Pierre Laval was head of government of Vichy France from 18 April 1942 to 19 August 1944. He was the political operator who actually ran the regime while Pétain provided the moral cover. Under his direction, the French police carried out the round-ups that delivered around 76,000 Jews to the deportation trains, of whom around three quarters were murdered. He volunteered children for deportation that the Germans had not asked for. He was tried, convicted, and shot at Fresnes prison on 15 October 1945. He attempted suicide on the morning of his execution and was revived by stomach pump in time to face the firing squad.
The 6 May 1942 return
Laval had served as prime minister briefly in 1940 and been dismissed by Pétain in December 1940 for moving too close to the Germans. He was returned to office on 18 April 1942 at German insistence. The return was made conditional, in his own private statements, on having a free hand to manage the relationship with the occupying power on his own terms. He took the position with eyes open. The deportations from France began two months later, in July 1942, with operations he had personally negotiated.
The 21 June 1942 deal with Eichmann
The framework agreement under which the deportations were to be conducted was negotiated between Laval’s deputy René Bousquet and Eichmann’s deputy Theodor Dannecker in June 1942. The agreement, finalised on 2 July 1942, provided that the French police would conduct the round-ups in exchange for German recognition of Vichy sovereignty over the southern zone. Bousquet briefed Laval on the agreement throughout. Laval approved it. The principle that French police would deliver French residents to the Germans was a Laval decision, defended by him afterwards as preserving French independence.
The children
Laval personally proposed, on 4 July 1942, that the deportations should include children under sixteen years old, whom the Germans had not initially requested. The proposal was made through Bousquet to Dannecker. The German side agreed. Around 4,000 children, the youngest aged two, were deported with their parents from the Vél d’Hiv round-up of 16 to 17 July 1942. They went to Auschwitz. They were killed on arrival.
Laval defended the decision at his post-war trial on the grounds that it had been done in the best interests of the children, who would otherwise have been separated from their families. The defence is the most damning piece of evidence at his trial. He had volunteered to send four-year-olds to Auschwitz, and presented the offer as a humane consideration for family unity. The court did not believe him. Neither has any historian since.
The 22 June 1942 speech
On 22 June 1942 Laval gave a national radio address to French listeners in which he said: Je souhaite la victoire de l’Allemagne, car sans elle le bolchevisme s’installerait partout
. I desire the victory of Germany, because without it Bolshevism will install itself everywhere. The speech was the moment at which French collaboration moved from passive cooperation to active alignment with the German war effort. The phrase was used as central evidence at his post-war trial. He could not, in 1945, deny he had said it. The recording exists. The text was published in Le Temps the next day under his signature.
The Service du Travail Obligatoire
Laval also instituted, on 16 February 1943, the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), the compulsory labour service that sent around 600,000 French men of military age to work in German factories during 1943 and 1944. The STO was Laval’s offer to substitute French labour for the German conscripts being lost on the Eastern Front. The men were put to work, often in conditions amounting to forced labour, in armaments factories where many were killed in Allied bombing raids. The STO is one of the larger collaborationist measures of any occupied country in Europe, and it was Laval’s creation.
The flight and capture
As the Allies advanced through France in summer 1944, Laval was taken to the German residence at Sigmaringen with the rest of the Vichy government. He fled to Spain in May 1945 and was extradited by the Spanish authorities, then to Austria, where he was arrested by US forces and handed over to the new French government on 31 July 1945.
The trial and the execution
Laval’s trial in October 1945 was conducted in conditions widely criticised at the time as procedurally unfair. He was given inadequate time to prepare his defence, and the court was openly hostile. He was convicted on 9 October 1945 and sentenced to death. The verdict was, however, supported by the substantive documentary record. Laval had given the radio speech. He had signed the deportation orders. He had volunteered the children. He had instituted the STO. The procedural complaints did not change the underlying facts.
On the morning of 15 October 1945 he attempted suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule that he had concealed in the lining of his clothes throughout three months of imprisonment. The capsule was old. He was revived by prison doctors with stomach pumps and oxygen. He was carried to the execution post at Fresnes prison and tied upright. He was shot by firing squad at 12:32. His last words, recorded by witnesses, were Vive la France!
What he was
Laval was the case of the political operator who believed himself too clever to be taken in by either side. He had calculated, in 1942, that Germany would win and that France’s best chance lay in negotiating a privileged position within the new German Europe. He had been wrong. He had paid the price. The French Jews he had delivered to Auschwitz had paid first, and at much higher cost.
See also
Sources
- Fred Kupferman, Laval, Balland, 1976
- Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Knopf, 1972
- Serge Klarsfeld, Vichy-Auschwitz, Fayard, 1983
- Laval radio speech of 22 June 1942, recording held by INA
- Laval trial transcripts, French National Archives
- USHMM: Pierre Laval