After the Fall of France in 1940, a new puppet state was set up in the south. Officially known as the French State, it is better known as Vichy France.
This collaborationist Vichy regime's armed forces were more active and usually more numerous than German troops in the task of hunting down and crushing the maquis - the French Resistance guerrilla forces.
This book explores the organization and operations of Vichy French Security Forces, including: the new Vichy Police Nationale, particularly their Groupes Mobiles de Reserve, the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire, and the Milice Francaise, a ruthless anti-Resistance militia armed partly with British weapons captured from SOE airdrops.
Fully illustrated throughout with contemporary photographs and commissioned artwork, it tells the story of Occupied France from the perspective of those who sought to keep it in German hands.
Papildus informācija
A detailed study into the significant but little-known arm of the Axis security machinery in occupied Europe the Vichy French Security Troops, the collaborators who hunted the Resistance.
The fall of France, 1940, and the emergence of the collaborationist
Vichy regime
The Vichy National Police and its Mobile Reserve Groups
Joseph Darnand and the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire, January 1942
transformation into Milice Francaise, January 1943
Civil war against the Resistance, 1943-44
The end, 1944-45
Milice organization weapons uniforms
Select Bibliograph
Plate Commentaries
Dr Stephen M. Cullen was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. He has written widely on inter-war fascism, communism, and the British Home Guard, including In Search of the Real Dads Army; The Home Guard and the Defence of the United Kingdom, 19401944 (Pen & Sword, 2011 & 2016). He has been a TV and BBC Radio guest on several programmes, talking about military and political history. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, England.
Mark Stacey was born in Manchester, UK, in 1964 and has been a freelance illustrator since 1987. He has a lifelong interest in all periods of history, particularly military history, and has specialized in this area throughout his career. He now lives and works in Cornwall.
