RG 84: France
State Department and Foreign Affairs Records
Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State (RG 84)
France
On September 3, 1939, France, led by Edouard Daladier, declared war on Germany. (Note 66) The Germans invaded France on May 10, 1940, and within six weeks the French, then led by Paul Reynaud who had replaced Daladier in March, were defeated. Reynaud, who resigned in mid- June, was replaced as prime minister by Marshal Philippe Petain. He negotiated an armistice with Germany and Italy (which had declared war on France on June 10, 1940). This June 22, 1940, armistice split the country into an occupied north and an unoccupied south.
The Germans immediately annexed Alsace and Lorraine and they were administered by Nazi administrators. Parts of France were given to Belgium. What remained were divided into two zones, one occupied and one unoccupied. The occupied zone was headquartered in Paris and controlled by a German Military Administration. The unoccupied zone, in the south of France, until November 1942, had its administrative machinery at Vichy. The Vichy Government was led by Petain and Pierre Laval.
On October 3, 1940, a major anti-Jewish statue was enacted in Vichy prohibiting Jews from holding most public offices, banned them from the judiciary, teaching, the military, banking, real estate, and the media, and limited their presence in the professions. A decree of October 4, 1940, authorized the internment of foreign Jews. About 25,000 such Jewish refugees were at Gurs, and later also at other camps. They were soon forced into labor brigades, where many would die of hunger, cold, and disease. In early 1941 the Vichy government set about to liquidate Jewish property. And as a result of a June 2, 1941 statute Jewish property became liable to "Aryanization." In August 1942, the Vichy government, under German pressure, turned over 15,000 foreign Jews for deportation. After November 11, 1942, when the Germans occupied all of France, the German occupiers began rounding up Jews for deportation and extermination.
The Vichy Government in June 1942 began pushing a voluntary program for French to go to Germany to work. Such labor was made mandatory for male workers in February 1943. By war's end some 600,000 French workers and another 600,000 French prisoners-of-war were either sent to Germany or were forced to work in French mines and industries deemed essential to the Germans.
Besides acquiring manpower from France, Germany, after the extension of German occupation to all of France in November, 1942, came close to virtually complete exploitation or utilization of France's economic resources, especially its war potential. By 1943 Germany was taking 40 percent of France's total industrial output and at least 55 percent of the government's revenue was utilized to meet the costs of occupation.
In occupied France, beginning in September 1940, a whole series of procedures where set in place that resulted in the expropriation and "Aryanization" of Jewish property. In May and August 1941, the roundup of Jews began and they were sent to camps at Drancy and elsewhere in France, and eventually to Auschwitz. On March 28, 1942, the first deportation train left Drancy for Auschwitz. In July 1942, in Paris, some 13,000 non-French Jews began being taken into custody and sent to extermination camps. It is estimated that 90,000 Jews of a pre-Final Solution population of 350,000 were exterminated.
The Allies landed in France in June 1944 and in August the French Committee for National Liberation, formed in Algiers in 1943, established a provisional government in Paris headed by General Charles de Gaulle. Both the United States and the United Kingdom on October 23, 1944, recognized the French Provisional Government. The Fourth Republic was created on December 24, 1946. (67)
Records of the U.S. Embassy, Paris, France
General Records 1936-1941, 1944-1953 (Entry 2452A)
Boxes 1-514
1940
1941
1944
1945
1946
1947
Classified General Records 1944-1953 (Entry 2453A)
Boxes 1-201
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
Top Secret General Records 1944-1949, 1950-1951, 1954 (Entry 2454A)
Boxes 1-28
Top Secret General Records 1950 (Entry 2454B)
Boxes 1-6
Top Secret General Records 1952 (Entry 2454C)
Boxes 1-6
Top Secret General Records 1953 (Entry 2454D)
Boxes 1-6
Miscellaneous Top Secret General Records (Entry 2456)
Box 1
Records of the Political Advisor to SHAEF (Paris), France
General Correspondence 1943-1944 (Entry 2483)
Box 1
Special Correspondence 1943-1944 (Entry 2484)
Box 1 (Contained in the same box 1 as Entry 2483)
Country Files 1943-1944 (Entry 2485)
This series is arranged alphabetically by country name and thereunder alphabetically by subject.
Boxes 2-9
Subject Files 1943-1944 (Entry 2486)
This series is arranged alphabetically by subject.
Boxes 10-22
Messages 1943-1944 (Entry 2487)
Boxes 23-25
Records of the U.S. Embassy Vichy, France
General Records 1940-1942 (Entry 2489)
Boxes 1-42
1940
1941
1942
Classified General Records (Confidential File) 1940-1942 (Entry 2490)
Boxes 1-21
1940
1941
1942
Miscellaneous Records 1942 (Entry 2491)
Box 1