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Nous serons les successeurs, sinon les héritiers de Vichy: Maintaining the New Industrial Order in Post-Vichy France

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Forging Europe: Industrial Organisation in France, 1940–1952
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Abstract

This chapter examines plans within the French Resistance for the industrial organisation of post-war France. Until 1943, it was presumed that Vichy’s Organisation Committees would be abolished; following the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, the Committees there were accordingly dissolved. In 1943, however, the question of whether the Committees should be maintained became highly contested, as figures ranging from Jean Monnet to former Vichy minister Pierre Pucheu argued that the bodies should be retained for their pragmatic value. This debate was ultimately settled by Charles de Gaulle in early 1944, although his decision was motivated by political rather than economic considerations. Consequently, Vichy’s Committees were maintained following the Liberation of France.

Louis Vallon, ‘Note sur l’organisation professionnelle de la vie économique’, 2 June 1944, MAE, CFLN 687. Vallon was de Gaulle’s directeur adjoint de cabinet, having joined the London-based Resistance in 1942.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, Fondation Charles de Gaulle, Le Rétablissement de la légalité républicaine (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1996) and Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle. Le rebelle, 1890–1944 (Paris: Seuil, 1984). De Gaulle famously claimed that, since Vichy was illegitimate, the Republic had never ceased to exist and therefore did not need to be proclaimed. See Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre. L’unité: 1942–1944 (Paris: Plon, 1956).

  2. 2.

    Claire Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance. Des idées dans la guerre (Paris: Editions de l’Erudit, 1984), 135.

  3. 3.

    Isser Woloch, ‘Left, Right and Centre: the MRP and the Post-war Moment’, French History, 21:1, 2007, 85–106, 90.

  4. 4.

    A document issued by the CFLN in April 1943 affirmed that its first objective, shared by all in the Resistance, was ‘the abolition of all Vichy legislation’. See ‘Note du Comité National Français’, 21 April 1943, CFLN 297, MAE. The standard Gaullist narrative has been challenged, notably in Henry Rousso, Le syndrome de Vichy. De 1944 à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1987), although Rousso does not discuss the CNR Programme in great detail.

  5. 5.

    Created in June 1943, this was the main external Resistance organisation and soon evolved into a government-in-waiting. Based in Algiers, it was led by de Gaulle and was renamed the Gouvernement provisoire de la République française (GPRF) on the eve of the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944.

  6. 6.

    Walther Funk, ‘The Economic Reorganization of Europe’ in Walter Lipgens, Documents on the History of European integration. Volume 1: Continental Plans for European Union, 1939–1945, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1984), 65–70, here 66.

  7. 7.

    De Gaulle’s celebrated radio speech was broadcast by the BBC on 18 June 1940. While Pétain had urged the French to lay down their arms on 17 June, the Armstice was only signed on 22 June.

  8. 8.

    For a wide-ranging discussion of the historiography on the Resistance, see Laurent Douzou, La Résistance française: une histoire périlleuse (Paris: Seuil, 2005). On the question of what actions constituted resistance, an illuminating discussion is provided by Jacques Semelin, ‘Qu’est-ce que “résister”?’, Esprit 198 (1994). On the Free French, see Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac, La France libre: De l’appel du 18 juin à la Libération (Paris: Gallimard, 1996); for two studies that explore the heterogeneity of ‘the Resistance’, see Robert Belot, La Résistance sans de Gaulle (Paris: Fayard, 2006) and Robert Gildea, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (London: Faber & Faber, 2015).

  9. 9.

    This section is indebted to the work of Claire Andrieu, Richard Kuisel, and Michel Margairaz. In particular, see Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance, Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie. Histoire d’une conversion, 1932–1952 (Paris: CHEFF, 1991).

  10. 10.

    ‘Notre programme’, in Le Populaire, 16 janvier–1 février 1943, qtd in Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance.

  11. 11.

    The German occupation of the hitherto Non-Occupied Zone in November 1942, itself in reaction to the Allied landings in Algeria, effectively put an end to Vichy’s supposed sovereignty. This development prompted a number of civil servants to leave their posts in Vichy. See Marc Olivier Baruch, Servir l’Etat français. L’administration en France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997).

