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The Organisation Committees Between Collaboration and Resistance, 1941–1944

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Forging Europe: Industrial Organisation in France, 1940–1952

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Abstract

This chapter examines the actions of the Organisation Committee for Steel (CORSID) and particularly its response to Vichy policies such as the Labour Charter, the deportation of French workers to Germany, and the Speer–Bichelonne agreement that envisaged French factories contributing to the German war economy. Based on previously unexploited archival sources, this chapter shows that CORSID went to great lengths to undermine any attempts to remove workers from French factories, while it welcomed initiatives that would allow factories to increase production for the Reich. It concludes that the industrialists running CORSID were guided primarily by business interests and that their actions must be seen as neither resistance nor collaboration.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to Henry Rousso, the archives of the Organisation Committees were preserved by the Archives nationales until the 1970s, at which point they seem to have been destroyed. See Rousso, ‘L’organisation industrielle de Vichy’ in Vichy. L’événement, la mémoire, l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).

  2. 2.

    The minutes of CORSID’s meetings can be consulted at the Archives nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, under 139 AQ 82. While the meetings are officially of the grouping for the Centre-Ouest region – equivalent to the Non-Occupied Zone – a remarkable range of issues were discussed. In addition to issues relating to the French steel industry as a whole, a number of specfic cases in the Occupied Zone were examined in detail.

  3. 3.

    The other Secretary General was Henri Lafond. OCRPI was centralised in the Ministry for Industrial Production, although the presence of a German official with veto powers on each OCRPI Section impinged on Vichy’s freedom of action.

  4. 4.

    Pucheu was an industrialist with ties to the far-right Croix de feu and Parti populaire français (PPF) in the 1930s; his appointment was therefore quite a shift from the trade unionist Belin. Pucheu later served as Minister for the Interior until the return to government of Pierre Laval in April 1942. His ill-fated attempt to join the Resistance in Algeria in 1943 is discussed in Chapter 5.

  5. 5.

    COA was the first Organisation Committee created, on 9 September 1940, and Lehideux remained its president throughout the war. Having married Louis Renault’s niece, Lehideux had been Director General of Renault from 1934 until his resignation in August 1940.

  6. 6.

    Dozens of letters criticising the Committees are preserved among Pétain’s papers, ‘Papiers du chef d’Etat, Etat français’, 2 AG 611 and 612, AN. Criticisms levelled against the Organisation Committees and the minister responsible for their creation, René Belin, are discussed in Chapter 3.

  7. 7.

    Pétain, ‘Message du 12 août 1941’ in Discours aux français (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), 167. In his memoirs Lehideux mistakenly states that the speech was broadcast on 11 August. See Lehideux, De Renault à Pétain (Paris: Editions Pygmalion, 2001), 317.

  8. 8.

    Pétain, ‘Message du 12 août 1941’, 171.

  9. 9.

    Lehideux, De Renault à Pétain, 317–318.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 321.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Pétain, ‘Discours du 1 mars 1941’ in Discours aux français, 113. Social Committees, a key component of the Labour Charter, are discussed below.

  13. 13.

    The most comprehensive treatment of the National Revolution is Limore Yagil, ‘L’Homme nouveau’ et la Révolution nationale de Vichy (1940–1944) (Paris: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 1997), while Julian Jackson’s chapter on the National Revolution in France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) offers the best synthesis.

  14. 14.

    The four original members of CORSID came from some of the largest firms, although the three largest – De Wendel, Schneider, and Nord – were not represented in the Committee.

  15. 15.

    ‘Etude sur les CO’, 10 September 1941, F 37 20, AN.

  16. 16.

    The minutes are kept in the archives of the firm Marine and Homécourt, now held by the Archives nationales in the file 139 AQ 82. These meetings were for the Groupement Centre-Ouest, corresponding roughly to the Occupied Zone. Although Léon Daum presided over this grouping, the other original members of CORSID attended nearly every meeting, as did the representative of the Ministry for Industrial Production. Francou’s name does not feature among the list of participants for a single meeting.

