on 24 August 1943, PetГЎin informed the German side that he was not going to sign into law the bill that had long been in preparation decreeing the wholesale expatriation of the Jews naturalized in France since 1927. The decisions of 2 July and 2 September 1942 were made by figures on the German and French sides who, at that time, had to be regarded as hommes nouveaux. The chief negotiator on the German side, the senior SS leader and chief of police (HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer, or HSSPF) Carl Oberg, had only been in office since 1 June 1942, his counterpart, the secretary-general Page 288 →of the French police RenГ© Bousquet, since 19 April 1942. Both of them were pursuing a similar agenda when it came to the position and role of the apparatus they represented. Oberg and his right-hand man, SS-StandartenfГјhrer (SS Colonel) Helmut Knochen, wanted to consolidate the power of the SS in France, which the latter had only recently achieved in a tortuous struggle with the Wehrmacht. Bousquet, a brilliant career bureaucrat from the Corps prГ©fectoral, was on the point of modernizing and centralizing the French police, with the backing of the head of the Vichy government, Pierre Laval, who had been restored to office in April 1942. These dispositions also overlaid the intensive negotiations that had been conducted since April 1942 concerning the conduct of mass arrests and deportations of the Jews from the occupied and the unoccupied zones and concerning the nature and extent of the cooperation of the French police in these persecution measures. The representatives of the SS, whose organization was still at least officially part of the same military

administration that it had just disempowered in the domain of the police, had to demonstrate to the central authorities in Berlin as well as to the Wehrmacht that they were able to cope with their new assignments. Among these assignments, the arrest and deportation of the Jews was crucial but ultimately of only secondary importance. Of primary importance was the creation of a stable collaboration axis with the leadership of the French police for ensuring public security and order, which, in turn, was directly connected with German military and economic interests. For Bousquet and his sponsor Laval, the main concern was to exact visible concessions from the German side when it came to strengthening French sovereignty rights and to equipping and training the French police, not least against the background of the severe strains on the Franco-German collaboration since August 1941 as a result of the hostage shootings following attacks on German military personnel and military installations. The SS would, in fact, be ready to make concessions in this area. Power sharing and mutual dependence among the power holders, directly represented by the German and French police leaderships and seconded in specific instances by political authorities on both sides, triggered the specific bargaining mechanism14 that mediated between the two key players, the leaderships of the German and French police, and their respective preferences. Not only were increases in power exchanged for organizational and personnel resources. In addition, the exchange itself led the actorsPage 289 → to constantly examine their subjective valuations of the respective outcome and to adapt their valuations to changed circumstances. The key decisions on the persecution of the Jews in France were taken within the framework of this bargaining mechanism. They concerned the cooperation of the French police in the arrest and deportation of the Jews as a service provided by the French side and the extension and guarantee of the competences of the French police and its leadership as a quid pro quo by the German side. In the jargon of game theory, these negotiated solutions conform to the Nash equilibrium:15 both sides had an interest in reaching an agreement because this promised to yield a higher utility than the status quo of a nonagreement. Furthermore, both sides had a relatively restricted scope for agreement, because concessions made to one side could easily entail disadvantages for the other side. Extending the competences and improving the equipment and training of the French police made the French state strong where this strength could potentially be turned against the occupying power, namely, in the area of armed police forces. Conversely, the participation of the French police in the arrest and deportation of the Jews exposed the French side to the risk of suffering a loss of esteem in the eyes of its own population and, as a result, jeopardizing the loyalty of the police forces themselves either directly or indirectly. The inhumane character of the deportation measures and the requisite police deployment could become apparent. Moreover, either way, to be called on to carry out repressive measures for the occupying power was an imposition on the police, on whose patriotic ethos one otherwise had to rely. Both sides therefore operated under the risk of jeopardizing their respective power base through negotiated solutions. Each side had to endeavor to demand the maximum but to concede the minimum. As a result, the negotiation constellation was unstable from the outset, and it was quite uncertain whether agreements would be reached. In general, however, both sides could assume that a combination of greater willingness to take risks—even to accept the failure of the negotiations, if necessary—and tenacity in pursuing one’s own goals entailed major payoffs as soon as an agreement was, in fact, reached.16 It is not just that agreements between the German and French negotiation partners point to equilibria in the sense of a balance of interests acceptable to both sides. That these equilibria were reached indeed points to three constitutive elements: the relation between the utility to be Page 290 →expected from negotiation success and the disadvantage to be expected from concessions, the respective negotiation tactics, and the support of the respective power base. Viewed in this light, the negotiations of 2 July and 2 September 1942 prove to be the decisive junctures.17 On both occasions, “equilibria” arose between the negotiation partners, and thus they reached agreements. On 2 July 1942, the agreement rested on the fact that Vichy agreed to the cooperation of the French police in the mass arrests and deportations of the foreign Jews and that the German side could assume that this would include a large number of soon-to-be-expatriated Jews. On 2 September 1942, by contrast, Laval in effect rescinded this

agreement. He rejected the execution of the German deportation program in accordance with the time plan worked out by Eichmann, and the inclusion of the Jews of French nationality in the arrest and deportation measures was deferred for the time being. The SS leadership in Paris gave its consent to the new French position and had this confirmed by Heinrich Himmler. Both of the decisions, that of 2 July and that of 2 September 1942, are clearly reflected in the development of the rates of deportation. They can be traced back to changes in the calculation of utility and disadvantages as a result of the respective negotiation style and, above all, of changes in the power base on the French side.

Deportations of Jews from France, Key Data, May 1942–August 1943 Italics indicate “turning points”; bold italics, “critical junctures.” Upper Statistical Series 5 November 1942Defeat of the German-Italian troops in El Alamein in Egypt 8 November 1942Allied landing in North Africa 2 February 1943Capitulation of the German Sixth Army and Allied troops in Stalingrad 12 May 1943Capitulation of the German Africa Corps in Tunisia 10 July 1943Allied landing in Sicily 25 July 1943Ousting of Mussolini by the Grand Council of Fascism 8 September 1943Armistice between Italy and the Allies Lower Statistical Series 7 June 1942Introduction of the Star of David badge in the occupied zone Page 291 →Fig. 14. Monthly figures of the Jews deported from France under German occupation, 1942–1944, with dates of key political and military events (upper row) and key decisions concerning the persecution of the Jews (lower row). (Data from Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz: Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und franzГ¶sischen BehГ¶rden bei der “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007); Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 [2006]: 437–73). Copyright Wolfgang Seibel.) Page 292 → 2 July 1942The commissioner general of the French police, Rene Bousquet, gives his consent to the senior SS leader and chief of police in France, Carl Albrecht Oberg, to the cooperation of the French police in the arrest and deportation of non-French Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones. 16/17 July 1942First major wave of arrests and deportations in Paris and adjacent dГ©partements. Its victims, over 13,000 human beings, are herded together into the VГ©lodrГґme d’Hiver, a bicycle racetrack in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. 8 August 1942Franco-German police agreement (Oberg-Bousquet agreement) 23 August 1942Pastoral letter of the archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge, protesting vehemently against the deportations of Jews 2 September 1942By invoking the protest of the Catholic Church, the French head of government, Pierre Laval, the most important French collaborator enjoying Hitler’s personal support, obtains a slowdown of the deportation program developed under Adolf Eichmann’s direction in the RSHA and the temporary suspension of the deportation of Jews with French citizenship. 25 September 1942The commander of the Security Police and the SD, Helmut Knochen, informs Eichmann of Himmler’s order to suspend temporarily the deportation of Jews with French citizenship, out of consideration for “the political situation.” 18 March 1943Mussolini decides, under pressure from his senior civil and military advisors, to place the measures against the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone in southeastern France in the hands of the Italian police instead of, as requested by the German side, those of the Vichy administration. However, the responsible police officer, Guido Lospinoso, sabotages the persecution of the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone. 16 April 1943The Franco-German police agreement of 8 August Page 293 →1943 is demonstratively

reaffirmed in Vichy by Oberg and Bousquet (second Oberg-Bousquet agreement). 24 August 1943The denaturalization law that the German side had in its sights since the summer of 1942 and that was already signed by Laval—through which the French Jews would have been expatriated en masse (based on a cutoff date determined by regulation, i.e., date of naturalization) and, as a consequence, would have been delivered up for deportation—is stopped by the head of state, Marshal PГ©tain. This marks the failure of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France by way of a mass administrative procedure. Bousquet’s concession on 2 July 1942 to make the French police available for the large-scale arrest of Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones was made in response to the carrot-and-stick tactics applied by the Germans. Bousquet had been cynical enough to hold out the prospect of surrendering the foreign Jews from the occupied and unoccupied zones in his conversations with Reinhard Heydrich during the latter’s visit to Paris in May 1942. When negotiating with the leadership of the SS on 2 July 1942, he at first tried to keep the French police out of the arrest operations against the Jews, invoking the sensitivity of head of state PГ©tain when it came to recourse to the French authorities by the occupying power. As a result, however, he made it easier for his counterpart, the commander of the Security Police and the SD (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, or BdS), Helmut Knochen, to refer, for his part, to his own head of state. By invoking the will of the “FГјhrer” as this had been openly expressed in public, Knochen made the “unconditional necessity of a conclusive resolution of the Jewish Question” into an essential condition of the German negotiation position.18 Bousquet relented. By this time, the German offers of establishing new police schools, installing a barracked force of riot police (the Groupes mobiles de reserve), and, not least, of disbanding the “Judenpolizei” under the direction of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, which did not fit into Bousquet’s plans for police reform, were already on the table. While Bousquet did not want to risk losing these gains, Knochen exhibited a steadfastness when it came to the arrests and deportations of the Jews, against which Page 294 →Bousquet was neither able nor willing to oppose anything at this time. Since the summer of 1940, both the French government and the French police leadership had provided ample proof that they had no misgivings in principle about cooperating in the persecution of the Jews, especially when this was directed against foreign Jews. So Bousquet consented to the collaboration of the French police in the arrest and deportation of foreign Jews throughout France. This constellation changed fundamentally in August 1942. On 7 June 1942, the Star of David badge was introduced as a preparatory measure in advance of the deportations in the occupied zone. This had led to barely disguised demonstrations of support with the Jews by the French population, especially in the cities. The deportations that had begun on 16 July—with the spectacular mass arrests of foreign Jews by the French police in Paris and surrounding areas—then unexpectedly became a political issue. Altering the political cost-benefit calculation on the French side were the protest by senior French clergymen—initially by the archbishops and cardinals in a note to PГ©tain and subsequently, in the second half of August, in the publicly distributed pastoral letters in the unoccupied zone, which quickly found their way into the international media—and concurrent diplomatic pressure from the US government.19 In fact, just a handful of Catholic dignitaries played a special role among the key players discussed here. They constituted the only group in whose actions the rationality of power coincided with the power of morality. It began with an elementary moral judgment. The archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-GГ©raud SaliГЁge, expressed it in his pastoral letter of 23 August 1942 in few but incisive words, with his expression of consternation over the deportation of the foreign Jews from the Free Zone. However, it was not through moral protest alone that the archbishops and cardinals managed to bring about the de facto cancellation of the collaboration in implementing the deportation program as developed and monitored by Eichmann, about which Laval informed the SS leadership in Paris on 2 September 1942. These church leaders were not opposed to the policy of the “new order” under PГ©tain but, on the contrary, were loyal to it and thus constituted a societal power factor of the first order. That the SS and police leadership accepted Vichy’s change of course raises the question of what made Laval’s negotiation position so strong. From the German perspective, this was, on the one hand, his personal credibility as an archcollaborator. On 22 June 1942, the anniversary of the GermanPage 295 → invasion of the

Soviet Union, Laval had publicly declared that he favored a German victory. For Hitler, he was the personal guarantor of the unconditional and Germany-friendly policy of Vichy. On the other hand, the German side had to take into account the special political role of the Catholic Church and the direct influence exercised by senior clergymen over PГ©tain. Shortly before this, the practical collaboration in the field of policing had experienced a major and, as both sides hoped, permanent consolidation through a formal accord, the Oberg-Bousquet agreement of 8 August 1942. The SS representatives in Paris were not interested in placing this in jeopardy through disputes over the frequency of deportation transports. In other words, in the meantime, the German side found itself in a negotiation position like that of the French side on 2 July 1942. The refusal to make concessions in the “Jewish Question” would have jeopardized the gains that had been achieved in internal security—above all in combating communists and the rest of the organized resistance—and in the stabilization of the Franco-German collaboration relations. The willingness to take risks on the German side had diminished, whereas the tenacity with which the French side insisted on assistance in domestic political matters had increased. This explains how a new equilibrium arose in the respective calculations of gains and losses on the German and French sides. As a result, the prospects of implementing the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” along the path already pursued, through an administrative mass procedure—wholesale denaturalization of the Jews of French nationality and their subsequent deportation—utilizing the French administration and French police forces, would prove to be illusory a couple of months later. First, the head of the German police forces, Knochen, informed Eichmann on 25 September 1942 that because of the “gravest consequences” that were otherwise to be expected in view of the stance of head of state PГ©tain following the protests of church dignitaries, arrests of French Jews would not be conducted in France “for the time being.” Knochen indicated that the “ReichsfГјhrer SS,” hence Himmler, had agreed to this.20 This raises the question of why the German side did not manage to change tack once again and bring the government in Vichy to continue along the originally agreed path of mass deportations of non-French Jews. For this, too, there was a clear program on which there was agreement not only between the RSHA and the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris but also, at least in principle, between the French and German lead negotiators—namely, the mass expatriation of Jews with French citizenship who had been naturalized after a certainPage 296 → cutoff date (under consideration were dates in the years 1927 and 1933). This procedure conformed to the pattern of the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941 in Germany proper, according to which Jews lost German citizenship and were divested of their property as soon as they were, in the cynical formulation of the decree, “normally resident abroad” or had moved abroad, which also happened automatically when they were deported beyond the frontiers of the Reich. In the Netherlands, for instance, the German Reich commissioner SeyГџ-Inquart was able to enforce the requirement that Jews with Dutch citizenship should be treated not as Dutch but, instead, as “stateless” and “enemies of the Reich,” thus denying the Dutch authorities jurisdiction over Dutch Jews in general. In an analogous way, in France, the Germans planned to use the commission for examining the naturalizations that had been granted since 1927, which Vichy had already established in July 1940, for precisely this purpose. The institutional preconditions were favorable, and the enactment of a denaturalization law became the main project of the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in France from the fall of 1942 onward. PГ©tain’s decision on 24 August 1943 not to undersign the already existing denaturalization law, which had been discussed back and forth and revised several times between the German and French negotiators, marked the failure of this undertaking as well. This had been preceded by the complete change in the military and geopolitical conditions, which also weakened the German negotiation position in the “Jewish Question.” The deferral of the deportations with Himmler’s blessing in September 1942, which had been conceived as a temporary measure, led to a path dependency that restricted the room for maneuver of the German side. As long as the principles of the Oberg-Bousquet agreement of 8 August 1942 and the agreements over the enactment of a denaturalization law were upheld, the German side was reliant not only on the personnel and organizational resources of the French administration and the French police but also on the political consent of the Vichy government as far as extending the anti-Jewish persecution measures was concerned. Arrayed against this

in the fall of 1942 were not only the domestic political resistance—namely, the protest by high-level Catholic dignitaries—but also a foreign political situation that was changing to Germany’s disadvantage and that made cooperation by Vichy in the Jewish persecution measures increasingly politically unattractive, while, by contrast, making the political reinforcement of the flanks of “Fortress Europe” increasingly important from the German perspective. The Allied landingPage 297 → in Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942 was followed by the long-prepared military occupation of the southern zone on the French mainland by German troops, which went hand in hand with a substantial enlargement of the Italian-occupied zone to the west and the north. Simultaneously, the German and Italian troops suffered defeat in Egypt at El Alamein. On 2 February 1943, the German 6th Army capitulated in Stalingrad. In the spring of 1943, Hitler and Ribbentrop undertook major efforts to confine the political costs resulting from the dramatically worsened military situation through a whole series of high-level political meetings. When the Oberg-Bousquet agreement was reaffirmed on 16 April 1943, the French side could count on the increased dependence of the German occupiers on stable domestic political relations in France and, not least, on the French armaments workforce mobilized in the context of the Service du travail obligatoire. The German envoy Schleier underlined the latter in a report to the Foreign Office of April 1943, with the remark that the general plenipotentiary for labor deployment, the Thuringian Gauleiter Sauckel, had “expressly” declared to him, during his last visit to Paris, “that France alone has completely fulfilled its labor draft program.” For the German side, by contrast, it remained uncertain whether and on what scale the original deportation program envisaged by Eichmann within the framework of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” could ever be taken up again with the full cooperation of the French administration and the French police. Oberg’s concession to Laval on 2 September 1942 now turned out to be basically irreversible. The special circumstances prevailing in the Italian-occupied zone from November 1942 and the behavior of the occupying troops stationed there contributed in a particular way to this situation. The Vichy authorities found themselves in the position of having to justify themselves toward Germany’s closest ally and its military representatives in the Italian zone for measures against the Jews that they were carrying out at the request of the Germans and with the consent of their own government. Moreover, the French side continually complained to the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris. The latter, for its part, regarded the French grievances as mere pretexts to avoid fulfilling pledges concerning French cooperation in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” and, in endless telexes and notes, blamed the conduct of the Italians in their occupied zone for the situation that had arisen. When these complaints were diverted to Rome, through Berlin and the Foreign Office and by Ribbentrop in person, the memorable situation of 17 and 18 March 1943 arose, in which Mussolini consented to the implementation of the Page 298 →Franco-German agreements on the arrest and deportation of the Jews in the Italian-occupied zone as well and then withdrew this consent a couple of hours later under pressure from his closest military and diplomatic advisers. It remained that the government in Vichy could justify its hesitation concerning large-scale cooperation in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” through administrative channels by invoking the reluctance of even Germany’s closest ally. The latter, that is, fascist Italy, had issued brutal anti-Jewish laws of its own from 1938 onward and protected the Jews in southeastern France not so much for humanitarian reasons but, instead, as a demonstration of power by the occupier toward the French rival, to whom it had been forced to make greater concessions than intended at the request of the Germans during the armistice negotiations in June 1940. Now the Italian commanders wanted to show who ruled the roost, especially in police matters. With secret negotiations with the Allies on a separate armistice in the offing, no one in the upper echelons of the Italian military was interested in compromising himself by supporting the ruthless German policy against the Jews. Additional months passed marked not only by a deterioration in Germany’s military situation but also by a steady decrease in the domestic political support for Vichy’s collaboration course, while, at the same time, the importance of domestic political stability and of the guarantee of public security and order increased for the German side with the increased frequency of attacks by the resistance in expectation of an Allied landing. It was the supreme commander of German forces in the West (Oberbefehshaber West), Field Marshal von Rundstedt, to whom, on 27 August 1943, PГ©tain pledged, on the one hand, that “in case of enemy landings,” he would

issue a “proclamation to the French people” to dissuade them, as the German side put it in the corresponding report to the Foreign Office, “from engaging in ill-considered actions against the German troops and their rearward supply lines.”21 On the other hand, PГ©tain demanded adequate equipment for the French police and secured von Rundstedt’s support for this. Three days earlier, PГ©tain had refused to sign the denaturalization law, which had been a long time in preparation and was supposed to provide the foundation for the expatriation and the immediate deportation of the expatriated Jews. He justified his refusal on the grounds that the French government was encountering “many difficulties” in its endeavor to uphold public order, which was precisely what Germany was constantly demanding after all, and that it did not want to do anything “that would offend public opinion and make [the Page 299 →performance of] the tasks of government even more difficult.”22 On the German side, however, military considerations dominated political considerations, and political considerations dominated considerations concerning the appropriate way to deal with the French government and its administration when it came to the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” Fig. 15. Graphic depiction of causal mechanisms. (Adapted from Peter HedstrГ¶m and Petri Ylikoski, “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 36 [2010]: 59. Copyright Wolfgang Seibel.) So if we assume, in line with our initial premises, that between the results of the Wannsee Conference and their actual implementation was a system of causal links whose constitutive elements were the “permissive environment” of the power-sharing arrangement of the occupation regime combined with state anti-Semitism, the bargaining mechanism that shaped the interaction between key German and French actors, and the legal and organizational implementation, then the cumulative effect of the protest of the Catholic Church dignitaries and the obstruction of the persecution in the Italian zone was to weaken precisely those elements. Page 300 →This assumption leads back to the paradoxes that mark the course of the persecution of the Jews in France. They can be traced back to the overlapping of rational action strategies of key political players that blur the boundaries between perpetrators and coperpetrators, persecutors and accomplices, and hence, in a way, good and evil. The really instructive phenomenon is nevertheless the transformation of moral norms into a political power factor. In and of themselves, the protests of high-level church dignitaries against the deportations of Jews would surely not have failed to make their mark with head of state PГ©tain, given the special position of power enjoyed by the Catholic Church in Vichy France. The decisive effect, however, was the resonance of these protests within the population. Presumably, the (mistaken) assumption, reproduced in some reports by prefects from the provinces, that the French police were arresting and deporting the foreign Jews by German fiat in the Free Zone as well also played a role, so that the outrage over these measures had a patriotic undercurrent. This alone did not, however, make the reaction of the population into a critical factor, for antipathies toward the occupying power were commonplace. It was instead the fact that these resentments were connected with original moral outrage that lent the reactions of the population a political character. The rhetoric of the urgent protests and appeals of the prominent clergymen that increasingly forced their way into the public domain appealed to both the moral and the patriotic feelings of the French. This and the fact that the Catholic Church was itself a prime bastion of the power of the Vichy regime brought about the swing of 2 September 1942. The political force of original moral judgment—triggered by the fate suffered by those who were arrested in their homes or on the open street or were dragged from the internment camps, their families torn apart, all of whom were surrendered to the German occupiers and abandoned to their fate—was rooted in nothing other than that “natural moral sense” of which James Q. Wilson speaks in the quotation cited at the opening of this conclusion. Even if the perpetrators on the German side and their accomplices on the French side had nothing but contempt or indifference for the normative power of morality, they nevertheless had to include it in their cynical calculations and thus show deference to the original moral judgment of the population. The exclusion of the Jews from what Helen Fein describes as the “universe of moral obligation”23 clearly failed. Thus morality turns out to be the original, necessary condition for saying no in the face of mass crimes against

humanity. However, just as anti-SemitismPage 301 → and the “exclusion from the universe of moral obligation” was a necessary but not a sufficient condition of unleashing the persecution, the mobilization of morality was a necessary but not a sufficient condition of its containment. In addition, political power had to be mobilized. But even such mobilization—for example, moral protest such as that articulated with broad resonance by the appeal of Archbishop SaliГЁge—would hardly have been sufficient to bring about a turn in the collaboration policy in the persecution of the Jews. What was needed was a transmitter of power, a mechanism that ensured the political effectiveness of the protest and lent it enduring effectiveness. The Catholic Church was the power factor that brought about both the mobilization of morality as a political force and its enduring effectiveness. The power of the church rested on its close association with the Vichy regime, which ensured its most senior representatives privileged access to the control centers of this regime. However, what turned out to be decisive was not the role of the church as such but the pronounced political skill of a small number of senior church representatives, first and foremost Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon. Thus, ironically, loyalty to the Vichy regime and the latter’s collaboration with the German occupying power were necessary presuppositions for the transformation of moral outrage into political power. On the one hand, when Laval referred his German interlocutors on 2 September 1942 to the stance of influential church dignitaries, this was credible because Laval could present himself as the supreme guarantor of Vichy’s Germany-friendly policy. On the other hand, it was effective because the German side could not afford an erosion of the power of the Vichy regime. This explains the concessions made by Oberg and Knochen, the two most senior German SS representatives in France, and Himmler’s approval, of which Knochen informed Eichmann on 25 September 1942. This course of events was neither inevitable nor predictable in the eyes of the key players. For the key players on the SS and Gestapo side, Oberg and Knochen, it did, in fact, turn out differently than they had hoped. Whether the rationality of persecution or the rationality of the acquisition and retention of power prevailed, whether the rationality of morality was articulated and was made politically effective in its articulation, depended to a large degree on the judgment and practical competence of the key figures on both sides, the German and the French. Here, too, closer inspection yields counterintuitive information. Among the explanatory factors of the actual course taken by the persecutionPage 302 → of the Jews in France under the German occupation is the differentiation of the SS into two groups of actors. One group, centered around Knochen and Hagen together with Oberg (whom the former used for their own purposes), pursued strategic ambitions aimed at consolidating the position of the SS as a political factor also in occupied France. The other group, including the desk officers for Jewish affairs (Judenreferenten) Dannecker and RГ¶thke, comprised Eichmann’s henchmen in Paris. It was Knochen who, in the fall of 1941, deviously undermined the position of the military commander, Otto von StГјlpnagel, and, in skillful interaction with his sponsor, Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Reich Security Main Office, contributed not only materially to StГјlpnagel’s actual resignation in February 1942 but, most important, to the dramatic increase in power of the SS through the installation of a senior SS leader and chief of police and the concentration of all German police competences in his area of command. Knochen, whose career received the decisive impulse when, in the fall of 1939, operating with an SD unit near the Dutch border town of Venlo, he abducted two British secret agents whom Nazi propaganda connected with the attack on Hitler in the BГјrgerbrГ¤ukeller in Munich on 9 November 1939, was a man equipped with a suitable nimbus among the ranks of younger SS leaders and with a kind of trump card when it came to mastering complex problems in which operative tasks were closely intertwined with political aspects. He had not only the corresponding judgment and practical competence but also the backing of the most senior SS leaders, hence of Heydrich and Himmler, which would continue even after the death of Heydrich in early June 1942. His Judenreferenten were inferior to Knochen not only in intelligence, rank, and access to networks but, for these very reasons, also in cynicism. Knochen was no less relentless in his pursuit of the goal of implementing the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” through deportation and mass murder than were Eichmann and his henchmen. Nevertheless, for Knochen, this goal remained secondary whenever the stakes involved the power of

the SS, which, in France, was essentially bound up with his personal activity. Knochen’s ambition was necessarily to prove that the SS was better able than the Wehrmacht, the nominal holder of occupation power, to master the precarious twofold task of ensuring public security and order as well as domestic political stability and stable Franco-German collaboration relations. This explains his special flexibility when it came to the relevance of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” for power on both the German and French Page 303 →sides. This disposition proved to be decisive in the concession made by the senior Sipo/SD officials to Laval on 2 September 1942 and the associated mobilization of Himmler to back this course, which resulted in the suspension (thought to be temporary) of Eichmann’s deportation program. It is worth considering what course the events would have taken if Knochen—who, according to the testimony of German and French postwar witnesses, was the actual intellectual and operative mastermind of the Sipo/SD leadership in Paris—had not found appropriate partners and opponents on the French side. This holds for RenГ© Bousquet, on the one side, and Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier of Lyon, on the other. The former made the essential contribution to the agreement of 2 July 1942 according to which the French police were to be responsible for the arrests of the non-French Jews for deportation. The latter was, in many senses, the political mastermind of the Catholic opposition to the prosecution measures, with their cruel accompanying circumstances, which led to Laval’s dГ©marche and to the climbdown of the SS on 2 September 1942. RenГ© Bousquet bore an astonishing resemblance to Knochen as regards age, career, and ambitions. He had just turned 33 when he was appointed secretary-general of the French police in April 1942, prior to which he had already served as prefect of the dГ©partement Marne. Just as Knochen had enforced the power of the SS as the sole German police authority in France, so Bousquet, immediately after assuming office, set about strengthening the French police through centralization, professionalization, and increased autonomy from the German occupying power. Like Knochen, Bousquet combined analytical intelligence with political and operative skill. Added to this was the ambition of a man who was extraordinarily young given the extent of his power. Bousquet not only shared all of these characteristics in an objective sense with Knochen and the cohort of young, ambitious university graduates that Reinhard Heydrich gathered around him in the RSHA and his other dependencies. He also impressed Heydrich and Himmler in meetings that the latter held with Bousquet in April 1942 and April 1943. This does not exhaust the parallels. Just as, within the Sipo/SD apparatus, Knochen sidelined his “desk officers for Jewish affairs” who persisted in their attempts to make the deportation program decreed for Western Europe with Eichmann in the series of consultations following the Wannsee Conference into the decisive factor for the negotiations between the German and French police leaderships, Bousquet contained the power of the secretary-general for Jewish affairs, Darquier de Pellepoix, by disbanding the special police force, the Police aux questionsPage 304 → juives, in July 1942 (though a de facto successor organization with diluted competences, the Section d’enquГЄte et de contrГґle, survived). However, Bousquet edged the ideological anti-Semites on the French side out of the operative persecution of the Jews only to assume this task himself in the area of policing. This was the price he paid on 2 July 1942 for the strengthening of the French police and of his own person. Bousquet’s technocratic skills and his practical political competence found no counterweight in moral judgment. Like his patron Laval, he turned human lives into commodities and, in doing so, crossed a red line, judged by genuinely moral standards. He did this reluctantly, in contrast to Laval, for during the negotiations on 2 July 1942, he still tried to avoid providing binding assurances of the participation of the French police in the mass arrests of Jews. Knochen’s clever conduct of the negotiations, however, had ensured that, at this stage, Bousquet already had before his mind’s eye the prospect of drastic improvements in the equipment and operational competences of the French police, which the German side was ready to concede. When, in addition, Knochen raised the matter to a level of political principle and remarked that a refusal of French assistance would “certainly not meet with the understanding of the FГјhrer”24 in view of Hitler’s unequivocal commitment to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” in Europe, Bousquet caved in and abandoned tens of thousands of Jews to the German persecutors. On the one hand, therefore, Bousquet was aware of the moral implications of his decision, which led him to hesitate; on the other hand, the prospect of increases in competence and power led him to disregard these implications.