  12. 12.

    Guizot was the Resistance name of the author, Emile Laffon. A graduate of the Ecole des Mines, Laffon was a lawyer before the war and joined de Gaulle in London in 1942.

  13. 13.

    Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance, 38.

  14. 14.

    Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, 735–737.

  15. 15.

    The Front national was a communist group within the Resistance, founded in May 1941. It has no link to the current French political party of the same name, which was founded in 1972.

  16. 16.

    Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, 734.

  17. 17.

    Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance, 43.

  18. 18.

    It is worth noting that René Belin, who created the Organisation Committees in August 1940 as Minister for Industrial Production and Labour, belonged to the latter group and rose to the rank of Deputy Secretary General of the CGT before resigning in 1940.

  19. 19.

    Andrieu, Le programme commun de la Résistance, 43.

  20. 20.

    This team consisted of Courtin, Paul Bastid, Robert Lacoste, François de Menthon, Alexandre Parodi, and Pierre-Henri Teitgen.

  21. 21.

    Robert Lacoste spent his pre-war career with the CGT; in November 1940, he co-authored the Manifeste des douze and became involved with the Resistance. He was Minister for Industrial Production in 1944–1945 and again from 1946–1950, although he is most notorious for his time as Minister Resident in Algeria from February 1956 until May 1958. His only biography is Pierre Brana and Joëlle Duseau, Robert Lacoste (1898–1989). De la Dordogne à l’Algérie, un socialiste devant l’histoire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010).

  22. 22.

    Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France, 163–172.

  23. 23.

    Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, 729–730. The Conseil des Investissements of the Courtin Report has similarities with what would ultimately emerge as the Conseil Général du Plan (CGP) under Jean Monnet’s leadership. For the origins of the Monnet Plan, see Philippe Mioche, Le plan Monnet. Genèse et élaboration 1941–1947 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987).

  24. 24.

    Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, 733.

  25. 25.

    Philippe Buton, Les lendemains qui déchantent. Le Parti communiste français à la Libération (Paris: FNSP, 1993), 36–38.

  26. 26.

    Jean-Pierre Azéma and Olivier Wieviorka have suggested the term ‘vichysto-résistant’ to describe individuals who supported Pétain’s regime until 1943 and who then defected to the resistance. See Vichy, 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin, 1997). Much of the literature on this category of résistants has focused on François Mitterrand, who supported Vichy and was even decorated with the regime’s francisque before joining the Resistance in the latter half of 1943; see Pierre Péan, Une jeunesse française: François Mitterrand, 1934–1947 (Paris: Fayard, 1994). For a lesser known example, see Johanna Barasz, ‘Un vichyste en Résistance, le général de La Laurencie’, Vingtième siècle, 2007/2, no. 94, 167–181.

  27. 27.

    ‘Projet d’instruction de la réforme de l’organisation professionnelle et de la répartition’, 13 May 1943, CFLN 631, MAE.

  28. 28.

    ‘Note du Comité National Français’, 21 April 1943, CFLN 297, MAE.

  29. 29.

    Giraud’s title at this time was ‘Civilian and Military Commander-in-Chief’.

  30. 30.

    Marcel Peyrouton had been Vichy’s Minister for the Interior in 1940–1941, where he passed a series of anti-Semitic measures such as the infamous law of 3 October 1940, which removed Jews from a range of positions in the public sector. Appointed Vichy’s ambassador to Argentina in 1941, he was brought to Algeria at the insistence of the Roosevelt Administration and appointed Governor General. He was forced to resign from this position in June 1943 and was then arrested and imprisoned in December as part of l’épuration. See Marcel Peyrouton, Du service public à la prison commune. Souvenirs (Paris: Plon, 1950).

  31. 31.

    ‘Procès Pucheu’, MAE, CFLN 619. Pucheu’s trial and execution were widely condemned by the international press, the consensus being that the former minister was not given a fair trial. De Gaulle justified the trial and the sentence in his memoirs, on the grounds that ‘it was necessary that our combatants, and our enemies, had immediate proof that culprits would have to answer for their actions’. See de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, vol. 2, 213.

