.svg)
TheRévolution nationale (French pronunciation:[ʁevɔlysjɔ̃nɑsjɔnal],National Revolution) was the officialideological program promoted byVichy France (the "French State") which had been established in July 1940 and led by MarshalPhilippe Pétain, after whom the ideological underpinning of Vichy France has also been referred to asPétainism,[1][2][3] also referred to asVichyism[4][5] (Vichyisme).[6][7] Pétain's regime was characterized byanti-parliamentarism,personality cultism,xenophobia, state-sponsoredantisemitism,promotion of traditional values, rejection of the constitutionalseparation of powers, andstate corporatism, as well as opposition to the theory ofclass conflict. Despite its name, the ideological policies werereactionary rather thanrevolutionary as the program opposed almost every change introduced toFrench society by theFrench Revolution.[8] Vichy France is often described as traditional right-wing andauthoritarian conservative as opposed tofascism; at the same time, the regime featured characteristics of fascism, and the definition of Vichy as fascist has been advocated by some historians.[9][1][10]
As soon as it was established, Pétain's government took measures against the “undesirables”, namelyJews,métèques (foreigners),Freemasons, andCommunists. The persecution of these four groups was inspired byCharles Maurras’ concept of the "Anti-France", or "internal foreigners", which he defined as the "four confederate states of Protestants, Jews, Freemasons and foreigners".[citation needed] The regime also persecutedRomani people,homosexuals, andleft-wing activists in general. Vichy imitated theracial policies of the Third Reich and also engaged innatalist policies aimed at reviving the "French race" (including a sports policy), although these policies never went as far asNazi eugenics.
Although Pétainism ended with the dissolution of Vichy France, such terms as Neo-Pétainism have been used to describe modern French far-right movements.
The ideology of the French State (Vichy France) was an adaptation of the ideas of theFrench far-right, includingmonarchism andCharles Maurras’integralism, by a crisis government that was aclient state, born out of thedefeat of France againstNazi Germany. It included:
None of these changes were forced on France by Germany. The Vichy government instituted them voluntarily as part of the National Revolution,[13] while Germany interfered little in internal French affairs for the first two years after the armistice as long as public order was maintained. It was suspicious of the aspects of the National Revolution that encouraged French patriotism, and banned Vichy veteran and youth groups from the Occupied Zone.[14]
Vichy was intensely anti-communist; it also exhibited certain characteristics offascism. Among historians, there have been different views whether to call Vichy France fascist. Its ideology is often presented astraditional right as opposed to fascism. Some historians believe that fascism may be a proper definition of Vichy France.
There is evidence for both views, and it has been noted that the features described as conservative were shared by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as well. The proponents of the approach of defining Vichy as authoritarian conservative as opposed to fascist also emphasized the absence of fascist mass mobilization and relative freedom of traditional and economic authorities; the opposing argument is that although the regime did not display the same desire for a mobilized national community as Germany and Italy did, it still had aspirations of mobilization, while in Germany and to a greater extent in Italy, the traditional and economic elites similarly preserved their "latitude".[10]
American historianStanley G. Payne found that it was "distinctlyrightist and authoritarian but never fascist".[15] Similarly, French historianOlivier Wieviorka rejects the idea that Vichy France was fascist on the grounds that "Pétain refused to create a single party state, avoided getting France involved in a new war, hated modernization, and supported the Church."[16]
The political scientistRobert Paxton wrote that genuinely fascist elements had only minor roles in the range of supporters fromreactionaries to moderateliberal modernizers;[17] at the same time, Paxton argued that since fascism and conservatism had much in common, Vichy qualified as fascist.[10]
French historianAlain-Gérard Slama [fr] argues that Vichy established a specific kind oftotalitarian dictatorship which at the same time was not fascist, since it sought "total subordination of civil society to state supervision", but did not "claim to resolve social conflicts, achieve its ends and mobilize the energies of its recruits by using a "scapegoat" and adhered to cultural continuity in contrast to the Fascist "rupture and complete rejection of the past."[18]
