FRENCH YOUTH UNDER THE OCCUPATION 1940–1945

In the wake of the First World War, and after the Armistice of June 1940, French society placed its hopes in a renewed youth capable of henceforth promoting a goal of peace.

The French State therefore seized upon this prospect by encouraging the creation of numerous youth movements, establishing a Secrétariat Général à la Jeunesse, and developing the cult of sport and physical culture. Furthermore, the various collaborationist parties each instituted a "youth" branch within their movements, often in the context of fierce competition, and more rarely in the spirit of ideological unity, which emerged mainly towards the end of the war.

The extraordinary proliferation of these movements, with their most varied social and political foundations — often resting on the minimal doctrinal bedrock of the National Revolution — produced a uniformological eclecticism without parallel. Their leaders, drawn from the professional army, the far left or the Maurrassian tradition, often retained a sectarian spirit until the end of the war, which the German authorities made no effort to suppress.

It is this history of the movements during the four years of the Occupation that this richly illustrated album — featuring a great many previously unpublished documents — sets out to recount.