It was Cardinal Gerlier who not only followed genuinely moral impulses but also possessed the capacity for political judgment25 and who combined both of these capabilities, in turn, with a remarkable practical political skill. Gerlier, who was honored as “Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1981, derived his political influence not only from his direct access to PГ©tain. He mastered the full range of political rhetoric, with which he brought both the moral and the patriotic feelings of the population into sympathetic motion by mentioning the national and moral values of France in the same breath in the positions he took against the deportations of Jews in August and September 1942, just as did other senior church figures on both the Catholic and the Protestant sides during these weeks. Gerlier was extremely well versed in the mechanisms of political power games and knew how to use these mechanisms effectively for his moral purposes. On 1 September 1942, as if he already knew of Thomas Schelling’s theorem concerning the paradox Page 305 →of weakness,26 he made the recommendation to the regional prefect of Lyon, Alexandre Angeli, that the Vichy government could address the “Jewish Question” with the Germans with the argument that the opposition of the Catholic Church revealed the domestic political problems caused by the cooperation in the deportations of the Jews.27 A day later, Laval would argue in precisely these terms to his German opposite numbers. Both Gerlier and Laval could present themselves in this way only because they were outstanding exponents of the Vichy system, its power base, and its politics. Gerlier’s venture was effective only because the cardinal stood for the most important societal bastion of the power of the Vichy regime. The German side found Laval’s arguments compelling only because he was the supreme guarantor of the French collaboration policy. What we learn from the French case in the history of the Holocaust is that people with good intentions alone cannot prevent evil, whereas the morally indifferent can contribute to the good without explicitly intending to do so. The most important lesson might be, however, that while the threshold of complicity in mass crime is disturbingly low, the efforts of intervention are amazingly effective once moral judgment and political skill converge.

Page 306 → Page 307 →

Short Biographies of the Key Actors Bousquet, RenГ© (1909–1993) From April 1942 until December 1943, secretary-general of the French police and, with the assistance of his deputy for the occupied zone, Jean Leguay, chief negotiation partner of the German police leadership under the senior SS leader and chief of police, Carl Albrecht Oberg, and the commander of the Security Police and the Security Services, Helmut Knochen. Reached an agreement with Oberg on 8 August 1942 (reaffirmed on 16 April 1943) that provided the basis for the Franco-German collaboration in the field of policing, including the persecution of the Jews. Prosecuted in 1949, received a lenient sentence (loss of civil rights for five years) on the grounds that he supported the resistance, and pardoned in 1950. Subsequently had a career in the public banking sector (Banque de l’Indochine). In 1991, charged with crimes against humanity. In 1993, shot dead by a mentally deranged man. Dannecker, Theodor (1913–1945) From 1940 to 1942, desk officer for Jewish affairs in the Sipo/SD headquarters in Paris. Recalled to Berlin at the end of July 1942, following tensions with his superior, Knochen. Subsequently desk officer for Jewish affairs or similar position in Bulgaria, Italy, and Hungary. Committed suicide in US military detention in December 1945. Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis (1897–1980) From May 1942 until February 1944, commissioner general for Jewish questions and director of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives under the Vichy government, as successor to Xavier Vallat. As such, close collaborator especially of the desk officers for Jewish affairs in the Paris Sipo/SD apparatus (Dannecker, RГ¶thke), increasingly isolated by Bousquet and Laval, who Page 308 →preferred to negotiate directly with the senior police officers on the German side (Oberg, Knochen) also when it came to the “Jewish Question.” After 1944, escaped to Spain, where he remained unmolested by the Franco regime. Condemned to death in absentia in 1947. de Brinon, Fernand (1885–1947) From July 1940 until the liberation in August 1944, delegate general of the French government in the occupied territories. Following studies in law and politics, active as a journalist. From the 1920s, proponent of a policy of rapprochement with Germany. From 1932, had personal contacts with later Reich foreign minister Ribbentrop. During the 1930s, had several meetings with Hitler. For 1940–1944, as representative of the Vichy government in Paris, officially the most important negotiation partner of the German occupying power with limited influence on specific questions of the “collaboration.” From August–September 1944 until May 1945, member of the fictive French government in Sigmaringen. Interned by US troops in May 1945 and extradited to France. There condemned to death and executed in 1947 for spying for the enemy and “lack of national dignity.” Gerlier, Pierre-Marie (1880–1965) Archbishop of Lyon from 1937, as “Primat des Gaules,” the most senior representative of the Catholic Church in the Free Zone with direct access to head of state PГ©tain. Initially indifferent, became the political mastermind of the protest by the Catholic clergy against the mass arrests and deportations of Jews, whose protection in church establishments he actively promoted. In 1981, honored as “Righteous among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Jerusalem. Hagen, Herbert Martin (1913–1999) From 1940 to 1942, director of the Sipo/SD office in Bordeaux. From May 1942, personal assistant of the senior SS leader and chief of police, Carl Albrecht Oberg, and his closest advisor also in connection with the persecution

and deportation of the Jews. In 1955, condemned to death in France in absentia. In 1980, condemned by jury court in Kiel to 12 years imprisonment for acting as an accessory to murder. Released prematurely in 1985. Knochen, Helmut (1910–2003) From 1940 to 1942, director of the Paris bureau of the representative of the chief of the Security Police and the Security Services for Belgium and France. Page 309 →From 1 June 1942 until August 1944, commander of the Security Police and the Security Services and SS colonel in the area of the military commander in France. Completed studies in German, English, and sport in Leipzig, Halle, and GГ¶ttingen (1935 doctorate). In 1932, entered the Nazi party and the SA. From September 1936, employed in the Higher Section West of the Security Services (SD) in DГјsseldorf and switched to the SS. In 1937, became special advisor in the Berlin headquarters of the Security Services. Condemned in 1946 by a British military court for complicity in the murder of captured British pilots. Extradited in 1947 to France, where he was condemned to death in 1954. In 1958, received commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment. In 1962, pardoned and released from French prison. Subsequently worked as a real estate agent in Baden-Baden and Offenbach. Laval, Pierre Etienne (1883–1945) French minister from 1925. Prime minister in 1935/36. From June to December 1940, deputy prime minister of the Vichy government under head of state PГ©tain. From April 1942 until August 1944, president of the Council of Ministers and head of government. Through Hitler’s personal support, the chief political proponent of the French policy of collaboration with the German occupying power. Directly involved in the approval of the Vichy government for the involvement of the French police in the mass arrests and deportations of Jews from July 1942, though he revoked this in part in September 1942. In 1945, condemned to death for high treason and executed. Leguay, Jean (1909–1989) From April 1942 until December 1943, prefect and delegate of the secretary-general of the police of the Vichy government in the occupied zone; as such, RenГ© Bousquet’s deputy. Under Bousquet, negotiating partner of the German SS and police leadership in France and primarily responsible for the involvement of the French police in the arrest and deportation of the Jews. Charged in 1979 with crimes against humanity. Died in 1989, before the end of the trial. Oberg, Carl Albrecht (1897–1965) From 1942 to 1944, senior SS leader and chief of police with the military commander in France. In this capacity, representative of the SS and Gestapo apparatus vis-Г -vis the government in Vichy and the latter’s negotiation partner in policing matters. Reached an agreement with the secretary-general of the French police, RenГ© Bousquet, on 8 August 1942 (reaffirmed on 16 April 1943) Page 310 →that provided the basis for the FrancoGerman collaboration in the field of policing, including the persecution of the Jews. In 1954, condemned to death in France. In 1958, received commutation of the death sentence to life imprisonment. In 1962, pardoned and released to West Germany. PГ©tain, Henri Philippe (1856–1951) World War I hero and Marshal of France, became head of state of the Г‰tat FranГ§ais and its authoritarian regime in July 1940. After a meeting with Hitler in October 1940, coined the quasi-official notion of “collaboration” as a characterization of the relationship between Vichy-France and Nazi-Germany. Initiated anti-Jewish legislation without German request and, while being reluctant to accept the idea of a “final solution,” did not prevent Vichy authorities and police forces from arresting and extraditing foreign Jews when wholesale deportations to Auschwitz started in July 1942. In August 1943 finally refused to sign a bill into law that would have denaturalized all Jews who had acquired French citizenship in 1927 or later. Was sentenced to death for treason in 1945 but received commutation to life imprisonment.

Röthke, Heinz (1912–1966) From 1942 to 1944, Theodore Dannecker’s successor as desk officer for Jewish affairs in the Sipo/SD headquarters in Paris. Played a key role in the radicalization and organizational refinement of the repression and persecution measures against the Jews, particularly in the preparation of the mass arrests and deportations from the summer of 1942, in close coordination with the head of department in charge in the Reich Security Main Office, Adolf Eichmann. After 1945, worked unmolested as legal counsel in Wolfsburg. From 1961, received monthly pension for prewar employment as senior civil servant in the Bavarian civil service. Saliège, Jules-Géraud (1870–1956) Archbishop of Toulouse from 1928. First protested in the spring of 1941 against the anti-Jewish laws and ordinances of the Vichy government. On 23 August 1942, had read from the pulpits of the parishes of his archdiocese his pastoral letter protesting vehemently against the arrests and deportations of the Jews that had been going on for weeks, a letter that strengthened the protest and passive resistance both within the Catholic clergy and among the population. In 1969, honored as “Righteous among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Jerusalem.

Page 311 →

Notes Preface 1. Wolfgang Seibel, “The Strength of Perpetrators: The Holocaust in Western Europe, 1940–1944,” Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration 15 (2002): 211–40; Wolfgang Seibel and Jörg Raab, “Verfolgungsnetzwerke: Arbeitsteilung und Machtdifferenzierung in den Verfolgungsapparaten des Holocaust,” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 55 (2003): 197–230; Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel, eds., Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005). 2. Charles King, “Can There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust?,” Perspectives on Politics 10 (2012): 323–41 (326–27). 3. Peter Hedström and Petri Ylikoski, “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 49–67. 4. Cf. John Gerring and Jason Seawright, “Techniques for Choosing Cases,” in Case Study Research: Principles and Practices, by John Gerring (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 86–150. 5. Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). For more recent accounts, see Rebecca Clifford, Commemorating the Holocaust: The Dilemmas of Remembrance in France and Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Olivier Wieviorka, La mémoire désunie: Le souvenir politique des années sombres, de la Libération à nos jours (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2010). 6. Olivier Wieviorka, “The Strange Paradox: Vichy after Vichy,” in Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe: Legacies and Lessons from the Twentieth Century, ed. Jerzy W. Borejza and Klaus Ziemer, in cooperation with Magdalena Hułas (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006), 384–395 (395). 7. Saul Friedländer, Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good (New York: Knopf, 1969).

Page 312 →Introduction 1. Translation of the reprint in Serge Klarsfeld, Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944, vols. 2–4 of La Shoah en France (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 413–15 (henceforth cited as Calendrier, with page number—the volumes are paginated consecutively). The Gestapo in Paris had SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter translated into German without delay. The facsimile (signed “Kriegel, SS-OberscharfГјhrer”) is reprinted in Serge Klarsfeld, Recueil de documents des dossiers des autoritГ©s allemandes concernant la persГ©cution de la population juive en France (1940–1944), 12 vols. (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1979), vol. V 1366–67 (henceforth cited as Recueil, with volume number (roman) and sheet number). 2. Wolfgang Benz, ed., Dimensionen des VГ¶lkermords: Die Zahl der jГјdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, 2nd ed. (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1996). For Western Europe, see Seibel, “Strength of Perpetrators.” For France and the Netherlands, see Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, “AntiJewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 (2006): 437–73. 3. Figures from Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz: Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und franzГ¶sischen BehГ¶rden bei der “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 368–72. This one-volume German edition of the two-volume French original Vichy–Auschwitz: Le rГґle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France (Paris: Fayard, 1983–85) contains an appendix with

primarily German sources. For quotations from those reprinted sources, I use the 2007 German edition (designated in citations throughout the following notes with the abbreviation “Ger.”); for quotations from the main body of Klarsfeld’s classic study, I use the French original. 4. King, “Can There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust?,” 326–27. 5. Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2008); Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011). 6. Hans G. Adler, Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland (TГјbingen: Paul Siebeck / J. C. B. Mohr, 1974); Zygmunt Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 7. Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,” World Politics 24 (1972): 40–79; Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg, Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 8. Feldman and Seibel, Networks of Nazi Persecution; Seibel and Raab, “Verfolgungsnetzwerke” ; Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel, eds., Der PrekГ¤re Staat: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2011). 9. See Eberhard JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa: Die deutsche Frankreichpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966). For a comparativePage 313 → assessment of the German occupation of France, see Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Allen Lane, 2008), 416–45. 10. “Aufzeichnung Гјber die Unterredung zwischen dem FГјhrer und dem Duce in MГјnchen am 18. Juni 1940, soweit sie in Anwesenheit des ReichsauГџenministers des Grafen Cianao, des Generaloberst Keitel und des Generals Roatta stattfand” [Note on the discussion between the FГјhrer and the Duce in Munich on 18 June 1940, insofar as it was conducted in the presence of Foreign Minister Graf Cianao, Colonel General Keitel, and General Roatta], 18 June 1940, Akten zur Deutschen AuswГ¤rtigen Politik 1918–1945: Aus dem Archiv des AuswГ¤rtigen Amts (Frankfurt am Main: P. Keppler Verlag, 1962), ser. D, vol. IX, doc. 479, pp. 503–5 (henceforth cited as ADAP). 11. Walther Hubatsch, ed., Hitlers Weisungen fГјr die KriegsfГјhrung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. 2nd ed. (Koblenz: Bernard und Graefe Verlag, 1983), Directive No. 18 of 11 November 1940, 67. 12. John P. Fox, “How Far Did Vichy France вЂSabotage’ the Imperatives of Wannsee?,” in The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, edited by David Cesarani (London: Routledge, 1994), 194–214; AndrГ© Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1991); Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz; Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Schocken Books, 1983 [1981]); RenГ©e Poznanski, Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Hachette, 1994); Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1953), 305–28; Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943 (London: Routledge, 1990); LГ©on Poliakov and Jacques Sabille, Jews under Italian Occupation (Paris: Г‰dition du Centre, 1955); Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987); Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993). 13. Regina M. Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen: AusgewГ¤hlte Dokumente zur zyklischen Eskalation des NS-Terrors im besetzten Frankreich 1941 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000); Ahlrich Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung in Frankreich 1940–1944: WiderstandsbekГ¤mpfung und Judenverfolgung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000); Ahlrich Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r: Die “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005). 14. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews. 15. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz.

16. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and Olivier Wieviorka, Vichy, 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), 104–7; Marc Olivier Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais: L’administration en France de 1940 Г 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 150–56, 398–99; Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust (London: Arnold, 1994); Tal Bruttmann, La Logique des bourreaux 1943–1944 (Paris: Hachette, 2003); Tal Bruttmann, Au Bureau des affaires Juives: L’administration franГ§aise et l’application de la lГ©gislation antisГ©mite (1940–1944) (Paris: Г‰ditions La DГ©couverte, 2006); Tal Bruttmann, Laurent Page 314 →Joly, and Barbara Lambauer, “Der Auftakt zur Verfolgung der Juden in Frankreich 1940: Ein deutsch-franzГ¶sisches Zusammenspiel,” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012): 381–407; Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonances: Aryanisation et restitution des Banques en France 1940–1953 (Paris: Fayard, 2003); Poznanski, Les Juifs en France; Jacques Semelin, PersГ©cutions et entraides dans la France occupГ©e: Comment 75% des Juifs en France ont Г©chappГ© Г la mort (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 2013); Philippe Verheyde, Les mauvais comptes de Vichy: L’aryanisation des entreprises juives (Paris: Perrin, 1999); An overview of the political twists of the French discussion is provided by Olivier Wieviorka in La mГ©moire dГ©sunie. See also Alain Michel, Vichy et la Shoah: EnquГЄte sur le paradoxe franГ§ais (Paris: CLD, 2012) for a recent, though controversial, account of what the author calls the “doxa” of the culpabilitГ© de Vichy (Vichy’s guilt). 17. Michael Mayer, Staaten als TГ¤ter: MinisterialbГјrokratie und “Judenpolitik” in NS-Deutschland und Vichy-Frankreich; Ein Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010). 18. Semelin, PersГ©cutions et entraides dans la France occupГ©e. 19. Jacques Semelin does mention the importance of the continued existence of French statehood and a full-fledged government as a potential structural impediment to repression and persecution (ibid., 834–38), without addressing systematically, however, the resulting logic of interaction with the German occupying power. 20. A similar thesis regarding genocide and mass crime unleashed by interethnic rivalry is presented by Michael Mann in The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); on the Holocaust, see “Germany’s Allies and Auxiliaries” (279–317), though it fails to take into consideration the Western European countries and the collaboration relations with the German perpetrators in those countries. 21. Laurent Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale”: Histoire du Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (1941–1944) (Paris: Grasset, 2006); Martin Jungius, Un vol organisГ©: L’État franГ§ais et la spoliation des biens juifs 1940–1944 (Paris: Tallandier, 2012). 22. Stanley Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France during World War II,” Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 375–95 (377). Hoffmann used the French expression “collaboration d’état.” See also Robert O. Paxton, “La Collaboration d’État,” in La France des annГ©es noires, edited by Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, vol. 1, De la dГ©faite Г Vichy (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1993), 333–61. 23. See Seibel, “Strength of Perpetrators.” 24. Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 25. Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). 26. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma, De Munich Г la LibГ©ration, 1938–1944 (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1979). 27. Philippe Burrin, Living with Defeat: France under German Occupation, 1940–1944 (London: Arnold, 1996). Page 315 →28. Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France, 1940–1944 (London: John Murray, 1997). 29. Thomas J. Laub, After the Fall: German Policy in Occupied France, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 30. Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during German Occupation (London: MacMillan, 2002). 31. Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years (1940–1944) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See also Wieviorka, La mГ©moire dГ©sunie. 32. This concerns, above all, the controversy, on the one hand, with the theses of Daniel Goldhagen (Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust [New York: Knopf, 1996]), who argued that an especially aggressive, “ethnonationalist” anti-Semitism in Germany was an essential

motivation for the persecution, and, on the other, with the works of GГ¶tz Aly (Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State [New York: Metropolitan, 2007]), who emphasized the economic motives, including the opportunities for individual enrichment, as a decisive factor. 33. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd ed. (New York: Meridian Books, 1958; 1st ed., 1951), 460–81. 34. Pierre Laborie, L’opinion franГ§aise sous Vichy (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1990), 264–81. 35. See Bear F. Braumoeller and Gary Goertz, “The Methodology of Necessary Conditions,” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000): 844–58; Gary Goertz and Jack S. Levy, “Causal Explanation, Necessary Conditions, and Case Studies,” in Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 9–45. 36. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 1–60, 317–25 (with the much-quoted formula “working towards the FГјhrer”); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4, 1914–1949, 3rd ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008), 623–25, 881–902 (emphasizing the effects of Hitler’s personal charismatic rule). 37. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking, 1963), 276. 38. Stathis Kalyvas, “The Ontology of вЂPolitical Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 475–94; Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 39. Hans Mommsen, Der Nationalsozialismus: Kumulative Radikalisierung und SelbstzerstГ¶rung des Regimes, in Meyers EnzyklopГ¤disches Lexikon, 9th ed., vol. 16 (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1976), 785–90; Hans Mommsen, “Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die вЂEndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage’ im вЂDritten Reich,’” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 381–420. 40. See Mommsen’s essay “Hannah Arendt und der ProzeГџ gegen Adolf Eichmann” in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: Ein Bericht von der BanalitГ¤t des BГ¶sen (Munich: Piper, 1986), I–XXXII, especially XVI–XVII, translated into EnglishPage 316 → as “Hannah Arendt and the Eichmann Trial” in From Weimar to Auschwitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 254–78. 41. Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, with contributions by JГјrgen MatthГ¤us (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004). 42. Burrin, Hitler and the Jews. 43. Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941 (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 431–69. 44. Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). 45. Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in WeiГџrussland 1941 bis 1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999); Christian Gerlach, Krieg, ErnГ¤hrung, VГ¶lkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998); Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in The Twentieth-Century World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 235–54. 46. Snyder, Bloodlands, 187–223. 47. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4:901–2. 48. See Feldman and Seibel, Networks of Nazi Persecution. 49. Saul FriedlГ¤nder, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 2, The Years of Extermination (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), xx. 50. Rainer C. Baum, The Holocaust and the German Elite: Genocide and National Suicide in Germany, 1871–1945 (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), 24–112. 51. Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945, 127–53. 52. Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 66–90; Benjamin

Valentino, “Final Solutions, Further Puzzles,” Security Studies 14 (2004): 204–8 (209–12). 53. Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1979), 30. 54. Helen Fein, Imperial Crime and Punishment: The Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and British Judgment, 1919–1920 (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977), 9. 55. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 460–81. 56. Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship” (1964), in Responsibility and Judgment, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 17–48. 57. Eva Fogelman, Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (New York: Anchor Books, 1994); Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust (New York: Henry Holt, 2003); Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (New York: Free Press, 1988). 58. On the role of public opinion as a stimulating or impeding factor of perpetrator behavior, see Valentino, Final Solutions, 30–65. 59. Fein, Accounting for Genocide, 9, 30. See also James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Page 317 →Press, 2007), 196–220; Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1994). 60. See David Bankier, ed., Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000); Christian T. Barth, Goebbels und die Juden (Paderborn: SchГ¶ningh, 2003); Karl-Heinz Reuband, “вЂJГјd Süß’ und вЂDer Ewige Jude’ als Prototypen antisemitischer Filmpropraganda im Dritten Reich: Entstehungsbedingungen, Zuschauerstrukturen und Wirkungspotential,” in Propaganda, (Selbst-)Zensur, Sensation: Grenzen von Presse- und Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland und Tschechien seit 1871, edited by Michael AndД•l, Detlef Brandes, Alfons Labisch, JiЕ™i PeЕЎek, und Thomas Ruzicka (Essen: Klartext, 2005), 89–148. 61. Guy B. Adams and Danny Lee Balfour, Unmasking Administrative Evil (Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage, 1998); Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust. 62. Mommsen, Die Realisierung des Utopischen, 383–84, 391–96; Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4:894. 63. Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship.” 64. Isaiah Berlin, “Political Judgement” (1957), in The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 40–53. 65. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper and Row, 1974); Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 66. Laborie, L’opinion franГ§aise sous Vichy, 273–78. 67. Kaspi, Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation; Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews; Poznanski, Les Juifs en France; Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. 68. See, in particular, the works of Ahlrich Meyer, who is responsible for the German translation of Serge Klarsfeld’s main work, Vichy–Auschwitz (1st German edition, 1989). See also Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung in Frankreich 1940–1944; Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r; Jungius, Un vol organisГ©:; M. Mayer, Staaten als TГ¤ter; Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen. 69. For a critical assessment, see Timothy Mason, “Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National-Socialism,” in Der FГјhrerstaat: Mythos und RealitГ¤t, edited by Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), 3–20; Klaus Hildebrand, “Monokratie oder Polykratie. Hitlers Herrschaft und das Dritte Reich,” in Nationalsozialistische Diktatur. 1933–1945. Eine Bilanz, ed. Karl Dietrich Bracher,В Manfred Funke and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (DГјsseldorf: Droste, 1983), 73–96.

70. Fein, Accounting for Genocide. 71. See Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013); Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2005), 67–72; Robert H. Bates et al., Analytic Narratives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 10–18; MarioPage 318 → Bunge, “Mechanism and Explanation,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (1997): 410–65; Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 27–47; Craig Parsons, How to Map Arguments in Political Science (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3–46; Clayton Roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 134–59. 72. See James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 1–23. 73. Jon Elster, “The Case for Methodological Individualism,” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 453–82. 74. Bunge, “Mechanisms and Explanation”; Mario Bunge, “Systemism: The Alternative to Individualism and Holism,” Journal of SocioEconomics 29 (2000): 147–257. 75. Gary Goertz and James Mahoney, A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 100–114; Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods; Joachim Blatter and Markus Haverland, Designing Case Studies: Explanatory Approaches in Small-N Research (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 79–143; David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing,” PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (2011): 823–30. 76. Fein, Accounting for Genocide, 79–82; Seibel, “Strength of Perpetrators.” 77. Fein, Accounting for Genocide, 79. 78. M. Mayer, Staaten als TГ¤ter, 174–92. 79. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Interference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 208–30. 80. See Asher Cohen, “PГ©tain, Horthy, Antonescu, and the Jews, 1942–1944: Toward a Comparative View,” Yad Vashem Studies 18 (1987): 163–98; Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Christian Gerlach and GГ¶tz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel: Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002); Ethan J. Hollander, “The Final Solution in Bulgaria and Romania: A Comparative Perspective,” East European Politics and Societies 22 (2008): 203–48; Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972); Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy, 298–308. 81. See Gerlach and Aly, Das letzte Kapitel, 239–48. The Hungarian head of state, Admiral Horthy, managed to bring the deportations of Jews to a halt on 19 July 1944. The deportations claimed no less than 437,000 victims within a space of six weeks following the military occupation of Hungary by the German Wehrmacht in March and the beginning of the deportations in May 1944. 82. Bunge, “Mechanism and Explanation”; Bunge, “Systemism”; Mario Bunge, “How Does it Work? The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2004): 182–210. Page 319 →83. Jon Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3–12; Peter HedstrГ¶m and Richard Swedberg, eds., Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 84. Cornelis J. Lammers, “The Interorganizational Control of an Occupied Country,” Administrative Science Quarterly 33 (1988): 438–57. 85. See John F. Nash, “The Bargaining Problem,” Econometrica 18 (1950): 155–62.

86. Among the numerous descriptions and analyses of the bargaining mechanism in the social sciences as mediating between rivalry and cooperation, see Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics, and Welfare: Planning and Politico-Economic Systems Resolved into Basic Social Processes (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), 324–68; Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, 135–47; Jon Elster, The Cement of Society: Studies in Rationality and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Nolan McCarty and Adam Meirowitz, Political Game Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 275–319; Fritz W. Scharpf, Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997). 87. George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development, 127–149; Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods; Blatter and Haverland, Designing Case Studies, 95–97; Hedström and Ylikoski, “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences.” 88. Bunge, “Mechanism and Explanation”; Bunge, “How Does It Work?”; Peter Hedström, Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 11–33. 89. Roberts, Logic of Historical Explanation, 105–33. 90. Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods; Blatter and Haverland, Designing Case Studies, 79–143. 91. On this, see Goertz and Levy, Explaining War and Peace; Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel Kelemen, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics 59 (2007): 341–69. 92. Bunge, “Mechanism and Explanation,” 449–53. 93. Valentino, Final Solutions, 71. 94. Ahlrich Meyer, “Ein französisches Verbrechen? Hollandes Rede zur Erinnerung an die Deportation der Juden” [A French crime? Hollande’s memorial speech on the deportation of the Jews], Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 7 August 2012.

