My posting of Nationalist music continues with this rousing little number from the État Français (French State; popularly known as Vichy France).
Following the French defeat in 1940 the government fell and Marshal Philippe Pétain, the "Lion of Verdun" of WW1 fame, araised as the leader of a new French puppet state of Germany.
Whilst the northern half of France was placed under temporary occupation by Germany, Hitler allowed Pétain to govern his own pseudo-independent French State in the southern half of the country. The French puppet was governed from the town of Vichy, resulting in her popular name of Vichy France.
Pétain, as the ardent traditionalist he was, who came from a time when France was dominated by nationalist and irredentist politics, believed that France had lost the Battle of France because of Bolshevik influences in the 1930s, which had wrought chaos in French politics throughout the 1930s, Pétain believed that these Communist influences had made France weak and lacking in spirit, and he sought to combat them in his new state.
Pétain sought to return to France a spirit of unabashed nationalism and national pride that had been lost following WW1, Pétain had lead proud French armies into battle in WW1, however, 1930s France was very different. Her soul had been wounded by the carnage of the great war, and there was no desire for another war. The Tricolour did not fly proudly over steel-hearted French armies, as she had done 25 years earlier.
Pétain created a new national motto - Travail, Patrie, Famille (Work, Fatherland, Family), which he hoped would inspire a proud sense of national community and pride in his nation.
Vichy was invaded and occupied by German forces in November, 1942, as an immediate reaction to Operation Torch in North Africa, the Germans disbanded the remaining Vichy French units and took complete military control.
Despite this, they did not liquidate the regime entirely, Vichy was allowed to maintain civil powers, this was the situation until June, 1944, when the governent began a gradual collapse after the Allies had invaded France.
On the 7th of September, the remaining cabinet members fled to Sigmaringen, establishing a puppet government-in-exie, known as the Sigmaringen enclave. This rump government finally fell in February, 1945, when Allied French armies took the city.