  17. 17.

    The best study of the Labour Charter is Jean-Pierre Le Crom’s Syndicats nous voilà! (Paris: Editions de l’Atelier, 1995), while the classic study remains Jacques Julliard, ‘La Charte du travail’ in René Rémond (ed.), Le gouvernement de Vichy, 1940–1942 (Paris: FNSP, 1972).

  18. 18.

    These can be found in the dossier ‘“Charte du travail”, projets de base 1940–1941’ in 98 J 9, Fonds Belin, IHS.

  19. 19.

    See the dossier ‘Charte du travail, projets de René Belin avant decembre 1940, dossier de travail de P. Laroque’ in 98 J 7, Fonds Belin, IHS. Laroque had joined the Ministry of Labour in 1931, coincidentally during Pierre Laval’s first stint as Prime Minister. He worked closely with Belin until the autumn of 1940, when he was dismissed under anti-Semitic legislation introduced by Vichy. Under de Gaulle, he later became Director General for Social Security in October 1944 and came to be known as the father of social security in post-war France. See Eric Jabbari, Pierre Laroque and the Welfare State in Postwar France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  20. 20.

    ‘Charte du travail italienne, 1927’, (undated, but among Belin’s papers from his first months as Minister for Industrial Production in summer 1940), 98 J 8, Fonds Belin, IHS.

  21. 21.

    See Julius Reiter, Entstehung und staatsrechtliche Theorie der italienischen Carta del Lavoro (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2005).

  22. 22.

    See Debbie Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies, 1930–1944 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 94–102. The strategy of improving workers’ rights to undermine the appeal of communism became similarly prevalent in France during the Cold War; see John W. Young, France, the Cold War, and the Western Alliance, 1944–1949 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990) and Philippe Buton, Les lendemains qui déchantent. Le Parti communiste français à la Libération (Paris: FNSP, 1993).

  23. 23.

    See dossier ‘Correspondence avec le ministre des finances, décembre 1940’, December 1940, 98 J 9, Fonds Belin, IHS.

  24. 24.

    Lettre à Pétain (not signed), 28 April 1941, 2 AG 611, AN. On the debate between ‘syndicalism’ and ‘corporatism’, see Le Crom, Syndicats nous voilà!.

  25. 25.

    Richard Vinen, The Politics of French Business, 1936–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 107–108. Baudouin resigned from Cabinet following Pétain’s meeting with Hitler at Montoire in October 1940.

  26. 26.

    ‘Réponse de l’administration militaire allemande à la Charte’, 21 October 1941, 98 J 9, IHS.

  27. 27.

    The two largest trade union confederations, the CGT and the CFTC, were dissolved by decree on 9 November 1940.

  28. 28.

    In the event, the minimum wage was never put into practice due to the context of the war and France’s worsening financial position. In 1944 the CFLN abolished the Charter in its entirety, including its more palatable provisions, meaning that the minimum wage provisions were never actually put into practice. Ultimately, minimum wage legislation would be introduced in 1950 in the form of the salaire minimum interprofessionnel garanti (SMIG).

  29. 29.

    See Le Crom, Syndicats nous voilà!, 392.

  30. 30.

    A series of alternative drafts and requests for modifications from Belin and others between 4 and 22 October 1941 are preserved among Pétain’s papers. See ‘Papiers de chef d’Etat, Etat français’, 2 AG 611, AN.

  31. 31.

    The ‘professional families’ were ultimately created in May 1942. See ‘Création des familles professionnelles’, 16 May 1942, F 12 9953, AN.

  32. 32.

    Like Bichelonne, Henri Lafond was a graduate of the Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines. A banker by profession, Lafond worked in the Ministry for Industrial Production between 1940 and 1942, when he returned to banking. He pursued a successful post-war career in the private sector until his assassination by an OAS militant in 1963.

  33. 33.

