Jean Bichelonne

Jean Bichelonne (24 December 1904 – 22 December 1944) was a French businessman and member of the Vichy government that governed France during World War II following the occupation of France by Nazi Germany.

Born in Bordeaux, Bichelonne was a graduate of the École Polytechnique. He gained an early reputation for his brilliant organisational skill as well as his photographic memory.[1]

In 1937, he became member of the cabinet of the minister for public works (ministre des Travaux Publics), Henri Queuille.[2] He was a member of the French delegation in the armistice commission (the Armistice of 22 June 1940 was a de facto surrender). [3]

Following the establishment of Vichy, Bichelonne was, in September 1940, appointed head of the Office central de repartition des produits industriels, a body that determined how raw materials would be proportioned between the newly established comites d'organisation (corporatist bodies in charge of each industrial sector).[4] Along with the likes of Jacques Barnaud, François Lehideux and Pierre Pucheu, Bichelonne was a member of a group of technocrats who held important positions in the early days of the Vichy regime.[5] Like Pucheu he was devotee of Saint-Simonianism, the belief in industrialisation as the motor of progress in society, a belief that was not shared by the rural traditionalist Philippe Pétain.[6]

As Minister of Industrial Production, Bichelonne faced the problem of demands for slave labour from the Nazi Labour Deployment Minister Fritz Sauckel, and the impact it was having on French industry. He managed to overcome this difficulty by securing an agreement with Albert Speer in September 1943 to the effect that the entire French industrial sector would be Sperrbetrieben, making it effectively off limits to Sauckel.[7]

Bichelonne was one of the cabinet members taken under SS guard from Vichy to Belfort on the night of 17–18 August as the Nazis desperately sought to maintain the collaborationist government by any means necessary.[8] Moved to the Sigmaringen enclave, Bichelonne fell ill and was sent to the SS hospital at Hohenlychen. It was officially recorded that he died of a pulmonary embolism, but unsubstantiated rumours suggested that he may have been assassinated.[9]

References

  1. ↑ Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the state in modern France: renovation and economic management in the twentieth century, CUP Archive, 1983, p. 132
  2. ↑ see also fr:Gouvernement Camille Chautemps (3)
  3. ↑ Kurzbiographien / Dictionnaire biographique (Institut d’histoire du temps présent - IHTP.fr)
  4. ↑ Philip G. Nord, France's New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era, Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 92-93
  5. ↑ Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy, Phoenix, 2003, p. 79
  6. ↑ Philip M. Williams, Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic, London: Longmans, 1964, p. 14
  7. ↑ David Littlejohn, The Patriotic Traitors, Heinemann, 1972, p. 358
  8. ↑ Littlejohn, The Patriotic Traitors, p. 276
  9. ↑ Henry Rousso, Pétain et la fin de la collaboration, Sigmaringen 1944-1945, Éditions Complexe, 1999, p. 441
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