Riding trains, hitching hikes on trucks across Germany, slipping through guarded frontiers with the help of secret guides, he eventually reached Vichy France, and, by the winter of 1943, was back in Virginia.

He was a regent for the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Nazi occupation of Vichy France which implemented the eugenics policies there ; his association with the Foundation led to allegations of collaborating with the Nazis.

Due to his close proximity with Jacques Doriot's fascist Parti Populaire Français ( PPF ) during the 1930s and his role in implementing eugenics policies during Vichy France, he was accused after the Liberation of collaborationism, but died before the trial.

* 1942 – Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France.

From 16 June 1940-1942 the colonial administration remained loyal to Vichy France ( from 1942, under Free French ), but 25 September 1942-13 October 1946 they were, like Madagascar, under British occupation.

In June 1940, during the early stages of World War II, France fell and the colony was then ruled by the pro-Axis Vichy ( French ) government.

When the French public were asked to select which film they wanted to see most, having been told by the Vichy government that soon no more American films would be allowed in France, the overwhelming majority chose it over all others.

The Vichy regime sought to collaborate with Germany, keeping peace in France to avoid further occupation although at the expense of personal freedom and individual safety.

After the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, where the British fleet destroyed a large part of the French navy, still under command of Vichy France, that killed about 1, 100 sailors, there was nationwide indignation and a feeling of distrust in the French forces, leading to the events of the Battle of Dakar.

In November 1942 Vichy France was finally occupied by German forces, because the war in North Africa was coming to an end ; the Germans foresaw a threat in southern Europe by the allied forces.

Key legislative actions included declaration of the Vichy laws and acts as unconstitutional and therefore illegal, re-establishment of republican legality throughout metropolitan France, election of replacement local governments that had been suppressed by the Vichy regime, voting for women, and implementation of labour laws.

* Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France 2nd ed.

* 1940 – World War II: the Vichy government is established in France.

* 1940 – World War II: the United Kingdom and the Vichy France government break off diplomatic relations.

* 1940 – World War II: Vichy France regime is formally established.

* 1940 – World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France ( Chef de l ' État Français ).

* 1942 – Holocaust: Vel'd ' Hiv Roundup ( Rafle du Vel'd ' Hiv ): the government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13, 152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz.

Ribbentrop, a Francophile, argued that Germany should allow Vichy France a limited degree of independence within a binding Franco-German partnership.

By January 1944, Germany had diplomatic relations with only a handful of countries: Argentina, Ireland, Vichy France, the Salo Republic in Italy, Occupied Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Holy See, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, and the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo and the Wang Jingwei regime in China.

* Otto Abetz: German Ambassador to Vichy France ( 1940 – 1944 )

After the Vichy forces in the Middle East surrendered in July 1941, volunteers from the Troupes Spéciales du Levant enlisted in the Free French forces and participated in combat in Italy, North Africa, and southern France.

He was eventually captured by Vichy police and turned over to the Gestapo, which tortured and shot him in June 1944, just as the Nazis realized that the Allies were about to reconquer France ; Bloch became a national martyr after the Allied liberation.

The French capital was soon moved again to Vichy.

The 89th compagnie de travailleurs étrangers ( Company of Foreign Workers ), consisting of foreigners judged as undesirable by the Third Republic and the Vichy regime and committed to forced labour, was established in Barcelonnette.

All British Army cavalry regiments had been mechanised since 1 March 1942 when the Queen's Own Yorkshire Dragoons ( Yeomanry ) was converted to a motorised role, following mounted service against the Vichy French in Syria the previous year.

The Third Republic was dismantled, and most of the country was controlled directly by the Axis Powers, while the south was controlled by the collaborationist Vichy government.

The Vichy Regime – led by Philippe Pétain, the aging war hero of the First World War – was originally intended to be a temporary, care-taker regime, to supervise French administration before the soon-expected defeat of Britain.

The Vichy regime flew to Germany when Paris was freed, and the interim Provisional Government of the French Republic was quickly put into place by the Free French.

With the fall of the French government, and the creation of the Vichy regime, French Indochina was left completely vulnerable.