  32. 32.

    On France’s épuration, the classic study in English remains Peter Novick, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of collaborators in Liberated France (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968); the best recent synthesis is Jean-Paul Cointet’s Expier Vichy: l’épuration en France 1943–1958 (Paris: Perrin, 2008), while a helpful overview is provided in Henry Rousso, ‘L’Epuration en France: Une histoire inachevée’ in Vichy. L’événement, la mémoire, l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 489–552. For more specific studies, see François Rouquet, L’Epuration dans l’administration francaise. Agents de l’Etat et collaboration ordinaire (Paris: CNRS, 1993) and Marc Bergère (ed.), L’épuration économique en France à la Libération (Rennes: Presses universiatires de Rennes, 2008). For a regional approach to the first, most brutal purges, see Philippe Bourdrel’s L’épuration sauvage, 1944–1945 (Paris: Perrin, 2002).

  33. 33.

    De Gaulle’s insistence on republican legitimacy developed in part as a means of securing his own position in the face of the reactionary Giraud. It was also hoped that such democratic overtures would reassure Roosevelt that de Gaulle was not, as the US President feared, a budding dictator. See Serge Berstein, Histoire du gaullisme (Paris: Perrin, 2001).

  34. 34.

    This Assembly included the 80 members of the National Assembly who voted against handing full powers to Philippe Pétain on 10 July 1940. In his memoirs, de Gaulle criticised the Assembly’s ‘harsh and extended debates’ on épuration, and for their avoidance of ‘the most pressing issues’ related to French foreign policy. Nevertheless, he noted the importance of the Assembly’s recognition of his legitimacy as leader of the French Republic. See de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, 185–190.

  35. 35.

    Unlike most memoirs by Vichy-era figures, Pucheu composed his before the end of the war and died in 1944. While his writings reflect the broad strategy of exoneration typical of such memoirs, they were not altered by the author in light of post-war events, although the text was edited by his heirs. See Pierre Pucheu, Ma Vie (Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1948).

  36. 36.

    Pucheu, Ma Vie, 117. These meetings occurred in August 1943, although it is probable that other such meetings with CFLN figures took place between Pucheu’s arrest in May 1943 and his execution in March 1944. Leroy-Beaulieu was an Inspecteur général des finances who held top posts at NATO and at the French Embassy in Bonn after the war. René Mayer held a number of portfolios in the Fourth Republic, including Economic Affairs and Finance, and became Prime Minister in 1953. In 1955 he succeeded Jean Monnet as President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, where he sat alongside Léon Daum.

  37. 37.

    Pucheu, Ma Vie, 336–337.

  38. 38.

    This statement is confirmed in previous chapters, which show that the creation of the Organisation Committees was not decisively influenced by the National Revolution (Chapter 2) and that the bodies were not significantly reformed in line with Vichy’s official ideology (Chapter 4).

  39. 39.

    Pucheu, Ma Vie, 344.

  40. 40.

    ‘Projet de résolution soumis au Conseil du Plan. Objectifs généraux pour l’activité française’, 13 March 1946, AMF 2 3, FJME.

  41. 41.

    Pucheu, Ma Vie, 345. France suffered prolonged coal shortages from 1940, when imports from its traditional supplier, Great Britain, became impossible.

  42. 42.

    René Belin and François Lehideux, the two Ministers for Industrial Production who survived the war, defended the New Industrial Order in their post-war accounts, as did Yves Bouthillier, Minister for the Economy in Vichy. See Belin, Du secrétariat de la CGT au gouvernement de Vichy (Paris: Albatros, 1978); Bouthillier, La drame de Vichy (Paris: Plon, 1951); Lehideux, De Renault à Pétain (Paris: Pygmalion, 2001).

  43. 43.

    According to François Lehideux, de Gaulle lamented that the former had been appointed minister by Pétain, since de Gaulle wanted to make him a minister in his own Cabinet. It should be noted, however, that Lehideux makes a number of highly questionable claims in his memoirs, so this should be treated with scepticism. See Lehideux, De Renault à Pétain, 459.

  44. 44.

