Darlan named Pétain’s successor

On 10 February 1941 Marshal Philippe Pétain, Head of the French State, issued a constitutional act designating Admiral of the Fleet François Darlan as his successor. The day before, the Foreign Minister, Pierre-Étienne Flandin, had resigned, and Darlan, Minister of Marine since June 1940, became Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister. Within a few days he had also gathered the interior and information portfolios into his hands, and at the end of February the composition of his government was announced. This ended the crisis in Vichy that had been running since mid-December, triggered by the dismissal of Pierre Laval.

Popular chronologies sum up these events in two sentences, and both need correcting. Under 3 February they state that the Germans forcibly restored Laval to office in Vichy. That did not happen: the Germans had indeed been pressing for his return since December, but Pétain refused, and Laval did not rejoin the government until April 1942. Under 24 February they record that Darlan became head of the Vichy government. In practice he did, but formally Pétain remained head of government, an office he had combined with that of head of state since July 1940; Darlan was Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, and his appointment was made on 9–10 February. At the end of February – between 21 and 25 February, according to various sources – only the full composition of the new cabinet was announced. The key date of the crisis is therefore 10 February, the day of the constitutional act.

The December coup in Vichy

Since July 1940 Laval had been Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, and the fourth constitutional act of 12 July had designated him as the Marshal’s successor. He had brought the Vichy regime into being, in October he arranged the meeting between Pétain and Hitler at Montoire, and he took over the Foreign Ministry. In the autumn he pursued a policy of collaboration on his own initiative: he met Hermann Göring and the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, discussed joint action against the Gaullists in Chad, and handed over to the Germans the National Bank of Belgium’s gold entrusted to France and the French shares in the copper mines at Bor. All this brought no easing of the armistice terms, only the growing distrust of the Marshal, who considered Laval too independent, disrespectful and unpopular in the country. Laval was also one of the few professional politicians of the old Chamber and Senate in the government, and supporters of the “National Revolution” saw him as a relic of the hated Republic.

The immediate pretext was a planned ceremony in Paris. Hitler had decided to return to France the remains of Napoleon’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt, which were to be laid to rest at Les Invalides on 15 December, and Laval wanted Pétain to attend. In the Marshal’s entourage there were fears that in the occupied capital the Germans might detain him and impose Laval on him as the real ruler. On the evening of 13 December 1940 Pétain assembled the government and asked all the ministers to sign a collective resignation. Laval signed, thinking the aim was to get rid of one of his colleagues. The Marshal, however, announced that he was accepting only two resignations: Laval’s and that of the Education Minister, Georges Ripert. That same night Laval was detained by men of the Interior Minister, Marcel Peyrouton, and driven under guard to his château at Châteldon. A further constitutional act, numbered 4 ter, annulled his designation as successor. On 14 December Pétain announced on the radio that Laval was no longer a member of the government, and the Foreign Ministry was taken over by Flandin, a former prime minister and Laval’s rival. From then on the government was in practice run by three men: Flandin, Darlan and the War Minister, General Charles Huntziger. The Marshal did not go to Paris, and the Duke of Reichstadt’s coffin was placed in Les Invalides without him.

Abetz in Vichy

The Germans regarded Laval’s dismissal as aimed at themselves. On 17 December Abetz arrived in Vichy with an armed escort and declared that Hitler was displeased and that collaboration would not continue unless Laval returned to the government. He also demanded that power be entrusted to a directorate of Darlan, Huntziger and Flandin, that four ministers, including Peyrouton, be removed, and that Fernand de Brinon be appointed the government’s representative to the occupation authorities in Paris. Pétain agreed to some of the demands – Brinon did receive the post – but on Laval he was immovable: he declared that his decision was irrevocable and threatened to step down. At Abetz’s insistence Laval was released, and after a stormy conversation with the Marshal in the ambassador’s presence he left for Paris with the Germans that evening. From then on he lived in the occupied zone under German protection.