    ‘Projet de répartition des comités d’organisation du Secrétaire Géneral de l’énergie en famille’ by Henri Lafond, 12 December 1941, F 12 9953, AN.

  34. 34.

    ‘Note pour Monsieur le secrétaire général de l’énergie’, 12 November 1941, F 12 9953, AN.

  35. 35.

    Henry Rousso, ‘L’organisation industrielle de Vichy’ in Vichy. L’événement, la mémoire, l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 79–109, here 99–100. Richard Vinen rightly points out that the last two industries were typically more supportive of the National Revolution, but that the action on the part of the mining industry is surprising. See Vinen, The Politics of French Business, 115.

  36. 36.

    ‘Création d’un office des comités sociaux’, 15 March 1944, F 12 9953, AN.

  37. 37.

    Titre 1, Article 4, ‘Loi relative à l’organisation sociale des professions’ (Charte du travail), 4 October 1941.

  38. 38.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 15 juillet 1942’, 15 July 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  39. 39.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 21 janvier 1942’, 21 January 1942, 139 AQ 139, AN. Based on the minutes of CORSID’s meeting, Daum seems to have been the most active member in most areas. Industrialist Roger Martin later wrote of Daum that at meetings, ‘when he wasn’t asleep, he had a sprightly wit’. See Martin, Patron du droit divin (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 37.

  40. 40.

    Ibid.

  41. 41.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest. Séance du 18 février 1942’, 18 February 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  42. 42.

    For Daum’s appointment to the Conseil national, see ‘Groupement du Centre et de l’Ouest. Séance du 29 Janvier 1941’, 21 January 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN. On Daum nearly being appointed Minister for Industrial Production in July 1940, see René Belin, Du secrétariat de la CGT au gouvernement de Vichy (Paris: Albatros, 1978), 128.

  43. 43.

    ‘Groupement du Centre et de l’Ouest. Séance du 13 octobre 1942’, 13 October 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN. Although Aubrun remained President of the new ‘family’, Daum became President of its Organisation Commission, created to oversee the establishment of the National Social Committee.

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    See ‘Rétablissement de la liberté syndicale et épuration des organisations syndicales de travailleurs et d’employeurs’, 13 January 1944, CFLN-GPRF 602, MAE.

  46. 46.

    Strikes had erupted in the coalfields of northern France in the autumn of 1941.

  47. 47.

    In her detailed study of the National Revolution, Debbie Lackerstein observes that ‘the Charter [was] totally irrelevant by 1943 [and] most of the structures it prescribed were never constituted, even though some groups worked on them until the end of the Occupation’. See Lackerstein, National Regeneration in Vichy France, 100.

  48. 48.

    Qtd. in Jean-Paul Cointet, Pierre Laval (Paris: Fayard, 1993), 368. Laval, a veteran politician of the Third Republic, was Prime Minister under Pétain until his dismissal in December 1940. His reinstatement was largely due to German pressure, as Laval was a strong advocate of closer collaboration with the Reich. On anti-Bolshevism as a unifying factor across Nazi-occupied Europe, see Lorna Waddington, Hitler’s Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy (London: Tauris, 2007), particularly Chapter 13, and Bernard Bruneteau, L’Europe nouvelle de Hitler. Une illusion des intellectuels de la France de Vichy (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 2003).

  49. 49.

    Arne Radtke-Delacor, ‘Produire pour le Reich. Les commandes allemandes à l’industrie française (1940–1944)’ in Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, no. 70, April–June 2001, 99–115. For Germany’s industrial strategy throughout this period, see Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making & Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Penguin, 2007).

  50. 50.

    A member of the Nazi Party since 1923, Fritz Sauckel was appointed General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment in March 1942, where he oversaw over 5 million foreign workers arrive to work in German factories. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and was executed in 1946.

  51. 51.

