Vichy France
Alluded to multiple times in Transit . Of course it's a large part of the machine the protagonist is caught up in. Thought I'd better review a little French history. Vichy France , officially The French State ( l'État français ), was France during the regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain , during World War II , from the German victory in the Battle of France (July 1940) to the Allied liberation in August 1944. [ 2 ] Following the defeat in June 1940, President Albert Lebrun appointed Marshal Pétain as Premier of France . After making peace with Germany, Pétain and his government voted to reorganize the discredited Third Republic into an authoritarian regime. The newly-formed French State maintained nominal sovereignty over the whole of French territory as defined by the Second Armistice at Compiègne . However, Vichy maintained full sovereignty only in the unoccupied southern Zone libre ("free zone"), while retaining limited authority in the Wehrmacht -...