Formation of government During the
Phoney War, Laval was cautiously ambivalent towards the conflict. He was on record as saying in March 1940 that although the war could have been avoided by diplomatic means, it was now up to the government to prosecute it with the utmost vigour. On 9 June 1940, the Germans were advancing on a front more than long across the entire width of France. As far as General
Maxime Weygand was concerned, "if the Germans crossed the
Seine and the
Marne, it was the end". Simultaneously, Marshal
Philippe Pétain was increasing the pressure upon Prime Minister
Paul Reynaud to call for an armistice. Meanwhile, Laval was in Châteldon. On 10 June, in view of the German advance, the government left Paris for
Tours. Weygand had informed Reynaud that "the final rupture of our lines may take place at any time". Then, "our forces would continue to fight until their strength and resources were extinguished. But their disintegration would be no more than a matter of time". Weygand had avoided using the word "armistice", but it was on the minds of all of those who were involved and was opposed to by Reynaud. Laval had meanwhile left Châteldon for
Bordeaux, where his daughter nearly convinced him of the necessity of going to the United States. Instead, it was reported that he was sending "messengers and messengers" to Pétain. As the Germans occupied Paris, Pétain was asked to form a new government. To everyone's surprise, he produced a list of his ministers, which was convincing proof that he had been expecting and had been prepared for the President's summons. When he was informed that he was to be appointed Minister of Justice, Laval's temper and ambitions became apparent as he ferociously demanded of Pétain, despite the objections of other men of government, to make him Minister of Foreign Affairs. Laval realised that only through that position could he effect a reversal of alliances and bring himself to favour with Nazi Germany, the military power that he viewed as the inevitable victor. However, Permanent Under-Secretary
François Charles-Roux refused to serve under Laval. One consequence of those events was that Laval was later able to claim that he had not been part of the government that requested the armistice. His name did not appear in the chronicles of events until June, when he began to assume a more active role in criticising the government's decision to leave France for
French North Africa. Although the final terms of the armistice were harsh, the
French colonial empire was left untouched, the
French Navy was maintained, and the French government was nominally allowed to administer the
occupied and unoccupied zones if it obeyed German directives. The concept of "collaboration" had been written into the Armistice Convention before Laval joined the government. The French representatives who affixed their signatures to the text accepted the term:
In Vichy government, 1940 and Pétain in 1940 (from
Frank Capra's documentary film
Divide and Conquer, 1943) By then, there was very little left of Laval the socialist. He now openly sympathized with
National Socialism and was convinced that Germany would win the war. For that reason, Laval felt France needed to emulate the Third Reich and its totalitarian regime as much as possible. To that end, when he was included in the Cabinet as minister of state, Laval set about with the work for which he is remembered: dismantling the Third Republic and its democracy and taking up the fascist cause. In October 1940, Laval understood collaboration more or less in the same sense as Pétain. For both, that meant giving up the least possible to get the most in return. Laval, in his role of go-between, was forced to be in constant touch with the German authorities, to shift ground, to be wily and to plan ahead. All of that under the circumstances drew more attention to him than to the Marshal and made him appear to many Frenchmen as "the agent of collaboration", and to others, he was "the Germans' man". The meetings between Pétain and
Adolf Hitler and between Laval and Hitler are often used as evidence of Vichy collaboration with the Nazis. In fact,
Montoire (24–26 October 1940) was a disappointment to both sides. Hitler wanted France to declare war on Britain, and the French wanted improved relations with their conqueror. Neither happened, and virtually the only concession that the French obtained was the 'Berlin Protocol' of 16 November 1940, which provided for the release of certain categories of French
prisoners-of-war. In November 1940, Laval took a number of pro-German decisions of his own, without consulting with colleagues. The most notorious examples concerned turning the
RTB Bor copper mines and the Belgian gold reserves over to German control. After the war, Laval's justification, apart from a denial that he acted unilaterally, was that Vichy was powerless to prevent the Germans from gaining something that they were clearly so eager to obtain.
Dismissal, 1940–1942 Laval's actions were a factor in his dismissal on 13 December 1940. Pétain asked all of the ministers to sign a collective letter of resignation during a full cabinet meeting. Laval did so since he thought that it was a device to get rid of Labour Minister M. Belin. Laval was therefore stunned when Pétain announced, "the resignations of MM. Laval and
Ripert are accepted". That evening, Laval was arrested and driven by the police to his home in
Châteldon. The following day, Pétain announced his decision to remove Laval from the government and replace him with
Pierre-Étienne Flandin. The reason was a fundamental incompatibility with Pétain. Laval's methods of working appeared slovenly to Pétain's precise military mind, and Laval showed a marked lack of deference, as instanced by a habit of blowing cigarette smoke in Pétain's face. By doing so, he aroused Pétain's irritation and the anger of the entire cabinet. Laval was detained under
house arrest for some time, but was released after the intervention of German ambassador
Otto Abetz, who had him brought to
Paris, where he lived under German protection, while continuing to take part in the public and political life. On 27 August 1941, several top Vichyites, including Laval, attended a review of the
Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a
collaborationist militia. Paul Collette, a member of the
Croix-de-Feu, shot Laval (and also
Marcel Déat, another prominent collaborationist), during a troop review and slightly wounded him, but Laval soon recovered from the injury.