Chapter One 1. Rolf-Dieter MГјller, “Die Mobilisierung der deutschen Wirtschaft fГјr Hitlers KriegfГјhrung,” in Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen, vol. 5.1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988); Norman Rich, The Establishment of the New Order, vol. 2 of Hitler’s War Aims (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), Page 320 →141–239; Hans-Erich Volkmann, “Die NS-Wirtschaft in Vorbereitung des Krieges,” in Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik, vol. 1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979), 177–369; Hans Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” in Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1942–1944/45, vol. 5.2 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999), 3–272. 2. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Fall Gelb: Der Kampf um den deutschen Operationsplan zur West-Offensive 1940 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1957). 3. The result of this cooperation was the undated “Sammelmappe вЂMilitГ¤rverwaltung’” (“Folder вЂMilitary Administration’”) of the quartermaster general in the general staff of the army, no. 800/40 geh. [geheim (i.e., secret)], of the spring of 1940 (Bundesarchiv-MilitГ¤rarchiv Freiburg, BArch RW 35/699). A description of the cooperation and the underlying convergence of interests between the Wehrmacht, the Reich administrative authorities, and the Four-Year Plan offices can be found in Wilfried Wagner, Belgien in der deutschen Politik wГ¤hrend des Zweiten Weltkriegesed. (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1974), 103–11, on the preparation of the occupation administration in Belgian, including remarks on the plans for the Netherlands and France. On the preparation and early termination of the German military administration in the Netherlands, see Konrad Kwiet, “Vorbereitung und AuflГ¶sung der deutschen MilitГ¤rverwaltung in den Niederlanden,” MilitГ¤rgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 3 (1969), 121–53.

4. Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” 264. 5. Sammelmappe (as in n. 3), sheet 4. 6. Cf. Helmut Krausnick, “Hitler und die Morde in Polen: Ein Beitrag zum Konflikt zwischen Heer und SS um die Verwaltung der besetzten Gebiete,” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963): 196–209. 7. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 59–60; Wolfram Weber, Die innere Sicherheit im besetzten Belgien und Nordfrankreich 1940–1944: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Besatzungsverwaltungen (DГјsseldorf: Droste Verlag), 38–39; Konrad Kwiet, Reichskommissariat Niederlande: Versuch und Scheitern nationalsozialistischer Neuordnung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1968), 36–37; Gerhard Hirschfeld, Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945 (Oxford: Berg, 1988), 16. 8. Sammelmappe (as in n. 3), sheet 4. German civilian police forces were under SS control. 9. On the administration of the occupation by the army high commands in the rear military areas, see Johannes HГјrter, “Die Wehrmacht vor Leningrad: Die Besatzungspolitik der 18. Armee im Herbst und Winter 1941/42,” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 49 (2001): 377–440. On the general typology of German occupation regimes, see Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” 264; Werner RГ¶hr, “System oder organisiertes Chaos? Fragen einer Typologie der deutschen Okkupationsregime im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Die Page 321 →deutsche Herrschaft in den “germanischen” LГ¤ndern 1940–1945, ed. Robert Bohn (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), 11–46. For a comprehensive study of German occupation regimes during World War II and its often improvised, if not incompetent, character, see Mazower, Hitler’s Empire. 10. On this, see Kwiet, “Vorbereitung und AuflГ¶sung der deutschen MilitГ¤rverwaltung in den Niederlanden.” 11. Wagner, Belgien in der deutschen Politik wГ¤hrend des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 115. 12. Ibid., 107–11. 13. A. De Jonghe, “L’etablissement d’une administration civile en Belgique et dans le Nord de la France: La discussion finale au quartier gГ©nГ©rale du FГјhrer, le 12 juillet 1944,” Cahiers de l’histoire de la seconde guerre mondiale, 1970, 67–129. 14. Werner Best, “GroГџraumordnung und GroГџraumverwaltung,” Zeitschrift fГјr Politik 32 (1942): 406–12. 15. Exemplary in this regard is Wilhelm Stuckart’s treatise “Zentralgewalt, Dezentralisation und Verwaltungseinheit” in Festgabe fГјr Heinrich Himmler, 1941, 1–32. The “unity of the administration”—a traditional principle of German administrative law that outlined the unity of the state as a legal person—is also overworked in two treatises by the chief of the military administration in Belgium, Reeder, and his deputy, Hailer, in the journal Reich, Volksordnung, Lebensraum—subtitled Zeitschrift fГјr vГ¶lkische Verfassung und Verwaltung—ed. Wilhelm Stuckart, Werner Best, Gerhard Klopfer, Rudolf Lehmann, and Reinhard HГ¶hn. See Eggert Reeder, “Die MilitГ¤rverwaltung in Belgien und Nordfrankreich—GrundsГ¤tze und politische Zielsetzungen,” and Walter Hailer, “Organisation der MilitГ¤rverwaltung und ihr VerhГ¤ltnis zu den landeseigenen BehГ¶rden [in Belgium],” Reich, Volksordnung, Lebensraum 6 (1943): 7–23, 24–50. 16. See Jane Caplan, Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich: Mit ausgewГ¤hlten Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Beamtenpolitik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966); Dieter Rebentisch, FГјhrerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Verfassungsentwicklung und Verwaltungspolitik 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989). 17. The formal designation of the RSHA was personalized to “Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD” (the chief of the Security Police and the SD). 18. Seibel, “Strength of Perpetrators.” 19. The Foreign Organization (AO) of the NSDAP had no comparable function to that of the NSDAP in Germany as a parallel institution of public

administration. 20. Cf. Lammers, “Interorganizational Control of an Occupied Country”; Cornelis J. Lammers, “Macht und AutoritГ¤t des Deutschen Besetzers in den Niederlanden wГ¤hrend des Zweiten Weltkrieges: AnsГ¤tze zu einer Soziologie der Besatzung,” Journal fГјr Sozialforschung 31 (1991): 401–15. 21. Often cited is the anecdote according to which Laval, having been told that Germany was an authoritarian state (“un Г©tat autoritaire”), exclaimed, “Et combien des autoritГ©s!” See JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 74. 22. Compare the complaint in the final report of the deactivation staff of the Page 322 →military commander of Belgium and northern France of the fall of 1944, again authored by the office manager of the head of the Administrative Headquarters, Dr. Walter Hailer: “The organizations and institutions that, contrary to their expectations, were not involved in the organization of the occupation administrations in the western territories continually sought, through their influential leading personalities, to gain influence in their special areas of expertise in the occupied territories under the military administration. Insofar as this did not seem to be achievable through their confidants being integrated into, or at least being loosely attached to, the military administration staff, special representatives with the highest authorities came into the occupied area. If the former, in spite of their organizational integration into the military administration, felt themselves [the word not is struck out here] to be primarily advocates and informants [sic] of their home offices, organizations, or economic groups, the latter, corresponding to the ranking of their special power, regarded themselves as functionally coordinated, or at least as largely independent, vis-Г -vis the military administration as regards their own assignment.В .В .В . If one considers, on the contrary, that most of the general and special representatives had the opportunity to report directly to the FГјhrer’s headquarters or to the FГјhrer himself, it becomes all too understandable that notions of the conditions in the occupied territory among the supreme command were often based on special information that was at least incomplete and hence unavoidably misleading.В .В .В . The inadequate reach of the direct connection of the military administration up the chain of command, however, also diminished its authority in the eyes of the authorities and populations of the occupied territories, particularly as there were sufficient German agencies and individuals who vaunted their privileged and superior relations to supreme German leadership bodies also towards non-Germans and exploited every opportunity to demonstrate this.” Abschlussbericht des Abwicklungsstabes des MilitГ¤rbefehlshabers in Belgien und Nordfrankreich, BArch RW 36/447, sheets 24–27. 23. See Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1942–1945: Die Wirtschaftsorganisation der SS, das Amt des GeneralbevollmГ¤chtigten fГјr den Arbeitseinsatz und das Reichsministerium fГјr Bewaffnung und Munition—Reichsministerium fГјr RГјstung und Kriegsproduktion im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1994). 24. Cf. Martin C. Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 25. For a comprehensive account of the economic persecution of the Jews in France and the collaboration relations between the Germans and the French, see Martin Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub: Die “Arisierung” der Wirtschaft in Frankreich in den Jahren 1940 bis 1944 (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2008).

Chapter Two 1. The Italian-French armistice was signed on 24 June 1940. Both of the armistice agreements came into effect on 25 June 1940. See Hermann BГ¶hme, EntstehungPage 323 → und Grundlagen des Waffenstillstandes von 1940 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966); Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, L’abГ®me 1939–1945 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1982), 183–203; JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 32–45. 2. BГ¶hme, Entstehung und Grundlagen des Waffenstillstandes von 1940, 21–33; JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 32–36. 3. BГ¶hme, Entstehung und Grundlagen des Waffenstillstandes von 1940, 30.

4. That affected the dГ©partements Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Hautes-Alpes, Basses-Alpes, DrГґme, Savoie, and Haute-Savoie; almost the entirety of the dГ©partements Vaucluse and IsГЁre; a minor part of the dГ©partement Ain; and the island/dГ©partement Corsica. See Jackson, France: The Dark Years, xx–xxi. 5. On his time in Paris, see Hans Speidel, Aus unserer Zeit: Erinnerungen (Berlin: PropylГ¤en, 1977), 86–121, 165–230. 6. Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” 22. 7. On Michel, ministerial director and head of department in the Federal Ministry of Economics under Ludwig Ehrhard from 1949, see Willi A. Boelcke, Die Deutsche Wirtschaft 1930 bis 1945: Interna des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums (DГјsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1983); Bernhard Brunner, Der FrankreichKomplex: Die nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen in Frankreich und die Justiz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag, 2004), 111–14. Brunner describes the successful efforts of German government departments in the 1950s to thwart the criminal legal prosecution of Michel in France. 8. The deactivation report is preserved in part in the collections BArch RW 35/6, 35/2, and 6/194. 9. Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien Гјber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989 (Bonn: Dietz, 1996), 251–322. 10. Martin Jungius and Wolfgang Seibel, “The Citizen as Perpetrator: Kurt Blanke and Aryanization in France, 1940–1944,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22 (2008): 441–74. 11. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 64. 12. Ludwig Nestler, ed., Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Frankreich (1940–1944) (Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1990), 31. 13. Ibid. 14. Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” 92–97. 15. On Abetz, see the studies by Barbara Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les FranГ§ais ou l’envers de la Collaboration (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Roland Ray, AnnГ¤herung an Frankreich im Dienste Hitlers? Otto Abetz und die deutsche Frankreichpolitik 1930–1942 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000). 16. See Christopher R. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940–1943 (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1978); Hans-JГјrgen DГ¶scher, SS und AuswГ¤rtiges Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der “EndlГ¶sung” (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1987). 17. Ribbentrop to Keitel, 3 August 1940, ADAP, ser. D, vol. X, doc. 282, p. 333. 18. Umbreit, “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945,” 94. Page 324 →19. Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, 99–108; Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, and Moshe Zimmermann, eds., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (Berlin: Karl Blessing Verlag, 2010), 227–37. 20. See the entries for Otto Abetz and Rudolph Schleier in ADAP: ErgГ¤nzungsband zu den Serien A–E: Gesamtpersonenverzeichnis, Portraitphotos und Daten zur Dienstverwendung, AnhГ¤nge, ed. Walter Bussmann (GГ¶ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1995), 409, 499. 21. Hans Umbreit, “Auf dem Weg zur Kontinentalherrschaft,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 5.1, Organisation und Mobilisierung des deutschen Machtbereichs. Erster Halbband: Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1939-1941, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1988), 1–345 (71).

Chapter Three 1. Journal Officiel, 11 July 1940, quoted from Marc-Olivier Baruch, Le régime de Vichy (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1996), 15–16.

2. Baruch, Le rГ©gime de Vichy, 37–38. 3. Michel Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie: Histoire d’une conversion, 1932–1952, 2 vols. (Paris: ComitГ© pour l’histoire Г©conomique et financiГЁre de la France, 1991), 506–23. 4. Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais. For the basic structure of German occupation regimes in Belgium and the Netherlands, see chapter 1 of the present volume. 5. Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1944–47 (New York: Knopf, 1972). 6. Baruch, Le rГ©gime de Vichy, 20–31; Jean-Marie Guillon, “La philosophie politique de la RГ©volution Nationale,” in Le rГ©gime de Vichy et les FranГ§ais, edited by Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida (Paris: Fayard / Institut d’Histoire du Temps PrГ©sent, 1992), 167–83. 7. Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 148–52; Yves LГ©onard, Salazarisme et fascisme (Paris: Chandeigne, 1996); Carl Levy, “Fascism, National Socialism, and Conservatives in Europe, 1914–1945,” Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 97–126. 8. Margairaz, L’État, les finances et l’économie, 497–540. 9. The full quotation reads, “Nous avons Г restaurer la France. Montrez-la au monde qui l’observe, Г l’adversaire qui l’occupe, dans tout son calme, tout son labeur et toute sa dignitГ©. Notre dГ©faite est venue de nos relГўchements. L’esprit de jouissance dГ©truit ce que l’esprit de sacrifice a Г©difiГ©. C’est Г un redressement intellectuel et moral que, d’abord, je vous convie. FranГ§ais, vous l’accomplirez et vous verrez, je vous le jure, une France neuve sortir de votre ferveur.” Philippe PГ©tain, Discours aux FranГ§ais, ed. Jean-Claude Barbas (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), 66. On the history of mentalities of the Vichy regime, see AzГ©ma, De MunichВ Г la liberation; AzГ©ma and BГ©darida, Vichy et les FranГ§ais, 167–265 (“Les fondements d’un Г©tat autoritaire”). Page 325 →10. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 83–95, 144–52. 11. Ibid., 44–110. See also Ralph Schor, L’antisГ©mitisme en France pendant les annГ©es trente: PrГ©lude Г Vichy (Paris: Г‰ditions Complexe, 1992); Ralph Schor, “Une passion sans fin: Entre Dreyfus et Vichy; Aspects de l’antisГ©mitisme franГ§ais,” Revue d’histoire de la Shoah 173 (September–December 2001). 12. This was expressed clearly in the government communiquГ© of 17 October 1940 justifying the first Statute on Jews, from 3 October 1940: “Le gouvernement, dans son Е“uvre de reconstruction nationale, a dГ», dГЁs les premiers jours, Г©tudier les problГЁmes des Juifs et celui des certains Г©trangers, qui, ayant abusГ© de notre hospitalitГ©, n’ont pas peu contribuГ© Г la dГ©faite. Partout, et spГ©cialement dans les services publics, si rГ©elles que soient d’honorables exceptions dont chacune pourrait fournir un exemple, l’influence des Juifs s’est fait sentir, insinuante et finalement dГ©composante. Tous les observateurs s’accordent Г constater les effets fГўcheux de leur activitГ© au cours des annГ©es rГ©centes durant lesquelles ils eurent dans la direction de nos affaires une place prГ©pondГ©rante. Les faits sont lГ et commandent l’action du gouvernement Г qui incombe la tГўche pathГ©tique de restauration franГ§aise. Le gouvernement entier, dans une absolue sincГ©ritГ©, s’est dГ©fendu de faire Е“uvre de reprГ©sailles. Il respecte les personnes et les biens des Juifs. Il les empГЄche seulement d’assurer certains fonctions sociales, d’autoritГ©, de gestion, de formations des intelligences, l’expГ©riences lui ayant prouvГ©, comme Г tous les esprits impartiaux, que les Juifs les exerГ§aient dans une tendance individualiste jusqu’à l’anarchie. Notre dГ©sastre nous impose l’obligation de regrouper les forces franГ§aises dont une longue hГ©rГ©ditГ© a fixГ© les caractГ©ristiques.” Quoted from Baruch, Le rГ©gime de Vichy, 24–25. 13. Maurice Duverger, a widely renowned political scientist of the postwar era, achieved a certain dubious fame with his essay “La situation des fonctionnaires depuis la rГ©volution de 1940” in the 1941 RГ©vue du droit public, in which he justified the exclusion of the Jews from the public service. There one can read, among other things, “La raison d’être de l’incapacitГ© des Juifs d’accГ©der aux fonctions publiques est la mГЄme que celle de l’incapacitГ© frappant les naturalisГ©s [i.e., the naturalized immigrants]: la protection de l’intГ©rГЄt des services publics. Le nouveau

rГ©gime reconnaissant Г toutes les fonctions publiques un certain caractГЁre politique Г cotГ© de leur caractГЁre technique il a Г©tГ© logiquement conduit Г exiger de tous les fonctionnaires non seulement des capacitГ© technique, mais encore une certaine aptitude politique. On a estimГ© que les Juifs, comme les naturalisГ©s, ne prГ©sentaient pas en gГ©nГ©ral cette aptitude: d’oГ№ leur expulsion des fonctions publiques.” Quoted from Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 144–45. 14. Walter Bargatzky, Hotel Majestic: Ein Deutscher im besetzten Frankreich (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder BГјcherei, 1987), 67–109; Ulrich Herbert, “Die deutsche MilitГ¤rverwaltung in Paris und die Deportation der franzГ¶sischen Juden,” in Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1933–1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, edited by Ulrich Herbert (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998), 170–208. 15. Paxton, Vichy France, passim, specifically 51–135. See, in addition, Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma, La collaboration 1940–1944 (Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 1975). Page 326 →16. “Une collaboration a Г©tГ© envisagГ©e entre nos deux pays. J’en ai acceptГ© le principe. Les modalitГ©s en seront discutГ©es ultГ©rieurement,” RГ©gime de Vichy: Textes officiels, Discours de PГ©tain aprГЁs l’entrevue de Montoire: 30 October 1940, accessed March 16, 2010, http://www.encyclopedie.bseditions.fr/article.php?pArticleId=160&pChapitreId=24032. 17. Hoffmann, “Collaborationism in France,” 377. Hoffmann used the French expression “collaboration d’etat.” See also Paxton, “La Collaboration d’État.” 18. Hubatsch, Hitlers Weisungen fГјr die KriegsfГјhrung 1939–1945 ed., Directive No. 18 of 11 November 1940, 67. 19. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 128–33. 20. Laval had used delaying tactics to oppose a visit to Versailles that PГ©tain wanted to make for political demonstration reasons, an act of disloyalty that the head of state reciprocated in kind. For a detailed account of Laval’s dismissal and its background, see Paxton, Vichy—France, 92–101; JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 140–56; Duroselle, L’abГ®me, 281–84.

Chapter Four 1. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, vol. 3, Deutsches Reich und Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren. September 1939—September 1941, ed. Andrea Löw (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), 496–97 (doc. 196). A facsimile is reprinted in Mark Roseman, Die Wannsee-Konferenz: Wie die NS-Bürokratie dem Holocaust organisierte (Berlin: Propyläen, 2002), 165. 2. Weber, Die innere Sicherheit, 43. Maxime Steinberg, L’étoile et le fusil, 3 vols. (Brussels: Vie ouvrière, 1983–86), 1:276. 3. Jules Gérard-Libois and José Gotovitch, L’an 40: La Belgique occupée (Brussels: CRISP, 1971), 146. 4. See Claudia Steur, Theodor Dannecker: Ein Funktionär der “Endlösung” (Essen: Klartext, 1997). 5. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:37. 6. Klarsfeld, “Juillet–septembre 1942: Les divergences dans l’appareil policier nazi et la réalisation de la solution finale en France,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 48 (1993): 545–46; Meyer, Täter im Verhör, 34–43; Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 77–91. 7. Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 85. 8. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:131. 9. Nestler, Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Frankreich, 53. 10. Baruch, Servir l’Etat français, 388–406; Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 215–17; Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:89–133; Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 76–91.

11. Г‰ric Conan, Sans oublier les enfants: Les camps de Pithiviers et de Beaune-la-Rolande, 19 juillet–16 septembre 1942 (Paris: Grasset, 1991); Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:146–49. 12. Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Verwaltungsstab, Wirtschaftsabteilung,Page 327 → file Wi I 426/40, 1 November 1940, Centre de documentation Juive contemporaine (hereinafter CDJC) CL-1. 13. See Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub, 70–86. 14. Journal Officiel, 9 February 1941, 650. 15. Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Verwaltungsstab, Wirtschaftsabteilung, file Wi I 1019/40, 9 December 1940, CDJC CL-1. 16. See Joseph Billig, Le Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, 3 vols. (Paris: Г‰ditions du Centre de documentation Juive contemporaine, 1955–60); Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale.” 17. See Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais, 141–44; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 128–44. 18. Maxime Steinberg, La persГ©cution des Juifs en Belgique (1940–1945) (Brussels: Г‰ditions Complexe, 2004), 127–34. 19. As the task of the CGQJ, the law of 29 March 1941, comprising just four articles, specified the supervision of the “liquidation of Jewish property” (“de fixerВ .В .В . la date de la liquidation des biens juifs dans les cas oГ№ cette liquidation est prГ©scrite par la loi”) and the appointment and supervision of the, as they were generally called, sequestrators (“administrateurs sequestres”), by which the administrateurs provisoires must also have been meant. Vallat appealed explicitly to this task during his first official visit to the military commander on 4 April 1941 (Billig, Le Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, 61). He also began to build an organization of his own for the “Aryanization,” the Direction de l’aryanisation Г©conomique. 20. Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale”; Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub. 21. Marie-ThГ©rГЁse Chabord and Jean PouГ«ssel, introduction to Inventaire des archives du Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives et du Service de restitution des biens des victimes des lois et mesures de spoliation: Sous-sГ©rie AJ 38, ed. Marie-ThГ©rГЁse Chabord and Jean PouГ«ssel (Paris: Centre historique des Archives nationales, 1998), XXI. 22. Art. 21–23 of the law of 22 July 1941, Journal Officiel, 26 August 1941, 3594–95. 23. See Alya Aglan, Michel Margairaz, and Philippe Verheyde, La Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, la Seconde Guerre mondiale et le XXe siГЁcle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2003); Verheyde, Les mauvais comptes de Vichy; Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonances, 86–101. 24. See, in detail, Wolfgang Seibel, “A Market for Mass Crime? Inter-Institutional Competition and the Initiation of the Holocaust in France, 1940–1942,” International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 5 (2002): 219–57. 25. Verordnungsblatt fГјr die besetzten franzГ¶sischen Gebiete (official gazette for the occupied French territories; hereinafter VOBlF), 20 December 1941, 325–26. 26. It is apparent that the procedures and measures in Germany in November 1938 served as a model. By decree of the plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan (GГ¶ring) of 12 November 1938, a “contribution to the German Reich” in the Page 328 →amount of one billion reichsmarks was imposed on the Jews with German citizenship (RGBl. I 1579), which was to be raised by the “Reich Representation of Jews in Germany” (from February 1939 called the “Reich Association”). In the German-occupied areas of Eastern Europe, “contributions” to be paid by the Jews of individual cities and/or by ghetto residents and to be collected by the Jewish councils were common practice in 1941 (see, e.g., Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und DurchfГјhrung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens [Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996]). 27. Commission MattГ©oli [Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France], Les rapports des comitГ©s associГ©s–rapport du comitГ© banques, vol. 9 (Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000), 28–29; Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonances, 95–101. 28. Sylvain Manville, “La Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations et l’amende du milliard,” in Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, Le spoliation

antisémite sous l’Occupation: Consignations et restitutions; Rapport definitive (Paris: Caisse des dépôts et consignations, 2001), 127–160 (129). 29. Journal Officiel, 16 January 1942, 239–40. 30. Journal Officiel, 22 March 1942, 1120.

Chapter Five 1. Oberg’s adjutant Herbert Hagen described the relationship between Knochen and Oberg in a postwar interrogation as follows: “Knochen always took the initiative; Oberg, who was aware of a certain inferiority, put up with this without taking offense.” Quoted from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 59. 2. Pascale Froment, RenГ© Bousquet (Paris: Fayard, 2001). 3. Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais, 389. 4. See chapters 3 and 4. 5. Journal Officiel, 23 July 1940, 4567. For the initial phase of both French and German anti-Jewish legislation and decrees, cf. Bruttmann, Joly, and Lambauer, “Der AuftaktВ zur Verfolgung der Juden.” 6. Journal Officiel, 24 July 1940, 4569. 7. The subreport “De-jewification of the French Economy” by the deactivation staff of the military commander in France contains the following statement: “Not specifically enacted as a measure against the Jews, but of major importance for economic de-jewification, was the law of 23 July 1940 depriving French persons who had left the French fatherland between 10 May and 30 June 1940 without sufficient reason of French citizenship.В .В .В . This law was already applied extensively to the important, well-known Jewish families, Rothschild, Deutsch de la Meurthe, and GГјnzburg, before the actual German and French anti-Jewish measures, because these families were the first to leave the country” (“Die Entjudung der franzГ¶sischen Wirtschaft” [De-jewification of the French economy], undated [late 1944/early 1945], BArch RW 35/2, sheets 4–5). For a detailed account of this report and its author, see Jungius and Seibel, “Citizen as Perpetrator.” 8. RGBl. I 722. Page 329 →9. For an in-depth account of the parallels and differences between the persecution and discrimination policy in Nazi Germany and in Vichy France, see Michael Mayer’s recent study Staaten als TГ¤ter. 10. Journal Officiel, 18 July 1940, 4537; 15 August 1940, 4701; 13 September 1940, 4983. 11. Journal Officiel, 26 October 1940, 5430. 12. “Verordnung Гјber die ordnungsgemäße GeschГ¤ftsfГјhrung und Verwaltung von Unternehmungen und Betrieben in den besetzten Gebieten der Niederlande, Belgiens und Frankreichs (GeschГ¤ftsfГјhrungs-Verordnung) vom 20. Mai 1940” [Decree on the orderly management and administration of companies and businesses in the occupied territories of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France (business management decree) of 20 May 1940], reprinted in RГ©publique FranГ§aise, La pГ©rsecution des juifs de France 1940–1944 et le rГ©tablissement de la lГ©galitГ© rГ©publicaine: Recueil des textes officiels 1940–1999 (Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000), 43–45. 13. Journal Officiel, 30 August 1940, 4844. 14. Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation has been analyzed by Richard H. Weisberg in Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France (New York: New York University Press, 1996) and, based on new sources on the decision-making processes within the ministerial bureaucracy, in particular by Michael Mayer in Staaten als TГ¤ter. See, in addition, the collection of texts by Dominique RГ©my, Les lois de Vichy: Actes dits “lois” de l’autoritГ© de fait se

prГ©tendant “gouvernement de l’Etat franГ§ais” (Paris: Editions Romillat, 1992) (whose title reveals the enduring discomfiture in dealing with the “annГ©es noires” 1940–1944) and specifically the aforementioned collection of facsimiles of the texts of German and French ordinances and statutes commissioned by the French government in connection with the work of the Commission MattГ©oli (Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France): RГ©publique FranГ§aise, La pГ©rsecution des juifs de France 1940–1944. 15. Journal Officiel, 18 October 1940, 5323. 16. Journal Officiel, 14 June 1941, 2475–76. 17. Ibid., 2476. 18. Journal Officiel, 18 October 1940, 5324. 19. See Anne Grynberg, Les campes de la honte: Les internГ©s juifs des camps franГ§ais 1939–1944 (Paris: Editions La DГ©couverte, 1991). 20. Note of the head of military administration administrative staff [Best], 19 August 1940, CDJC XXIV-1, reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 375. See also Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r, 23–27. 21. Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung in Frankreich 1940–1944, 19. 22. Note for the files of Kriegsverwaltungsrat Mahnke, dated 22 August 1940, CDJC XXIV-2, reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 375–77. On this procedure, see, furthermore, Hans Umbreit, Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1968), 261–62; Herbert, Best, 262–65; Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les FranГ§ais, 199–202; Barbara Lambauer, “Opportunistischer Antisemitismus: Der deutsche Botschafter Otto Abetz und die Page 330 →Judenverfolgung in Frankreich (1940–1942),” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 53 (2005): 241–73 (247–52). 23. VOBlF, 30 September 1940, 92–93. 24. VOBlF, 20 October 1940, 112–14. 25. Journal Officiel, 26 August 1941, 3594. 26. The arrest lists were drawn up based on the “Jewish card file” that had been maintained since October 1940 by a special bureau of the Parisian PrГ©fecture de police, called the “Tulard bureau” after its director. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 35–39; Bruttmann, Au bureau des affaires Juives, 105–21. 27. Jean-Marc BerliГЁre and Laurent Chabrun, Les policiers franГ§ais sous l’Occupation, d’aprГЁs les archives inГ©dites de l’épuration (Paris: Perrin, 2001), 220–24; Bernd Kasten, “Gute Franzosen”: Die franzГ¶sische Polizei und die deutsche Besatzungsmacht im besetzten Frankreich 1940–1944 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1993), 96–97. 28. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:25–28. 29. On the arrests and deportations between May 1941 and March 1942 depicted here, see ibid., 15–43. 30. See ibid., 15. 31. Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub, 56–178. 32. Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub; Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale.” 33. The key figure on the German side was the head of “de-jewification” in the Economics Department of the military command in France, Dr. Kurt Blanke. See Jungius and Seibel, “Citizen as Perpetrator.” 34. Der ReichsfГјhrer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei, S-IV D 6–776/40 gRs. [signed by Heydrich], An das AuswГ¤rtige Amt, z. Hd. SSStandartenfГјhrer Gesandter Luther, dated 20 September 1940, Recueil I 19b–c. 35. The Judenreferent assigned to the Beauftragter des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD fГјr Belgien und Frankreich, Dienststelle Paris (representative

of the chief of the Security Police and Security Service for Belgium and France, Paris office), Theodor Dannecker, referred, in an extended note dated 21 January 1941, to the “secret directive of the OKW of 4 October 1940 that, among other things, also transfers the authority for dealing with Jewish matters to the representative of the chief of the Security Police and Security Service for Belgium and France” (Recueil I 29–33), to which Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:13) also refers. 36. The following remark is accredited to Dannecker’s superior, SS-SturmbannfГјhrer Kurt Lischka, in a note dated 30 January 1941 by the war administration advisor Mahnke on a discussion between members of the military administration and representatives of the office of the representative of the chief of the Security Police and Security Service for Belgium and France in Paris: “SS-SturmbannfГјhrer Lischka stated that, in the further treatment of the Jewish Question in France, the objective is to ensure that the Jewish problem in Europe is solved in accordance with the guidelines applied in the Reich. He stated that the creation of a central office for Jews for France, or initially for the occupied area of France, is planned for this purpose” (Recueil I 37–39). This “central office for Jews” subsequently became the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (CGQJ). Page 331 →37. Quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 19. 38. Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 99–100 (doc. 18). 39. “These assassinations are criminal.” Quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 93 (doc. 14b). 40. Journal Officiel, 23 August 1941. In a file note on the proposed law, dated 22 August 1941, Major Walter Beumelburg, the German liaison officer with the general plenipotentiary of the French government to the German occupying power (Ingrand), remarked, “The law demonstrates that Minister Pucheu is determined to proceed with all possible severity against communism and anarchism and in the process to throw overboard the constitutional reservations sacred to the French.” Quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 95 (doc. 15). 41. Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 114–15 (doc. 24). 42. Quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 121–22 (doc. 29). In the original, the phrase “mass movement under the unified leadership” (einheitlich geleitete Massenbewegung) was emphasized by underlining. 43. See Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 121–23 (doc. 29). 44. The processes and decisions are recorded in minute detail in Otto von StГјlpnagel’s personal notes. An almost complete reproduction of these notes can be found in Umbreit, Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich, 129–33. 45. Excerpts are reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 153–55 (doc. 44d). 46. PГ©tain said, “Resist these conspiracies, help the judiciary! The discovery of one culprit spares the lives of 100 Frenchmen”; Darlan said, “Your own interest and that of our prisoners of war, who would like to return home to us as quickly as possible, makes it a duty to inform us of any details you may hear about attacks” (ibid.). 47. “The extreme measures of the military commander made a strong, almost despondent impression on the government [in Vichy], because they were interpreted as a domestic and foreign political imposition.” Enclosure to the political situation report [of the military commander in France], October 1941, dated 30.10.1941, quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 151 (doc. 44a). 48. Quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 148–49 (doc. 44). 49. Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 156 (doc. 44f.). 50. On this finding, see already Herbert, “Die deutsche MilitГ¤rverwaltung in Paris,” 185–93. 51. Peter Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg? KriegfГјhrung und PartisanenbekГ¤mpfung in Frankreich 1943/44 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007), 29–31. 52. The contents of this telex are reproduced in the 120-page report “Das Geiselverfahren im Bereich des MilitГ¤rbefehlshabers in Frankreich von August