    On the role of pragmatism in the creation of the Committees, see Hervé Joly (ed.), Les Comités d’organisation et l’économie dirigée de Vichy, 2000.

  45. 45.

    ‘Projet sur le rétablissement de la légalité républicaine’, 3 July 1944, CFLN, MAE.

  46. 46.

    ‘Observations de la Chambre syndicale de la sidérurgie’, 29 December 1944, F 12 10062, AN. Given that virtually all the active industrialists were still in France (and indeed working within the system of the Organisation Committees), they did not take part in the debates that unfolded in Algiers on the maintenance of the Committees.

  47. 47.

    See Maxime Blocq-Mascart, Chroniques de la Résistance (Paris: Corréa, 1945) and Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France. Kuisel argues that ‘the OCM, perhaps more than any resistance movement, wanted to rebuild with the materials of Vichy’s corporatist construction’, 166. Lepercq remained President of the COH until his dismissal in August 1943 for opposing the STO.

  48. 48.

    Jean Monnet began the war overseeing the coordination of the French and British economies in London; after the Fall of France he was sent to the United States as a member of the British Supply Council and soon started advising President Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt, he initially supported Giraud over de Gaulle, although he helped negotiate the creation of the CFLN by the two generals in June 1943.

  49. 49.

    For a discussion of the Organisation Committees in Algeria, see Jacques Cantier, L’Algérie sous le régime de Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002), 170–172 and Daniel Lefeuvre, ‘Vichy et la modernisation de l’Algérie: Intention ou réalité?’, Vingtième siècle, no. 42 (avril-juin 1994), 7–16. While the first Committees in Algeria were only set up in December 1941, this was nevertheless done within the framework of the law of 16 August 1940.

  50. 50.

    ‘Ordonnance du 15 mai 1943 portant abrogation des lois et décrets concernant l’organisation professionnelle’, published in the Journal officiel, 16 May 1943, AME 34 6, FJME. That same day Giraud also decreed the repeal of Vichy’s corporatist Labour Charter. See ‘Ordonnance du 15 mai 1943 portant abrogation de la loi du 4 octobre 1941 relative à l’organisation sociale des professions’, published in the Journal officiel, 16 May 1943, AME 34 6, FJME.

  51. 51.

    ‘La révision des lois de Vichy. Le général Giraud abroge les dispositions concernant l’organisation professionnelle’, La Dépêche Algérienne, 19 May 1943, AME 34 6, FJME. Underlined in the original.

  52. 52.

    ‘Déclaration et ordonnance du commandant en chef français civil et militaire concernant la validité de la législation en vigueur dans les territoires relevant de son autorité’, March 1943, AME 34 2, FJME.

  53. 53.

    ‘Note sur l’Organisation syndicale de la Régence’, 4 August 1943, CFLN 875, MAE.

  54. 54.

    Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France, 182. Offroy was writing in February 1944.

  55. 55.

    Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Paris: Fayard, 1976), 271.

  56. 56.

    ‘Note sur la première étape de la reconstruction en France’, 22 September 1943, AME 33 1, FJME. Emphasis added.

  57. 57.

    Ibid.

  58. 58.

    ‘Note’, 13 January 1944, CFLN 602, MAE.

  59. 59.

    The best study of the Labour Charter is Jean-Pierre Le Crom, Syndicats nous voilà! (Paris: Editions de l’Atelier, 1995). For a recent detailed study, see Debbie Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies, 1930–1944 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).

  60. 60.

    Rapport Leprince, 26 January 1944, CFLN 686, MAE.

  61. 61.

    Ibid.

  62. 62.

    In the CFLN, Commissaire à la production et au ravitaillement was analogous to Minister for Industrial Production.

  63. 63.

    An Inspecteur des finances, Diethelm joined de Gaulle in London in 1941. The best biography of this lesser-known figure of the CFLN is Frédéric Turpin’s André Diethelm 1896–1954. De Georges Mandel à Charles de Gaulle (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004).

  64. 64.

    Turpin, André Diethelm 1896–1954, 128–129.

  65. 65.

    ‘Note du Commissaire au ravitaillement et à la production’, 9 February 1944, F 60 914, AN.