Return to power, 1942–1944 Laval returned to power in April 1942. In an infamous radio speech on 22 June 1942, Laval outlined his policy objectives by expressing his "desire to re-establish normal and trusting relations with Germany and Italy". He added he "wished for a German victory" because otherwise "
Bolshevism [would] establish itself everywhere". The effect of such speech on public opinion was disastrous, since it made clear to everyone that the Vichy government was
de facto subservient to the Germans; Pétain and the other ministers were also bewildered and highly irritated by Laval's nerve. Laval had been in power for a mere two months when he was faced with the decision of
providing forced labour to Germany, which was short of skilled labour because it needed troop replacements on the
Eastern Front. Unlike other occupied countries, France was technically protected by the armistice, and its workers could not be simply rounded up for transportation. In the occupied zone, the Germans used intimidation and the control of raw materials to create unemployment and thus create reasons for French labourers to volunteer to work in Germany. Laval received German demands to send more than 300,000 skilled labourers immediately to factories in Germany. Laval delayed by making a counteroffer of one worker in return for one French prisoner-of-war. The proposal was sent to Hitler, and a compromise was reached that one prisoner-of-war would be repatriated for every three workers arriving in Germany. Laval's precise role in the deportation of Jews has been hotly debated by both his accusers and his defenders. The Germans never told the Vichy French authorities about the
extermination camps; instead, the French were told that Jews were being deported as forced labour for the Axis war effort. When ordered to have all Jews in France rounded up to be transported to
German-occupied Poland, Laval negotiated a compromise by allowing only Jews who were not
French citizens to be forfeited to German control. It was estimated that by the end of the war, the Germans had killed 90% of the Jewish population in other occupied countries, but in France, 50% of the prewar French and foreign Jewish population, with perhaps 90% of the purely-French Jewish population still remaining alive. Laval went beyond the orders given to him by the Germans, as he included Jewish children under 16, whom the Germans had given him permission to spare, in the deportations. In his book
Churches and the Holocaust,
Mordecai Paldiel claims that when the Protestant leader
Marc Boegner visited Laval to remonstrate, Laval claimed that he had ordered children to be deported along with their parents because families should not be separated, and "children should remain with their parents". According to Paldiel, when Boegner argued that the children would almost certainly die, Laval replied that "not one [Jewish child] must remain in France". It was believed that Laval also attempted to prevent Jewish children gaining visas to the United States that had been arranged by the
American Friends Service Committee and that Laval was committed less to expelling Jewish children from France than to making sure they reached Nazi camps. More and more, the insoluble dilemma of collaboration faced Laval and his chief of staff, ; Laval had to maintain Vichy's authority to prevent Germany from installing a
puppet government, which would be made up of French Nazis such as
Jacques Doriot. When the Allied landings in French North Africa (
Operation Torch) began in November 1942, Germany and Italy
occupied the Zone libre, thus ending any factual sovereignty of the Vichy government over Metropolitan France. Hitler continued to ask whether the French government was prepared to fight at his side and required Vichy to declare war against Britain: Laval and Pétain agreed to maintain a firm refusal, struggling against ultracollaborationist ministers. In 1943, Laval became the nominal leader of the newly created
Milice, but its operational leader was Secretary General
Joseph Darnand. In a speech broadcast during the
Normandy landings in June 1944, Laval appealed to the nation:In August 1944, as Allied forces were approaching Paris, Laval attempted a last-ditch plot to prevent de Gaulle or the Communist Party from taking power: with permission from the Germans, he attempted to call back the
National Assembly (which had not been meeting since 1940) with the goal of giving it the power to form a government that could be seen as legitimate. With the endorsement of German ambassador
Otto Abetz, Laval had
Édouard Herriot, President of the
Chamber of Deputies, released from imprisonment and brought back to Paris, so that he could re-convene the Parliament; the President of the
Senate Jules Jeanneney was also sought, but could not be found. Laval's machinations failed: after being initially collaborative, Herriot refused to go on with the plan due to the absence of Jeanneney, while the Germans changed their minds after the intervention of the ultracollaborationists
Marcel Déat and
Fernand de Brinon. On 17 August Herriot was arrested by the Germans and deported to
Laxou and then to
Potsdam, thus ending any possibility of recalling the Assembly.
Exile in Sigmaringen and Spain, 1944–1945 On the same day, Laval and some others were also arrested by the Germans and transported to
Belfort, where they arrived on 19 August. In view of the speed of
the Allied advance, what was left of the Vichy government was moved on 7 September 1944 from Belfort to the
Sigmaringen enclave in Germany. Pétain took residence at the
Hohenzollern castle in
Sigmaringen. At first, Laval also resided in that castle. In January 1945 Laval was assigned to the Stauffenberg castle in Wilflingen, 12 km outside the Sigmaringen enclave. By April 1945, US General
George S. Patton's army approached Sigmaringen and so the Vichy ministers were forced to seek their own refuge. Laval received permission to enter
Spain and was flown to
Barcelona by a
Luftwaffe plane. However, 90 days later,
Charles de Gaulle pressured Spain to expel Laval. The same
Luftwaffe plane that had flown him to Spain then flew him to the
American-occupied zone of Austria. The American authorities immediately arrested Laval and his wife and turned them over to the
Free French. They were flown to Paris to be imprisoned at
Fresnes Prison. Madame Laval was later released, but Pierre Laval remained in prison to be tried for treason. Prior to his arrest, Laval had planned to move to
Sintra,
Portugal, where a house had been leased for him. ==Trial and execution==