Vichy France Quotes

“It is tempting to identify with Resistance and to say ‘That is what I would have done.’ Alas, we are far more likely to act, in parallel situations, like the Vichy majority. Indeed, it may be the German occupiers rather than the Vichy majority whom Americans, as residents of the most powerful state on earth, should scrutinize most unblinkingly. The deeds of occupier and occupied alike suggest that there come cruel times when to save a nation’s deepest values one must disobey the state. France after 1940 was one of those times.”
― Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944

“At bottom, however, lay a more subtle intellectual culprit: fear of social disorder as the highest evil. Some of France’s best skill and talent went into a formidable effort to keep the French state afloat under increasingly questionable circumstances. Who would keep order, they asked, if the state lost authority? By saving the state, however, they were losing the nation. Those who cling to the social order above all may do so by self-interest or merely by inertia. In either case, they know more clearly what they are against than what they are for. So blinded, they perform jobs that may be admirable in themselves but are tinctured with evil by the overall effects of the system...”
― Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944