A history of collaboration

By JEAN-FRANÇOIS MURACCIOLE, historian and professor at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3.
Collaboration has left an indelible mark on the history of contemporary France. Although it has been established since the 1970s that it was not the Germans but the French who wanted and practiced collaboration with the occupying forces, the fact remains that it is a vague concept. The phenomenon is infinitely complex, encompassing all the varieties of human behavior and an infinite diversity of forms and levels. Collaboration is not a clearly defined policy, and its stakes evolve as it requires constant adaptation to circumstances, to the demands of the occupying power, to French opinion and to the course of the world war. Drawing on a wealth of research carried out over the past forty years, thanks to the opening up of archives on the subject, this conference proposes to ask: was collaboration a parenthesis in history, or an exception characterized by the temporary disappearance of France's values?
A conference organized at the CHRD on January 24, 2018.