According to Roger Austin, "whilst [Vichy's] ideological atmosphere may have betrayed its conservative origins," in its attempts at mass mobilization, surveillance policies and exectutive repression advanced to fascism more than it may be supposed.[19]Roger Griffin noted the similarities of Vichy with fascist regmies and described it aspara-fascist, on the one hand, stemming from not a populist Fascist movement, but a wide spectrum of right-wing opponents of liberalism and socialism among the upper echelons of society, but on the other hand, relying on various fascist-like institutions of social control and engineering (such as the youth organizationCompagnons de France [fr]), a grassroots organization of mobilization of men (Légion Française des Combattants), paramilitary elite (theMilice) and the secretService du Contrôle Technique (SCT),[20] designed both to reveal the public opinion of the Pétainist regime and persecute any dissent to it, from public pro-German critics to the listeners of BBC;Martin Blinkhorn calls the activities of the SCT the strongest argument in defining Vichy France as a totalitarian regime.[21]
The historianZeev Sternhell described Vichy France as "totalitarian" and "no less fascist than Mussolini's Italy," with a racial legislation harsher than the one of Italy and even theNuremberg Laws, and the ideology of the regime, determined not only to dismantle the intstitutions of democracy, "but to kill its spirit," as grounded in the traditions of the "war" of the French "revolutionary right" against "liberalism, democracy and socialism", and in terms of philosophy,against the Enlightenment.[1] Some proponents of the definition of Vichy as fascist put an emphasis on the last two years of the regime marked by the organization of theMilice, fascist by its ideology. The historianH. R. Kedward wrote: "Much of Vichy's ideology, it is often argued, was of a traditional, right-wing, nationalist nature, harking back to a pre-Revolutionary, rural age, with the accent on hierarchy and provincial values, and this competed with the technocratic modernism of some of its ministries. And yet it is this very synthesis of opposites, a familiar characteristic of fascist regimes, which suggests that Vichy, at least in its last two repressive vears, was indeed a variant of fascism."[9]
The Vichy government's "francisque" insignia featured two symbols from the Gallic period: thebaton and the double-headed hatchet (labrys) arranged so as to resemble thefasces, the symbol of theItalian Fascists.[22]
Joan of Arc replacedMarianne as the national symbol of France under Vichy, as her status as one of France's best-loved heroines gave her widespread appeal, and the image of Joan as a devoutCatholic andpatriot also fit well with Vichy's traditionalist message. Vichy literature portrayed Joan as an archetypal virgin and Marianne as an archetypal whore.[23] Under the Vichy regime, the school textbookMiracle de Jeanne by René Jeanneret was required reading, and the anniversary of Joan's death became an occasion for school speeches commemorating her martyrdom.[24] Joan's encounter with angelic voices, according to Catholic tradition, were presented as literal history.[25] The textbookMiracle de Jeanne declared "the Voices did speak!" in contrast with republican school texts, which had strongly implied Joan was mentally ill.[25] Vichy instructors sometimes struggled to square Joan's military heroism with the classical virtues of womanhood, with one school textbook insisting that girls ought not follow Joan's example literally, saying: "Some of the most notable heroes in our history have been women. But nevertheless, girls should preferably exercise the virtues of patience, persistence and resignation. They are destined to tend to the running of the household ... It is in love that our future mothers will find the strength to practise those virtues which best befit their sex and their condition".[26]
Summarizing Pétain's speeches, the British historian Christopher Flood wrote that Pétain blamedla décadence on "political and economic liberalism, with its divisive,individualistic andhedonistic values – locked in sterile rivalry with its antithetical outgrowths, Socialism and Communism".[27] Pétain argued that rescuing the French people fromdécadence required a period of authoritarian government that would restore national unity and thetraditionalistmorality, which Pétain claimed the French had forgotten.[27] During theRiom Trial, theThird Republic, in particular thePopular Front government, despite the fact thatLéon Blum’s left-wing government prepared France for the war by launching a new military effort, Communists, Jews, etc, were blamed for the military defeat of France to Germany. The defendants of the Riom Trial included Blum,Édouard Daladier,Paul Reynaud,Georges Mandel andMaurice Gamelin: they were largely successful in rebutting the charges, and won sympathetic coverage in the international press, leading to the suspension of the trial in 1942 and its closure in 1943.[citation needed]
Despite his highly-negative view of the Third Republic, Pétain argued thatla France profonde ("deep France", denoting profoundly French aspects of French culture) still existed, and that the French people needed to return to what Pétain insisted was their true identity.[28] Alongside this claim for a moral revolution was Pétain's call for France to turn inwards and to withdraw from the world, which Pétain always portrayed as a hostile and threatening place full of endless dangers for the French.[27]