Berlin responded with pressure. Abetz refused all contact with Flandin, the German authorities made it difficult for members of the government to cross the demarcation line, and the collaborationist Paris press, led by Marcel Déat, attacked Vichy as a nest of reactionaries and men tied to England. Over Christmas Darlan went to meet Adolf Hitler; the meeting took place on 25 December in Hitler’s special train near La Ferrière-sur-Epte, not far from Beauvais. According to French accounts, Hitler spoke of Laval’s dismissal as proof of France’s ill will and threatened that the Reich would cease to treat it as a partner. Darlan handed him a letter from Pétain confirming his intention to continue the policy of Montoire, and gave assurances that a change of men did not mean a change of course. He returned convinced that he, and not Flandin, could be the Germans’ interlocutor.

The meeting at La Ferté-Hauterive

Flandin, a leader of the liberal right under the Third Republic, wanted to pursue a more balanced policy than Laval. He supported the course set at Montoire, but through intermediaries – Professor Louis Rougier and the minister Jacques Chevalier – he conducted confidential talks with the British intended to ease the blockade and allow the unoccupied zone to be supplied through the Mediterranean ports. When at the beginning of January he informed the German armistice commission about them, the arrangement collapsed. On 22 January he announced the creation of a National Council, an advisory body composed largely of former parliamentarians and businessmen, which was meant to give the regime a more respectable face. Towards the Germans, however, he was powerless, because they simply refused to talk to him. In January the new United States ambassador, Admiral William Leahy, was already in Vichy, sent by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to keep the Marshal from making further concessions to the Reich.

Pétain tried to break the deadlock. On 18 January 1941 he met Laval in his railway carriage at the station of La Ferté-Hauterive, some 25 kilometres north of Vichy, in the unoccupied zone. The conversation lasted about two hours. The only witness, the head of the Marshal’s civil cabinet, Henry du Moulin de Labarthète, recalled that Pétain reproached Laval for keeping information from him and acting on his own. In the end the two agreed on a press communiqué that spoke of misunderstandings having been cleared up. Laval later presented the meeting as a reconciliation. It was one only on a personal level, however: the Marshal was prepared to take him back as one of the ministers, without special powers, while Laval would return only as the real head of government, with the interior or foreign ministry in his hands.

February: Flandin’s departure

At the beginning of February Berlin’s stance settled the matter. The Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, instructed Abetz that Laval should remain in Paris, in the occupied zone, as a card held in reserve in case of a dispute with the Marshal. For the Germans it was enough to have someone in Vichy who pursued a policy of collaboration and with whom they could talk. At the turn of January and February Darlan went to Paris – first stopped at the demarcation line, then let through – and talked with Abetz and with Laval. Laval demanded full power. According to accounts that later circulated in Vichy, when asked what would become of the Marshal under his plans, he replied that he would put him on the mantelpiece like an ornament. Whether exactly those words were spoken is not known, but Darlan returned convinced that there would be no compromise with Laval and that the Germans would not insist on him personally.

Flandin realised that he was an obstacle. The Germans would not receive him and had no intention of doing so, while Darlan, who had talked with Hitler, Abetz and Laval, had become the only minister capable of negotiating with the occupier. On 9 February 1941 Flandin resigned. In a statement he stressed that he had sought to carry out the policy of collaboration while preserving the independence that the armistice guaranteed France. His tenure had lasted 57 days. General Émile Laure, one of Pétain’s closest associates, later called that day the decisive turning point in the history of Vichy.

The act of 10 February

On 9 and 10 February Darlan took up the posts of Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister, while keeping the navy portfolio. On 10 February Pétain signed a further version of the fourth constitutional act, on the deputising for and succession to the head of state, numbered 4 quater. Under it, should the Marshal die or be unable to exercise power, his functions were to pass to Darlan. The act was published in the official gazette the next day, which is why some accounts give the date as 11 February. According to one officer of the Marshal’s entourage, Pétain said that evening that if he were to go, he would leave the fate of the country in the hands of a man who had known how to run his affairs with competence and authority.

