The War Goes On
The French government signed the armistice with the Germans on June 22, 1940 and another with the Italians on June 24, 1940, but the war continued. French territory served as an advanced base for the Germans in their efforts to conquer England. It also served as an economic weapon as the war dragged on. France was a reservoir of agricultural and industrial products where occupying forces were financed by requisitions, "clearing," and 400 million francs in "occupation-related expenses" that the French government was required to pay them each day. Germany's invasion of the USSR increased the economic burden on France, which evolved from material to including human appropriations. Beginning in 1942-1943, young men in occupied countries were required for the Service du Travail Obligatoire [Obligatory Labor Service] in Germany because the number of volunteers who went to work in Germany as part of the labor rotation in June 1942 was woefully adequate to German labor needs.
On September 4, the Vichy government decreed that French men between 18 and 50 and French women between 21 and 35 "could be required to perform work that the government judges useful and in the superior interest of the nation," without specifying that the work could be performed outside of France. In fact, Vichy was responsible for this policy, which applied to all occupied countries under Sauckel, chief of the Reich's labor service. A census of the potential labor pool was conducted. In January 1943, Sauckel demanded 250,000 workers. A month later, Laval signed a law creating the Service du travail obligatoire (STO), mobilizing high school graduates from the years 1940, 1941, and 1942 for a two-year period. Company workers were also automatically selected to work in Germany. The documents of a worker at the Siemens factories attested to the administrative mechanisms that the process entailed in France as well as in Germany. When he obtained a furlough to return home, Gustave Le Gall did not return to his job, deserting the STO to join the maquis [rural Resistance forces].
