not decided what to do prior to the meeting with them, he had already made clear to his fellow ministers that there would not be a new trial. Predictably, the defense request for a new trial was denied.114
Three days later, on October 15, Laval faced a firing squad. Even the moment of Laval’s death could not pass without high drama. Immediately before his execution, Laval tried to kill himself by taking a cyanide capsule, which he had secreted in his clothes. However, the age of the poison had eroded its effectiveness. Laval was brought before a firing squad still suffering from the nonlethal effects of the poison, revived, and then shot and killed.115
In his prison cell, he left the following note: “For my advocates—for their information: to my executioners—for their shame. I refuse to be killed by French bullets. I will not make French soldiers accomplices in a judicial murder. I have chosen my death—the poison of the Romans, which I have carried with me through my long wanderings and which has escaped the searchings of my guards. I wish to be buried with the Tricolor scarf round my neck. I die because I loved my country too much. My last thought is for France.”116
Was Justice Served?
The narrowly drawn jury pool, the aborted preliminary examination, the hurried nature of the trial itself circumscribed by the arbitrary date of the pending election, the unchecked demonstrations not just of jury bias, but also of court bias, make it impossible to conclude that Laval received fair treatment. The question remains, did the French authorities execute a guilty man or an innocent man?
The charge of plotting against the security of the state (Article 87) seems most problematic. An axiomatic notion in criminal law is that before there can be a crime, there has to be notice that the complained-of conduct is unlawful. The unique situation that France found itself in after its ignoble military defeat at the hands of the Germans makes it difficult to conclude that the actions Laval took amounted to plotting against the security of the French state. Was it in the best interest of the state at that time to avoid a complete German administrative takeover of continental France, or better that its government not be beholden to the German occupiers? A strong argument can be made that everything Laval did, he did to preserve whatever little French sovereignty remained after the armistice with Germany.
This leaves the charge of collaborating with the enemy (Article 75). Was there an enemy? A proponent of Laval’s position might argue that the real enemy was the Soviet Union. There are two main difficulties with this argument. First, historically, Laval had no difficulty in trying to come to terms with the Soviet Union. In 1934, while foreign minister, he negotiated a Franco-Soviet protocol with one of Stalin’s henchmen: the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, Maxim Litvinov.117 Second, there was no state of war between France and the Soviet Union; indeed, during Laval’s second tenure at Vichy, the Soviet Union was engaged in a death struggle with France’s invader.
In contrast, France had declared war against Germany in September 1939 after Germany’s invasion of Poland. The following year, Germany invaded France, crushing its military forces. The terms of the ensuing armistice reflected the hapless French position. While there was a truce or armistice, there was no peace treaty. Absent a peace treaty, Germany and France were at war with one another. This made Germany the enemy.118
If one had to point to specific policies Laval pursued as falling under collaboration with the enemy, two would seem the most likely candidates: (1) siphoning French workers to Germany to assist it in its war effort, and (2) facilitating the deportation of Jews in France to help Germany attain its goal of annihilating European Jewry.
Transfer of Workers to Germany
As noted above, as prime minister of Vichy France, Laval reached an agreement in the spring of 1942 with Fritz Sauckel, Hitler’s forced-labor czar. Sauckel’s responsibilities were simple: to obtain workers from occupied countries to be transported to Germany so that their labor would assist in its war effort. Beauchamp’s testimony at Laval’s trial was that 400,000 French workers were sent to Germany. That number, however, included only those workers who were members of the organization that Beauchamp represented. General estimates place the number of workers sent to Germany under Laval’s aegis at about 700,000, a number consistent with Laval’s own estimates.119 While in prison at Fresnes prior to his trial, Laval prepared extensive notes and memoranda to be used in his defense. In the memorandum relating to the Relève program, Laval conceded that 641,500 French workers had been in Germany as of July 30, 1944.120 Since Sauckel and the Germans agreed that one farm worker prisoner of war could be released for every three workers sent to Germany, Laval apparently considered the exchange beneficial to France. As a result, Laval stated that both he and Pétain were “sincerely grateful” for Hitler’s generous gesture121—somewhat surprising since Laval had originally asked for a one-for-one exchange.
On its face, it would seem that providing labor to a belligerent power to assist it in continuing its war effort is criminal collaboration. The enemy’s goal is to retain an efficient domestic production system while the majority of its working-age men are in the military. That goal is implemented if a large number of foreign workers are imported to staff domestic production. Nor is there anything benign about the massive transfer of civilian populations for use as workers in a foreign country. Sauckel himself was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg for precisely such conduct and hanged. 122
There is also evidence that at some point in mid-1943 Laval refused to cooperate further with Sauckel.123 Logically, however, such a refusal is more inculpatory than exculpatory. First, if there had been collaboration up to the point of refusal, then a subsequent refusal cannot undo what had been done. Second, that Laval was able to say “no” to Sauckel would suggest he could have, and should have, done so earlier. It could be, however, that Laval’s refusal was triggered not so much by his newly found backbone, as by the changing wartime conditions, both external and internal. By then the tide of the war had begun to turn against Germany. The French police were no longer as cooperative in implementing the draft of French workers for Germany and the French Resistance was draining off considerable manpower from the French population, making the number of persons available for transport to Germany much smaller.124 Until this point, however, Laval’s actions had served the Germans in their war effort. This is collaboration.
Deportation of Jews
Vichy France passed legislation directed against the Jews during Laval’s first tenure with the Vichy regime.125 Although he opposed such legislation, he nevertheless signed it.126 Even so, it is a stretch to see domestic legislation, even if anti-Semitic in substance, as amounting to collaboration with Germany. Such legislation was the product of internal motivation, not external pressure from the German occupier.127 If there was collaboration, it would have to be Laval’s role in deporting Jews from France to their deaths as part of the Nazi plan for the extermination of Jews in Europe.
No doubt certain comments Laval made would suggest anti-Semitism on his part, especially his December 1942 statement at a press conference that he wished for a German victory, and that President Roosevelt carried in his baggage the double triumph of Jews and communists. Nevertheless, the general consensus, both by Laval’s biographers and by Holocaust historians, is that Laval was not an anti-Semite.128 In the end, however, his general attitude towards Jews is a side issue since the critical question is his actual involvement in the deportation of Jews to their deaths.
There is no question that a large number of Jews, about 75,000 of the 300,000 in France at the beginning of the war, were sent to Poland, almost all of whom were killed. Certainly, the German effort to deal with Jews in France and the Vichy government’s assistance during the period he was out of office—December 1940 to April 1942—cannot be attributed to Laval. German efforts at deporting French Jews did, however, extend well into his second tenure with the Vichy government—and, in fact, became even more intense during that latter period.
On June 23, 1942, Himmler ordered that all Jews of France be deported. When Laval was informed of this shortly afterwards, probably by Adolf Eichmann who came to Paris with that message a week later,129 Laval saw deporting foreign Jews as his only option, in the hope of saving Jews of French citizenship.130