The period between July and December 1940 is usually characterised in terms of Vichy’s attempts to develop closer relations with Berlin which culminated in a new policy of collaboration. However, this picture obscures a second dimension to Vichy’s policy that saw Pierre Laval and Foreign Minister Paul Baudouin engage in concerted efforts at rapprochement with Rome to counter the domination of Berlin. Their efforts foundered upon Mussolini’s ideologically driven opposition, but their persistence suggests that it was not inevitable that French collaboration should have become exclusively directed towards Germany. At the same time, however, Vichy had two main concerns about Italian intentions. The first was that Italy’s encroachments upon French sovereignty in its occupation zone might lead to territorial annexation by stealth. The second was the need to protect the French colonial empire from Fascist claims, especially over Tunisia. Vichy, therefore, attempted to use collaboration with Germany to counter the threat from Italy.

The conclusion ties together the book’s argument, linking diplomatic relations to local-level negotiations and ideological dimensions to demonstrate how Vichy’s engagement with the Axis saw it caught in a double bind. It reflects on the absence of public memories of the Italian occupation and the tendency to focus on Germany in the scholarship. This chapter also highlights how French responses to the challenges arising out of the Italian armistice terms, Fascist territorial claims and the Italian occupation were critical to shaping Vichy’s wider policies on collaboration. The Italian dimension to Vichy’s actions, therefore, necessitates a reconceptualisation of state collaboration and its relationship to collaborationism as well as the relationship between collaboration and resistance.

This chapter examines how the collapse of the Protocols of Paris negotiations with Berlin and the vulnerability of Italian forces in Libya resulted in a brief but significant experiment in military collaboration between France and Italy. The episode marked a high point in Vichy’s belief that it could manipulate Berlin and Rome to the French advantage. By offering Rome the concessions that Vichy had refused to grant Berlin on the use of Tunisian ports, Darlan sought to fulfil three objectives. The first was to gain concessions on the armistice terms, the second was to use Rome to counterbalance Berlin and the third was to use the Allied threat as a cover to strengthen French defences in North Africa against the threat from Italy. If Vichy’s decision to collaborate with Germany had been taken from a position of weakness and self-delusion, its decision to collaborate with Italy was taken from a position of opportunism. However, the strategy failed to yield any tangible results. Vichy’s brief engagement in military collaboration with Italy was opportunistic and voluntary, but it was also poorly conceived and executed.

The Italian occupation of south-eastern France and Corsica between November 1942 and September 1943 has often been portrayed as relatively benign compared to the German occupation and the Italian occupation elsewhere. However, this chapter suggests that mounting Italian military and political weakness and the wounded pride of the Fascist regime caused the occupying forces to assert their authority with growing repression and violence. French responses to Italian actions were characterised by opposition, unwilling compliance and limited cooperation, with local authorities often clashing with Vichy. Efforts to defend French sovereignty varied across areas of policy and in response to differing levels of threat. French authorities made pragmatic choices, making concessions to one Axis government in one policy area in an attempt to defend against the other Axis government and maintain control over another policy area. The absence of any sustained collaboration or collaborationism meant that the trajectory of French responses to the Italian occupation was in the opposite direction to those relating to the German occupation.