1941 bis Mai 1942” [The hostage procedure in the domain of the military commander in France from August 1941 to May 1942], BArchRW 35/542, sheets 1–120, quoted in text from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 295–341 (323). 53. Ibid., 324. 54. On this and on the confusing variety of initiatives, reports, orders, and measures, see Meyer, Die deutsche Besatzung in Frankreich 1940–1944, 72–77. Page 332 →55. The communiquГ© is also reproduced in the report “Das Geiselverfahren im Bereich des MilitГ¤rbefehlshabers in Frankreich vom August 1941 bis Mai 1942,” reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 295–342 (324–25). 56. Cf. also Dannecker’s report to the RSHA, Recueil II 430–31. 57. Cf. Lambauer, “Opportunistischer Antisemitismus”; Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg?, 20–31; Herbert, Best, 251–322. 58. The idea of a “fine,” taking its lead not only from the economic persecution measures imposed on the Jews in the wake of the November pogroms of 1938 but also from the daily practice of financial exactions on the Jews in the occupied territories in Eastern Europe, was launched in the fall of 1941 by Dr. Kurt Blanke, the head of the “de-jewification” department in the administration of the military commander. Cf. Martin Jungius and Wolfgang Seibel, “The Citizen as Perpetrator: Kurt Blanke and Aryanization in France, 1940–1944.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22 (2008): 441–74. The mass deportations of Jews from Germany proper began in October 1941. 59. For a detailed account, see Seibel, “Market for Mass Crime.” 60. Cf. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Pillages sur ordonnances, 95–100. 61. Cf. Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub, passim and, for a synopsis, 368–70. 62. Military commander in France to the commander in chief of the army, no date [receipt stamped by the quartermaster general of the army on 15 October 1941], Recueil II 206. 63. On the one hand, that the commander in chief of the army, von Brauchitsch, did not deal personally with the matter may come as no surprise given that the Battle of Moscow (Operation Typhoon) had just begun; on the other hand, it amounted to a duping of StГјlpnagel, who, in a report dated 6 October 1941, not only stressed Knochen’s responsibility for the synagogue attacks that had come to light immediately but also expressly requested “a personal audience with the Herr Commander in Chief of the Army.” Recueil II 202–4 (204). 64. OKH, Gen[eral] St[ab] d[es] H[eeres] / Gen[eral] Qu[artiermeister] [i.e., General Staff of the Army / Quartermaster General] to the chief of the Security Police and the SD, 21.10.1941, Recueil II 207–8. 65. Ibid. 66. Thomas acted as representative of the chief of the Security Police and SD for Belgium and France based in Brussels. 67. Recueil II 207–8. 68. Chief of the Security Police and the SD to the OKH, Quartermaster General Wagner, 6.11.1941, Recueil II 216–19 (218). 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 219. For the rest, Heydrich pointed out that Thomas and SS-ObersturmfГјhrer Sommer, who was directly involved in the attacks, had, in any case, been deployed elsewhere for official reasons. That could be interpreted as a tacit concession and a face-saving opportunity for StГјlpnagel. 71. On 31 July 1941, GГ¶ring had charged Heydrich with “making all necessary preparationsВ .В .В . of a technical and material nature for a total solution of the JewishPage 333 → Question” in the European territories under German control. See Joseph Walk, ed., Das Sonderrecht fГјr die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen MaГџnahmen und Richtlinien—Inhalt und Bedeutung (Heidelberg und Karlsruhe: MГјller Juristischer Verlag, 1996; 1st ed.,

1981), 345. 72. I am indebted to Insa Meinen for this reference. 73. Recueil II 202–4 (243). 74. BArch RW 35/543, sheets 15–57, quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 221–25 (doc. 85). 75. Ibid., 223. 76. This corresponded to the proposals submitted by StГјlpnagel to the OKH on 1 December 1941, which had led to the raid on 14 December 1941 in which around 1,000 Jews were arrested in Paris. The observation that the “occasional deportations” would be “sure to have a powerful effect” should be seen in the context of Hitler’s “Night and Fog Decree” (Nacht-und-Nebel-Erlass) of 7 December 1941 (reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 196 [doc. 66]), which was sent to the highest-level authorities of all German occupation administrations on Keitel’s orders on 12 December 1941. Hitler’s decree, which stipulated that the only alternative in the case of suspected perpetrators of attacks on the German occupying power was between immediate death sentences and secret deportation to Germany without reporting to the relevant domestic authorities or to relatives, was commented as follows in Keitel’s order: “Effective and enduring deterrence can be achieved only through death penalties or through measures that keep the relatives and the population in a state of uncertainty about the fate of the culprit. The transfer to Germany serves this purpose.” StГјlpnagel’s proposal to conduct “occasional deportations” of “communists and Jews” and the explicit comment that “such a measure is sure to have a powerful effect” was thus, in its intention and language, entirely in line with the “Night and Fog Decree” and the comments on it by Keitel or the OKW. The counterespionage department of the OKW presented the “Night and Fog Decree” with an implementation ordinance dated 2 February 1942 (reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 226–28 [doc. 88]) and stressed, “The deterrent effect of these measures resides (a) in the fact that the accused are made to disappear without trace, (b) in the fact that no information may be given about their whereabouts and their fate.” Thus this was the true ethos of the officials and officers in the command posts of the German military administration, who otherwise commended themselves on providing for the welfare of the population of the occupied territory in accordance with the rules of the Hague Land Warfare Convention. As it happens, the OKW stipulated that Hitler’s decree should “be applied at first only in the occupied Western territories.” 77. BArch RW 35/543, sheet 58, reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 228 (doc. 89). 78. Ibid. 79. OKH, quartermaster general, to the Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD [Heydrich], 21.10.1941, Recueil I 207–8. Page 334 →80. StГјlpnagel’s resignation took effect with two letters, dated the same day, to Keitel as head of the High Command of the Armed Forces, one of which was marked as official, the other as “private” (BArch RW 35/1, sheets 108–10 [official resignation letter], 100–107 [“private” letter to Keitel], both reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 229–34 [docs. 90 and 90a]). 81. Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 229 (doc. 90). 82.“ The French government, which according to the Armistice Agreement, has certain tasks to perform in the occupied zone, must contend with the military administration. The latter, in turn, must contend with the German Embassy. According to the will of the FГјhrer, the embassy has sole responsibility for policy toward France as a whole, and its wishes could not always be harmonized with administrative imperatives. Moreover, it constantly increased in size and, in the process, assumed tasks that, in my opinion, are not part of its current remit. Additional factors were the Four-Year Plan, which can issue orders directly to the military administration, the numerous Reich ministries that repeatedly interfered in economic matters, the independent and not always expedient actions of the SD [this is an allusion to the synagogue attacks in the fall of 1941], and also sundry differences with the Wehrmacht departments that did not feel bound by the directives of the military commander.” Quoted from ibid. 83. “The downright tragicomic situation in which I find myself in this matter is shown by the recent intervention of the Reichmarshall [GГ¶ring], who

forbade me from imposing punishment measures that were in the process of being carried out because it would be extremely detrimental for his political discussions with Marshal PГ©tain!!!, but then just two days later, after an attack on a Luftwaffe officer, demanded immediate drastic measures. Thus in these questions I am prey to the most diverse forces and am caught, as it were, between all stools.” Quoted from ibid., 231–32 (doc. 90); emphasis in the reprint of the original. 84. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 195–96. 85. Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Lagebericht fГјr die Monate Februar/MГ¤rz 1942 [military commander in France, situation report for the months February/March 1942], AN-AJ 40/444, reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, doc. 95, 243–45. 86. Cf. BГ¶hme, Entstehung und Grundlagen des Waffenstillstandes von 1940. 87. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 195–96. 88. JГ¤ckel (ibid., 196) also speaks in terms of “realistic resignation” on the part of Carl-Heinrich von StГјlpnagel. 89. BArch RW 35/617, sheets 5–8, reprinted in Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 236–38 (doc. 93). 90. Cf. Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 26–40. 91. Quoted from Delacor, Attentat und Repressionen, 54; cf. Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 27. 92. Trial testimony of Oberg and Knochen from 1948 and 1949, quoted from Delacor, Attentate und Repressionen, 55. 93. In this respect, one cannot accept Bernd Kasten’s conclusion (“Gute Franzosen,”Page 335 → 27) “that the appointment of an HSSPF was first and foremost the result of an internal power struggle in which the factual differences merely served as a pretext.”

Chapter Six 1. Michael Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office, trans. Tom Lampert (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), 200. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:34–35. 2. David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer” (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006), 36–60. 3. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:46–48. 4. See ibid.; Gerhard Paul, “вЂVon Judenangelegenheiten hatte er bis dahin keine Ahnung’: Herbert Hagen, der Judenreferent des SD aus NeumГјnster,” Informationen zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen Zeitgeschichte 33–34 (September 1998): 63–75. 5. Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:47) quotes a statement of the delegate general of the Vichy government to the German authorities in Paris, Fernand de Brinon, to the effect that HSSPF Oberg was “under the sway of a young SS officer, Major Hagen. The latter had the advantage that he could express himself clearly in French but the disadvantage of treating us with contempt. He maintained spies and, for Oberg, performed the function of a powerful chief of staff.” 6. On Knochen, see Wildt, Uncompromising Generation, 255–56; on Hagen, ibid., 256. 7. Ibid., 256. 8. Ibid., 197; Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 157–58; Marcel Hasquenoph, La Gestapo en France (Paris: De Vecchi, 1987), 50–51. 9. We are especially well informed about Theodor Dannecker thanks to Claudia Steur’s monograph Theodor Dannecker. 10. Significantly, the reprimand was not for drunkenness on duty but for “falsifiying documents.” See Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 18–19. 11. Ibid., 20–21.

12. Steur (ibid., 157) quotes a postwar statement by Dieter Wisliceny, who had been Dannecker’s superior in 1937: “Dannecker lived in permanent conflict with all of his superiors and subordinates. He was extremely ambitious, vain, and thin-skinned.” 13. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:29–32. 14. Thus he observed pompously in a letter to Dannecker dated 8 October 1941 (Recueil I 204a) that he had managed to bring Abetz to “consult in person with the ReichsfГјhrer SS,” with the result that Abetz received Himmler’s consent “that the Jews currently in the concentration camp in the occupied zone can be transported to the East as soon as the means of transport permit.” Therefore, Zeitschel requested that Dannecker “should not slacken in this direction in which I have Page 336 →managed to secure the consent in principle of the ReichsfГјhrer and should send a report to Berlin every couple of weeks with the urgent request that the Jews be deported from occupied France as soon as possible.” 15. It came to an Г©clat in December 1941, when Dannecker had a search conducted in the office of the commissioner-general for Jewish affairs, Xavier Vallat, a rabid anti-Semite himself. Vallat complained bitterly to the head of department in charge in the administration of the military commander, Werner Best, “May I be permitted, Excellency, to point out the extraordinary nature of such conduct. I do not believe that any other French administration has ever been treated in a similar way, and I find myself compelled to make a lively [sic] protest against a procedure, blame for which is to be ascribed, as it appears, to a subordinate bureau that, in the present case, has overstepped the rights that the German authorities can derive from their victory.” MinistГЁre de l’IntГ©rieur, Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives, [in German] Der Generalcommisaire [sic] fГјr Judenfragen an den Herrn MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich, Verwaltungsstab, zu HГ¤nden des Herrn Ministerialdirektors Dr. Best [Commissioner-general for Jewish affairs to the military commander in France, administrative office, attention ministerial director Dr. Best], reprinted in Recueil I 265. 16. For a detailed account of the origins of the CGQJ and Dannecker’s role in this context, see Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 107–32. 17. For a detailed account, see Jungius, Der verwaltete Raub. 18. Dannecker’s reports dated 1.7.1941 and 22.2.1942, Recueil I 80–158, II 379–84. 19. Dannecker “An die Dienststelle BrГјssel” [to the Brussels office (of the representative of the commander of the Security Police and the SD)], 26.2.1942, Recueil II 387–88; Best [military commander in France–administrative staff] “An den Beauftragten des Chefs der SP z.d. SD—Dienststelle Paris” [to the representative of the head of the SP at the SD—Paris office], 31 March 1942, Recueil II 474–76. 20. Note by Dannecker, “Identification of the Jews,” 4.5.1942, Recueil II 521. 21. Achte Verordnung Гјber MaГџnahmen gegen Juden [Eighth decree on measures against the Jews], 29 May 1942, VOBlF, 383. 22. Note by Dannecker, “Abschub von 5000 Juden aus Frankreich (Quote 1942)” [Deportation of 5,000 Jews from France (quota for 1942)], 10.3.1942, Recueil II 410–11. 23. On Heydrich’s Paris visit, see Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman, 274–75; Herbert, Best, 320–22; Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:51–54; Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 26–28; Froment, RenГ© Bousquet, 209–23. 24. Quoted from Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 27. See also Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman, 274. 25. See JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa. 26. This is the title of a chapter in Paxton, Vichy France, 109–31. See also HervГ© Coutau-BГ©garie and Claude Huan, Darlan (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 387–438. 27. On the one hand, the most spectacular military confrontation between the French and the British after the sinking of a considerable portion of the French Page 337 →fleet in Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940 were the battles between Vichy troops and British and Gaullist troops in Syria in June and July 1941 that were triggered by the handover of airfields in Syria to the German Luftwaffe at Darlan’s initiative and ended with the defeat of the Vichy troops. On the other hand, on Darlan’s instructions, the French authorities made every effort to obstruct a German armistice inspection that traveled to Morocco in the

spring of 1941. In contrast to the famous cinematic representation of a comparable episode in Michael Curtiz’ film Casablanca, the German inspectors were not permitted to appear in uniform in Morocco. They were under strict surveillance, and their Arab informants were imprisoned or even executed. See Robert O. Paxton, Parades and Politics at Vichy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 221–26; Paxton, Vichy France, 114. 28. JГ¤ckel, Frankreich in Hitlers Europa, 171–74; Paxton, Vichy France, 117–26; Paxton, La collaboration d’état, 350–55. 29. See Paxton, Vichy France, 123–24. Paxton notes that Darlan’s verbal note on 14 July 1941 was “the most ambitious French proposal of the Vichy period,” a “climactic French offer” (122, 123). 30. Paxton, Vichy France, 128; Duroselle, L’abГ®me, 300. 31. Jean-Paul Cointet, Pierre Laval (Paris: Fayard, 1993). 32. A chargГ© d’affaires (Somerville Pinckney Tuck) remained behind. 33. J.-P. Cointet, Pierre Laval, 380–84; Duroselle, L’abГ®me, 342. 34. Baruch, Le rГ©gime de Vichy, 83. 35. See Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais, 333–39. On the composition of Laval’s government, see MichГЁle Cointet, Nouvelle histoire de Vichy (Paris: Fayard, 2011), 519–20. 36. The institution of the regional prefects was established by the Vichy government in April 1941 (Journal Officiel, 19 April 1941). On Bousquet’s career until 1942, see Froment, RenГ© Bousquet, 67–177. 37. As late as July 1943, when Bousquet’s star was already on the wane, the German consul general, Schleier, at this time Abetz’s de facto chargГ© d’affaires at the German Embassy because of a long absence, reported to the Foreign Office, “The ReichsfГјhrer was impressed by Bousquet’s personality and now clearly shares the view defended up to now by Oberg that Bousquet is as valuable a collaborator in the context of police cooperation as he would be a dangerous opponent were he to be forced into the other camp. The ReichsfГјhrer is of the opinion that Bousquet is such a strong and active personality that he is certain to play a role in French politics again in the future beyond the framework of his present activity as secretary-general of the police.” Quoted from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:54. 38. From the military court file, Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:70) quotes Hagen as saying that “the relations between Oberg, Knochen, and myself and Bousquet were always conducted in an atmosphere of comradeship. In my opinion, the hopes on both sides were founded on a new organization of Europe in which France would assume one of the leading places. The secretary-general of the Police [Bousquet] was driven by the idea of building up a strong police force vested with the greatest possible authority.” Page 338 →39. See Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 38–40. 40. See ibid., 41–54; Baruch, Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 392–98. 41. See Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 41. Following the military occupation in November 1942 of the previously unoccupied zone, the institution of the regions and regional prefects was, in the terminology used in the German correspondence, extended from the “newly occupied” zone to the “old occupied” zone. 42. See Baruch, Servir l’État franГ§ais, 392–93. 43. Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 50. 44. On the GMR, see also Baruch, Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 393–94. 45. Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 189–96. 46. On the PQJ, see Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 236–40; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 135–37. 47. On the SEC, see Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 348–51, 621–51; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 245.

48. Jean-Marc BerliГЁre, “The Wreckage of a Republican Police Model,” in The Impact of World War II on Policing in North-West Europe, ed. Cyrille Fijnaut (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), 21–41 (here 32, 35–36); BerliГЁre and Chabrun, Les policiers franГ§ais sous l’Occupation, 251–52, 254–58 (SEC), 268, 284–87 (Service Permilleux); Maurice Rajfus, La police de Vichy: Les forces de l’ordre franГ§aises au service de la Gestapo 1940–1944 (Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 1995), 196–202; Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 70; Griffioen and Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy,” 470, 479–80. 49. Thus Joly (Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 351) wrote of “une redoutable police parallГЁle traquant les juifs coupable d’infraction aux lois et ordonnances en vigueur” [a formidable parallel police force tracking down Jews who had violated laws and ordinances in force]. 50. On the Milice and its role in the Vichy regime, in general, and as an instrument of repression, in particular, see Pierre Giolitto, Histoire de la Milice (Paris: Perrin, 2002); Baruch, Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 530–75; Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 219–22. 51. See J.-P. Cointet, Pierre Laval, 427–8. 52. Thus Baruch, Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 532. 53. See Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 219–22 (“Die letzte Karte: Die Ernennung Darnands und die Rolle der Milice” [The final card: Darnand’s appointment and the role of the Milice]); Paxton, Vichy France, 297–98. 54. See Kasten, “Gute Franzosen,” 219–22, with further references. 55. Lieb, Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg?, passim. 56. See the impressive study by Lieven Saerens, De Jodenjagers van de Vlaamse SS: Gewone Vlamingen? [The Jew-hunters of the Flemish SS: Normal Flemings?] (Antwerp: Lannoo, 2007). 57. Louis Malles’s film Lacombe Lucien (1973) illustrates the dialectic of large-scale and small-scale violence that this involved. Seventeen-year-old Lucien Lacombe, who grew up fatherless during the war and the occupation, wants to join the maquisards during the final weeks before the liberation but is rejected by them because of his youth. In the anger of disappointment, he informs on a Jew Page 339 →living in hiding in the village, who, as a result, is arrested by the members of the Milice and is immediately deported. The film illustrates the relative arbitrariness not just of the violence but also of the choice between the political options open to the male youth in particular in occupied France. 58. On the “Bousquet era,” see Baruch, Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 388–406; on Bousquet’s role in the preparations for the deportations of Jews in particular, see Froment, RenГ© Bousquet, 233–64. 59. Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD IV B 4a [signature: Eichmann], An das AuswГ¤rtige Amt, z. Hdn. Herrn Legationsrat Rademacher [to the Foreign Office, attention Herr Legationsrat Rademacher], 9 March 1942, Recueil II 407. 60. IV J SA 225a Dan/Bir, Paris, den 10.3.1942, Betr.: Abschub von 5000 Juden aus Frankreich (Quote 1942), Vermerk [on the “conference of the desk officers for Jewish affairs in the RSHA—IV B 4—on 4.3.1942 in Berlin”], Recueil II 410–11 (410). 61. “Jews of French nationality must lose their nationality before the deportation or, at the latest, on the day of the deportation. The liquidation of assets must follow likewise.” Ibid., 410. 62. Ibid., 411. 63. Ibid. 64. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:60. 65. Note by Dannecker, “Provision of Rolling Stock for Jew Deportations,” 13.5.1942, Recueil II 559. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid., 559–60. Dannecker’s note concludes, “The general explained further that he regards the prompt resolution of the Jewish Question in

occupied France as a vital necessity for the occupation army, for which reason he always adopts a radical standpoint and supports its implementation, even at risk of appearing crude to certain people.” 68. Ibid., 560. 69. Ibid., 581. 70. The invitation followed on 23 May 1942 by telephone and was made by Eichmann, as recorded in a note by Dannecker on the same day. The purpose of the meeting, according to the note, was “to establish the guidelines for further transports of Jews.” Ibid., 613. 71. On the meeting in the RSHA on 11 June 1942 and its consequences for the deportation policy in France, see Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:63–66. 72. Recueil III 826. 73. Recueil II 394. 74. This is recorded in a report by the envoy Schleier to the Foreign Office dated 11 September 1942, containing the following summary: “Stateless Jews and Jews who emigrated from Poland and Germany in 1939/40, as well as earlier Jewish immigrants from Austria and Czechoslovakia, in total around 20,000, were already interned by the French government in concentration camps in the Pyrenees and Perpignan in late 1940. Until Laval’s assumption of office in mid-April Page 340 →1942, nothing further occurred with these Jews. When ObergruppenfГјhrer Heydrich visited Paris on 5–12 May 1942, the latter mentioned in discussions with the head of the French police, Undersecretary of State Bousquet, that transport trains would soon be available to deport stateless Jews in the occupied zone, who were interned in the KZ Drancy, to the East for labor deployment. Bousquet then asked Heydrich whether it would not also be possible to deport the Jews interned in the Free Zone for more than one-and-a-half years. The question was left open at the time because of transportation difficulties.” Recueil V, 1457. 75. Recueil III 825. 76. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:65. 77. Recueil III 826. According to the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941, Jews “normally resident abroad” lost German citizenship. The decree stated that their property was “forfeited to the Reich along with loss of citizenship.” This meant that all Jews who were deported were robbed of both their nationality and their property. Thus the formulation “normally resident abroad” included “residence” in the ghettos and in the labor and extermination camps in the “East.” A decree of the Reich Interior Ministry of 3 December 1941 stated that the articles of the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law also applied to those Jews “who are normally resident in the territories occupied by the German forces or under German administration or who will be resident there in the future, in particular also in the General Government and in the Reich Commissariats Ostland und Ukraine [Eastland and Ukraine Reich Commissions]” (quoted from Walk, Das Sonderrecht fГјr die Juden im NS-Staat, 358). As is well known, the Auschwitz extermination camp was located in the Polish “General Government.” 78. Recueil III 828–29. 79. “Betr.: Besprechungspunkt fГјr Bousquet” [Re.: Discussion point for Bousquet], Az. IV J Dan-Ge, Paris, 15.6.1942, Recueil III 832. 80. Recueil III 920. 81. Ibid., 918. Both Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz [Ger.], 386) and Froment (RenГ© Bousquet, 235) give the figure noted by hand by Dannecker as 15,000. However, that would be a discrepancy from the figure of 10,000 Jews to be deported that Dannecker recorded in his own note for the files as having been pledged by Bousquet. The facsimile in the documentation assembled from the relevant original documents by Klarsfeld reveals that Dannecker added a stroke toward the right to the first zero after the figure 1 so that the number could appear to be a “5.” Froment even incorrectly ascribes the handwritten marginal note to RГ¶thke. 82. Recueil III 840–41.