    To this number we must add 300,000 who volunteered to go to Germany, of whom 60,000 left before 4 September 1942. These volunteers generally went for economic reasons, as Germany offered higher wages and more hours of work. See Jean-Pierre Azéma’s ‘Introduction’ in La main-d’oeuvre française exploitée par le IIIe Reich (Caen: Centre de Recherche Quantitative, 2003). In addition to this excellent collected volume, the classic work on the STO in France remains Jacques Evrard, La déportation des travailleurs français dans le IIIe Reich (Paris: Fayard, 1972), while the best recent works are Patrice Arnaud, Les STO. Histoire des Français requis en Allemagne nazie 1942–1945 (Paris: CNRS, 2010) and Raphaël Spina, La France et les Français devant le service du travail obligatoire (1942–1945) (PhD thesis. Cachan: ENS, 2012).

  52. 52.

    Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 227.

  53. 53.

    Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 640. It should be noted that Tooze is referring to the German recruitment of labour from across Europe, not only France.

  54. 54.

    Françoise Berger has calculated that overall steel output in France declined significantly in 1943 compared to 1942. This is consistent with trends in other industries; coal production peaked in 1942, for example, before declining significantly in 1943. For steel, see Françoise Berger, La France, l’Allemagne et l’acier (1932–1952). De la stratégie des cartels à l’élaboration de la CECA (Paris: Université de Paris I, 2000), 460–461. For coal, see ‘The Coal Economy of France under German Occupation’, WO 219 3752, NA. It has also been suggested that the drop in production can be attributed to deliberate under-production (freinage) by employers. This argument is advanced by François Marcot in ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un patron résistant?’ in Olivier Dard et al., L’Occupation, l’Etat français et les entreprises (Paris: ADHE, 2000), 277–292, while the best critical discussion of this thesis is provided by Talbot Imlay and Martin Horn in The Politics of Industrial Collaboration during World War II: Ford France, Vichy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

  55. 55.

    Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (London: Penguin, 2007), 249.

  56. 56.

    Denis Peschanski and Jean-Louis Robert (eds), Les Ouvriers en France pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Paris: CNRS, 1992).

  57. 57.

    For an insightful discussion of the multifaceted nature of ‘the Resistance’ and the diverse motivations of individuals opposing the Vichy regime, see Robert Gildea, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (London: Faber & Faber, 2015).

  58. 58.

    ‘Groupement Centre-Ouest. Réunion du 18 mars 1941’, 18 March 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN. The minutes of this meeting state that ‘Daum repeats his previous recommendations’ on keeping workers busy, but unfortunately the detailed minutes of the previous meetings are not available.

  59. 59.

    Ibid. While the nature of the work at Lorient is not discussed in the document, the project was undoubtedly the construction of a submarine base under the auspices of Organisation Todt (OT), the Reich’s engineering group which oversaw infrastructure projects across Europe. For a discussion of the Lorient project and the OT in France, see Rémy Desquesnes, ‘L’Organisation Todt en France (1940–1944)’, Histoire, économie et société, 11:3, 1992, 535–550. For a more thorough account of the OT in France and a comparison with the Italian case, see Fabian Lemmes, Arbeiten für das Reich: die Organisation Todt in Frankreich und Italien, 1940–1945 (PhD thesis, European University Institute, 2009).

  60. 60.

    ‘Groupement Centre-Ouest. Réunion du 29 avril 1941’, 29 April 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  61. 61.

    Ibid.

  62. 62.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 27 août 1941’, 27 August 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  63. 63.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 21 janvier 1942’, 21 January 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  64. 64.

    ‘Réunion des Usines du Centre-Ouest du 23 mai 1941’, 23 May 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  65. 65.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 21 janvier 1942’, 21 January 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  66. 66.

    The Forges d’Audincourt specialised in sheet metal, but its production was severely disrupted by Allied bombings in July 1943. With production thus affected, more workers were vulnerable to the STO and by 1944 only 650 workers remained at the factory, compared to 1150 at the beginning of the war. See Eric Coulon, Les Forges d’Audincourt (Strasbourg: Coprur, 2006), 94.

  67. 67.