Darlan, then an Admiral of the Fleet not quite sixty years old, was not a politician by choice. He came from a republican family from Nérac – his father had been a Radical deputy and Minister of Justice – and he himself had spent years building a modern navy. He did not share the clerical and traditionalist zeal of the “National Revolution”, but since the British attack on Mers-el-Kébir in July 1940 he had been a determined Anglophobe and regarded German victory as a foregone conclusion. He believed that by offering the Reich economic and limited military co-operation France could recover its prisoners of war, ease the armistice terms, keep its fleet and colonial empire, and secure a better place in a future German-led Europe than that of a defeated enemy. In this respect he differed little from Laval. The difference was that Pétain trusted him.

The admiral’s government

In the following days Darlan accumulated further posts. On 16 February he took over the Interior Ministry from Peyrouton, whom the Germans could not forgive for arresting Laval, and soon afterwards also oversight of information and propaganda. Peyrouton left to become ambassador to Argentina. The other ministers remained in office until the composition of the new cabinet was announced at the end of February; sources give dates from 21 to 25 February here, and French lists of governments usually take the position as of 24 February. Huntziger remained War Minister and General Maxime Weygand the government’s Delegate-General in North Africa. The novelty lay in young technocrats from the world of big industry and banking, such as Pierre Pucheu, François Lehideux and Jacques Barnaud, and alongside them the journalist and historian Jacques Benoist-Méchin, who on 25 February, with the backing of Abetz and Brinon, became deputy secretary-general to the Vice-President of the Council and was to act as intermediary in dealings with the Germans. Education went to the ancient historian Jérôme Carcopino.

The make-up of the cabinet gave rise in Vichy to the legend of the “Synarchy”, a secret conspiracy of bankers and technocrats supposedly bent on seizing control of the state. Historians regard it as a myth, but the change was real: the last men associated with the parliamentarism of the Third Republic disappeared from the government, and executive power passed to admirals and experts ready to treat collaboration as a technical matter. For the Germans it was a more predictable government than Flandin’s team and, in the view of some historians, even more inclined to collaborate than Laval’s. Pétain remained head of state and formally head of government; he presided over the Council of Ministers and signed legislation, but day-to-day government passed into Darlan’s hands. Laval stayed in Paris and waited.

Place in the war

Darlan governed Vichy for fourteen months and took collaboration further than his predecessor. In March 1941 the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs was established, and in June a second, harsher Statute on Jews was proclaimed. In the spring, when a rising against the British broke out in Iraq, Darlan allowed the Luftwaffe to use airfields in Syria; on 11 May he talked with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, and at the end of May he signed with Abetz the Paris Protocols, which opened bases at Aleppo, Bizerta and Dakar to the Germans. Weygand saw to it that they were not ratified, but the opening of Syria provoked the British and Free French Syria campaign in the summer of 1941. In July Darlan’s government agreed to a joint defence of Indochina with Japan, which opened the way for the Japanese to move south, towards Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.

Laval did not disappear from the scene. On 27 August 1941 he was wounded in an assassination attempt at Versailles, and when the Germans ceased to trust the admiral, who was refusing them workers and had begun seeking contact with the Americans, they demanded Laval’s return. On 18 April 1942 Laval became head of government, this time with precisely that title, created especially for him. Darlan remained Pétain’s successor and commander-in-chief of the Vichy armed forces. In November 1942, present in Algiers by chance at the moment of the Allied landings, he went over to their side, and on 24 December he was killed by an assassin. The crisis of December 1940 and February 1941 showed the limits of Vichy’s “independence”: Pétain could dismiss a minister whom the Germans wanted to see in power, but his successor could only be someone the occupier was prepared to accept as an interlocutor.