83. Ibid., 825–26. 84. Ibid., 920. 85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 921. “World war” here referred to the war of 1914–18. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. Page 341 →89. Dannecker had recorded in his note on the conversation with Leguay: “In conclusion, I emphasized that I could not specify any precise date for concluding the campaign that we are calling for in the occupied zone. However, it is certainly possible that it could be 10 or 15.7.1942. I did not respond to Leguay’s objection that these deadlines do not leave sufficient time.” Recueil III 921–22. 90. Calendrier 413–15. 91. Ibid., 410–13. 92. The crucial sentence in this regard in the first draft of Bousquet’s letter to Oberg (Calendrier 410–13 [411]) states, “Je suis persuadГ© que les rГ©sultats les plus heureux peuvent ГЄtre obtenus grГўce aux efforts que nous ferons, vous et moi, pour rГ©aliser sur le plan rГ©gionale et dГ©partemental, une collaboration vГ©ritable et efficace de nos services respectifs.” (I am convinced that the most auspicious results can be achieved thanks to the efforts that you and I are making to realize a genuine and effective collaboration between our respective administrations at the regional and departmental levels.) 93. As it was put in the second draft of Bousquet’s letter to Oberg: “Le Chef du Gouvernement vous a prГ©sentГ© les objections et les rГ©serves qu’il croyait devoir faire au nom du Gouvernement franГ§ais. Il m’a chargГ© d’attirer Г nouveau votre attention sur les rГ©percussions d’ordre administratif que ne pourrait manquer d’avoir une dГ©claration allemande posant, sous quelque form que ce soit, le principe d’une subordination de l’administration franГ§aise Г la nouvelle organisation militaire instituГ©e en France sous votre haute autoritГ©.” (The head of government has presented to you the objections and reservations that he felt obliged to make in the name of the French government. He has instructed me to draw your attention once again to the inevitable administrative repercussions of a German declaration laying down, in whatever form, the principle of the subordination of the French administration to the new military organization established in France under your supreme authority.) Police nationale Cabinet A nВ° 342, ГЂ M. le GГ©nГ©ral Oberg, Commandant SupГ©rieur S.S., Paris, le 18 juin 1942, Calendrier 413–15 (413). The last clause was an allusion to Oberg’s assumption of the office of HГ¶herer SS- und PolizeifГјhrer shortly before, on 1 June 1942, and the associated concentration of police competences within the occupation administration of the military commander in France in the hands of the SS. In a longer enclosure to his draft letter, Bousquet makes clear, among other things, his motives for insisting on a sufficient degree of administrative autonomy on the French side: “Dans les DГ©partements, je peux apporter le tГ©moignage personnel que la tГўche des prГ©fets se heurte chacque jour Г des difficultГ©s sans cesse renouvelГ©es et que certaines initiatives prises par les services allemands placent l’Administration franГ§aise dans l’impossibilitГ© matГ©rielle et morale de remplir sa tГўche avec honneur.” (I can personally testify that, in the dГ©partements, the prefects constantly encounter new difficulties on a daily basis in exercising their function and that certain initiatives taken by the German services morally and materially preclude the French Administration from performing its task in an honorable way.) Ibid., 414. 94. The transcript can be found in Calendrier 428. Page 342 →95. The original reads, “Ce matin matin visite de M. Bousquet qui a apportГ© un tГ©lГ©gramme. M. Leguay a Г©tГ© priГ© par le capitaine Dannecker de venir le voir. Aux termes accord, on devrait interner 10.000 Juifs en zone libre. M. Laval dГ©clare qu’il na jamais donnГ© aucun accord. Erreur fondamentale. La dГ©cision des AutoritГ©s allemandes d’interner 10.000 Juifs dans la rГ©gion parisienne (40 % de FranГ§ais). RГ©ponse Laval: je donnerai moi-mГЄme une rГ©ponse. Elle sera nГ©gative.” Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:78) points out that the figure of 10,000 stated in the

minutes is mistaken. The note taker must have actually meant the 22,000 Jews mentioned by Dannecker in his note of 26 June 1942, in which he referred to the conversation with Leguay on the previous day, as the deportation quota to be immediately fulfilled for the occupied zone. 96. Note by Dannecker (“SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen for your attention”), 29.6.1942, Recueil II 948–50 (949). 97. Recueil III 949. 98. Ibid., 949–50. 99. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:83. 100. IV J SA 24 Dan/Ge, Paris, 18.6.1942, reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 413. 101. Ibid. 102. Chief of the Security Police and the SD, IV B 4a—3233/41g (1085), to the Foreign Office, Attn: Legationsrat Rademacher, 22 June 1942, reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 114–15. 103. Griffioen and Zeller, “Anti-Jewish Policy,” 450–59; Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:72. 104. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 416–17. 105. RSHA IV B 4, Paris, 1.7.1942, Recueil IV 974–75 (974). 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid., 975. 108. Peter Longerich (Heinrich Himmler, 590) incorrectly ascribes the remark that the pace of the deportations from France must “be increased significantly within a short timeВ .В .В . in order to free France of Jews as soon as possible” to Himmler and his decree of 23 June 1942, though he gives as the corresponding source reference “note Dannecker of 1 July 1942.” 109. This is also Klarsfeld’s assessment (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:83). Steur (Theodor Dannecker, 80), by contrast, thinks that Knochen presumably promised Eichmann to intervene with the French government to ensure the imprisonment of Jews because Eichmann left Paris immediately without waiting for the result of the meeting between Knochen, Oberg, and the representatives of the French government scheduled for the next day, 2 July 1942. That Knochen gave such an assurance is, in fact, highly probable. Nevertheless, Eichmann could not be sure how vociferously Knochen would confront Bousquet and his retinue. 110. In the words of Eichmann’s note, “It is obvious that the practical results cannot be accomplished overnight. In the meantime, however, transports from the occupied part are available, so that, with a view to the difficulties in the unoccupiedPage 343 → part, the RF SS-order [order of the ReichsfГјhrer SS, i.e., Himmler] can nevertheless be pushed through in its entirety at present.” Recueil IV 974. 111. Ibid., 975. 112. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:85. 113. Ibid. The close personal relations between Eichmann and Hagen went back specifically to their journey to the Middle East together in 1937 and their collaboration in the SD special task force in Vienna after the “Anschluss” of Austria in March 1938. Eichmann had sent regular reports about his activities in Vienna to Hagen, who had returned to Berlin in the meantime. See Hans Safrian, “Adolf Eichmann,” in Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf. 30 LebenslГ¤ufe, ed. Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (Paderborn: Ferdinand SchГ¶ningh, 2000), 134–46, especially 136–39. 114. The HSSPF in the area of the MBF, Paris, 4 July 1942, note for the files, Re.: Consultation with SecrГ©taire gГ©nГ©ral Г la Police Bousquet on 2.7.42, Recueil IV 1000–1009. As Baruch (Servir l’Etat franГ§ais, 399) observes, the very fact that Bousquet appeared for the meeting as the sole representative of the French side underscores his optimism and self-confidence. 115. Klarsfeld conjectures that after the Г©clat of 29 June, Knochen, Oberg, and Hagen would have considered it opportune to exclude Dannecker from the

meeting. It is more probable that the “Jewish Question” only acquired importance in the course of the conversation, which, according to the original plans, was supposed to concentrate on the fundamental issues of Franco-German cooperation in policing. 116. Recueil IV 1006. At Knochen’s insistence, Bousquet conceded, later in the conversation, that Pellepoix should be granted “the right to make proposals concerning the conduct of operations against the Jews” and to make “his police” available for this purpose and that “a meeting between the BdS, Pellepoix, and BousquetВ .В .В . to resolve this issue” should be arranged. 117. Recueil IV 1006. 118. Ibid. 119. Ibid. 120. Hagen’s note states at this point, not entirely accurately, that “this is supposed to be the special wish of the Marshal.” Recueil IV 1007. 121. Recueil IV 1001. 122. Ibid., 1004. 123. Ibid., 1001–3. 124. Ibid., 1005. 125. So Klarsfeld conjectures in Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:84. 126. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:93. 127. Ibid. 128. Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 335–37. 129. Wildt, Uncompromising Generation, 338–48. 130. The naming of this game as “chicken” derives from an example cited by Page 344 →way of illustration, a test of courage in which two drivers drive toward each other at high speed on a single-lane road. The one who loses his or her nerve and swerves counts as “chicken” (coward). See Anatol Rapoport and Albert M. Chammah, “The Game of Chicken,” American Behavioral Scientist 10 (1966): 10–28; William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 197–201. 131. Recueil IV1012. 132. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:93. 133. RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du 26 juin 1942, Calendrier 428: “Le Chef du Gouvernement indique qu’il a dГ©cidГ© de procГ©der, avant toute mesure d’exГ©cution dont il rendra compte prГ©alablement au MarГ©chal, Г un recensement des Juifs, de faГ§on Г discriminer les Juifs franГ§ais des Juifs Г©trangers.” (The head of government indicates that he has decided, prior to any implementation measures about which he undertakes to inform the Marshal in advance, to proceed with a census of the Jews designed to distinguish the French Jews from foreign Jews.) 134. That Bousquet was fully aware of his justification problems can be seen, in turn, from Hagen’s note on the meeting of 2 July 1942, which states, “Bousquet stresses that this [measure of having Jews of foreign nationality arrested by French police] constitutes an unprecedented course of action by the French government, where there is a clear awareness of the resulting difficulties.” Recueil IV 1012. 135. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:95. 136. Calendrier 428. 137. RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du vendredi 3 juillet 1942 [Meeting of the Council of Ministers dated Friday, 3 July 1942], Calendrier 453: “Des mesures particuliГЁres pourraient ГЄtre envisagГ©es Г l’égard des Juifs qui sont arrivГ©s en France depuis septembre 1939.”(Certain measures could be contemplated regarding the Jews who arrived in France after September 1939.

138. Ibid.: “Le MarГ©chal estime que cette distinction est juste et sera comprise par l’opinion.” 139. Bernard Laguerre, “Les dГ©naturalisГ©s de Vichy 1940–1944,” VingtiГЁme SiГЁcle 20 (1988): 3–15; Catherine Kessedjian, “Le Juif dГ©chu de la nationalitГ© FranГ§aise,” in “Le droit antisemite de Vichy,” ed. Dominique Gros, special issue, Le Genre Humain 30–31 (1996): 231–42. 140. RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du vendredi 3 juillet 1942—Notes manuscrites [Meeting of the Council of Ministers dated Friday, 3 July 1942—Handwritten notes], Calendrier 454: “Il faut distinguer entre Juifs franГ§ais et dГ©chets expГ©diГ©s par les Allemands eux-mГЄme. L’intention du Gouvernement allemand serait de faire un Г©tat juif Г l’Est de l’Europe. Je ne serais pas dГ©shonorГ© si j’expГ©diais un jour vers cet Г©tat juif les innombrables des Juifs Г©trangers qui sont en France.” 141. Recueil IV 1108. In this place “4.6.” is given as the date planned for the meeting with Laval, which is clearly a mistake. 142. “Bousquet has forbidden the special Jew-police to engage in any practical Page 345 →activity for over six weeks. On 29.6.1942, the director of the Jew-police traveled to Vichy. Without informing him, wage payments to members of his agency were blocked on 30.6.42. It will be interesting to learn from Bousquet how he wishes to demonstrate how the [handwritten insertion: “general”] French police, which is notoriously corrupt and has absolutely no understanding of the Jewish Question, is capable of addressing the problem independently in the sense desirable for Europe.” Note, “Points of interest prior to the discussion with the French secretary-general of the police, Bousquet,” Paris, 4.7.1942, signed by Dannecker, Recueil IV 1014–15 (1014). 143. IV J SA 24 Dan/Bir, “Abschub von Juden aus Frankreich” [Deportation of the Jews from France], Paris, 6.7.1942, Recueil IV 1020–22. 144. Ibid., 1020. 145. Ibid., 1021. 146. Recueil IV, 1024. 147. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:108. 148. “Dans une intention d’humanitГ©, le Chef du Gouvernement a obtenu—contrairement aux premiГЁres propositions allemands—que les enfants, y compris ceux de moins de 16 ans, soient autorisГ©s Г accompagner leurs parents.” RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du vendredi 10 juillet [1942] [Meeting of the Council of Ministers dated Friday, 10 July [1942]], Calendrier 481. 149. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:108–10. “In late July and early August [1942] in the camps, over 1,000 Jewish mothers, who were due to be deported, were separated from their small children with rifle butts. Between early and mid-August, 3,500 of these children were left to their own devices in the same camps without any supervision, many of them ill and completely distraught; in the midst of one of the richest agricultural regions of France, they were left virtually without food. Some of them died in situ, the rest arrived in an utterly deplorable physical condition in the Drancy camp, only to be herded together in the most brutal manner a couple of days later by gendarmes, taken in buses to the Le Bourget train station, and from there deported in sealed railway wagons to Auschwitz.” 150. RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du vendredi 3 juillet 1942—Notes manuscrites, Calendrier 454 (see full quote in note 140). 151. Recueil IV 1027–28. 152. Ibid., 1025. 153. Ibid., 1029–30. 154. Ibid., 1031. By the “Union” was meant the Union gГ©nГ©rale des IsraГ©lites de France (UGIF). 155. IV J SA 225a RГ¶/Bir, Paris, den 11.7.1942, Betr.: Abtransport staatenloser Juden [Re: Removal of stateless Jews], Recueil IV 1060–61. 156. Recueil IV 1043. 157. ADAP, ser. E, vol. III, doc. 58, p. 96.

158. ADAP, ser. E, vol. III, footnote to doc. 58, p. 96 (quoted from the reprint in ADAP, Akten Inland IIg., vol. 189). 159. Calendrier 481. Page 346 →160. Recueil IV 1090. 161. Recueil V 1095. 162. Ibid. 163. After completing his legal training, Heinz RГ¶thke (born in 1912) became a senior civil servant in the Munich Regional Council and, before being posted to Paris as commander of the Security Police and the SD, which went along with the appointment as SS-HauptsturmfГјhrer, had been a member of the senior field command for Brest. See Brunner, Der Frankreich-Komplex, 65–66. 164. Recueil IV 1095. IV J referred to the “Jewish Desk” (Judenreferat) in the Paris Sipo/SD bureau. In a note dated 21 July 1942, Dannecker had characteristically shifted responsibility to Knochen: “Because of the cancellation of the transport from Bordeaux, it was explained that, as a result of the pledge made by SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen to the French chief of police Bousquet to take only stateless Jews, an entirely new situation has arisen without our involvement that undermined the whole concept.” Recueil IV 1174. This is what Dannecker claims to have said in a telephone conversation with Eichmann and the latter’s transportation specialist Novak, who, he recorded in his note, had called him on 20 July 1942. This was clearly the telephone conversation that RГ¶thke mentioned in his marginal note of 2 August 1942. However, the restriction of the arrests and deportations to “stateless Jews” did not stem from Knochen at all. Rather, it was the consequence of Undersecretary of State Luther’s telex of 10 July 1942 according to which “until further instructions” the deportation of foreign Jews (let alone Jews of French citizenship) “is not as yet possible”. Cf. ADAP, ser. E, vol. III, footnote to doc. 58, p. 96 (quoted from the reprint in ADAP, Akten Inland IIg., vol. 189). 165. RГ¶thke’s report on the raid (“Re: Deportation of stateless Jews”) of 18 July 1942—Recueil IV 1131–35—stated, “The French population repeatedly expressed its sympathy with the arrested Jews and its regret especially to the arrested children. In many cases, the transportation of the arrested Jews was not conducted inconspicuously, so that a portion of the non-Jewish population had the opportunity to form small gatherings and engage in discussions about the group of arrested Jews” (1132). 166. Ibid. 167. Hagen and RГ¶thke attended the meeting on the German side. On the French side, Leguay attended, as well as the director of the subsection for foreigner and Jewish affairs in the ParisianPrГ©fecture de police, FranГ§ois Tulard, the commissioner-general for Jewish affairs, Darquier de Pellepoix, and his office manager (secretary-general), Pierre Galien. See RГ¶thke’s note “Deportation of stateless Jews” of 18.7.1942, Recueil IV 1134. 168. Ibid. 169. See the description by a social worker reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:126: “Sick children, blocked toilets; attacks on the French police—only two doctors; leaking roof.” 170. See, besides the above-quoted accounts of Serge Klarsfeld, Claude LГ©vy and Paul Tillard, Betrayal at the Vel d’Hiv (New York and Paris: Hill and Wang, 1969); Page 347 →Asher Cohen, PersГ©cutions et sauvetages: Juifs et FranГ§ais sous l’Occupation et sous Vichy (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 269–76; BerliГЁre and Chabrun, Les policiers franГ§ais sous l’Occupation, 226–29, 236–38; Rajfus, La police de Vichy, 118–26; Conan, Sans oublier les enfants; Denis Peschanski, La France des Camps: L’internement, 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), 346–47, 350, 355–62. 171. Recueil IV 1148–55. 172. Ibid., 1151. 173. Ibid., 1050–51. 174. Ibid., 1175.

175. Ibid. 176. Ibid; emphasis (underlining) in the original. 177. Ibid., 1176. 178. This is conjectured by Steur (Theodor Dannecker, 84). 179. The facsimile of the official translation of Darquier’s letter to Laval of 23 July 1942 prepared for the German agencies is reprinted in Recueil IV 1187–88. 180. Ibid., 1188. 181. Ibid. 182. Pierre Galien was Darquier’s office manager and head of administration of the CGQJ. 183. Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 300. 184. See Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 89–90. 185. See Joly, Vichy dans la “Solution finale,” 363–66. 186. Oberg to Bousquet [in French], 23.7.1942, Calendrier 577–79 (578). 187. RГ©union du Conseil des Ministres en date du 18 juillet 1942, Calendrier 531–32. 188. Note [de R. Bousquet] pour le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 juillet 1942, Calendrier 588–93. 189. Oberg had written to Bousquet on 23 July 1942, “Ce qui m’a incitГ© Г agir ainsi, c’est la conviction nГ©e de nos relations personelles, que votre personne offre la garantie d’une collaboration loyale et que vous rГ©ussirez Г©galement Г diriger la police franГ§aise dans ce sens.” (What spurred me to act in this way is my conviction, based on our personal relations, that you, M. le SecrГ©taire GГ©nГ©ral, are the guarantor of a loyal collaboration and that you will also succeed in directing the French police in this sense.) Calendrier 578. 190. “La formule serait Г mon avis que les autoritГ©s allemandes n’entendent pas demander Г la Police franГ§aise une tГўche depassant le cadre des obligations mises Г la charge du Gouvernement franГ§ais par la Convention d’Armistice.” (In my opinion the formulation should be that the German authorities do not intend to require the French police to perform any task that goes beyond the framework of the obligations imposed on the French government by the Armistice Agreement.) Note [de R. Bousquet] pour le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 juillet 1942, Calendrier 588–93 (590). 191. “.В .В .В une coopГ©ration aussi limitГ©e que possible dans le cadre de la Convention d’Armistice.” Calendrier 589. 192. Note [de R. Bousquet] Г Monsieur le GГ©nГ©ral Oberg, Commandant supГ©rieurPage 348 → des S.S. et de la Police relative Г sa note du 23 juillet 1942, Calendrier 613–16 (= attachment to Police Nationale Cabinet A—nВ° 421, Paris, le 29 juillet 1942, Le SecrГ©taire GГ©nГ©ral Г la Police Г M. le GГ©nГ©ral Oberg, Commandant supГ©rieur des S.S. et de la Police, Calendrier 612–13). 193. Ibid., 614. 194. “.В .В .В contre l’anarchisme, le terrorisme et le communisme, et d’une maniГЁre gГ©nГ©rale, contre toute action Г©trangГЁre susceptible de troubler l’ordre et le calme Г l’intГ©rieur de la France.” Calendrier 614. 195. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 368–71. 196. Note de Monsieur le GГ©nГ©ral Oberg (texte dГ©finitif), Calendrier 662–63 (= attachment to Police Nationale Cabinet A—nВ° 438, Le DГ©leguГ© du SГ©crГ©taire GГ©nГ©rale Г la Police dans les Territoires OccupГ©s Г M. le Commandant [sic] Hagen, Paris, le 4 aoГ»t 1942, Calendrier 662). 197. Calendrier 662–63. 198. Ibid., 662.

199. Ibid., 687. The protocol of the meeting bears the elaborate title “Allocution prononcée par le Général Oberg, Chef supérieur des S.S. et de la police allemande, le 8 août 1942, pendant la réunion groupant: Les préfets régionaux, les intendants de police et les kommandeurs régionaux de la Sipo-SD en zone occupée et en présence de M. Bousquet” (Address delivered by General Oberg, supreme commander of the SS and the German police, on 8 August 1942, at the meeting including: The regional prefects, the police directors, and the regional commanders of the Sipo/SD in the occupied zone and in the presence of M. Bousquet). Ibid., 687–88. 200. “Il vous appartient de donner à ces service une impulsion vigoureuse dont vous sentez comme moi toute la nécessité dans les circonstances présentes.” Ministère de l’Intérieur, Direction générale de la Police nationale, P.N. Cab n° 187, Paris, le 13 août 1942, Calendrier 712–13 (713). 201. Calendrier 588–93. 202. Calendrier 593.

Chapter Seven 1. Serge Klarsfeld, “Juillet–septembre 1942,” 545–46; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 217–79; Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r, 59–66; Steur, Theodor Dannecker, 45–92. 2. See Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r, 59–66. 3. Recueil VI 1550. The telex to Himmler mentioned by Knochen seems not to have survived. 4. See Reitlinger, Final Solution, 326–28 (“The Final Solution Not Achieved”). 5. “Profondement Г©mus par ce qu’on nous rapporte des arrestations massives d’IsraГ©lites opГ©rГ©es la semaine derniГЁre et des durs traitements qui leurs sont infligГ©s, notamment au VГ©lodrГґme d’Hiver, nous ne pouvons Г©touffer le cri de notre conscience. C’est au nom de l’humanitГ© et des principes chrГ©tiens que notre voix Page 349 →s’élГЁve pour une protestation en faveur des droits imprescriptibles de la personne humaine. C’est aussi un appel angoissГ© Г la pitiГ© pour ces immenses souffrances, pour celles surtout qui atteignent tant de mГЁre et d’enfants. Nous vous demandons, Monsieur le MarГ©chal, qu’il vous plaise d’en tenir compte, afin que soient respectГ©s les exigences de la justice et les droits de la charitГ©.” (Profoundly moved by what we have learned about the mass arrests of Jews conducted last week and of the harsh treatment inflicted upon them, particularly in the VГ©lodrГґme d’Hiver, we cannot stifle the cry of our conscience. It is in the name of humanity and of the principles of Christianity that we raise our voices in protest on behalf of the imprescriptible rights of the human person. It is also an anguished appeal for pity for this immense suffering, especially that afflicting mothers and their children. We respectfully call upon you, Monsieur le MarГ©chal, to ensure that the requirements of justice and the rights of charity are respected.) Recueil IV 1180. 6. Recueil V 1256. 7. Ibid. 8. Recueil IV 1206–11, 1228–30. 9. “The Jews could not be handed over immediately because some of them had been allocated from the camps in small labor battalions to isolated villages etc. and first had to be rounded up again. Besides, the preference was to hand over these Jews along with their family members, who first had to be interned.” Recueil IV 1208–9. 10. Ibid., 1209. 11. Ibid., 1230.

12. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:139. 13. “Les enfants ne doivent pas partir dans les mГЄmes convois que les parents; ils seront gardГ©s dans un camp soit Г Pithiviers, soit Г Beaune-laRolande. En attendant leur dГ©part pour rejoindre leurs parents, ils seront laissГ©s aux soins de femmes choisies parmi les mГЁres, les infirmiГЁres et institutrices devant elles-mГЄmes faire partie d’un dГ©part. Le choix de ces femmes sera fait par nos soins Г raison d’une garde pour huit enfants. D’aprГЁs les reseignements donnГ©s par les AutoritГ©s allemandes des trains d’enfants seront mis en route dans la deuxiГЁme quinzaine d’aoГ»t.” (The children should not leave in the same convoys as their parents; they will be held under guard at a camp, either Pithiviers or Beaune-laRolande. While awaiting their departure to rejoin their parents, they will be left in the care of women chosen from among the mothers, since the nurses and teachers must themselves form part of a departure. We will select these women at a level of one nurse to every eight children. According to the information provided by the German authorities, trains with children will begin to roll in the second half of August.) Leguay to the regional prefect in OrlГ©ans, telegram no. 434, 3 August 1942, Calendrier 642. 14. “Lundi 10 aoГ»t: journГ©e terrible. Spectacle dГ©chirant. Des cars enlГЁvent 70 enfants aux parents qui vont partir le soir. J’ai obtenu que les enfants partent avant pour ne pas assister Г l’appel des parents. Mais quelle scГЁne dans le soleil brГ»lant! Il faut retenir les pГЁres et les mГЁres quand les cars quittent la cour. Quels Page 350 →cris et quelles larmes, quels gГЁstes des pauvres pГЁres qui, avant la dГ©portation dГ©finitive, caressent le visage d’un fils ou d’une fille comme pour en conserver l’empreinte au bout des doigts! Des mГЁres hurlent de dГ©sespoir et personne ne peut retenir ses larmes. Cependant les appels des dГ©portГ©s commencent dans la cour, sous le soleil cruel. Les insolations sont nombreuses, les civiГЁres passent. Le dГ©sordre augmente encore la cruautГ© des mesures.” (Monday, 10 August: Terrible day. Heartrending spectacle. Buses took 70 children from the parents who were to leave that evening. I was able to ensure that the children left earlier so that they did not to have to witness the roll call of their parents. But what a scene in the scorching sun! The fathers and mothers had to be restrained as the buses left the courtyard. What cries and tears, what gestures of the poor fathers caressing the face of a son or a daughter before the ultimate deportation as though they were trying to preserve the imprint of the faces in their fingertips! The mothers cried out in despair, and nobody could hold back their tears. Nevertheless the roll calls of the deportees began in the courtyard under the cruel sun. The numerous victims of sunstroke were carried out on stretchers. The chaos heightened the cruelty of the measures even further.) Calendrier 709. On 7 December 1943, Raymond-Raoul Lambert would himself be deported, with his wife and four children, to Auschwitz, where all of them were murdered. 15. Recueil V 1282. 16. Ibid., 1291. In the telex, the word keinesfalls, meaning “under no circumstances,” is followed by the emphasis note “UNTERSTR” (i.e., “underline”). 17. See Michael R. Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews in France, 1940–1944.” In Bystanders to the Holocaust, vol. 3 of Michael R. Marrus (ed.), The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews, 8 vols. (Westport and London: Meckler, 1990), 1284–1305. 18. Jacques Adler, “The French Churches and the Jewish Question: July 1940—March 1941,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 46 (2000): 357–77; Burrin, Living with Defeat, 210–27; M. Cointet, Nouvelle histoire de Vichy, 566–67; Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (New York: Arcade, 2002), 322–43; Jacques Dusquesne, Les catholiques franГ§ais sous l’occupation (1966; reprint, Paris: Grasset, 1986), 244–56; W. D. Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1995), 95–150; Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews”; Jean-Marie Mayeur, “Les Г©glises devant la persГ©cution des Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,” in Commentaire RГ©vue trimestrielle 14 (1981): 254–63; Mordecai Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation (Jersey City: Ktav, 2006), 69–129. 19. Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews,” 1285-90. Marrus cites as examples corresponding statements by the bishops of Grenoble and Marseille.

