At this time, the United States still maintained diplomatic relations with the Vichy government. When American diplomats learned of Laval’s possible return, they made clear that this move would lead to the rupture of such relations.22 Once Hitler was informed of American pressure against Laval’s return, he “issued an ultimatum of his own to the effect that he would judge France’s willingness to collaborate with Germany by the presence or absence of Laval in the French Government.”23 This made Laval’s return inevitable.
On April 15, 1942, a new government was formed. Laval was to hold several ministries, including the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Laval was also designated as “head of the government,” responsible only to Pétain, now the figurehead head of state.24 In effect, Laval now ruled Vichy France, with the acquiescence and support of his German overlords.
In one critical sense, cooperation with Germany was more important to Laval in 1942 than it had been in 1940. Two years earlier, it was simply a matter of attempting to ameliorate the harshness of the German occupation and retaining whatever was left of French sovereignty. Now Germany was fighting the Soviet Union, and to Laval this made all the difference. Laval viewed the spread of Soviet communism as a greater threat to France than Germany’s National Socialism. Laval was convinced that Germany’s defeat at the hands of the Soviets would result in Soviet expansion to the Rhine, leaving France at the mercy of the Soviet Union. As Laval saw it, Germany’s interests and France’s objectives were now the same: the defeat of the communist Soviet Union.25
Thus, Laval’s oft-quoted radio statement to the French people, made during his second tenure with the Vichy government: “je veux la victoire de l’Allemagne” (“I wish for a German victory”). 26 The statement certainly proved damaging to Laval at his trial in 1945. However, as he saw it, this sentiment made him a French patriot who was acting in his country’s best interests.
As of April 1942 no major turning points had been reached in the war. The German army on the Russian front was still on the offensive and a major German victory at Tobruk in North Africa was a month or two in the future. Britain had staved off an invasion by retaining control of the skies over the English Channel, but it surely posed no threat to Germany. The United States was engaged in a full-fledged retreat in the Pacific and its major Pacific naval victories were still months away. But it was to be a long war and the war’s duration required virtually complete conscription in Germany, which in turn left its home-based industrial machine understaffed.
Recognizing the need for foreign laborers, Hitler appointed Fritz Sauckel as special labor czar in March 1942. Some of the shortages were to be filled by bringing forced laborers from the East, primarily Slavs, to Germany. But France was not immune. Sauckel set an immediate goal of three hundred thousand workers from both the occupied and unoccupied zones of France to be recruited in the month following May 15, 1942.27 Laval, however, wanted a quid quo pro, in part because the program had to be sold to the French public. The over one million French soldiers who remained POWs since their capture by the Germans in 1940 were of great concern to Laval and the French nation.28 Laval originally proposed that for every worker sent to Germany, one of these French POWs would be released and returned to France. The Germans refused. Finally, it was agreed that for every three French workers sent to Germany, one prisoner from a farm family would be allowed to return home.29
Laval announced this agreement on the radio on June 22, 1942. In his address, he told the French people that his first concern on returning to power was the return of these captured French soldiers. The worker-for-prisoner exchange program, called the Relève program, would serve two purposes. First, it would bring POWs back to their families. Second, it would make a significant contribution to end the war. As Laval saw it, France could not remain “indifferent in the face of the huge sacrifices Germany is making to construct a Europe in which we must take our place.”30 In his effort to sell the Relève program to the French public, Laval stated in this radio address that he wished for a German victory, insisting that this would give him latitude to obtain future concessions from Germany.31
Germany had multiple war objectives. One was to defeat the Allied powers and establish hegemony over Europe. Another related to the extermination of European Jewry, a policy formally implemented in July 1941 when the initial German military successes in the Soviet Union made clear that the vast majority of Europe’s Jews would now be living in places under German occupation.32
France first implemented an anti-Jewish policy in the early months of the Vichy regime with the repeal of the “Marchand Law” in August 1940. That statute prohibited the French press from attacking any particular group on grounds of race or religion when the purpose of the attack was to arouse hatred.33
Two months later, in October 1940, the Statut des juifs was passed—though Laval opposed it. This statute excluded Jews from top positions in the civil service and certain other high-ranking professions. There followed a series of laws permitting the confinement of foreign Jews and a statute stripping Algerian Jews of French citizenship. Postwar inquiry into the passage of these statutes reveals little German pressure towards their enactment; they appear to have been totally French-inspired initiatives.34
While there were notorious anti-Semites in France, Laval does not appear to have been one of them.35 Nevertheless, when it came to implementing the German plan to murder all of European Jewry, Laval participated to a degree; the degree was defined by the difference between Jews in France who were French citizens and those who were refugees from Germany or German-occupied territories. In June 1942, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, announced that all Jews in France were to be deported. Laval became aware of the announcement a month later.36 By the end of the summer, twenty-seven thousand Jews, mostly foreign Jews, had been deported. Laval was not reluctant to have the French police assist in the round-ups that preceded deportation. When the Catholic Church protested the arrest of foreign Jews, Laval made clear to Otto Abetz, the German ambassador, that he would use the local police to drag Jews out of any church or religious building in which they were given shelter. Indeed, Laval indicated that he was glad for the opportunity to get rid of the foreign Jews, as they had always been a problem in France.
As Germany’s military successes became fewer, the intensity of its efforts to murder Jews increased. Laval was somewhat successful in preventing the deportation of Jews who were French citizens when the Germans asked for legislation depriving Jews of citizenship, or at least voiding any citizenship granted as of 1927. Laval actually refused to assent to such legislation.37 The end result was that of the three hundred thousand Jews in France, about a quarter were sent to Poland, where most were gassed immediately. About a quarter of the seventy-five thousand Jews were French citizens.38 Therefore, it is safe to say that Laval clearly assisted in the process by which a large number of Jews were killed. His policies, however, undoubtedly also saved a large number of Jews.39 Laval himself linked the two: “[E]very time a foreign Jew leaves our territory, it’s one more gained for France’s.”40 Thus, Germany’s efforts to eradicate Jewry from the face of Europe received some, but by no means complete, assistance from Laval.
Arrest, Flight, and Prelude to Trial
By mid-1944, the tide turned clearly against Germany. As a consequence, the powers of the Pétain regime and its ability to maneuver vis-à-vis the Germans continued to erode. On August 17, 1944, Laval was in Paris with Abetz, when Abetz, implementing a directive from German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop that the seat of the Vichy government was to be transferred from