Paris and Collaboration
The capital of German France, Paris lost the symbolic sites from which France derived its legitimacy as a nation. The Elysée Palace was closed, the Chambre des députés [the lower house of the French legislature] was occupied by the German military administration (MBF) and the Kommandantur of Gross-Paris [Greater Paris], and the Senate, situated in the Luxembourg gardens, served as Luftwaffe headquarters.
A new "Tout-Paris" gravitated around the national-socialist authorities, a social milieu composed of French men and women who embraced Nazism, as well as opportunists and henchmen sometimes freed from prison by the occupying authorities. A range of groups and parties like the Parti populaire, the Français de Doriot and the Rassemblement national populaire de Déat were financed by the Germans and became well established. They even called themselves collaborationists.
Because the government was in Vichy, it was forced to open an embassy in Paris. This was the function of the Délégation générale du Gouvernement français dans les Territoires occupés (DGTO), which occupied the former headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior at Place Beauvau. Ministries that had not been requisitioned by the occupiers continued to occupy their facilities, meaning that some Ministers traveled back and forth between Vichy and Paris.
The Ministry of Information financed some of the propaganda. Its posters indicate that the Vichy government’s authority was soon restricted to social and family policies. The resources available for the Propaganda Abteilung were far more substantial, financing poster campaigns as well as elaborate exhibits that flaunted the Nazi style and spirit.