    ‘Groupement Centre-Ouest. Réunion du 18 mars 1941’, 18 March 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN. In May and June 1941 the average working week for the industry fell to 30 hours and dropped below 29 hours for July 1941. See ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 27 août 1941’, 27 August 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  68. 68.

    The best overview of this argument is provided by François Marcot, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un patron résistant?’. For specific examples, see Marcot, ‘La direction de Peugeot sous l’Occupation: pétainisme, réticence, opposition et résistance’ in Mouvement social, no. 189, October–December 1999, 27–46; Christophe Capuano, ‘Travailler chez Schneider sous l’Occupation. Les cas des usines du Creusot’ in Christian Chevandier and Jean-Claude Daumas (eds), Travailler dans les entreprises sous l’Occupation (Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2007), 187–207; and Imlay and Horn, The Politics of Industrial Collaboration during World War II.

  69. 69.

    De Rochebrune and Hazera have argued that ‘managerial logic’ informed the decision-making of employers during the war, by far outweighing the patriotic ‘logic of the citizen’. See Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean Claude Hazera, Les patrons sous l’Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995) and the discussion below.

  70. 70.

    While Vinen includes examples of the COH protesting labour deportations in 1942, his discussion of the motivations for the opposition to these policies focuses on the STO. He notes that by 1943, when the STO was established, ‘business calculations were now founded on the assumption of an allied victory’. He adds that ‘Resistance to STO…was in theory the policy of all COs’. See Richard Vinen, ‘The French Coal Industry during the Occupation’, The Historical Journal, 33:1, 1990, 105–130, here 113–114 and 123. This ‘social fear’ may also explain CORSID’s support for Social Committees, which would theoretically have improved relations between workers and employers.

  71. 71.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 21 janvier 1942’, 21 January 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  72. 72.

    ‘Réunion du Groupe Centre-Ouest du 15 juillet 1942’, 15 July 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  73. 73.

    Ibid. This request was sent out as ‘Circulaire du 13 juillet 1942’, 13 July 1942, 139 AQ 79, AN.

  74. 74.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 octobre 1942’, 13 October 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  75. 75.

    Ibid.

  76. 76.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 16 novembre 1942’, 16 November 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  77. 77.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 16 février 1943’, 16 February 1943, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  78. 78.

    After graduating from the Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines de Paris, Robert Baboin taught at the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne before succeeding Coqueugnot as Director for Steel at the Ministry of Industrial Production. Coqueugnot’s health was failing and died in January 1944.

  79. 79.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 16 février 1943’, 16 February 1943, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  80. 80.

    The replacement of Coqueugnot, an industrialist by profession, with former professor Baboin may in part explain why the Ministry of Industrial Production’s representative was no longer in agreement with the industrialists running CORSID on this question. Laval’s support for the STO, however, was likely the most important factor.

  81. 81.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 avril 1943’, 13 April 1943, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  82. 82.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 18 mai 1943’, 18 May 1943, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  83. 83.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 15 juin 1943’, 15 June, 139 AQ 82, AN. The minutes of this meeting report that the factories of Guérigny and Imphy, both in Nièvre (Bourgogne), received North African workers from the German authorities. While not specified in the documents, these workers would likely have come from Tunisia, which was occupied by German forces following the Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco in November 1942 until May 1943.

  84. 84.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 juillet 1943’, 13 juillet, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  85. 85.

    Richard Vinen has argued that most of the COH’s efforts to resist the STO took place after Aimé Lepercq’s dismissal in the summer of 1943 and were instead overseen by his successor Charles Crussard, ‘a less high profile resistant than Lepercq’. See Vinen, ‘The French Coal Industry during the Occupation’, op.cit.

  86. 86.

    According to Alan Milward, ‘only about ten per cent on average of the men detailed to go to Germany actually arrived there’. See Milward, The New Order and the French Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 153.

  87. 87.

