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Operation Nemesis and Other Historic Paybacks

Khalid Elhassan November 17, 2019 32 min

Armenian Genocide - 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Pierre Laval, left, with SS Obergruppenfuhrer Carl Oberg, head of the German police in France. Wikimedia

9. Turning Traitor

When France fell to the Germans in 1940, Pierre Laval persuaded the French Assembly to dissolve itself and cede all powers to Marshall Petain, thus ending the Third Republic and inaugurating the Vichy Regime. Convinced of ultimate German victory in WWII, Laval eagerly collaborated with the Nazis.

During the Vichy Regime, he served as vice president of the Council of Ministers for five months in 1940, until dismissed by Petain, and as head of the Vichy government from 1942 until the liberation of France in 1944. In an infamous 1942 speech, he avowed his desire that Germany win the war, and throughout, he avidly persecuted the French Resistance.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.