In France, the Nazis split France into an occupied and unoccupied zone – occupied being the north, unoccupied, or Vichy, being the south. Nazis would have been living in the occupied zone – you would have had to board one for several days at a time – from 1940, and into the unoccupied zones from 1942.
The economy certainly suffered. By the terms of the armistice, the French had to pay for the costs of their own occupation. Although the French got the Vichy government, the Nazis became less and less interested in collaborating with them as opposed to outright taking advantage of them, particularly in the economic sector. 40% of French industry and 58% percent of state revenues went towards Germany, and in 1943 Germany instituted what’s called the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) which was basically a labor draft. You get your papers from the Germans, you get sent to Germany or Poland to go work in a factory. You’re there for however long they want you and you don’t get to go home. It was hugely, hugely resented.
And yes, there were definitely strict rations, which became even stricter as the war went on.
The Vichy government had their own special police, called the milice. The important thing to remember about occupied France was that the Vichy gov’t legitimized itself by asserting that Vichy France was a free France. As a result, you get Vichy police in addition to the Nazi police, you get French civil servants organizing much of the “National Revolution,” etc. (Interestingly, the Vichy government also made Mother’s Day an official holiday.) The idea of French sovereignty was huge, and when the Nazis started to infringe on it by instituting things like the STO and trying to deport French nationals, then you have a problem.
As for clandestine resistance movements, that’s another post entirely, but I’ll go on.
In France you had the external resistance and the internal resistance. The former was led by Charles de Gaulle, who flew to London after the 1940 armistice and basically said that he thought Vichy was stupid and if you agreed with him, go join him. He eventually had 7,000 people in what was called the FFL (Free French Legion, I think) and they fought out of Algeria. They were rather successful. I’m not a military historian by any means, so I have no idea what they actually did, but several governments recognized de Gaulle as the legitimate leader of France and de Gaulle was able to pester Eisenhower into liberating Paris in the summer of 1944.
Then you had the internal resistance, which was much less organized. The FFL tried to hook up with them in 1942 so that all the resistance forces in France could be under de Gaule – it was a success if only because the internal resistance needed the money from the FFL. The CRN (National Resistance Council) that came out of this “merger” was generally successful? I think. They coordinated with the guerilla fighting units to distract German/Vichy forces and kept up morale after the STO/full occupation. They also helped out in the Battle of Normandy.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.