  66. 66.

    A teacher, journalist, and civil servant before the war, Joxe was named Secretary General of the CFLN in 1942. After the war, he pursued a successful career as a dipomat and a minister and led the negotiations culminating in the Evian Accords in 1962, which granted independence to Algeria.

  67. 67.

    ‘Note pour le général de Gaulle’, 10 February 1944, F 60 914, AN.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    Interestingly, a certain Giacobbi worked as director of legal services for OCRPI as late as September 1943 and worked closely with Jean Bichelonne. For the Giacobbi at OCRPI, see ‘Note’, April 1943, and ‘Note de Bichelonne’, September 1943, F 12 10932, AN.

  70. 70.

    This Cabinet reshuffle is mentioned in the memoirs of both Joxe and de Gaulle. Curiously, Joxe makes no mention of Diethelm, noting only that Giacobbi ‘took on the difficult tasks of Supply and Production’, while de Gaulle misidentifies Giacobbi’s portfolio as the Economy (which was held by Pierre Mendès France at the time). Both de Gaulle and Joxe present Giacobbi’s promotion as part of a general reshuffle that saw the addition of two Communists (Fernand Grenier and François Billoux) to the CFLN, but in fact their appointment happened one month later, on 4 April, weeks after the CNR Programme was released. Overall, Diethelm is strikingly absent from Joxe’s narrative, as the Minister for War is not once mentioned in the chapter on the Liberation. See Louis Joxe, Victoires sur la nuit (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), 188 and de Gaulle, op.cit., 181.

  71. 71.

    The issue was first introduced to the Consultative Assembly by Paul Giacobbi on 21 July 1944. Despite criticism of the decision by Vincent Auriol, the future President of the Fourth Republic, Giaccobi concluded the session by exclaiming that ‘there is an absolute agreement on the foundations of the economic doctrine of the Government and of the Nation’. See ‘La politique économique du gouvernement’, 22 July 1944, C I 591, AN.

  72. 72.

    Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France, 180.

  73. 73.

    The ‘Big Three’ would ultimately recognise de Gaulle as France’s legitimate leader only on 23 October 1944, two months after the liberation of Paris. He would continue to be excluded from crucial international summits, most notably the Yalta Conference in February 1945.

  74. 74.

    Isser Woloch, ‘Left, right and centre: the MRP and the post-war moment’ in French History, 21:1, 2007, 85–106, 90.

  75. 75.

    Qtd in Andrieu, op.cit., 157. This version of the programme was agreed by the CNR on 28 February 1944 and a copy was relayed to de Gaulle the next day by Bingen, the CFLN’s representative at the CNR. The final text of the programme was approved on 15 March 1944, in which the quoted passage remained unchanged.

  76. 76.

    The vagueries on specific policies suited the PCF, as it wanted to avoid ‘hav[ing] its hands tied by a detailed political programme or by precise measures that would be too constraining’. Given the ‘radical’ policies contained in the CNR Programme, Philippe Buton concludes that it was a ‘success for the PCF’. See Buton, op.cit., 53. Prior to March 1944, the SFIO had been the staunchest supporter of the nationalisation of key industries, of which the PCF was sceptical.

  77. 77.

    Frédéric Turpin, op.cit., 142. Schuman had voted full powers to Pétain on 10 July 1940 and did not actively participate in the Resistance, which explains Diethelm’s statement. Schuman’s position in September 1944 was Political Counsellor for issues related to Alsace-Lorraine.

  78. 78.

    De Gaulle visited the Ministry of War and then the police prefecture before making his public appearance at the Hôtel de Ville. See de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, 358–359.

  79. 79.

    Lettre du général Valin au général de Gaulle, 7 November 1945, 3 AG 4 30, AN. Diethelm remained Minister for War until 21 November 1945, when he was succeeded by de Gaulle himself, who took on the portfolio for National Defence in addition to his role as President.

  80. 80.

    ‘Nouveau projet d’ordonnance soumis en septembre par M Diethelm au Chef du Gouvernement’, undated (September 1944), 3 AG 4 32. ‘This text was not read by de Gaulle’ was hand-written on the document by a member of de Gaulle’s staff.

