collaboration

collaboration (France) The act of co-operating with the German authorities in France during World War II. It was the public policy of the Vichy government, whose leader Pétain announced his readiness to ‘enter into the way of collaboration’ in October 1940. In the French territory under German occupation considerable numbers of French bureaucrats, police officers, and other public officials also collaborated, although their number is uncertain. In recent years, the compliance of many ordinary French people with the occupying forces – partly out of conviction, but mostly to avoid repression – has been established by historians. To make a clean break after the Liberation in 1944, it was rumoured that over 100,000 collaborators were executed, though the real figure was less than 10,000. Many public officials, especially lawyers and bureaucrats needed for the country's reconstruction after the war, were kept in office. Few of the collaborators in business and commerce were punished, and some Vichy officials were even elected to the Chamber of Deputies after 1945.