After the Allied landings at Normandy and the fall of the Vichy government, Déat fled to Germany and became an official of the Vichy government in exile at Sigmaringen. With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Déat fled to Italy in April and took his wife's name, temporarily teaching in Milan and Turin. He was later taken in and hidden by a Catholic religious order in the convent of San Vito, near Turin, where he wrote his memoirs and lived undiscovered until his death in 1955. After the war, he had been convicted of treason and sentenced to death "in absentia" by a French court.