  81. 81.

    ‘Réorganisation des armées terre, air, mer’, 28 May 1945, 3 AG 4 30, AN.

  82. 82.

    Diethelm was ultimately dropped from Cabinet for good in the autumn of 1945.

  83. 83.

    Blum-Picard, an Inspecteur général des Mines before the war, joined de Gaulle in London in December 1943 and became his Economic Advisor in 1943 before being named Secreatry General for the Commissariat for Industrial Production in 1944.

  84. 84.

    A trade unionist with the CGT before the war, Albert Gazier signed his name to the Manifeste des douze in November 1940 and joined de Gaulle in Algeria in 1943. Elected to the National Assembly with the SFIO in 1945, he held a number of ministerial positions under the Fourth Republic.

  85. 85.

    ‘Commission d’étude des problems économiques d’après-guerre. Procès-verbal de la séance du 17 avril 1944’, 17 April 1944, CFLN 686, MAE.

  86. 86.

    In his memoirs, de Gaulle describes how meetings of the CFLN were organised. Assisted by Joxe, de Gaulle would decide on the matters to be discussed and would ask ministers for their opinions. ‘Then, I would conclude by formulating the resolution of the Council and, if need be, providing a final decision to resolve any disputes.’ If this were the case, opposition from either of the Communist members of the CFLN, or indeed from Diethelm qua Minister for War, could have been easily overruled by de Gaulle, particularly as Giacobbi supported maintaining the Committees. See de Gaulle, Mémoires de guerre, 210.

  87. 87.

    ‘La politique économique du gouvernement’, 21 July 1944, C I 591, AN. The debate took place over two days, 21–22 July 1944.

  88. 88.

    Ibid., 22 July 1944.

  89. 89.

    Ibid., 21 July 1944.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., 22 July 1944.

  91. 91.

    The reform of the Organisation Committees and OCRPI are discussed in Chapter 6.

  92. 92.

    Lettre de Pierre Mendès France, ‘Objet: Groupements économiques institues par l’autorité de fait de VICHY’, 20 April 1944, F 60 914, AN. A copy of this letter can also be found in F 60 896, AN.

  93. 93.

    William Hitchcock, France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 28–29.

  94. 94.

    While France’s coal mines were nationalised in December 1944 and certain companies, notably Renault, in early 1945, the majority of nationalisations occurred after Mendès France’s resignation on 6 April 1945. These included the Banque de France as well as the largest banks in the country, and key sectors such as gas and electricity. The best study of the post-war nationalisations remains Claire Andrieu, Lucette Le Van, and Antoine Prost (eds), Les nationalisations de la Libération (Paris: FNSP, 1987).

  95. 95.

    ‘Projet sur le rétablissement de la légalité républicaine’, 3 July 1944, CFLN 603, MAE.

  96. 96.

    ‘Rétablissement de la liberté syndicale et épuration des organisations syndicales de travailleurs et d’employeurs’, 21 January 1944, CFLN 602, MAE. The first article of the law abolished national confederations of trade unions and employers’ associations, although individual confederations, notably the CGT, the CFTC, and the CGPF, were not formally dissolved until 9 November 1940. The re-establishment of union rights necessitated the removal of this clause, but the remaining articles remained valid.

  97. 97.

    ‘Commission d’étude des problems économiques d’après-guerre. Sous-commission des Comités d’organisation. Séance du 21 avril 1944‘, 21 April 1944, CFLN 686, MAE. Emphasis added. The law of 11 July 1938 ‘on the general organisation of the Nation for wartime’ included articles on ‘economic organisation in wartime’, but these fell far short of what had been established with the law of 16 August 1940. The 1938 law granted relevant ministers the possibility of managing the trade, use, and rationing of resources deemed to be vital to the needs of the country. No new institutions were foreseen in the legislation, as the Organisation Committees would only be created in 1940.

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Brunet, LA. (2017). Nous serons les successeurs, sinon les héritiers de Vichy: Maintaining the New Industrial Order in Post-Vichy France. In: Forging Europe: Industrial Organisation in France, 1940–1952. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95198-7_5

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