    There is some debate as to how many conscripted for work in Germany actually joined the maquis, with one estimate placing the proportion as low as 19 per cent (for the département of Tarn). See Jean-Pierre Azéma and Olivier Wieviorka, Vichy, 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 256.

  88. 88.

    Given that German industry was formally oriented towards armaments and war production, Speer can be considered Bichelonne’s opposite number.

  89. 89.

    This characterisation has been questioned in some recent works. Speer’s purported apoliticism is rejected by Tooze as ‘self-evidently absurd’, given Speer’s membership in the Nazi Party since 1931 and the political implications of his actions as Minister – by increasing German production he prolonged the war. The depiction of Jean Bichelonne as apolitical has recently come under similar criticism, notably by Jackie Clarke, who describes Bichelonne’s proposals to integrate the French economy into a German-led Europe as ‘political choices […] despite the professed apoliticism of technicians’. See Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 552–553 and Jackie Clarke, France in the Age of Organization (Oxford: Berghahn, 2011), 132–135.

  90. 90.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin le vendredi 17 septembre 1943 dans le bureau de Monsieur Speer’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN. In Speer’s memoirs, he writes favourably of the plan, as it allowed the Reich to gain armaments capacity and ‘seemed to be the only way [he] could harness French industrial production to [German] purposes’. He adds that ‘Hitler proved content’ with the plan. See Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 310–311.

  91. 91.

    Bichelonne told his German interlocutors that with this protection, ‘the labour problem will disappear quite simply’. ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin (Wannsee)’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  92. 92.

    Walther Funk, ‘The Economic Reorganization of Europe’ in Walter Lipgens (ed.), Documents on the History of European integration. Volume I: Continental Plans for European Union, 1939–1945 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), 65–70.

  93. 93.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin (Wannsee)’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  94. 94.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin le vendredi 17 septembre 1943 dans le bureau de Monsieur Speer’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  95. 95.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin le vendredi 17 septembre 1943 dans le bureau de Monsieur Speer’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  96. 96.

    See Chapter 2.

  97. 97.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 18 avril 1944’, 18 April 1944, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  98. 98.

    On the motivations of French employers for ‘economic collaboration’, see Fabian Lemmes, ‘Collaboration in Wartime France, 1940–1944’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 15:2, 2008, 157–177.

  99. 99.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin (Wannsee)’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  100. 100.

    A standard defence presented by industrialists after the war was that while they produced extensively for the Reich, they produced civilian rather than military goods. A number of recent studies have accepted this defence. See François Marcot, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un patron résistant?’ and, for the case of Schneider in the French steel industry, Christophe Capuano, ‘Travailler chez Schneider sous l’Occupation’.

  101. 101.

    Tooze, Wages of Destruction, 640

  102. 102.

    Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 179–180.

  103. 103.

    Although the number of deportations dropped significantly, several thousand continued to be deported monthly after September 1943. Milward calculates that 5000 workers were deported in September 1943 and fewer than 4000 in October; see Milward, The New Order and the French Economy, 161. Speer cites very similar figures in his memoirs; see Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 311. In February 1944, the eligibility criteria for being drafted for compulsory labour were broadened even further, aggravating concerns over additional deportations. On the competition between Sauckel’s and Speer’s initatives, see Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1994).

  104. 104.

    Radtke-Delacor, ‘Produire pour le Reich’, 114.

  105. 105.

    ‘France industrie’, 25 April 1944, F 12 9971, AN. According to this calculation, the Etablissements Edmond Chevalier in Verneuil-sur-Eure was producing 75 per cent for the Reich, while the Fonderie des Avenues in Pont Audemer was producing 85 per cent for the Reich, with the remainder reserved for the SNCF. Both firms were protected under the Speer-Bichelonne agreement from the STO (Sperrbetriebe).

  106. 106.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 octobre, 1942’, 13 October 1942 and ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 juin 1944’, 13 June 1944, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  107. 107.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 16 mai 1944’, 16 May 1944, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  108. 108.

