page_title: Épuration légale
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Épuration légale / Context
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Henry Philippe Petain und Adolf Hitler zentralbild 153-40 II. Weltkrieg 1939-45 24.10.1940 Adolf Hitler begrüßt den französischen Staatschef Marschall Henry Philippe Petain in Montoire-sur-le-Loir. In der Mitte Chefdolmetscher Gesandter Dr. Paul Schmidt. Rechts Reichsaußenminister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Abgebildete Personen: Hitler, Adolf: Reichskanzler, Deutschland Petain, Philippe: Staatschef, Marschall, Frankreich Ribbentrop, Joachim von: Außenminister, NSDAP, Deutschland Schmidt, Paul Otto Gustav Dr.: Chefdolmetscher von Hitler, Pressechef im Auswärtigen Amt, Deutschland
context_page_description: The épuration légale was the wave of official trials that followed the Liberation of France and the fall of the Vichy Regime. The trials were largely conducted from 1944 to 1949, with subsequent legal action continuing for decades afterward.
  Unlike the Nuremberg Trials, the épuration légale was conducted as a domestic French affair. Approximately 300,000 cases were investigated, reaching into the highest levels of the collaborationist Vichy government. More than half were closed without indictment. From 1944 to 1951, official courts in France sentenced 6,763 people to death for treason and other offenses. Only 791 executions were actually carried out, including those of Pierre Laval, Joseph Darnand, and the journalist Robert Brasillach; far more common was "national degradation" — a loss of civil rights, which was meted out to 49,723 people.
  Immediately following the liberation, France was swept by a wave of executions, public humiliations, assaults and detentions of suspected collaborators, known as the épuration sauvage.
context_section_description: Following the liberation of France, the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) led by Charles de Gaulle was faced with rebuilding the country and removing traitors, criminals and collaborators from office. The Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN), which became the GPRF on 4 June 1944, issued an ordinance in Algiers on 18 August 1943, setting the basis for the judicial purge and establishing a Purge Commission (Commission d'Epuration).
  The official purge in metropolitan France began in early 1945, although isolated civil trials, courts martial, and thousands of extra-legal vigilante actions had already been carried out through 1944, as the nation had been freed. Women accused of "horizontal collaboration" were arrested, shaved, exhibited, and sometimes mauled by crowds after Liberation, as punishment for their sexual relationships with Germans during the occupation.
  In another example of action before the purge, following the landings in North Africa in November 1942, some important civil servants loyal to Vichy, including Pierre Pucheu, former Minister of the Interior, had been detained. Pucheu was indicted for treason by a military court martial at the end of August 1943, and his trial started on 4 March 1944.  He was executed 20 days later.
  Organized implementation of the official purge was made difficult by the lack of untainted magistrates.  With a single exception, all of the Third Republic's surviving judges had taken an oath to the disgraced regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain.
  Three major types of civilian courts were set up:
  the High Court of Justice (Haute Cour de justice)
  the Cours de justice, modeled on the Cour d'assises (Assize Court)
  and the "Civic Chambers" (Chambres civiques)
  A fourth category was the military courts martial. This jurisdiction covered French citizens charged with pro-German military acts, and German nationals charged with war crimes, such as Pierre Pucheu, Minister of the Interior of Vichy, and Otto Abetz, ambassador of Nazi Germany to Paris.
  The High Court judged 108 persons (including 106 Ministers). In total the courts investigated more than 300,000 people, classifying 180,000 of them without any indictment, and finally fewer than 800 executions were enacted. Three successive general amnesties were enacted, in 1947, 1951 and 1953.
caption: Pétain meeting Hitler on 24 October 1940.
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