The Vichy 80

The Vichy 80 were a group of elected French parliamentarians who, on 10 July 1940, voted against the constitutional change that dissolved the Third Republic and established an authoritarian regime known as Vichy France.

Nazi Germany invaded France on 14 May 1940, and Paris fell a month later. Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned rather than seek armistice terms, so President Albert Lebrun appointed Marshal Philippe Pétain as his replacement. France capitulated on 22 June 1940. Under the terms of the armistice, France was partitioned: the northern region was to be occupied by Germany, and the remainder, with its capital at Vichy, was, ostensibly, to be governed by a French government under Pétain.

Pétain began a revision of the constitution of the Third Republic. This process was completed with a vote of the combined houses of the parliament on 10 July 1940. The result was a constitutional amendment that created the new regime, Vichy France. The eighty deputies and senators who opposed the change are referred to as the Vichy 80 (French: "les quatre-vingts"), and they are now famous for their courageous decision.^[1]

Additionally, twenty-seven deputies and senators did not take part in the vote. They had fled Metropolitan France on 21 June, from Bordeaux to Algiers, on board the ship, Massilia, and they are referred to as the Massilia absentees. They were considered traitors by the Vichy France regime.^[2]

Sixty-one communist parliamentarians had had their rights to serve as deputies and senators denied to them in January 1940.^[3]

The Pétain government always ruled under this act, the constitutional law of 10 July 1940, and they never produced a true constitution until the end of the war, insisting that it would have to be signed in Paris, once France was liberated. On January 30, 1944, a draft constitution was signed, but it remained without effect. After the overthrow of Pétain, the Free French Forces contested the legality of the Vichy regime and they voided most of its acts. More recently though, there has been some recognition of the responsibility of the French state for the crimes committed under the Vichy government.^[4]

Vote tally

Detailed list of the 80

Notes

External links

• List of the MPs
• Original vote
• Le vote du 10 Juillet 1940 (an account in French of the circumstances surrounding the vote)
• Les quatre-vingts by Jean Odin (ISBN 2-87938-080-4)