During the Second World War, the island was the site of the Battle of Madagascar between the Vichy government and the British.

Concessions reached their zenith after a crucial rail link through Vichy France was severed in 1942, leaving Switzerland completely surrounded by the Axis.

During World War II the city, together with the rest of Lebanon, was captured by British forces fighting against the Vichy French, and following the war it became a major city of independent Lebanon.

On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom ; twelve days later France surrendered and was soon divided into German and Italian occupation zones, and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime.

The first operation he participated in was assisting the allied invasion of Lebanon, then held by Vichy French forces ( the same operation in which Moshe Dayan lost his eye ) in June – July 1941.

In 1939, the Second World War broke out and France was occupied by the armies of Nazi Germany until 1945 ; his parents opposed the occupation and the Vichy regime who collaborated with them, but did not join the French Resistance.

The Vichy collaborationist government, directed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power established a commission to " redefine French citizenship " with the aim of stripping " undesirables ", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality.

In early 1943, the Vichy authorities established a paramilitary group, the Milice ( militia ), to combat the Résistance.

The official épuration légale began following a June 1944 decree that established a three-tier system of judicial courts ; a High Court of Justice, which dealt with Vichy ministers and officials ; Courts of Justice for other serious cases of collaboration ; and regular Civic Courts for lesser cases of collaboration.

After a parliamentary vote on July 10th, Pétain became leader of the newly established authoritarian regime known as Vichy France, the town of Vichy being the seat of government.

Working with Arnold Deppé and Elvire De Greef-Berlemont (" Tante Go ") in the south of France, they established links with the safe houses in Brussels, then a route was found, using trains, through occupied and Vichy France to the border with Spain.

Following the June 22, 1940 signing of the agreement with the Nazis to create Vichy France, she returned to Paris while her brother went to Lyon where he established the " Dutch-Paris " underground.

** The French Constitutional Law of 1940, adopted 10 July 1940, established Vichy France

The military history of France during World War II covers the period from 1939 until 1940, which witnessed French military participation under the French Third Republic ( established in Paris then Bordeaux ), and the period from 1940 until 1945, which was marked by mainland and overseas military administration and influence struggles for the French colonies ( under the command of Admiral François Darlan ) between the French State under Marshal Philippe Pétain ( Vichy then Sigmaringen ), the Free French Forces under General Charles de Gaulle ( London ) and the Army of Africa under General Henri Giraud ( Algiers ).

The capital region of France had been governed by Nazi Germany since the signing of the Second Compiègne Armistice in June 1940, when the German Army occupied northern and westmost France, and when the puppet regime of Vichy France was established in the town of Vichy in central France.

This replaced the fallen Vichy State ( 1940 – 1944 ) and united the politically divided French Resistance, drawing Gaullists, nationalists, communists and anarchists, into a new " national unanimity " government established on 9 September 1944.

Several alleged Vichy loyalists involved in the Milice ( a paramilitary militia ) — which was established by Sturmbannführer Joseph Darnand who hunted the Resistance with the Gestapo — were made prisoners in a post-liberation purge known as the Épuration légale ( Legal purge ).

While Vichy France collaborated with Japan in French Indochina after the 1940 invasion and later established a Japanese embassy in Sigmaringen, de Gaulle had declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor and created local anti-Japanese resistance units called Corps Léger d ' Intervention ( CLI ) in 1943.

In 1941, the Vichy government established a Commissariat général aux questions juives ( 1941-1944 ), which worked with the Gestapo to begin rounding up Jews for the concentration camps in 1942, including the notorious Vel'd ' Hiv Roundup on 16 and 17 July of that year.

Nazi Germany occupied three fifths of France's territory ( the Atlantic seaboard and most of France north of the Loire ), leaving the rest to the new Vichy collaboration government established on July 10, 1940 under Henri Philippe Pétain.

The Noyautage des administrations publiques ( infiltration of public services ) was also established, with the original aim of recruiting public figures who would be able to assure the return of the republic after the Vichy regime fell.