20. Quoted from Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy, 99. See also RenГ©e BГ©darida, “Églises et Chretiens,” in La France des annГ©es noires, vol. 2, De l’occupation Г la libГ©ration, ed. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1993), 105–28 (115). Page 351 →21. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 202. 22. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, Frankrijk en BelgiГ«, 1940–1945: Overeenkomsten, verschillen, oorzaken (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2011), 296; Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 200–202; Mayeur, “Les Г©glises devant la persГ©cution des Juifs,” 258–59. 23. Vallat’s report on his meeting with Gerlier on 6 October 1941 can be found in CDJC CIX-106, here quoted from Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 200. 24. The multipage declaration, read out, among others, on 30 December 1997 by the bishop of the diocese Seine-Saint-Denis, Olivier de Berranger, at Drancy, the site of the deportations, stated, among other things, “Dans leur majoritГ©, les autoritГ©s spirituelles, empГЄtrГ©es dans un loyalisme et une docilitГ© allant bien au delГ de l’obГ©issance traditionnelle au pouvoir Г©tabli, sont restГ©es cantonnГ©es dans une attitude de conformisme, de prudence et d’abstention, dictГ©e pour une part par la crainte de reprГ©sailles contre les Е“uvres et les mouvements de jeunesses catholiques. Elles n’ont pas pris conscience du fait que l’Église, alors appelГ©e Г jouer un rГґle de supplГ©ance dans un corps social disloquГ©, dГ©tenait en fait un pouvoir et une influence considГ©rables et que, dans le silence des autres institutions, sa parole pouvait, par son retentissement, faire barrage Г l’irrГ©parable. On doit s’en souvenir: au temps de l’occupation, on ignorait encore la vГ©ritable dimension du gГ©nocide hitlГ©rien. S’il est vrai qu’on peut citer en abondance des gestes de solidaritГ©, on doit se demander si des gestes de charitГ© et d’entraide suffisent Г honorer les exigences de la justice et le respect des droits de la personne humaine.В .В .В . Ainsi, face Г la lГ©gislation antisГ©mite Г©dictГ©e par le gouvernement franГ§ais—à commencer par le statut des juifs, d’octobre 1940, et celui de juin 1941, qui Гґtaient Г une catГ©gorie de FranГ§ais leurs droits de citoyens, qui les fichaient et qui faisaient d’eux des ГЄtres infГ©rieurs au sein de la nation–, face aux dГ©cisions d’internement dans des camps de juifs Г©trangers qui avaient cru pouvoir compter sur le droit d’asile et sur l’hospitalitГ© de la France, force est de constater que les Г©vГЄques de France ne se sont pas exprimГ©s publiquement, acquiesГ§ant par leur silence Г ces violations flagrantes des droits de l’homme et laissant le champ libre Г un engrenage mortifГЁre.В .В .В . Il n’en reste pas moins que, si parmi les chrГ©tiens, clercs, religieux ou laГЇcs, les actes de courage n’ont pas manquГ© pour la dГ©fense des personnes«—a footnote inserted at this point refers explicitly to the example of Archbishop SaliГЁge and Cardinal Gerlier, furthermore to the protests of Bishop ThГ©as of Montauban, of Archbishop Moussaron of Albi, and of Bishop Delay of Marseille—»nous devons reconnaГ®tre que l’indiffГ©rence l’a largement emportГ© sur l’indignation et que devant la persГ©cution des juifs, en particulier devant les mesures antisГ©mites multiformes Г©dictГ©es par les autoritГ©s de Vichy, le silence a Г©tГ© la rГЁgle et les paroles en faveur des victimes, l’exception.В .В .В . Le rГ©sultat, c’est que la tentative d’extermination du peuple juif, au lieu d’apparaГ®tre comme une question centrale sur le plan humain et sur le plan spirituel, est restГ©e Г l’état d’enjeu secondaire. Devant l’ampleur du drame et le caractГЁre inouГЇ du crime, trop de Pasteurs de l’Église ont, par leur silence, offensГ© l’Église elle-mГЄme et sa mission. Aujourd’hui, nous confessons que Page 352 →ce silence fut une faute. Nous reconnaissons aussi que l’Église en France a alors failli Г sa mission d’éducatrice des consciences et qu’ainsi elle porte, avec le peuple chrГ©tien, la responsabilitГ© de n’avoir pas portГ© secours dГЁs les premiers instants, quand la protestation et la protection Г©taient possibles et nГ©cessaires, mГЄme si, par la suite, il y eut d’innombrables actes de courage.” (For the most part, those in authority in the church, caught up in a loyalism and docility which went far beyond the obedience traditionally accorded to civil authorities, remained stuck in conformity, prudence and abstention. This was dictated in part by their fear of reprisals against the church’s activities and youth movements. They failed to realize that the church, called at that moment to play the role of defender within a social body that was falling apart, did in fact have considerable power and influence, and that in the face of the silence of other institutions, its voice could have echoed loudly by taking a definitive stand against the irreparable. It must be borne in mind: During the

occupation no one knew the full extent of the Hitlerian genocide. While it is true that mention could be made of a great number of gestures of solidarity, we have to ask ourselves whether acts of charity and help are enough to fulfill the demands of justice and respect for the rights of human persons.В .В .В . So it is that, given the anti-Semitic legislation enacted by the French government—beginning with the October 1940 law on Jews and that of June 1941, which deprived a whole section of the French people of their rights as citizens, which hounded them out and treated them as inferior beings within the nation—and given the decision to put into internment camps foreign Jews who had thought they could rely on the right of asylum and hospitality in France, we are obliged to admit that the bishops of France made no public statements, thereby acquiescing by their silence in the flagrant violation of human rights and leaving the way open to a death-bearing chain of events.В .В .В . Nevertheless, while it may be true that some Christians—priests, religious and laypeople—were not lacking in acts of courage in defense of fellow human beings, we must recognize that indifference won the day over indignation in the face of the persecution of the Jews and that, in particular, silence was the rule in face of the multifarious laws enacted by the Vichy government, whereas speaking out in favor of the victims was the exception.В .В .В . The end result is that the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, instead of being perceived as a central question in human and spiritual terms, remained a secondary consideration. In the face of so great and utter a tragedy, too many of the church’s pastors committed an offense, by their silence, against the church itself and its mission. Today we confess that such a silence was a sin. In so doing, we recognize that the church of France failed in her mission as teacher of consciences and that therefore she carries along with the Christian people the responsibility for failing to lend their aid, from the very first moments, when protest and protection were still possible, as well as necessary, even if, subsequently, a great many acts of courage were performed.) ConfГ©rence des Г©vГЄques de France, La DГ©claration de repentance de l’Eglise de France, le mardi 30 Septembre 1997, http://www.dialogue-jca.org/Repentance_des_eveques_de_France.htm (English translation from http://www.jcrelations.net /Declaration+of+Repentance+seeking+forgiveness+for+the+failings+of+the+Church+during+the+Holocaust+period.2407.0.html?L=3).Page 353 → 25. See Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and Olivier Wieviorka, Vichy, 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin, 1997), 176–79 (“Un rГ©gime clГ©rical Г la franГ§aise”); RenГ©e BГ©darida, Les Catholiques dans la Guerre 1939–1945 (Paris: Hachette, 1998); BГ©darida, “La hiГ©rarchie catholique,” in AzГ©ma and BГ©darida,Vichy et les FranГ§ais, 444–62; BГ©darida, “Eglises et ChrГ©tiens”; Etienne Fouilloux, Les chrГ©tiens franГ§ais entre crise et libГ©ration 1937–1947 (Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1997); Fouilloux, “Le clergГ©,” in AzГ©ma and BГ©darida, Vichy et les FranГ§ais, 463–77; Burrin, Living with Defeat, 210–27; Dusquesne, Les catholiques franГ§ais sous l’occupation, especially 48–90; Bill [William D.] Halls, “Catholicism under Vichy: A Study in Diversity and Ambiguity,” in Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern Zone, 1940–1942, ed. Harry Roderick Kedward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 113–46; Halls, Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France; William D. Halls, “Catholics, the Vichy Interlude, and After,” in France at War: Vichy and the Historians, ed. Sarah Fishman et al. (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), 231–48. 26. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 355. 27. Calendrier 768. 28. BГ©darida, “Églises et ChrГ©tiens,” 115; Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews,” 1294–95; Mayeur, “Les Г©glises devant la persГ©cution des Juifs,” 255. 29. Quoted from Marrus, “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews,” 1294. 30. Richard I. Cohen, “Jews and Christians in France during World War II: A Methodological Essay,” in JudaГЇsm and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, ed. Otto Dov Kulka and Paul L. Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1987), 327–40 (335). 31. BГ©darida, Г‰glises et ChrГ©tiens, 115. 32. “Aucune dГ©faite, vous nous l’avez rappelГ© vous-mГЄme, ne peut contraindre la France Г laisser porter atteinte Г son honneur.В .В .В . Je vous supplie, Monsieur le MarГ©chal, d’imposer des mesures indispensables pour que la France ne s’inflige pas Г elle-mГЄme une dГ©faite morale

dont le poids serait incalculable.” (No defeat, as you yourself reminded us, can compel France to permit its honor to be besmirched.В .В .В . I implore you, Monsieur le MarГ©chal, to take the indispensable measures to ensure that France does not inflict a moral defeat of incalculable weight upon itself.) Calendrier 778. 33. Messageries Г‰vangГ©liques, ed., Les Г©glises protestantes pendant la guerre et l’occupation: Actes de l’AssemblГ©e gГ©nГ©rale du Protestantisme franГ§ais. NГ®mes, 22 au 26 octobre 1945 (Paris: Messageries Г‰vangГ©liques, 1946), 29–31; Johan M. Snoek, The Grey Book: A Collection of Protests against Anti-Semitism and the Persecution of Jews Issued by non-Roman Catholic Churches and Church Leaders during Hitler’s Rule (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1969), 144–45; Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 146. 34. SaliГЁge’s pastoral letter is reprinted in Calendrier 820. Page 354 →35. The letter is reprinted in Calendrier 812–13. 36. Calendrier 820–21 / Recueil V 1366–67., Added to the exclamation “Lord, have pity on us!” (Herr habe Mitleid mit uns!) in the German translation of the letter prepared by a certain SS-OberscharfГјhrer Kriegel was the marginal note, presumably by Knochen, “With us poor sheep!” (Mit uns armen Schafen!). 37. Valeri’s letter to Maglione is reprinted in French translation in Calendrier 826. 38. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:154–55. 39. Recueil V 1347–56. The minutes are dated 20 August 1942. 40. Recueil V 1357. 41. See Richard I. Cohen, The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987); “Le Consistoire Durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,” RГ©vue d’histoire de la Shoah 169 (May–August 2000). 42. Calendrier 867–68. 43. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz (Ger.), 179–80; Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenverfolging, 477–78. 44. ADAP, ser. E, vol. III, doc. 247, p. 425. 45. Recueil V 1361–62. 46. Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:161. 47. The Ministry of the Interior’s synopsis of the reports by the prefects reads, “The roundup and expulsion measures taken against the foreign Jews have prompted considerable disturbance of public opinion. A considerable number of the prefects report reactions of sympathy and pity on the part of the population. All seem to agree in ascribing responsibility for these measures to the German authorities. At any rate, these massive arrests, which were extensively exploited by the opposition, have inspired undisguised rejection in certain dГ©partements.” MinistГЁre de l’IntГ©rieur, Cabinet du SecrГ©taire GГ©nГ©ral pour l’Administration, Г‰tat FranГ§ais, Vichy, le 18 septembre 1942, SynthГЁse des rapports des prГ©fets de la zone libre pour le mois d’aoГ»t 1942, accessed 22 November 2012,http://www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/prefets/fr/fzl0842mi.html. 48. The course of events is recorded in minute detail in a note of 1 September 1942 by Angeli, Calendrier 1017–20. See also Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:189–192; GГ©rard Gobitz, Les dГ©portations de rГ©fugiГ©s de Zone Libre en 1942: RГ©cits et documents (Paris: L’Harmattan), 134. 49. Calendrier 1020–21. 50. “Nous n’oublions pas qu’il y a pour l’autoritГ© franГ§aise un problГЁme Г rГ©soudre, et nous mesurons les difficultГ©s auxquelles doit faire face le Gouvernement.” CommuniquГ© de son Г©minence le cardinal Gerlier, ArchevГЄque de Lyon, diffusГ© le 2 septembre, rГ©digГ© le 30 aoГ»t [1942], with the addendum “qui devra ГЄtre lu en chaire, le dimanche 6 septembre et auquel ne devra ГЄtre ajoutГ©e aucune autre parole” (which should be read from the pulpit on Sunday, 6 September, and to which nothing should be added), Calendrier 1033.

51. Calendrier 1017–20 (1020). Page 355 →52. “Ma protestationВ .В .В . est mГЄme de nature Г renforcer le Gouvernemet franГ§ais dans ses rapports aves les autoritГ©s occupantes car elle montre aisni Г l’Allemagne les difficultГ©s intГ©rieures que crГ©e en France la remise des Juifs.” Quoted in Regional Prefect Angeli to Bousquet, 1 September 1942, Calendrier 1017–20 (1020). 53. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 22, 28, adapted to international relations in Robert Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (1988): 427–60. 54. “Ce n’est pas sur la violence et la haine qu’on pourra bГўtir l’ordre nouveau. On le construira et la paix, avec lui, que dans le respect de la justice, dans l’union bienfaisante des esprits et des cЕ“urs, Г laquelle nous convie la grande voix du MarГ©chal PГ©tain, et oГ№ refleurira le sГ©culaire prestige de notre Patrie.” Calendrier 1033. 55. Recueil V 1400–1404. 56. Ibid., 1400. 57. Ibid., 1400–1404 (1401). 58. This is also Klarsfeld’s conclusion in Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:167. 59. Note by Ahnert [RГ¶thke’s deputy], “Conference on Jewish Questions at the RSHA on 28.8.1942,” dated 1 September 1942, Recueil V 1378–80 (1378). 60. Note by RГ¶thke, “Deportation of the Jews from the Occupied Zone,” Recueil V 1384–85 (1384). 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. At the end of RГ¶thke’s note is a handwritten marginal remark by Knochen: “We can’t incessantly change course—then it’s better to say that we’re going to do it, but not now this and now that.” This remark refers as likely to the recent intensification of the rate of deportation demanded by the RSHA as to the divergences within the SS and Gestapo leadership in Paris on how to deal with the French police leadership. At any rate, Knochen once again revealed that he regarded Eichmann’s and RГ¶thke’s deportation plans as politically and logistically unfeasible. 63. CDJC LXV-15, here quoted from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:411–12. 64. Ibid., 454. In a note written by RГ¶thke’s deputy Ahnert on 5 September 1942, one can find the figure of “7,100 stateless Jews” who were “captured” in the course of the “raids [conducted] by the French police in the unoccupied zone” in August 1942. Ahnert records, on this occasion, that “because of the directive of the RSHAВ .В .В . 22,931 stateless Jews had been deported to the East between 17.7 and 4.9.1942.” Together with the 5,138 Jews who had been “evacuated,” this amounted to “a total of 28,069 Jews deported from France.” Recueil V 1420. 65. The cynical view of the SD includes a veiled allusion to the lack of professionalism of the French police. According to the information provided by Bousquet, Hagen records, “there had been some complaints because the police went about their work at times in an extraordinarily brutal way and some excesses had also occurred in this area. He [Bousquet] stressed that the conduct of the operationPage 356 → had been more brutal than in the occupied zone.” Hagen went on, “Because the Jews are involved to the extraordinary degree in black marketeering, Bousquet has established three special police brigades of 15 men each. These are charged with systematically prosecuting for black marketeering throughout the Free Zone.” Ibid. 66. The commitment by the Vichy government to collaborate in the raids and deportations referred, in general terms, to “stateless” (apatrides) Jews who were supposed to be arrested in the Free Zone or handed over to the Germans from the detention camps. The 17 transports conducted between 7 August and 22 October 1942 following this agreement (a total of 10,529 deportees) involved almost exclusively Germans, Austrians, and Poles (see the table in Calendrier 987–92). German and Austrian Jews who were living abroad had been denaturalized (and dispossessed) en masse by the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941 and hence counted as “stateless.” An analogous procedure was applied to Polish Jews. Moreover, in the

Netherlands and Belgium, the German occupying power sought to impose their view that, following the model of the directives of the Nuremberg racial laws and the decrees on the Reich Citizenship Law based on those directives, Jews were not citizens of the home country at all but “enemies of the Reich” and were thus not entitled to the protections guaranteed by the Hague Land Warfare Convention and their observance by the occupying power. The Germans succeeded in imposing this view in the Netherlands but not in Belgium and France. Bousquet’s pledge to permit Dutch and Belgian Jews to be deported from the Free Zone in the future amounted to the acceptance of the German position by the Vichy authorities, at least de jure. The de facto application of the German conception to the French Jews, by contrast, developed into the main bone of contention between the Sipo/SD in France and the Vichy government over the following months. 67. “Chef Gouvernement vous prie intensifier recherche en vue arrestations IsraГ©lites apatrides conformГ©ment mes instructions du 30.8.1942. Vous rapelle aucune dГ©rogation ne peut ГЄtre accordГ©e sans instruction formelle et prГ©cise Ministre Interieur.” (Head of Government requests that you intensify search with view to arrests of stateless Jews in accordance with my directives of 30.8.1942. Reminder that no exemption can be granted without explicit and precise directive Interior Minister.) Calendrier 1067. 68. November 1942 saw four transports, with 3,745 deportees; February 1943, three transports, with 2.998 deportees; March 1943, five transports, with 5,005 deportees (details from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz [Ger.], 368–69). 69. Calendrier 1014–15. 70. “Il est vraisemblable qu’une telle opГ©ration serait de nature Г soulever des difficultГ©s d’ordre matГ©riel autant que moral, ces derniГЁres due Г l’attitude de certaines hautes personnalitГ©s, suivie par une partie de l’opinion.” Calendrier 1015. 71. Henri-Haye’s report to the Vichy Ministery of Foreign Relations, quoted in Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 101. See also Griffioen and Zeller, Page 357 →Jodenvervolging, 478. The French original is reprinted in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:438–39. 72. The central committee for refugees and expellees from North Africa and Alsace-Lorraine addressed the following appeal to the prefect of the dГ©partement Hautes-PyrГ©nГ©es on 1 September 1942: “In our opinion, the honor of France, which has at all times granted the persecuted of other nations fraternal hospitality, demands that we take this stance in support of innocent children. We believe, on the other hand, that senior clergymen are extremely active in this question, by which they are profoundly moved. At stake here is the moral and spiritual honor of France.” Quoted from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:173. The London Times reported in its 9 September 1942 issue on the protests by senior Catholic clergymen, as did the Tribune de GenГЁve on 3 September and the British Economist on 12 September 1942 (details from Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:174). 73. See the compilation of the corresponding reports in Calendrier 1002–20. 74. Lettre pastorale de s. Exc. Mgr Delay, Г‰veque de Marseille (4.9.1942), Calendrier 1048–49 (1048). 75. Jean-Marie Mayeur (“Les Г©glises devant la persГ©cution de Juifs,” 262) has aptly summarized this consensus and the political compromise formation based on it: “De fait, le gouvernement de Vichy prГ©fГ©ra au total ne pas affronter directement l’épiscopat. De leur cГґtГ©, les Г©vГЄques, malgrГ© leur condamnation de la politique Г l’égard des juifs, rГ©affirmaientВ .В .В . leur loyalisme Г l’égard du marГ©chal, voire leur volontГ© de вЂcollaboration Г son Е“uvre de redressement religieux, matГ©riel et moral.’” (All things considered, the Vichy government actually preferred to avoid a direct confrontation with the episcopacy. The bishops, for their part, despite their condemnation of the policy toward the Jews, reaffirmedВ .В .В . their loyalty to the marshal, indeed their intention to “collaborate in his work of religious, material, and moral reform.”) The quotation in the final clause of this quote refers to a message of solidarity by the archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and the bishops of FrГ©jus, Nice, and Monaco to PГ©tain, quoted by Mayeur. 76. Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:172) summarizes the situation as follows: “Declarations of protest from leading elements in French society poured in to the French authorities, to PГ©tain, Laval, or the prefects, from all sides. They made abundantly clear to the members of the government in almost identical

and urgent terms the shamefulness of their actions against the Jews. They were the expression of a collective partisanship, above all from Catholic and Protestant circles, who were least suspect of systematic opposition to PГ©tain’s вЂNational Revolution.’ Their reaction in particular proved to be particularly effective because it was equally influential on the marshal and those around him and on the prefects, who realized that the proponents of the regime were beginning to abandon it psychologically.” 77. Note by RГ¶thke, “Deportation of the Jews from the Free Zone,” 9.9.1942, Recueil V 1442–44 (1442). In fact, however, between 16 and 30 September 1942, seven further transports, with a total of 6,121 deportees, would leave Drancy. See Page 358 →“Zeittafel der DeportationszГјge des Jahres 1942” in Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:191. 78. Recueil V 1442. 79. Ibid., 1442–43. 80. Ibid., 1443–44. 81. Ibid., 1444. 82. RГ¶thke recorded in a note on 12 September 1942, “One gets the impression that the French government does not even want to hand over all of the stateless Jews from the Jew camps in the unoccupied zone, perhaps because it believes that it must be careful following the interventions by the Vatican and United States government.” Note by RГ¶thke, “Plan for the deportation of the Jews from the unoccupied and occupied zones of France, 12.9.1942,” Recueil V 1464–68 (1465). 83. Note by RГ¶thke, “Arrest of rich and influential Jews and arrest of wearers of Star of David, 16. September 1942,” Recueil V 1480–83 (1480). 84. Ibid., 1482. 85. Recueil VI 1506–8. 86. Telex from Knochen, “Note for Paris: to Department IV J, SS-Oberstuf. Roethke,” Recueil VI 1518. Beneath the note “present immediately, urgent,” the telex states, “Re: Known operation. By order of SS-StandartenfГјhrer Dr. Knochen, nothing is to be undertaken in the operation pending further orders.” There is a discrepancy in the fact that Knochen’s telex was sent on 22 September and arrived in Department IV J (RГ¶thke) at 8:20 p.m. on the same day, even though the raid was supposed to have begun on that day at 4:00 a.m. Klarsfeld (Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:181) does not comment on this either, though he points out that the time available to Knochen, who was in Rouen at this time, for examining RГ¶thke’s 21 September note was in any case too brief and that the raid, which was of course not possible without Knochen’s consent, was postponed for this reason. 87. Note by RГ¶thke, “Arrest Romanian Jews, 24.9.1942,” Recueil VI 1535, and telex from RГ¶thke, “To the Security Police (SD)—Detachments Bordeaux, Poitiers, Angers, OrlГ©ans, Dijon, 24.9.1942, Arrest operation against Jews of Rumanian nationality,” Recueil VI 1537–38. 88. A communication in the form of a telegram transcript, which deals with the inclusion of the Jews from a series of third states in the deportation measures, states, “Regarding Romanian Jews, directive has arrived to the effect that Romanian government agrees in principle with inclusion in our measures.” German Embassy, Paris, LR [Legationsrat (legation counselor)] Dr. Zeitschel, 24 September 1942, Recueil VI 1533. 89. RГ¶thke wrote in his telex to the Sipo/SD command on 24 September 1942, “Bousquet is in agreement that the French police are to be instructed to arrest Jews of Rumanian citizenship who attempt to cross the border without permission and to hand them over to the Security Police—(SD) detachments for evacuation.” Recueil VI 1537–38. 90. See Klarsfeld, Vichy–Auschwitz, 1:180–81; Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews, 157–71. Page 359 →91. BdS, Dr. Kno. [Knochen], 25 September 1942, telex to RSHA IV B 4, Deportation of Jews from France, Recueil VI 1550–51 (1550).

Chapter Eight 1. Telex, “To all security police (SD) commands, Re: Arrest of Jews, 5.10.1942,” Recueil VI 1573–74.

Page 393 →

References Archival Sources The core of the archival sources referred to in this book consists of the files of the Sipo/SD bureau in Paris that, from 1 June 1942 on, bore the designation of the “Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD im Bereich des MilitГ¤rbefehlshabers in Frankreich.” In the early 1950s, these files became part of the archival holdings of the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC) in Paris. During the 1970s, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld began their collection of key documents of both German and French origin. This work culminated in Serge Klarsfeld’s two-volume book Vichy–Auschwitz: Le rГґle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France (Paris: Fayard, 1983–85). A German edition, containing reprints of both German and French documents in German, was edited by Ahlrich Meyer and appeared in 1989 and, in a second edition, in 2007. In the present book, the German sources are quoted from the 2007 German edition, while French documents and Klarsfeld’s introduction and comments are quoted from the original French volumes. In the second half of the 1990s, another offprint of the relevant German archival sources, including documents of the German embassy in Paris and the German military administration, appeared in facsimile in Klarsfeld’s twelve-volume Recueil de documents des dossiers des autoritГ©s allemandes concernant la persГ©cution de la population juive en France (1940–1944) (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, n.d.). A French source collection, Klarsfeld’s Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944, vols. 2–4 of La Shoa en France (Paris: Fayard, 2001), contains the relevant French key documents. Throughout the book, sources from the archives of the CDJC in Paris are cited in accordance with the Recueil de documents des dossiers des autoritГ©s allemandes concernant la persГ©cution de la population juive en France (1940–1944), specifying volume number and page number. French sources quoted from the continuously paginated volumes of the Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944 are listed with the original source designation and Calendrier page number. The files of the Vichy regime and its administration became accessible from the mid-1990s onward. The context was the official acknowledgment of the coresponsibilityPage 394 → of the French state for the deportation of the Jews under German occupation between 1940 and 1944, pronounced by President Jacques Chirac in 1995, and the trial, beginning in 1997, of the former secretary general of the prefecture of Bordeaux, Maurice Papon, for complicity in the deportation of Jews. Another landmark in terms of archive accessibility, especially concerning the initial phase of the German occupation and the economic persecution of the Jews, was the establishment and the work of the Commission MattГ©oli (Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France), whose final report was published by La Documentation FranГ§aise in 2000. The newly accessible files of the Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux question juives (CGQJ), which had primary responsibility for supervising the economic persecution of the Jews in the form of the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses and the spoliation of Jewish assets, have meanwhile been evaluated in two books: Laurent Joly’s Vichy dans la “solution finale”: Histoire du commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux Question juives (1941–1944) (Paris: Grasset, 2006) and Martin Jungius’ Un vol organisГ©: L’État franГ§ais et la spoliation des biens juifs 1940–1944 (Paris: Tallandier, 2012; originally published in German in 2008). A particular merit of Jungius’ book is the systematic comparative evaluation of both the French and German sources. Relevant French archival sources beyond the holdings of the CDJC have been evaluated in another seminal study by Ahrich Meyer, TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r: Die “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich 1940–1944 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), based on the records of the court trials against the two key figures in the SS and Gestapo apparatus in France, Carl Albrecht Oberg and Helmut Knochen. Michael Mayer undertook a systematic comparison of German and French anti-Jewish legislation, in Staaten als TГ¤ter: MinisterialbГјrokratie und “Judenpolitik” in NS-Deutschland und Vichy-Frankreich: Ein Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010). Mayer’s study is particularly valuable for the present one because of its nuanced contextual information on the political and administrative decision-making processes pertaining to the implementation of the results of the Wannsee Conference in France beginning in early 1942.

An indispensable collection of printed sources for the first phase of the German occupation, especially as far as the turf battle between the SS and the German military administration is concerned, is Regina Delacor’s commented source edition Attentate und Repressionen: AusgewГ¤hlte Dokumente zur zyklischen Eskalation des NS-Terrors im besetzten Frankreich 1941/42 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000). A standard collection of printed sources used in the present study is the Akten zur Deutschen AuswГ¤rtigen Politik (ADAP). Additional primary sources used in the present study are held by the German Federal Archives’ (Bundesarchiv-MilitГ¤rarchiv Freiburg [previously BA-MA, now BArch]), mainly the series RH 3 (Generalquartiermeister [Quartermaster General]), RW 6 (Allgemeines Wehrmachtsamt / MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich [General Wehrmacht Office / military commander in France, clearing and settlement reports]), RW 34 (Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission Frankreich [German Armistice Commission France]), RW 35 and RWD 19 (MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich und nachgeordnete Dienststellen [Military Commander in France and subordinate Page 395 →bureaus]), and RW 36 and RWD 20 (MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Belgien und Nordfrankreich [Military Commander in Belgium and Northern France]).