    ‘Comité d’organisation de la sidérurgie. Région du Centre et de l’Ouest. Réunion du 13 octobre 1942’, 13 October 1942, 139 AQ 82, AN.

  109. 109.

    Writing on the French automotive industry in this period, Talbot Imlay has similarly noted ‘if the Germans captured a large part of the productive pie, it was a pie that had considerably shrunk’. See Imlay and Horn, The Politics of Industrial Collaboration during World War II, 267.

  110. 110.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin le vendredi 17 septembre 1943 dans le bureau de Monsieur Speer’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN. Kehrl summarises Bichelonne’s visit to Berlin in his memoirs in a chapter tellingly entitled ‘The Concentration of the War Economy’. See Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1973), 310–318.

  111. 111.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin (Wannsee), 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN.

  112. 112.

    On opposition to industrial concentration in the French steel industry due to fears of bombardment, see Christophe Capuano, ‘Travailler chez Schneider sous l’Occupation’. The issue of concentration in the French steel industry in the post-war period is discussed in Chapter 8.

  113. 113.

    Despite the opposition of Laval and Bichelonne, Hitler supported Sauckel’s calls for more labour in early 1944 and the law of 4 September 1942 was consequently broadened on 1 February 1944 to include more categories, such as men up to 60 years old and women between 18 and 45.

  114. 114.

    In one of the better-known anecdotes about Jean Bichelonne, the Minister was told of a German plan to melt down the Eiffel Tower for its steel. Bichelonne was able to spontaneously provide the figure for the exact tonnage of steel in the Tower, which was reassuringly small enough to make the scheme impractical. This is recounted in Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France: Renovation and Economic Management in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

  115. 115.

    ‘Bulletin d’information’, 9–11 February 1942, F 12 10933, AN. This was requested by Thierry Maulnier, a future member of l’Académie française, in the pro-Vichy daily l’Action Française.

  116. 116.

    7,500 tonnes of steel would be comparable to a month’s output at a single steel mill during the war. Schneider’s large factory in Creusot, for example, produced an average of 11,376 tonnes of steel per month in 1941; the monthly average for 1942 was 9,590 tonnes. For the production figures, see ‘Relations avec l’occupant allemand’, 1941–1942, 187 AQ 575, AN.

  117. 117.

    During the war, Committees’ work was criticised for being arcane and unclear. One article claimed that employers affected by Committees’ decisions were ‘incapable of understanding anything of the jumble of often contradictory memoranda’ emitted by the Committees, with the result of the memoranda simply being ignored. See L’Espoir Français, 10 November 1942 in ‘Revue de presse. Partie économique (du 23 au 29 Novembre)’, compiled by OCRPI, F 12 10931, AN.

  118. 118.

    Indeed, the creation of this body was only the second formal action CORSID took, on 25 November 1940. ‘Déclaration no. 2‘, CORSID, 3 December 1940, 139 AQ 80, AN.

  119. 119.

    ‘Circulaire du 7 août 1941’, 7 August 1941, 139 AQ 79, AN. CORSID issued this circular to ask how many copies of the French–German and German–French technical vocabulary list each factory wanted to receive.

  120. 120.

    On Eugène Dupuy, see Philippe Mioche, ‘Un tournant dans l’histoire technique de la sidérurgie: la création de l’Irsid’, Histoire, économie et société, 8:1, 1989, 119–140, 124.

  121. 121.

    ‘Circulaire du 27 octobre 1941’, 27 October 1941, 139 AQ 79, AN.

  122. 122.

    Attempts at rationalisation under Vichy included the development of economic planning, the creation of a research centre for the steel industry, the development of comprehensive statistics and economic data for France, and the emergence of ‘technocracy’. Indicatively, Richard Kuisel, ‘Vichy et les origines de la planification économique (1940–1946)’, Le Mouvement social, no. 98, January 1977, 77–101; Philippe Mioche, ‘Un tournant dans l’histoire de la sidérurgie’; Delphine Dulong, Moderniser la politique. Aux origines de la Ve République (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); Olivier Dard, ‘Les technocrats: archéologie d’un concept, généalogie d’un groupe social’ in Olivier Dard, Jean-Claude Daumas and François Marcot (eds), L’Occupation, l’Etat français et les entreprises (Paris: Association pour le développement de l’histoire économique, 2000), 213–228; Philip Nord, France’s New Deal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Clarke, France in the Age of Organization.

