After signing an armistice agreement on 22 June 1940, Adolf Hitler placed the German army in charge of occupied France and ordered the military government to supervise the Vichy regime and maintain security. Viewing World War II as a struggle between nation‐states, the military commander in France, Otto von Stülpnagel, cultivated French support, placed industrial resources at the disposal of the German war effort, and maintained ‘security’ by capturing enemy soldiers and Allied spies. Initially barred from the Hexagon, Göring's Office of the Four Year Plan, Himmler's SS, and Ribbentrop's Forei ... More

After signing an armistice agreement on 22 June 1940, Adolf Hitler placed the German army in charge of occupied France and ordered the military government to supervise the Vichy regime and maintain security. Viewing World War II as a struggle between nation‐states, the military commander in France, Otto von Stülpnagel, cultivated French support, placed industrial resources at the disposal of the German war effort, and maintained ‘security’ by capturing enemy soldiers and Allied spies. Initially barred from the Hexagon, Göring's Office of the Four Year Plan, Himmler's SS, and Ribbentrop's Foreign Office adopted an expanded definition of security, argued that the Reich had to combat the so‐called Jewish conspiracy to maintain order, and secured Hitler's favor. In conjunction with Alfred Rosenberg and the French government, they launched an anti‐Semitic campaign of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation. Hitler used assassinations as a pretext for genocide and ordered subordinates to answer resistance activity with deadly reprisals and massive deportations that focused on Jews. Stülpnagel condemned anti‐Semitic measures and disproportionate hostage executions as impolitic distractions and resigned his command. Astute political tactics helped the Himmler seize control of German security forces but alienated the military government and, later, the Vichy regime. With limited support from French and German colleagues, the SS could only deport 75,000 French Jews: Fritz Sauckel's labor organization impressed approximately 850,000 workers into the German war economy by cooperating with French and German colleagues. Accommodation explains divergent results of select German policies, clarifies the inner workings of the Nazi regime, and elucidates decisions made by Prime Ministers Pierre Laval and François Darlan.