Bibliography Adams, Guy B., and Danny Lee Balfour. Unmasking Administrative Evil. Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage, 1998. Adler, Hans G. Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportation der Juden aus Deutschland. Tübingen: Paul Siebeck / J. C. B. Mohr, 1974. Adler, Jacques. “The French Churches and the Jewish Question: July 1940–March 1941.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 46 (2000): 357–77. Aglan, Alya, Michel Margairaz, and Philippe Verheyde, La Caisse des dépôts et consignations, la Seconde Guerre mondiale et le XXe siècle. Paris: Albin Michel, 2003. Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945: Aus dem Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts. Frankfurt am Main: P. Keppler Verlag, and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1950–95. Allison, Graham T., and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications.” World Politics 24 (1972): 40–79. Aly, Götz. Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. Translated by Jefferson Chase. New York: Metropolitan, 2007. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking, 1963. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2nd ed. New York: Meridian Books, 1958. 1st ed., 1951. Arendt, Hannah. “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship.” 1964. In Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn, 17–48. New York: Schocken Books, 2003. Azéma, Jean-Pierre. De Munich à la Libération, 1938–1944. Paris: Points, 1979. Azéma, Jean-Pierre. La collaboration 1940–1944. Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 1975. Azéma, Jean-Pierre, and François Bédarida, eds. Vichy et les Français. Paris: Fayard, 1992. Azéma, Jean-Pierre, and Olivier Wieviorka. Vichy, 1940–1944. Paris: Perrin, 1997. Bankier, David, ed. Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1941. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000. Bargatzky, Walter. Hotel Majestic: Ein Deutscher im besetzten Frankreich. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder

BГјcherei, 1987. Barth, Christian T. Goebbels und die Juden. Paderborn: SchГ¶ningh, 2003. Baruch, Marc Olivier. Le rГ©gime de Vichy. Paris: Г‰ditions La DГ©couverte, 1996. Baruch, Marc Olivier. Servir l’État franГ§ais: L’administration en France de 1940 Г 1944. Paris: Fayard, 1997. Bastianini, Guiseppe. Volevo Fermare Mussolini: Memorie di un diplomatico fascista. 1959. Reprint,Milan: BUR Saggi, 2005. Bates, Robert H., et al. Analytic Narratives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Page 396 →Baum, Rainer C. The Holocaust and the German Elite: Genocide and National Suicide in Germany, 1871–1945. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Baumann, Zygmunt. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Beach, Derek, and Rasmus Brun Pedersen. Process-Tracing Methods. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. BГ©darida, RenГ©e. “Églises et Chretiens.” In La France des annГ©es noires, vol. 2, De l’occupation Г la libГ©ration, ed. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, 105–28. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1993. BГ©darida, RenГ©e. “La hiГ©rarchie catholique.” In Vichy et les FranГ§ais, ed. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, 444–62. Paris: Fayard, 1992. BГ©darida, RenГ©e. Les Catholiques dans la Guerre 1939–1945. Paris: Hachette, 1998. Benz, Wolfgang, ed. Dimensionen des VГ¶lkermords: Die Zahl der jГјdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. 2nd ed. Munich: Deutscher TaschenbuchVerlag, 1986. Benz, Wolfgang, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, and Gerhard Otto, eds. Die BГјrokratie der Okkupation. Strukturen der Herrschaft und Verwaltung im besetzten Europa. Berlin: Metropol Verlag 1998. BerliГЁre, Jean-Marc. “The Wreckage of a Republican Police Model.” In The Impact of World War II on Policing in North-West Europe, ed. Cyrille Fijnaut, 21–41. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004. BerliГЁre, Jean-Marc, and Laurent Chabrun. Les policiers franГ§ais sous l’Occupation, d’aprГЁs les archives inГ©dites de l’épuration. Paris: Perrin, 2001. Berlin, Isaiah. “Political Judgement.” 1957. In Berlin, The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History, 40–53. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996 Best, Werner. “GroГџraumordnung und GroГџraumverwaltung.” Zeitschrift fГјr Politik 32 (1942): 406–12. Bierman, John. “How Italy Protected the Jews in the Occupied South of France, 1942–1943.” In The Italian Refuge: Rescue of the Jews during the Holocaust, ed. Ivo Herzer, 218–29. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989. Billig, Joseph. Le Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives. 3 vols. Paris: Г‰ditions du Centre de documentation Juive contemporaine, 1955–60.

Blatter, Joachim, and Markus Haverland. Designing Case Studies: Explanatory Approaches in Small-N Research. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Boelcke, Willi A. Die Deutsche Wirtschaft 1930 bis 1945: Interna des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums. DГјsseldorf: Droste Verlag. 1983. BГ¶hme, Hermann. Entstehung und Grundlagen des Waffenstillstandes von 1940. Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1966. Bohn, Robert, ed. Die deutsche Herrschaft in den “germanischen” LГ¤ndern 1940–1945. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997. Boog, Horst. Das Deutsche Reich in der Defensive: Strategischer Luftkrieg in Europa, Krieg im Westen und in Ostasien 1943–1944/45. Vol. 7 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001. Braham, Randolph L. The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. 2nd ed. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Page 397 →Braumoeller, Bear F., and Gary Goertz. “The Methodology of Necessary Conditions.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2000): 844–58. Browning, Christopher R. The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940–1943. New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1978. Browning, Christopher R. The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942. With contributions by JuМ€rgen MatthaМ€us. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2004. Brunner, Bernhard. Der Frankreich-Komplex: Die nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen in Frankreich und die Justiz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2007. Bruttmann, Tal. Au Bureau des affaires Juives: L’administration franГ§aise et l’application de la lГ©gislation antisГ©mite (1940–1944). Paris: Г‰ditions La DГ©couverte, 2006. Bruttmann, Tal. La Logique des bourreaux 1943–1944. Paris: Hachette, 2003. Bruttmann, Tal, Laurent Joly, and Barbara Lambauer. “Der AuftaktВ zur Verfolgung der Juden in Frankreich 1940: Ein deutsch-franzГ¶sisches Zusammenspiel.” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 60 (2012): 381–407. Buchanan, James A. “A Defense of Organized Crime?” In The Economies of Crime and Punishment, 119–32. Washington, DC: American Enterprise for Public Policy Research, 1973. Bunge, Mario. “How Does It Work? The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (2004): 182–210. Bunge, Mario. “Mechanism and Explanation.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (1997): 410–65. Bunge, Mario. “Systemism: The Alternative to Individualism and Holism.” Journal of Socio-Economics 29 (2000): 147–257. Burgwyn, H. James. Mussolini Warlord: Failed Dreams of Empire, 1940–1943. New York: Enigma Books, 2012. Burrin, Philippe. Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust. London: Arnold, 1994.

Burrin, Philippe. Living with Defeat: France under German Occupation, 1940–1944. Translated by Janet Lloyd. London: Arnold, 1996. Bussmann, Walter, ed. ADAP: ErgГ¤nzungsband zu den Serien A–E: Gesamtpersonenverzeichnis, Portraitphotos und Daten zur Dienstverwendung, AnhГ¤nge. GГ¶ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1995. Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations. Groupe de travail sur les spoliations et les restitutions des “biens juifs”: Rapport d’étape, Janvier 1999. Paris: Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, 1999. Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations. Le spoliation antisГ©mite sous l’Occupation: Consignations et restitutions. Rapport definitive. Paris: Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, 2001. Caplan, Jane. Government without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. Page 398 →Capoccia, Giovanni, and R. Daniel Kelemen. “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism.” World Politics 59 (2007): 341–69. Caron, Vicki. “The вЂJewish Question’ from Dreyfus to Vichy.’” In French History since Napoleon, ed. Martin S. Alexander, 172–202. London: Arnold, 1999. Caron, Vicki. “Prelude to Vichy: France and the Jewish Refugees in the Era of Appeasement.” Journal of Contemporary History 20 (1985): 157–76. Caron, Vicki. Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Cesarani, David. Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Murderer.” Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2006. Chabord, Marie-ThГ©rГЁse, and Jean PouГ«ssel, Inventaire des archives du Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives et du Service de restitution des biens des victimes des lois et mesures de spoliation: Sous-sГ©rie AJ 38. Paris: Centre historique des Archives nationales, 1998. Chary, Frederick B. The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972. Clifford, Rebecca. Commemorating the Holocaust: The Dilemmas of Remembrance in France and Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Cohen, Asher. PersГ©cutions et sauvetages: Juifs et FranГ§ais sous l’Occupation et sous Vichy. Paris: Cerf, 1993. Cohen, Asher. “PГ©tain, Horthy, Antonescu, and the Jews, 1942–1944: Toward a Comparative View.” Yad Vashem Studies 18 (1987): 163–98. Cohen, Richard I. The Burden of Conscience: French Jewish Leadership during the Holocaust. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Cohen, Richard I. “Jews and Christians in France during World War II: A Methodological Essay.” In JudaГЇsm and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, ed. Otto Dov Kulka and Paul L. MendesFlohr, 327–40. Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1987. Cointet, Jean-Paul. Pierre Laval. Paris: Fayard, 1993. Cointet, MichГЁle. Nouvelle histoire de Vichy. Paris: Fayard, 2011.

Coleman, James S. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Collier, David. “Understanding Process Tracing.” PS: Political Science and Politics 44 (2011): 823–30. Collotti, Enzo. Il fascismso e gli ebrei: Le leggi razziali in Italia. Rome: Laterza, 2006. Commission MattГ©oli [Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France]. Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs de France : Rapport gГ©nГ©ral. Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000. Commission MattГ©oli [Mission d’étude sur la Spoliation des Juifs de France]. Rapport final de la Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs en France. Vol. 2, Aryanisation Г©conomique et restitutions. Ed. Antoine Prost, RГ©my Skoutelsky, and Sonia Etienne in collaboration with Fabrice Cardon, FabricePage 399 → Launay, and Sylvain Lebreton. Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000. Commission MattГ©oli [Mission d’étude sur la Spoliation des Juifs de France]. Rapport final de la Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs en France. Vol. 3, Les rapports sectoriels—La spoliation financiГЁre. Ed. Claire Andrieu in collaboration with CГ©cile OmnГ©s, David Charron Murat, Christophe Dubois, FleurHГ©lГЁne Lebreton, Jean-Gabriel Mastrangelo, Karine Royer, Babacar Sarr, and Flavie Telles. Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000. Commission MattГ©oli [Mission d’étude sur la Spoliation des Juifs de France]. Rapport final de la Mission d’étude sur la spoliation des Juifs en France. Vol. 9, Les rapports des comitГ©s associГ©s—rapport du comitГ© banques. Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000. Conan, Г‰ric. Sans oublier les enfants: Les camps de Pithiviers et de Beaune-la-Rolande, 19 juillet–16 septembre 1942. Paris: Grasset, 1991. Conze, Eckart, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, and Moshe Zimmermann, eds. Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik. Berlin: Karl Blessing Verlag, 2010. Coutau-BГ©garie, HervГ©, and Claude Huan. Darlan. Paris: Fayard, 1989. Crozier, Michel. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Crozier, Michel, and Erhard Friedberg. Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Curtis, Michael. Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime. New York: Arcade, 2002. Dahl, Robert A., and Charles E. Lindblom. Politics, Economics, and Welfare: Planning and Politico-Economic Systems Resolved into Basic Social Processes. New York: Harper and Row, 1953. Dean, Martin C. Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. De Jonghe, A. “L’etablissement d’une administration civile en Belgique et dans le Nord de la France: La discussion finale au quartier gГ©nГ©rale du FГјhrer, le 12 juillet 1944.” Cahiers de l’histoire de la seconde guerre mondiale, 1970, 67–127. Delacor, Regina M. Attentate und Repressionen: AusgewГ¤hlte Dokumente zur zyklischen Eskalation des NSTerrors im besetzten Frankreich 1941/42. Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2000. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europГ¤ischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. Vol. 3, Deutsches Reich und Protektorat BГ¶hmen und MГ¤hren, September 1939–September 1941. Ed. Andrea LГ¶w. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012.

Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europГ¤ischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. Vol. 4, Polen: September 1939–Juli 1941. Ed. Klaus Peter Friedrich and Susanne Heim. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europГ¤ischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Page 400 →Deutschland 1933–1945. Vol. 5, West- und Nordeuropa: 1940–Juni 1942. Ed. Katja Happe. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012. DГ¶scher, Hans-JГјrgen. SS und AuswГ¤rtiges Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der “EndlГ¶sung.” Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1987. Dreyfus, Jean-Marc. Pillages sur ordonances: Aryanisation et restitution des Banques en France 1940–1953. Paris: Fayard, 2003. Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste. L’abГ®me 1939–1945. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1982. Dusquesne, Jacques. Les catholiques franГ§ais sous l’occupation. 1966. Reprint, Paris: Grasset, 1986. Elster, Jon. “The Case for Methodological Individualism.” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 453–82. Elster, Jon. The Cement of Society: Studies in Rationality and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Elster, Jon. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. Feldman, Gerald D., and Wolfgang Seibel, eds. Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. Fein, Helen. Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 1979. Fein, Helen. Imperial Crime and Punishment: The Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and British Judgment, 1919–1920. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977. Ferro, Marc. PГ©tain. Paris: Fayard, 1987. Fogelman, Eva. Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Fouilloux, Г‰tienne. Les chrГ©tiens franГ§ais entre crise et libГ©ration 1937–1947. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1997. Fouilloux, Г‰tienne. “Le clergГ©.” In Vichy et les FranГ§ais, ed. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, 463–77. Paris: Fayard, 1992. Fox, John P. “How Far Did Vichy France вЂSabotage’ the Imperatives of Wannsee?” In The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, ed. David Cesarani, 194–214. London: Routledge, 1994. FriedlГ¤nder, Saul. Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. Vol. 2. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006. FriedlГ¤nder, Saul. Kurt Gerstein: The Ambiguity of Good. New York: Knopf, 1969. FriedlГ¤nder, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

FriedlГ¤nder, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. 2, The Years of Extermination. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Froment, Pascale. RenГ© Bousquet. Rev. ed. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Funk, Arthur L. “Negotiating the вЂDeal with Darlan.’” Journal of Contemporary History 81 (1973): 81–127. Geddes, Barbara. Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Page 401 →George, Alexander L., and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2005. GГ©rard-Libois, Jules, and JosГ© Gotovitch, L’an 40: La Belgique occupГ©e. Brussels: CRISP, 1971. Gerlach, Christian. Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Gerlach, Christian. Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in WeiГџrussland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999. Gerlach, Christian. Krieg, ErnГ¤hrung, VГ¶lkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998. Gerlach, Christian, and GГ¶tz Aly. Das letzte Kapitel: Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002. Gerring, John, and Jason Seawright. “Techniques for Choosing Cases.” In Case Study Research: Principles and Practices, by John Gerring, 86–150. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Gerwarth, Robert. Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011. Gilbert, Martin. The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt, 2003. Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War: A Complete History. New York: Henry Holt, 1989. Gildea, Robert. Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during German Occupation. London: MacMillan, 2002. Giolitto, Pierre. Histoire de la Milice. Paris: Perrin, 2002. Gobitz, GГ©rard. Les dГ©portations de rГ©fugiГ©s de Zone Libre en 1942: RГ©cits et documents. Paris: L’Harmattan. Goertz, Gary, and Jack S. Levy. Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Goertz, Gary, and James Mahoney. A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996. Griffioen, Pim, and Ron Zeller. “Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 (2006): 437–73.

Griffioen, Pim, and Ron Zeller. Jodenvervolging in Nederland, Frankrijk en BelgiГ«, 1940–1945: Overeenkomsten, verschillen, oorzaken. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2011. Grynberg, Anne. Les campes de la honte: Les internГ©s juifs des camps franГ§ais 1939–1944. Paris: Г‰ditions La DГ©couverte, 1991. Guillon, Jean-Marie. “La philosophie politique de la RГ©volution Nationale.” In Le rГ©gime de Vichy et les FranГ§ais, ed. Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, 167–83. Paris: Fayard /В Institut d’Histoire du Temps PrГ©sent, 1992. Hafner, Georg M., and Esther Schapira. Die Akte Alois Brunner: Warum einer der Page 402 →größten Naziverbrecher noch immer auf freiem FuГџ ist. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2000. Hailer, Walter. “Organisation der MilitГ¤rverwaltung und ihr VerhГ¤ltnis zu den landeseigenen BehГ¶rden [in Belgium].” Reich, Volksordnung, Lebensraum 6 (1943): 24–50. Halls, William D. “Catholicism under Vichy: A Study in Diversity and Ambiguity.” In Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern Zone, 1940–1942, ed. Harry Roderick Kedward, 113–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Halls, William D. “Catholics, the Vichy Interlude, and After.” In France at War: Vichy and the Historians, ed. Sarah Fishman et al., 231–48. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000. Halls, William D. Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France. Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1995. Hasquenoph, Marcel. La Gestapo en France. Paris: De Vecchi, 1987. HedstrГ¶m, Peter. Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. HedstrГ¶m, Peter, and Richard Swedberg, eds. Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. HedstrГ¶m, Peter, and Petri Ylikoski. “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 36 (2010): 49–67. Herbert, Ulrich. Best: Biographische Studien Гјber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989. Bonn: Dietz, 1996. Herbert, Ulrich. “Die deutsche MilitГ¤rverwaltung in Paris und die Deportation der franzГ¶sischen Juden.” In Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1933–1945: Neue Forschungen und Kontroversen, ed. Ulrich Herbert, 170–208. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998. Herbert, Ulrich. Fremdarbeiter: Politik und Praxis des “AuslГ¤nder-Einsatzes” in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches. Berlin and Bonn: Dietz, 1986. Herzer, Ivo, ed. The Italian Refuge: Rescue of the Jews during the Holocaust. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989. Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Hildebrand, Klaus. Das Dritte Reich. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991. Hildebrand, Klaus. “Monokratie oder Polykratie: Hitlers Herrschaft und das Dritte Reich.” In Nationalsozialistische Diktatur. 1933–1945. Eine Bilanz, ed. and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, 73–96. DГјsseldorf:

Droste. ed. Hirschfeld, Gerhard. Nazi Rule and Dutch Collaboration: The Netherlands under German Occupation, 1940–1945. Oxford: Berg, 1988. Hoffmann, Stanley. “Collaborationism in France during World War II.” Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 375–95. Hollander, Ethan J. “The Final Solution in Bulgaria and Romania: A Comparative Perspective.” East European Politics and Societies 22 (2008): 203–48. Page 403 →Hubatsch, Walther, ed. Hitlers Weisungen fГјr die KriegsfГјhrung 1939–1945: Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht. 2nd ed. Koblenz: Bernard und Graefe Verlag, 1983. HГјrter, Johannes. “Die Wehrmacht vor Leningrad: Die Besatzungspolitik der 18. Armee im Herbst und Winter 1941/42.” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 49 (2001): 377–440. Husson, Edouard. Heydrich et la Solution finale. Paris: Perrin 2008. JГ¤ckel, Eberhard. Frankreich in Hitlers Europa: Die deutsche Frankreichpolitik im zweiten Weltkrieg. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1966. Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years (1940–1944). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf. Fall Gelb: Der Kampf um den deutschen Operationsplan zur Westoffensive 1940. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1957. Joly, Laurent. Vichy dans la “Solution finale”: Histoire du Commissariat gГ©nГ©ral aux questions juives (1941–1944). Paris: Grasset, 2006. Jungius, Martin. Der verwaltete Raub: Die “Arisierung” der Wirtschaft in Frankreich in den Jahren 1940 bis 1944. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2008. Translated into French as Un vol organisГ©: L’État franГ§ais et la spoliation des biens juifs 1940–1944 (Paris: Tallandier, 2012). Jungius, Martin, and Wolfgang Seibel. “The Citizen as Perpetrator: Kurt Blanke and Aryanization in France, 1940–1944.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22 (2008): 441–74. Kalyvas, Stathis. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kalyvas, Stathis. “The Ontology of вЂPolitical Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars.” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 475–94. Kaspi, AndrГ©. Les Juifs pendant l’Occupation. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1991. Kasten, Bernd. “Gute Franzosen”: Die franzГ¶sische Polizei und die deutsche Besatzungsmacht im besetzten Frankreich 1940–1944. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1993. Kersevan, Alessandra. Lager italiani: Pulizia etnica e campi di concentramento fascisti per civili jugoslavi 1941–1943. Rome: Nutrimenti, 2008. Kershaw, Ian. Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941. London: Allen Lane, 2007. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1936–1945: Nemesis. London: Allen Lane, 2000.

Kessedjian, Catherine. “Le Juif dГ©chu de la nationalitГ© FranГ§aise.” In “Le droit antisГ©mite de Vichy,” ed. Dominique Gros, 231–42. Special issue, Le Genre Humain 30–31 (1996). King, Charles. “Can There Be a Political Science of the Holocaust?” Perspectives on Politics 10 (2012): 323–41. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Interference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Page 404 →Klarsfeld, Serge. “Juillet–septembre 1942: Les divergences dans l’appareil policier nazi et la rГ©alisation de la solution finale en France.” Annales: Economies, SociГ©tГ©s, Civilisations 48 (1993): 545–55. Klarsfeld, Serge. Le Calendrier de la persГ©cution des Juifs de France 1940–1944. Vols. 2–4 of La Shoah en France. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Klarsfeld, Serge. Recueil de documents des dossiers des autoritГ©s allemandes concernant la persГ©cution de la population juive en France (1940–1944). 12 vols. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, n.d. Klarsfeld, Serge. Vichy–Auschwitz: Le rГґle de Vichy dans la solution finale de la question juive en France—1942. 2 vols. Paris: Fayard, 1983–85. Translated into German as Vichy–Auschwitz: Die Zusammenarbeit der deutschen und franzГ¶sischen BehГ¶rden bei der “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007). Knox, MacGregor. “Das faschistische Italien und die вЂEndlГ¶sung’ 1942/43.” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 55 (2007): 53–92. Knox, MacGregor. Hitler’s Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–1943. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Krausnick, Helmut. “Hitler und die Morde in Polen: Ein Beitrag zum Konflikt zwischen Heer und SS um die Verwaltung der besetzten Gebiete,” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963): 196–209. Kuran, Timur. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Kwiet, Konrad. Reichskommissariat Niederlande: Versuch und Scheitern nationalsozialistischer Neuordnung. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1968. Kwiet, Konrad. “Vorbereitung und AuflГ¶sung der deutschen MilitГ¤rverwaltung in den Niederlanden.” MilitГ¤rgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 3 (1969), 121–53. Laborie, Pierre. L’opinion franГ§aise sous Vichy. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1990. Laguerre, Bernard. “Les dГ©naturalisГ©s de Vichy 1940–1944.” VingtiГЁme SiГЁcle 20 (1988): 3–15. Lambauer, Barbara. “Opportunistischer Antisemitismus: Der deutsche Botschafter Otto Abetz und die Judenverfolgung in Frankreich (1940–1942).” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 53 (2005): 241–73. Lambauer, Barbara. Otto Abetz et les FranГ§ais ou l’envers de la Collaboration. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Lammers, Cornelis J. “The Interorganizational Control of an Occupied Country.” Administrative Science Quarterly 33 (1988): 438–57. Lammers, Cornelis J. “Macht und AutoritГ¤t des Deutschen Besetzers in den Niederlanden wГ¤hrend des

Zweiten Weltkrieges: AnsГ¤tze zu einer Soziologie der Besatzung.” Journal fГјr Sozialforschung 31 (1991): 401–15. Laub, Thomas J. After the Fall: German Policy in Occupied France, 1940–1944. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. LГ©onard, Yves. Salazarisme et fascisme. Paris: Chandeigne, 1996. Levy, Carl. “Fascism, National Socialism, and Conservatives in Europe, 1914–1945.” Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 97–126. Page 405 →LГ©vy, Claude, and Paul Tillard. Betrayal at the Vel d’Hiv. New York and Paris: Hill and Wang, 1969. Lieb, Peter. Konventioneller Krieg oder NS-Weltanschauungskrieg? KriegfГјhrung und PartisanenbekГ¤mpfung in Frankreich 1943/44. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007. Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: Biographie. Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2008. Mann, Michael. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Manville, Sylvain. “La Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations et l’amende du milliard.” In Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, Le spoliation antisГ©mite sous l’Occupation: Consignations et restitutions; Rapport definitive, 127–60. Paris: Caisse des dГ©pГґts et consignations, 2001. Margairaz, Michel. L’Etat, les finances et l’économie: Histoire d’une conversion, 1932–1952. 2 vols. Paris: ComitГ© pour l’histoire Г©conomique et financiГЁre de la France, 1991. Marrus, Michael R. “French Churches and the Persecution of Jews in France, 1940–1944.” In Bystanders to the Holocaust, ed. Michael R. Marrus, 3:1284–1305. The Nazi Holocaust: Historical Articles on the Destruction of European Jews 8. Westport and London: Meckler, 1990. Marrus, Michael R., and Robert O. Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. New York: Schocken Books, 1983. 1st ed., New York: Basic Books, 1981. Mason, Timothy. “Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of NationalSocialism.” In Der FГјhrerstaat: Mythos und RealitГ¤t, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker, 3–20. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981. Mayer, Arno J. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final “Solution in History.” New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Mayer, Michael. Staaten als TГ¤ter: MinisterialbГјrokratie und “Judenpolitik” in NS-Deutschland und Vichy-Frankreich. Ein Vergleich. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010. Mayeur, Jean-Marie. “Les Eglises devant la persГ©cution de Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.” Commentaire RГ©vue trimestrielle 14 (1981): 254–63. Mazower, Mark. Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Allen Lane, 2008. McCarty, Nolan, and Adam Meirowitz. Political Game Theory: An Introduction. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Messageries Г‰vangГ©liques, ed. Les Г‰glises protestantes pendant la guerre et l’occupation: Actes de

l’AssemblГ©e gГ©nГ©rale du Protestantisme franГ§ais. NГ®mes, 22 au 26 octobre 1945. Paris: Messageries Г‰vangГ©liques, 1946. Meyer, Ahlrich. Der Blick des Besatzers: Propagandaphotographie der Wehrmacht aus Marseille 1942–1944 / Le regard de l’occupant: Marseille vue par des correspondants de guerre allemands, 1942–1944. Bilingual ed. Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1999. Meyer, Ahlrich. Die deutsche Besatzung in Frankreich 1940–1944: WiderstandsbekГ¤mpfung und Judenverfolgung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000. Page 406 →Meyer, Ahlrich. TГ¤ter im VerhГ¶r: Die “EndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage” in Frankreich 1940–1944. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. Michel, Alain. Vichy et la Shoah: EnquГЄte sur le paradoxe franГ§ais. Paris: CLD, 2012. Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Ministero Degli Affari Esteri, Commissione per la pubblicazione dei documenti diplomatici. I documenti diplomatici italiani. Nona serie: 1939–1943, Volume X (7 febbraio 1943 – 8 settembre 1943). Roma: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello stato, libreria dello stato 1990. Mommsen, Hans. Beamtentum im Dritten Reich: Mit ausgewГ¤hlten Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Beamtenpolitik. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. 1966. Mommsen, Hans. Der Nationalsozialismus: Kumulative Radikalisierung und SelbstzerstГ¶rung des Regimes. In Meyers EnzyklopГ¤disches Lexikon, 9th ed., 16:785–90. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1976. Mommsen, Hans. “Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die вЂEndlГ¶sung der Judenfrage’ im вЂDritten Reich.’” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 381–420. Mommsen, Hans. “Hannah Arendt and the Eichmann Trial.” In From Weimar to Auschwitz, 254–78. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Moos, Carlo. Ausgrenzung, Internierung, Deportation: Antisemitismus und Gewalt im spГ¤ten italienischen Faschismus (1938–1945). Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2004. MГјller, Rolf-Dieter. “Die Mobilisierung der deutschen Wirtschaft fГјr Hitlers KriegfГјhrung.” In Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen, vol. 5.1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 349–689. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988. Naasner, Walter. Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1942–1945: Die Wirtschaftsorganisation der SS, das Amt des GeneralbevollmГ¤chtigten fГјr den Arbeitseinsatz und das Reichsministerium fГјr Bewaffnung und Munition—Reichsministerium fГјr RГјstung und Kriegsproduktion im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1994. Nash, John F. “The Bargaining Problem.” Econometrica 18 (1950): 155–62. Nestler, Ludwig, ed. Die faschistische Okkupationspolitik in Frankreich (1940–1944). Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1990. Oliner, Samuel P., and Pearl M. Oliner. The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York: Free Press, 1988. Ousby, Ian. Occupation: The Ordeal of France, 1940–1944. London: John Murray, 1997.

Parsons, Craig. How to Map Arguments in Political Science. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Paldiel, Mordecai. Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation. Jersey City: Ktav, 2006. Paul, Gerhard. “вЂVon Judenangelegenheiten hatte er bis dahin keine Ahnung’: Herbert Hagen, der Judenreferent des SD aus NeumГјnster.” Informationen zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen Zeitgeschichte 33–34 (September 1998), 63–75. Paxton, Robert O. “La Collaboration d’État.” In La France des annГ©es noires, ed. Page 407 →Jean-Pierre AzГ©ma and FranГ§ois BГ©darida, vol. 1, De la dГ©faite Г Vichy, 333–61. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 1993. Paxton, Robert O. Parades and Politics at Vichy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1944–47. New York: Knopf, 1972. Peschanski, Denis, ed. La France des Camps: L’internement, 1938–1946. Paris: Gallimard, 2002. PГ©tain, Philippe. Discours aux FranГ§ais. Ed. Jean-Claude Barbas. Paris: Albin Michel, 1989. Pietromarchi, Luca. “La difesa degli ebrei nel 43: Frammenti delle Memorie dell’ambasciatore Luca Pietromarchi.” Nuova antologia 122 (1987): 245–47. Pohl, Dieter. Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und DurchfГјhrung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996. Poliakov, LГ©on, and Jacques Sabille. Jews under Italian Occupation. Paris: Edition du Centre, 1955. Poundstone, William. Prisoner’s Dilemma. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Poznanski, RenГ©e. Les Juifs en France pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Paris: Hachette, 1994. Putnam, Robert. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42 (1988): 427–60. Rajfus, Maurice. La police de Vichy: Les forces de l’ordre franГ§aises au service de la Gestapo 1940–1944. Paris: Le Cherche Midi, 1995. Rapoport, Anatol, and Albert M. Chammah. “The Game of Chicken.” American Behavioral Scientist 10 (1966): 10–28. Ray, Roland. AnnГ¤herung an Frankreich im Dienste Hitlers? Otto Abetz und die deutsche Frankreichpolitik 1930–1942. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000. Rebentisch, Dieter. FГјhrerstaat und Verwaltung im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Verfassungsentwicklung und Verwaltungspolitik 1939–1945. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 1989. Reeder, Eggert. “Die MilitГ¤rverwaltung in Belgien und Nordfrankreich—GrundsГ¤tze und politische Zielsetzungen.” Reich, Volksordnung, Lebensraum 6 (1943): 7–23. Reichardt, Sven, and Wolfgang Seibel, eds. Der PrekГ¤re Staat: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2011. Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1953.

