Female Collaborators, 1940–1945 - A History of the Women Who Supported the Vichy Regime and the Nazi Occupier

"Female collaborators": the mere mention of the word calls to mind images of the thousands of French women crushed by the savage purges and publicly shorn at the Liberation for having "sinned" with the enemy. Sometimes, too, one recalls other events that marked the years of Occupation — such as the notorious trip to Germany undertaken by French actresses in 1942 on the "train of shame". Yet the engagement of women with the enemy from 1940 onwards cannot be reduced to these few stock profiles.

In this groundbreaking work on France during the dark years, Pierre Brana and Joëlle Dusseau examine active female collaborators, underlining that they were numerous… and that they operated everywhere. Some, of course, are well known: artists (such as Coco Chanel), wives (think of Hélène, the wife of Marcel Déat) or "daughters of" (such as Josée de Chambrun, who idolised her father Pierre Laval). Most, however, were anonymous, but many were no less dangerous for that: members of the Milice, Gestapo informants or spies, they frequently lied, denounced, hunted down and even committed acts of violence. For what reasons? Out of need? Out of love? Out of conviction? Out of sadism?

Drawing on unpublished sources, the two authors present the findings of a shattering historical investigation that proves "collaboration" can also be conjugated in the feminine. An indispensable synthesis that fills a major historiographical gap.