  123. 123.

    ‘Lettre d’Eugène Dupuy’, 17 March 1942, 139 AQ 79, AN.

  124. 124.

    See, for instance, ‘Note du BNS sur l’épaisseur des tôles minces’, April 1945, 139 AQ 80, AN.

  125. 125.

    ‘Prix, produits selon les spécifications allemands homologués’, 4 June 1943, 104 AQ 113, ANMT.

  126. 126.

    ‘Larges plats satisfaisant à des specifications allemandes’, December 1943, 104 AQ 113, ANMT.

  127. 127.

    See, for example, ‘Larges plats suivant norme allemande’, 19 January 1944 and ‘Tôles fortes, moyennes et minces satisfaisant à des spécifications allemandes’, 28 April 1944, 104 AQ 113, ANMT. The French names of these steel products have ben included since both plat and tôle would be rendered into English as ‘sheet metal’.

  128. 128.

    Letter on behalf of Otto Wolff (signature illegible), 9 November 1944, 106 AQ 14, ANMT.

  129. 129.

    ‘Note’, April 1942, in ‘Dossier Lille’, F 12 10935, AN.

  130. 130.

    See Robert Frank, Jean-Marie Flonneau and Robert Mancherini, ‘Conclusion’ in Alain Beltran, Robert Frank and Henry Rousso (eds), La vie des entreprises sous l’Occupation (Paris: Belin, 1994). This label is also used in Fabian Lemmes, ‘Collaboration in wartime France, 1940–1944’, European Review of History, 15:2, 2008, 157–177.

  131. 131.

    Philippe Burrin, La France à l’heure allemande (Paris: Seuil, 1995), especially 468–470. In this influential study, Burrin proposed the term ‘accommodation’ to describe a huge range of actions between the extremes of collaboration and resistance. Accordingly, producing for the Reich in order to protect one’s factory is considered by Burrin to be ‘accommodation’ rather than ‘collaboration’.

  132. 132.

    François Marcot, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un patron résistant?’, op.cit., 278\280.

  133. 133.

    Christophe Capuano, ‘Travailler sous Schneider sous l’Occupation’ and Marcot, ‘La direction de Peugeot sous l’Occupation’. Both authors identify individual employers whom they argue privileged civilian over military production.

  134. 134.

    A discussion of the claims made by COH members after the war that opposition to the STO constituted resistance is provided by Vinen, ‘The French Coal Industry during the Occupation’.

  135. 135.

    ‘Il faut un meilleur ravitaillement et des salaires suffisants pour obtenir un renforcement de la capacité de production’, L’Humanité, 28 March 1945 for the first quotation and, for the second, ‘Suppression des Comités d’organisation’, L’Humanité, 24 April 1946.

  136. 136.

    ‘Procès-verbal de la conférence tenue à Berlin le vendredi 17 septembre 1943 dans le bureau de Monsieur Speer’, 17 September 1943, 72 AJ 1926, AN. This quotation comes from Jean Bichelonne in a meeting with Albert Speer.

  137. 137.

    ‘Groupement Centre-Ouest. Réunion du 29 avril 1941’, 29 April 1941, 139 AQ 82, AN. This quotation comes from Léon Daum.

  138. 138.

    This term, or ‘logique de gestionnaire’, is proposed by Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean Claude Hazera in Les Patrons sous l’Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995).

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    Luc-André Brunet

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Brunet, LA. (2017). The Organisation Committees Between Collaboration and Resistance, 1941–1944. In: Forging Europe: Industrial Organisation in France, 1940–1952. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95198-7_4

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