RГ©my, Dominique. Les lois de Vichy: Actes dits “lois” de l’autoritГ© de fait se prГ©tendant “gouvernement de l’Etat franГ§ais.” Paris: Г‰ditions Romillat, 1992. RГ©publique FranГ§aise. La pГ©rsecution des juifs de France 1940–1944 et le rГ©tablissement de la lГ©galitГ© rГ©publicaine: Recueil des textes officiels 1940–1999. Paris: La Documentation FranГ§aise, 2000. Reuband, Karl-Heinz. “вЂJГјd Süß’ und вЂDer Ewige Jude’ als Prototypen antisemitischerPage 408 → Filmpropraganda im Dritten Reich: Entstehungsbedingungen, Zuschauerstrukturen und Wirkungspotential.” In Propaganda, (Selbst-)Zensur, Sensation: Grenzen von Presse- und Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Deutschland und Tschechien seit 1871, ed. Michael AndД•l, Detlef Brandes, Alfons Labisch, JiЕ™i PeЕЎek, and Thomas Ruzicka, 89–148. Essen: Klartext, 2005. Rich, Norman. The Establishment of the New Order. Vol. 2 of Hitler’s War Aims. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. Roberts, Clayton. The Logic of Historical Explanation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Rodogno, Davide. Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Rodogno, Davide. “Italiani brava gente? Fascist Italy’s Policy toward the Jews in the Balkans, April 1941–July 1943.” European History Quarterly 35 (2005): 213–40. RГ¶hr, Werner. “System oder organisiertes Chaos? Fragen einer Typologie der deutschen Okkupationsregime im Zweiten Weltkrieg.” In Die deutsche Herrschaft in den вЂgermanischen’ LГ¤ndern 1940–1945, ed. R. Bohn, 11–46. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997. Roseman, Mark. Die Wannsee-Konferenz: Wie die NS-BГјrokratie dem Holocaust organisierte. Munich: PropylГ¤en, 2002. Rousso, Henry. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Rummel, Rudolph J. Death by Government. New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 1994. Saerens, Lieven. De Jodenjagers van de Vlaamse SS: Gewone Vlamingen? Antwerp: Lannoo, 2007. Safrian, Hans. “Adolf Eichmann.” In Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf. 30 LebenslГ¤ufe, ed. Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring, 134–46. Paderborn: SchГ¶ningh, 2000. Sarfatti, Michele. Gli ebrei nell’ltalia fascista: Vicende, identitГ¤, persecuzione. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Sarfatti, Michele. “Fascist Italy and German Jews in South-Eastern France in July 1943,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3 (1998): 318–28. Scharpf, Fritz W. Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Policy Research (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997). Schelling, Thomas. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960. Schlemmer, Thomas, and Hans Woller. “Der italienische Faschismus und die Juden 1922 bis 1945.” Vierteljahrshefte fГјr Zeitgeschichte 53 (2005): 164–201. Schor, Ralph. L’antisГ©mitisme en France pendant les annГ©es trente: PrГ©lude Г Vichy. Paris:

Г‰ditions Complexe, 1992. Schor, Ralph. “Une passion sans fin: Entre Dreyfus et Vichy. Aspects de l’antisГ©mitisme franГ§ais,” Revue d’histoire de la Shoah 173 (September–December 2001). Page 409 →Seibel, Wolfgang. “A Market for Mass Crime? Inter-Institutional Competition and the Initiation of the Holocaust in France, 1940–1942.” International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 5 (2002): 219–57. Seibel, Wolfgang. “The Strength of Perpetrators: The Holocaust in Western Europe, 1940–1944.” Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration 15 (2002): 211–240. Seibel, Wolfgang, and JГ¶rg Raab. “Verfolgungsnetzwerke: Arbeitsteilung und Machtdifferenzierung in den Verfolgungsapparaten des Holocaust.” KГ¶lner Zeitschrift fГјr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 55 (2003): 197–230. Semelin, Jacques. PersГ©cutions et entraides dans la France occupГ©e: Comment 75% des Juifs en France ont Г©chappГ© Г la mort. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 2013. Shela, Menachem. “The Italian Rescue of Yugoslav Jews, 1941–1943.” In The Italian Refuge: Rescue of the Jews during the Holocaust, ed. Ivo Herzer, 205–17. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989. Slama, Alain-GГ©rard. “Un quotidien rГ©publicain sous Vichy: Le Temps (juin 1940–novembre 1942).” RГ©vue franГ§aise de science politique 22 (1972): 719–49. Smelser, Ronald, and Enrico Syring, eds. Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf. 30 LebenslГ¤ufe. Paderborn: SchГ¶ningh, 2000. Snoek, Johan M. The Grey Book: A Collection of Protests against Anti-Semitism and the Persecution of Jews Issued by Non-Roman Catholic Churches and Church Leaders during Hitler’s Rule. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1969. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Speidel, Hans. Aus unserer Zeit: Erinnerungen. Berlin: PropylГ¤en, 1977. Steinberg, Jonathan. All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941–1943. London: Routledge, 1990. Steinberg, Maxime. La persГ©cution des Juifs en Belgique (1940–1945). Brussels: Г‰ditions Complexe, 2004. Steinberg, Maxime. L’étoile et le fusil. 3 vols. Brussels: Vie ouvriГЁre, 1983–86. Steur, Claudia. Theodor Dannecker: Ein FunktionГ¤r der “EndlГ¶sung.” Essen: Klartext, 1997. Stevelberg, RГ©mi-Numa. La Gendarmerie dans les Alpes-Maritimes de 1942 Г 1945. Nice: Serre Г‰diteur, 2004. Streit, Christian, “AngehГ¶rige des militГ¤rischen Widerstandes und der Genozid an den Juden im SГјdabschnitt der Ostfront.” In NS-Verbrechen und der militГ¤rische Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Gerd R. UeberschГ¤r, 90–103. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000. Stuckart, Wilhelm. “Zentralgewalt, Dezentralisation und Verwaltungseinheit,” in Festgabe fГјr Heinrich Himmler, 1–32 (Darmstadt: L. C. Wittich 1941).

Toynbee, Arnold, and Veronica M. Toynbee. Hitler’s Europe. London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1954. Umbreit, Hans. “Auf dem Weg zur Kontinentalherrschaft.” In Organisation und Mobilisierung des deutschen Machtbereichs. Erster Halbband: Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1939-1941, vol. 5.1 of Das Deutsche Reich Page 410 →und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 1–345. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1988. Umbreit, Hans. “Die deutsche Herrschaft in den besetzten Gebieten 1942–1945.” In Organisation und Mobilisierung des deutschen Machtbereichs. Zweiter Halbband: Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1942-1944/45, vol. 5.2 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 3–272. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. Umbreit, Hans. Der MilitГ¤rbefehlshaber in Frankreich 1940–1944. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1968. Valentino, Benjamin. “Final Solutions, Further Puzzles.” Security Studies 14 (2004): 204–18. Valentino, Benjamin. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Verheyde, Philippe. Les mauvais comptes de Vichy: L’aryanisation des entreprises juives. Paris: Perrin, 1999. Volkmann, Hans-Erich. “Die NS-Wirtschaft in Vorbereitung des Krieges.” In Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik, vol. 1 of Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. MilitГ¤rgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 211–435. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1979. Wagner, Wilfried. Belgien in der deutschen Politik wГ¤hrend des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1974. Walk, Joseph, ed. Das Sonderrecht fГјr die Juden im NS-Staat: Eine Sammlung der gesetzlichen MaГџnahmen und Richtlinien—Inhalt und Bedeutung. Heidelberg und Karlsruhe: MГјller Juristischer Verlag, 1996. 1st ed., 1981. Waller, James. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Waltz, Kenneth N. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979. Weber, Wolfram. Die innere Sicherheit im besetzten Belgien und Nordfrankreich 1940–1944: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Besatzungsverwaltungen. DГјsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1978. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Vol. 4, 1914–1949. 3rd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008. Weisberg, Richard H. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Wieviorka, Olivier. “The Strange Paradox: Vichy after Vichy.” In Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe: Legacies and Lessons from the Twentieth Century, ed. Jerzy W. Borejza and Klaus Ziemer, in cooperation with Magdalena HuЕ‚as, 384–395. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006. Wieviorka, Olivier. La mГ©moire dГ©sunie: Le souvenir politique des annГ©es sombres, de la LibГ©ration Г nos jours. Paris: Г‰ditions du Seuil, 2010. Wildt, Michael. An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office. Translated by Tom Lampert. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.

Page 411 →Wilson, James Q. The Moral Sense. New York: The Free Press, 1993. Wistrich, Robert. Who’s Who in Nazi Germany. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Zuccotti, Susan. The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Zuccotti, Susan. The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Page 412 → Page 413 →

Index Abetz, Otto, 32, 42–43, 62, 70, 88, 91, 93, 130, 161, 166, 192, 323n15, 324n20, 329n22, 335n14, 337n37 Ahnert, Horst, 130, 154, 355n59, 355n64 d’Ajeta, Blasco, 363 Alfieri, Dino (Edoardo), 199, 201, 366nn52–53, 367n58, 369n83 Alibert, Raphael, 183 Ambrosio, Vittorio, 201, 205–6, 368n69 Angeli, Alexandre, 164–65, 305, 354n48, 392n27 Armilhon, Jean, 231–32, 237, 378n9 Asche, Kurt, 104 Achenbach, Ernst, 42 Auleb, Helge, 39 Avarna di Gualtieri, Carlo, 196, 201, 364n35, 367n61, 370n91 Badoglio, Pietro, 181, 274, 374n123, 375n127 Barbie, Klaus, 372n102, 372n111 Barthélemy, Joseph, 232–33 Bastianini, Giuseppe, 201, 206–7, 208, 234, 252, 368n78, 369nn79–80, 369nn82–83, 370n84, 379n25 Baudouin, Paul, 43 Baur, André, 247, 383n72 Benoist-Méchin, Jacques, 92 Bérard, Léon, 155 de Berranger, Olivier, 351n24 Best, Werner, 30, 41, 72, 88, 321nn14–15, 329n20, 336n15, 336n19 Beumelburg, Walter, 331n40 Bichelonne, Jean, 54 Bismarck, Otto, von, 363 Blanke, Kurt, 41, 330n33, 332n58 Bockelberg, Alfred von, 39

Boegner, Marc, 156–57 Boetticher, Hans, 80 Borgoncini Duca, Francesco, 370n84 Bousquet, RenГ©, 11–12, 16, 24, 35, 50, 53–54, 59, 60, 64, 81–82, 89–90, 95–97, 99, 101, 105–11, 114–29, 132–35, 137–45, 149–50, 153, 157–59, 164, 166, 168, 170–72, 175–78, 181, 185, 188, 191–92, 194–97, 200–201, 210, 213–14, 219–20, 222, 225–233, 235–46, 248–55, 258, 275–79, 284–85, 288, 292–97, 303–4, 307, 309, 337nn36–38, 339n58, 339n74, 340n79, 340n81, 341nn92–93, 342n95, 342n109, 343n114, 343n116, 344n134, 344n142, 346n164, 347n186, 347nn188–90, 347n192, 348n199, 355n52, 355n65, 356n66, 358n89, 364n35, 371n99, 373n120, 377n20, 377n23, 377n5, 379n30, 380n40, 380n45, 381n55, 382nn59–60, 385nn96–97, 385n102, 388nn6–8, 389n9, 391n18, 392n24, 398n27 Brauchitsch, Walther von, 39, 75–76, 332n63 Bridoux, Eugene, 370nn98–99 de Brinon, Fernand, 43, 86, 184, 256–59, 261–62, 266–69, 276, 308, 335n5, 360n16, 385n98, 386n112, 386nn114–16, 389nn11–13, 389n15, 391n22 Brunner, Alois, 216, 228, 237, 245–47, 256, 266–67, 270, 274, 280, 382n63 Bourrague, Celestin Jean, 209–10, 370n91 BГјrckel, Josef, 38, 133 BussiГЁre, AmГ©dГ©e, 53, 247–48, 250 Page 414 →Cado, Henri, 164–66 Calisse, Alberto, 190–91, 212 Chaillet, Pierre, 164–65, 171 Chappoulie, Henri, 259–61, 267, 385n104 Ciano, Gian Galeazzo, 190, 201, 205, 363, 369n79 Chirac, Jaques, 394 Dannecker, Theodor: 49, 52, 65–66, 82–89, 97, 102–15, 118–35, 150, 153, 168, 171, 175, 185, 230–31, 244, 302, 307, 310, 330nn35–36, 332n56, 335n9, 335n12, 335n14, 336nn15–16, 336nn18–20, 336n22, 339n65, 339n67, 339n70, 340n81, 341n89, 342nn95–96, 342n108, 343n115, 344n142, 346n164 Darlan, FranГ§ois, 43, 69, 70, 90–94, 156, 331n46, 337n27, 337n29, 337nn19–20, 391n12 Darnand, Joseph, 98–100, 278–79, 338n53 Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis, 82, 88, 97–98, 116, 124–25, 127–28, 134–35, 229–30, 232–33, 236–39, 242, 247, 249, 250–51, 253, 257, 268–69, 277, 303, 307, 346n167, 347n179, 347n182, 373n119, 378nn9–10, 379n20, 380n35, 40, 385n98 DГ©at, Marcel, 100, 278, 317 Delay, Jean, 174

Di Castiglione, Lazarro, 196 Donati, Angelo, 212, 213, 274, 371n109 Doriot, Jacques, 100 Drumont, Édouard, 359n6 Duverger, Maurice, 45, 325n13 Eichmann, Adolf, xv, xvi, 3–4, 11–13, 24, 49, 83–86, 88–89, 102–6, 108, 111–15, 117, 119, 121, 127–28, 130–32, 135, 149–54, 168, 170–72, 175–77, 179, 181, 185, 187, 194, 198, 213, 220–24, 229–31, 237, 258, 285, 287, 290, 292, 294–95, 297, 301–3, 315n37, 315n40, 335n1, 339n59, 342nn109–110, 343n113, 346n146, 355n62, 365n40, 372n110, 376n9, 378n12, 395, 398, 406, 408 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 181, 216, 274 Ermert, Wilhelm Gustav, 41 Falkenhausen, Alexander von, 30 Flandin, Pierre-Étienne, 43 François, Jean, 243 Gabolde, Maurice, 184, 232, 236, 238, 242, 245, 247, 251, 264, 268–69, 380n45 Galien, Pierre, 135, 346n167, 347n182, 361n15 de Gaulle, Charles, 7, 183, 277–78, 377n19 Gautherot, Henri, 66–67 Geissler, Georg, 164, 254, 385n96 Gerlier, Pierre-Marie, 16, 155–56, 158, 164–67, 171, 174, 286, 301, 303, 305, 308, 351n23, 354n50, 391n12, 392n27 Giraud, Henri, 248, 377n19 Goebbels, Joseph, 87, 317n60, 395 Giraud, Henri, 226, 377n19 Göring, Hermann, 47, 75, 93, 327, 332, 334 di Gualtieri, Carlo Avarna, 196, 200–201, 210–11, 364n25, 364n35, 370n91, 370n98, 371n99 Guariglia, Raffaele, 215, 375n127 Guérard, Jacques, 247, 383n75 Günther, Rolf, 154 Hagen, Herbert, 83–85, 95, 102, 107–8, 115–16, 119–21, 124, 136, 142, 149, 158–59, 167, 170–71, 184, 188, 203, 210, 222–23, 230, 232–33, 237, 240–42, 249–53, 256–59, 267, 302, 308, 328n1, 335n4, 337n38, 343n113, 343n115, 343n, 120, 344n134, 346n167, 348n196, 355n65, 360n16, 367n67, 370n93, 376nn7–8, 378n6, 381n54, 382n59, 383n68, 384n85, 386n112, 386nn115–16, 389nn11–13,

389n15, 389n406 Hailer, Walter, 321n15, 322n22, 402 Heinrichsohn, Ernst, 128, 129 Helbronner, Jaques, 246, 247, 383n71 Henri-Haye, Gaston, 173, 356n71, 391n19 Henriot, Philippe, 278 Herriot, Г‰douard, 164 Heydrich, Reinhard, 41, 47, 54, 59–60, 65, 73–75, 77, 79–80, 83–84, 89–90, 95, 101–3, 105, 107, 109, 111, 120, 144, 150, 177, 225, 227, 248, 284, 293, 302–3, 312n5, 330n34, 332n70, 333n79, 336n23, 340n74, 401, 403 Hilaire, Georges, 95 Himmler, Heinrich, xiii, 24, 30, 31, 59, 75, 102, 113, 119–20, 150, 152, 176, 179, 181, 185, 190, 194, 198, 200, 225–26, 231, 232, 235, 237, 240, 244, 251, 272, 290, 295, 296, 301–3, 312n5, 321n15, 335n14, Page 415 →342n108, 343n110, 348n3, 359n3, 362n18, 376n7, 385n100, 405, 409 Hitler, Adolf, 6–7, 29, 30, 34, 36, 38, 45–46, 67–72, 75–80, 84, 89, 91–93, 120, 159, 181, 199, 202, 215, 234–36, 245, 248, 272–73, 278, 292, 295, 297, 302, 304, 308–9, 312n5, 312n7, 313n9, 314n24, 315n32, 316n42, 317n69, 319n1, 320nn6–7, 321n9, 323n1, 326n18, 333n76, 334n84, 334n87, 336nn23–25, 337n28, 352n24, 353n33, 362n19, 367nn64–65, 374n124, 376n7 Hollert, Heinz, 371n43 Horthy, MiklГіs, 318n81 Hull, Cordell, 173, 391n19 Ingrand, Jean-Pierre, 276, 331n40, 389n10 Jardel, Jean, 259, 260, 385n104 Jeanneney, Jules, 164 Kaplan, Jacob, 156 Kaltenbrunner, Ernst, 194, 214, 256, 266–67, 270, 372n114, 382n56, 385n100 Keitel, Wilhelm, 42, 68, 72, 75, 77–80, 313n10, 323n17, 333n76, 334n80 Knochen, Herbert, 3, 48–50, 54, 56, 59–60, 73–76, 79, 81–85, 88, 95, 98, 102, 104, 107–8, 110–11, 113–22, 124, 127, 129, 135–36, 149–53, 164, 170–72, 175–80, 185, 187–90, 192–95, 197–98, 204, 209–12, 214, 220–25, 228, 230–33, 235, 238–42, 244, 246, 248–59, 261, 267–69, 272–76, 280, 284, 288, 292–93, 295, 301–4, 307–8, 328n1, 332n63, 334n92, 335n6, 337n38, 342n96, 343nn115–16, 346n164, 348n3, 354n36, 355n62, 358n86, 359n91, 361n7, 363n24, 364n36, 365n43, 370n92, 370n97, 371n99, 372n114, 373n117, 376n13, 378n8, 381n53, 382n56, 383n68, 384n91, 385n100, 386n116, 388n8, 389n9, 391n18, 392n24, 394 Kohl, Otto, 103–5, 108

Kossmann, Karl-Richard, 39, 153 Krause, Ernst von, 39 Krug von Nidda, Roland, 42, 105, 225, 235, 249, 277–78, 380n32 Laval, Pierre Etienne, 3–4, 11–12, 14, 24, 43–44, 46, 50, 60, 90, 94–100, 107, 110–11, 115–18, 120–28, 130, 132, 134–35, 137–43, 145, 149–52, 154, 158, 161, 164–73, 175, 177–78, 182, 184, 188–90, 196, 200, 220, 222–23, 225, 230–39, 241–42, 244–45, 247–59, 264, 267, 272–73, 275–79, 287–88, 290, 292–95, 297, 301, 303–5, 307, 309, 321n21, 326n20, 337n31, 337n33, 337n35, 338n51, 339n74, 342n95, 344n141, 347n179, 357n76, 361n15, 374n124, 376n2, 377n3, 377n5, 378n6, 379n28, 379n30, 380n35, 380n45, 385nn96–98, 386n114, 388n5, 389nn11–15, 391n19 Leahy, William Daniel, 94 Leguay, Jean, 107–13, 118, 122, 125–26, 128–29, 134, 142, 144, 153–54, 168, 175–76, 178, 184–85, 188, 196–97, 222, 236, 240, 249, 250–52, 307, 309, 341n89, 342n95, 346n167, 349n13, 364n35, 376nn7–8, 377n5, 378n7, 380n45, 384n82 Linstow, Hans Otfried von, 39 Lischka, Kurt, 49, 66, 85, 104, 115, 120, 170, 195–96, 202, 243–44, 246–48, 250, 252, 330n36, 365n40 Lospinoso, Guido, 209–10, 212–14, 219, 241, 292, 371n109, 372n116, 373n117, 373n119, 382n56 Luther, Martin (German Foreign Office official), 65, 130, 330n34, 346n164 Mackensen, Hans Georg von, 200–208, 215, 366n55, 367n69, 368n72, 368n74, 369n80, 370n87, 374nn123–24 Maglione, Luigi, 158, 354n37 Malfatti, Francesco, 210 Manstein, Erich von, 120 Marazzani, Mario, 203 Medicus, Franz, 41 MГ©nГ©trel, Bernard: 379n28, 383n68 Michel, Elmar, 39, 41, 51 Montgomery, Bernard, 366n53 Mornet, Andre, 386n115 Moussaron, Jean-Joseph, 351n24 MГјller, Heinrich, 113, 119, 131, 177, 188–90, 198, 209–10, 212–14, 221–22, 240 Mussolini, Benito, 181, 199–209, 213–15, 224, 234, 245, 248, 264, 275, 290, 292, 297, 363n23, 366n53, 367n58, 367nn64–65, 367n69, 368n74, 368n78, 369n80, 369n83, 370n84, 370n87, 374nn123–24 Page 416 →Nosek, Roland, 370n92

Novak, Franz, 112, 346n164 Oberg, Carl Albrecht, 7, 24, 49–50, 56, 59–60, 80–84, 89–90, 95–96, 98–99, 101–3, 107–11, 114–20, 124, 129, 135–45, 149–53, 166, 168–72, 175–78, 181, 185, 191–92, 194–95, 197, 203–4, 210, 219–23, 225–33, 235–37, 241–43, 245–46, 248, 250–52, 269, 272–73, 275–76, 279, 287–88, 292–93, 295–97, 301–2, 307–9, 328n1, 334n92, 335n5, 337nn37–38, 339n74, 341nn92–93, 342n109, 343n115, 347n186, 347n189, 347n192, 348n196, 348n199, 359n3, 361n18, 370n93, 371n99, 377nn20–22, 379n31 380n37, 382n56, 382n62, 384n89, 388n5, 389n13, 394 Papon, Maurice, 297, 394 Permilleux, Charles, 98, 244 Pétain, Henri Philippe, 3, 7, 18, 24, 42–46, 67, 69–70, 93–94, 122–23, 127, 150–52, 155–59, 164, 166–67, 169, 173–75, 181–83, 196, 221, 228, 233, 235–36, 245–46, 254–62, 264, 266–68, 270, 272–73, 277–79, 287, 293–96, 298, 300, 304, 308–310, 318n80, 324n9, 326n16, 326n20, 331n46, 334n83, 355n54, 357nn75–76, 379n28, 379n31, 383n68, 385n98, 386nn115–16, 389n15, 391n12, 391n22 Pietromarchi, Luca, 369n79 Platon, Charles, 200–201, 209, 364n35 Pucheu, Pierre, 67, 70, 96, 331n40 Rademacher, Franz, 102, 112, 339n59, 342n102 Rauter, Hanns Albin, 35 Reeder, Eggert, 321 Renthe-Finck, Cecil von, 42 Reynaud, Paul, 44 Roatta, Mario, 313n10 Rombaldi, 214, 373n119 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 42, 62, 93, 194, 198–209, 234, 252, 278, 297, 308, 323n17, 366nn52–54, 368n72, 368n74, 369n80, 374n124, 390n22 Ribière, Marcel, 189–91, 211, 361n15, 371n100 Rochat, Charles, 95 Rommel, Erwin, 120 Röthke, Heinz, 49, 107, 128–32, 134, 150, 153–54, 168, 170–71, 175–81, 184–85, 190, 192–94, 197–98, 202–3, 210, 212, 214, 223–25, 228, 230–33, 236–44, 247–49, 251, 253–54, 256–58, 268–69, 272, 274, 276, 302, 307, 310, 340n81, 346nn163–65; and, 167, 355nn59–60, 355n62, 355n64, 357n77, 358nn82–83, 358nn86–87, 358n89, 361n15, 363n24, 364n25, 364n36, 365n40, 365n43, 370n94, 371n102, 371n107, 372n111, 373n118, 376n9, 376n13, 377n5, 378n7, 378n10, 380n38, 380n40, 380n45, 384n95, 385n96, 385n98, 386n115, 388n3 Roussel, Jean-Marie, 386n115

Rundstedt, Gerd von, 272–73, 279, 298, 387n123 SaliГЁge, Jules-Geraud, 1–2, 16, 157–58, 160, 162, 164–65, 167, 174, 285–86, 292, 294, 301, 310, 312n1, 351n24, 353n34 Sauckel, Fritz, 234–35, 297, 389n12 Sauts, Thomas, 168, 170, 197, 377n5 Schleier, Rudolph, 42, 105, 187, 192, 225, 234–35, 249, 297, 324n20, 337n37, 339n74, 361n15, 374n124, 379n24, 379n28, 379n29, 379nn30–31, 380n32, 384n80, 387n122, 487n123, 390n21, 391n21 Schmid, Jonathan, 39 Schmidt, Fritz, 32, 35, 115, 124, 127, 366n48, 385n98,100 Schwartz, IsaГЇe, 156, 247, 383n71 Schweblin, Jacques, 130, 371n109 Schweinichen, Bolko von, 115 Senise, Carmine, 207, 209 SeyГџ-Inquart, Arthur, 30, 35, 296 Sommer, Hans, 75, 332n70 Speer, Albert, 54 Speidel, Hans, 39, 69, 323n5 Streccius, Alfred, 39 StГјlpnagel, Carl-Heinrich von, 78–79, 81, 90, 334n88 StГјlpnagel, Otto von, 39, 55, 59, 67–73, 75–80, 90, 101, 302, 331n44, 332n63, 70, 333n76, 334n80 Suhard, Emmanuel, 151, 153, 156, 167, 259 Thadden, Eberhard von, 372n112 ThГ©as, Pierre-Marie, 164, 286, 351n24 Page 417 →Thomas, Max, 47, 49, 74, 332n66, 332n70 Tuck, Somerville Pinkney, 161, 337n32, 391n19 Tulard, FranГ§ois, 129, 346n167, 330n26 Tyszelman, Samuel, 66–67 Valeri, Valerio, 155, 158, 354n37 Vallat, Xavier, 52, 88, 155, 307, 327n19, 336n15, 351n23 de Vaugelas, Jean, 98

Vercellino, Mario, 196 Vidau, Luigi, 369n83 Vittorio Emanuele III, 374n124 Wagner, Eduard, 69–70, 79, 332n68 Wagner, Robert, 38, 133 Weizsäcker, Ernst von, 202, 367n63 Wisliceny, Dieter, 335n12 Zeitschel, Carl-Theodor (Carltheo), 42, 66, 82, 86–88, 105, 335n14, 358n88 Zöpf, Wilhelm, 104