The Vichy government tried to assert its legitimacy by symbolically connecting itself with theGallo-Roman period ofFrance's history, and celebrated theGaulish chieftainVercingetorix as the "founder" of the French nation.[22] It was asserted that just as the defeat of the Gauls in theBattle of Alesia (52 BCE) had been the moment in French history when a sense of common nationhood was born, thedefeat of 1940 would again unify the nation.[22]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(August 2025) |
To advance his message, Pétain frequently spoke onFrench radio. In his radio speeches, Pétain always used the personal pronounje (French for the English word "I"), portrayed himself as a Christ-like figure sacrificing himself for France and assuming a God-like tone of a semi-omniscient narrator who knew truths about the world that the rest of the French did not.[29]
Jews, national or not, were excluded from the Nation, and prohibited from working in public services. The firstlaw on the status of Jews was promulgated on 3 October 1940. Thousands ofnaturalized Jews were deprived of theircitizenship, while all Jews were forced to wear ayellow badge. The next day, Pétain signedanother edict, this one authorizing detainment of foreign Jews in France. TheCrémieux Decree of 1870 was abrogated on 7 October by Interior MinisterMarcel Peyrouton, strippingAlgerian Jews of their French citizenship as well. Anumerus clausus drastically limited their presence at the University, among physicians, lawyers, filmmakers, bankers or small traders. Soon the list of off-limits works was greatly increased. In less than a year, more than half ofthe Jewish population in France was deprived of any means of subsistence.[30] Foreign Jews first, then all Jews were at first detained inconcentration camps in France, before being deported toDrancy internment camp where they were then sent toNazi concentration camps.
No other nation was attacked as frequently and violently as Britain was in Vichy propaganda.[31] In Pétain's radio speeches, Britain was always portrayed as the "Other", a nation that was the complete antithesis of everything good in France, the blood-soaked "Perfidious Albion" and the relentless "eternal enemy" of France whose ruthlessness knew no bounds.[32] Joan of Arc, who had fought against England, was made into the symbol of France partly for that reason.[32] The chief themes of Vichy Anglophobia were British "selfishness" in using and then abandoning France after instigating wars, British "treachery" and British plans to take overFrench colonies.[33] The three examples that were used to illustrate these themes were theDunkirk evacuation in May 1940, the Royal Navyattack at Mers-el-Kébir on the French Mediterranean fleet that killed over 1,300 French sailors in July 1940 and the failedAnglo-Free French attempt to seize Dakar in September 1940.[34] Typical of Vichy anti-British propaganda was the widely distributed pamphlet published in August 1940 and written by self-proclaimed "professional Anglophobe"Henri Béraud entitled,Faut-il réduire l'Angleterre en esclavage? ("Should England Be Reduced to Slavery?"); the question in the title was merely rhetorical.[35] Additionally, Vichy mixed Anglophobia with racism andantisemitism to portray the British as a racially degenerate "mixed race" working for Jewish capitalists, in contrast to the "racially pure" peoples on the continent of Europe who were building a "New Order".[36] In an interview conducted by Béraud with Admiral Darlan published inGringoire newspaper in 1941, Darlan was quoted as saying that if the "New Order" failed in Europe, it would mean "here in France, the return to power of the Jews and Freemasons subservient to Anglo-Saxon policy".[37]
Catholic social teaching of the time, particularly the encyclicalQuadragesimo anno ofPope Pius XI, was influential in the Vichy regime, which was also active in defending traditional Catholic values, eulogising national religious figures such asJoan d'Arc and restoring some privileges of the clergy that had been abolished by the1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, though the law was never fully repealed and Catholicism was not reinstated as astate religion. TheCatholic Church in France welcomed these changes and expressed a certain degree of support towards the regime until 1944, although the Church was also strongly critical of some Vichy policies, such as the deportation of the Jews and institutional racism. However, a consistent number of Catholics took part in theFrench Resistance with the support of some segments of the clergy, among whomGeorges Bidault, who later became the founder of thePopular Republican Movement.[38]
"I have never known what the National Revolution was, it was never defined and it was an expression that personally I never used [...] Everyone put his own desire, ideal and the regime that he saw into these words, but the National Revolution was never defined in any form at any time."
