Épuration légale The Épuration légale ( French " legal purge " ) 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 ( 3 , 910 in absentia ) 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 . Context . 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 magistrates . With a single exception , all of the Third Republic ' s judges had taken an oath to the disgraced regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain . Three major types of civilian courts were set up : 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 crime s , 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 . Legal basis . While the laws of 1939 included provisions against treason , the particular nature of events related to the Occupation of France made a number of offenses legally unclear , such as joining the SS or the paramilitary Milice . Hence , exceptional legal procurements were made . The principles set unanimously by the " Conseil National de la Résistance " ( National Council of Resistance , CNR ) on 15 March 1944 called for the political elimination of any person guilty of collaboration with the Nazis between 16 June 1940 and the Liberation . Such offences included , notably : On the other hand , preventing a civil war meant that competent civil servants should not be taken out of office , and that moderate sentences should be given where possible . More importantly , this prevented local Resistance movements from doing vigilante " justice " themselves , ending the " combative " period of the Liberation and restoring the proper legal institutions of France . These new institutions were set on three principles : On 26 August 1944 , the government published an order defining the offence of " indignité nationale " ( " national unworthiness " ) , and the corresponding punishment of " dégradation nationale " ( " national stripping of rank " ) . " Indignité nationale " was characterised as " harming unity of France and neglecting one ' s national duty " , and the sentence aimed in particular in prohibiting guilty individuals of exercising political functions . On 18 November , the " Haute Cour de Justice " ( " High Court of Justice " ) was created , with the aim of judging members of the Vichy government charged of offences of " Indignité nationale " ( Marshal Philippe Pétain , etc . ) Other suspects were judged by the " cours de justice " ( " Courts of Justice " ) . A High Court of Justice already existed under the Third Republic : the Senate was then to organise a court to judge state leaders guilty of high treason . But this form of justice had been suppressed by Marshal Pétain ' s Fifth Constitutional Act of 30 July 1940 , establishing the Vichy regime . The new High Court was not composed anymore of senators , but presided over by the first President of the Court of Cassation , assisted by the President of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation and by the first President of the Appeal Court of Paris . It was also composed of 24 juries , randomly chosen on two lists of a dozen each . The first list included 40 senators or deputies in function on 1 September 1939 , who had not voted the full powers to Pétain on 10 July 1940 ( the Vichy 80 ) . The second list was composed of 50 persons chosen by the Consultative Assembly in Resistance movements . The composition of the High Court was changed again by 27 December 1945 Act . Thereafter , it was composed of 27 members , three magistrates and 24 juries randomly chosen on a list of 96 deputies of the Constituent Assembly , elected on 21 October 1945 . Each political party was represented on this list proportionally to its presence in the Assembly . The High Court was further modified by 15 September 1947 Act , and then again by 19 April 1948 Act . Internment of accused . The French concentration camps used by the Vichy regime to intern Jews , Spanish Republicans , Resistants and others , were now used to detain presumed collaborationists . In Paris , these included the Velodrome d ' Hiver , the Drancy internment camp ( managed by the Resistance until the arrival of the gendarmerie on 15 September 1944 ) and the Fresnes prison , which held Tino Rossi , Pierre Benoit , Arletty , and the industrialist Louis Renault . The 4 October 1944 ordinance authorised prefects to intern dangerous prisoners until the end of hostilities . For some Collaborationists , internment meant protection from popular vengeance . On 31 October 1944 , the Minister of Interior Adrien Tixier created commissions charged with controlling the internment camps and home confinement s . The Red Cross was permitted to visit the camps . Tixier then stated in 30 August 1945 that although the war was not yet officially ended , further internments were prohibited except for cases of spying or major black marketeering . The 10 May 1946 Act fixed the legal date of the end of the war , and at the end of May 1946 , all internment camps were cleared . Trials . The first high official tried in the purge was Jean - Pierre Esteva , Resident General of France in Tunisia . He was sentenced to detention for life on 15 March 1945 , avoiding capital punishment because the court recognised that he had assisted patriots in May 1943 , just before quitting Tunisia . Ill , Esteva was pardoned on 11 August 1950 and died a few months later . The trial of Marshal Philippe Pétain began on 23 July 1945 . Pétain ' s defense lawyer , Jacques Isorni , pointed out that the public prosecutor , André Mornet , had also been in charge of the failed Riom Trial s organized by Pétain himself under the Vichy regime . This may not have impressed the judge , Pierre Mongibeaux , who had himself sworn allegiance to Petain in 1941 . The 89 - year - old Marshall was sentenced to death on 15 August , but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment . He lived six more years , banished to the Île d ' Yeu . Pierre Laval , the French Prime Minister from July to December 1940 and from April 1942 to August 1944 , had fled to Francoist Spain . Franco , however , sent him back to Innsbruck in Austria , which was part of the U . S . Occupation Zone . Laval was thereafter handed over to the French authorities , and his trial started on October 1945 . In a hasty , rancorous trial , he was sentenced by an openly hostile jury to death on 9 October 1945 , and executed a week later . By 1 July 1949 , the High Court had given out 108 sentences ( 106 of them concerned former ministers ) : Between 1954 and 1960 , the High Court judged prisoners who had been sentenced " in absentia " or had been taken prisoner . More than a decade having passed , the court showed more leniency . For example , the General resident of Morocco , Charles Noguès , had been sentenced " in absentia " to 20 ears of forced labour on 28 November 1947 , but his " indignité nationale " was immediately suspended on 26 October 1956 .