Vichy State
| French State | ||||||||||
| État Français | ||||||||||
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Client state of Germany (1940–42) Puppet government of Germany (1942–44) Government-in-exile (1944–45) |
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Motto "Travail, Famille, Patrie" "Work, Family, Fatherland" |
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Anthem "La Marseillaise" (official) "Maréchal, nous voilà!" Marshal, here we are! (unofficial) |
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 The French State in 1942:
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 The gradual loss of all Vichy territory to Free France and the Axis powers. Legend.
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| Capital |
Vichy (de facto) Parisa(de jure) |
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| Capital-in-exile | Sigmaringen (1944–45) | |||||||||
| Languages | French | |||||||||
| Government | Authoritarian state | |||||||||
| Chief of State | ||||||||||
| • | 1940–1944 | Philippe Pétain | ||||||||
| Prime Minister | ||||||||||
| • | 1940–1942 | Philippe Pétain | ||||||||
| • | 1942–1944 | Pierre Laval | ||||||||
| Legislature | National Assembly | |||||||||
| Historical era | World War II | |||||||||
| • | Second Compiègne | 22 June 1940 | ||||||||
| • | Pétain given full powers | 10 July 1940 | ||||||||
| • | Operation Torch | 8 November 1942 | ||||||||
| • | Case Anton | 11 November 1942 | ||||||||
| • | German retreat | Summer 1944 | ||||||||
| • | Disestablished | 1944 | ||||||||
| • | Capture of the Sigmaringen enclave | 22 April 1945 | ||||||||
| Currency | French franc | |||||||||
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| a. | Paris remained the formal capital of the French State, although the Vichy government never operated from there. | |||||||||
| b. | Although the French Republic's institutions were officially maintained, the word "Republic" never occurred in any official document of the Vichy government. | |||||||||
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Vichy France (French: Régime de Vichy) is the common name of the French State (État français) headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It represented the unoccupied "Free Zone" (zone libre) in the southern part of metropolitan France and the French colonial empire.
From 1940 to 1942, while the Vichy regime was the nominal government of all of France except Alsace-Lorraine, the German militarily occupied northern France. While Paris remained the de jure capital of France, the government chose to relocate to the town of Vichy, 360 km (220 mi) to the south in the zone libre, which thus became the de facto capital of the French State. Following the Allied landings in French North Africa in November 1942, southern France was also militarily occupied by Germany and Italy. Petain's regime remained in Vichy as the nominal government of France, albeit one that clearly operated as a de facto client state of Nazi Germany from November 1942 onward. The Vichy government nominally remained in existence on paper until the end of the war, although it lost its all remaining de facto authority in late 1944 when the Allies liberated the whole of France.
After being appointed Premier by President Albert Lebrun, Marshal Pétain ordered the French government's military representatives to sign an armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940. Pétain subsequently established an authoritarian regime when the National Assembly of the French Third Republic granted him full powers on 10 July 1940. At that point, the Third Republic was dissolved. Calling for "National Regeneration", the French government at Vichy reversed many liberal policies and began tight supervision of the economy, with central planning a key feature. Labour unions came under tight government control. The independence of women was reversed, with an emphasis put on motherhood. Conservative Catholics became prominent. Paris lost its avant-garde status in European art and culture. The media were tightly controlled and stressed virulent anti-Semitism, and, after June 1941, anti-Bolshevism.
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