Xavier Vallat - Vichy France

Vichy France

After the German occupation of France in June 1940, Vallat supported the rise to power of Marshall Philippe Pétain at head of a collaborationist regime based in Vichy. In March 1941, he was appointed as head of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Questions, a body set up to implement the anti-Semitic laws enacted by Pétain's government. In this position he oversaw the "Aryanisation" of the French economy, education system, civil service and professions, and the enforcement of laws requiring all Jews to be registered with the police. As the historian Robert Paxton has demonstrated, these laws were passed by the Vichy regime on its own initiative and not under German pressure, as both Pétain and Vallat claimed at their trials after the war.

Although he was a zealous anti-Semite, Vallat was also a French patriot, and he became increasingly angry at the refusal of the Germans to reward Vichy's co-operation with a less restrictive occupation regime. He was particularly critical, as a veteran, of the German refusal to release almost two million French prisoners-of-war. As a result, the German Ambassador to Vichy, Otto Abetz, demanded that Pétain dismiss Vallat, which he did in May 1942. This meant that it was Vallat's successor, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who oversaw most of French co-operation with the German deportation of more than 70,000 French Jews to the extermination camp at Auschwitz, where most of them were killed.

Vallat remained a supporter of Vichy's policies, however, and in June 1944, when the Allied armies had already landed in Normandy, he was appointed head of the Vichy Radio following the assassination of Philippe Henriot by the Resistance. He broadcast regular anti-Semitic tirades until the Allies occupied Vichy in August.