TheRévolution nationale was never fully defined by the Vichy regime although it was frequently invoked by its most enthusiastic supporters. Philippe Pétain himself was rumoured to dislike the term and only used it four times in his wartime speeches.[39] As a result, different factions formed different views of what it meant which conformed with their own ideological views about the regime and the postwar future.[39]
ThePétainistes gathered those who supported the personal figure of Marshal Pétain, considered at that time a war hero of theBattle of Verdun. TheCollaborateurs include those who collaborated withNazi Germany or advocated collaboration, but who are considered more moderate, or more opportunistic, than theCollaborationistes, advocates of a French fascism.
Supporters of collaboration were not necessarily supporters of the National Revolution, and vice versa.Pierre Laval was a collaborationist but was dubious about the National Revolution, while others likeMaxime Weygand opposed collaboration but supported the National Revolution because they believed that reforming France would help it avenge its defeat.[14]
Those who supported the ideology of the National Revolution rather than the person of Pétain himself could be divided, in general, into three groups: the counter-revolutionary reactionaries; the supporters of aFrench fascism; and the reformers who saw in the new regime an opportunity to modernize the state apparatus. The last current would include opportunists such as the journalistJean Luchaire who saw in the new regime career opportunities.
These were part of thecounter-revolutionary branch of theFrench far right, the oldest one being composed ofLegitimists, monarchist members of theAction française (AF), etc. But the Vichy regime also received support from large sectors of the liberalOrleanists, in particular from its mouthpiece,Le Temps newspaper.[40]
The supporters were, however, in the minority. Although the Vichy government initially had substantial support from those who were glad that the war was over and expected that Britain would soon surrender, and Pétain remained personally popular during the war, by late autumn 1940 most French hoped for a British victory and opposed collaboration with Germany.[13]
In 1941,Nobel Prize winnerAlexis Carrel, who had been an early proponent ofeugenics andeuthanasia and was a member ofJacques Doriot'sFrench Popular Party (PPF), went on to advocate the creation of theFrench Foundation for the Study of Human Problems (Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains), using connections to the Pétain cabinet (specifically, French industrial physiciansAndré Gros and Jacques Ménétrier). Charged with the "study, under all of its aspects, of measures aimed at safeguarding, improving and developing theFrench population in all of its activities," the Foundation was created bydecree of the Vichy regime in 1941, and Carrel appointed as “regent”.[41]
Vichy's policy concerning sports found its origins in the conception ofGeorges Hébert (1875–1957), who denounced professional and spectacular competition, and likePierre de Coubertin, founder of themodern Olympic Games, who was a supporter of amateurism. Vichy's sport policy followed the moral aim of "rebuilding the nation", was opposed toLéo Lagrange's sport policy during the Popular Front, and was specifically opposed toprofessional sport imported from theUnited Kingdom. They also were used to engrain the youth in various associations and federations, as done by theHitler Youth or Mussolini'sBalilla.
On 7 August 1940, aCommissariat Général à l’Education Générale et Sportive (General Commissioner to General and Sport Education) was created. Three men in particular headed this policy:
In October 1940, the two General Commissioners prohibited professionalism in two federations (tennis and wrestling), while permitting a three-year delay for four other federations (football, cycling, boxing andBasque pelota). They prohibited competitions for women in cycling orassociation football. Furthermore, they prohibited, or spoiled by seizing the assets of, at least four uni-sport federations (rugby league,table tennis,Jeu de paume andbadminton) and one multi-sport federation (the FSGT). In April 1942, they additionally prohibited the activities of the UFOLEP and USEP multi-sport federations, also seizing their goods which were to be transferred to the “National Council of Sports”.
| This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(August 2025) |
Petainism andNeo-Petainism have been used as labels to define some right-wing far-right political movements in France which emerged after World War II.
The founder of the far-rightFront National (FN)Jean-Marie Le Pen and its prominent memberBruno Gollnisch have been described as politicians "true to their roots on the ultra-nationalist, Neo-Petainist right," loyal to the nostalgia for the Vichy regime "in and around the FN". The activities of the FN included promoting historical revisionism of Vichy France, the Holocaust and the conclusions of the Nuremberg Trials.[42]
