Chapter 5 - The Absence of Collaborationism

Summary

This chapter focuses on ideology and collaborationism. The first section suggests that in the autumn of 1940, Baudouin sought to develop a culturally driven ideological alternative to collaboration with Nazi Germany. The second section explores the French Fascists’ lack of support for collaborationism with Italy. The absence of sustained collaboration with Rome meant that there was limited scope for Vichy to slip from involuntary to voluntary collaboration. The relationship between state collaboration and collaborationism with Fascist Italy was, therefore, virtually the opposite of that with Nazi Germany. While short-lived and limited in nature, it was Vichy that led attempts to forge ideological collaboration with Rome rather than the French Fascists. And while collaborationists continued to press for greater collaborationism with the Nazis after the full occupation of France deepened state collaboration with Berlin, Vichy’s pursuit of state collaboration with Rome lasted longer than any pursuit of collaborationism.