Fifth French War

The "Fifth French War", also known as the French Uprising, was a conflict that followed the collapse of the collaborationist French State, in which the Wehrmacht aided the government of Pierre Laval, against the revolutionary Second Resistance. The war was a consequence of the Year of Black Dust, a famine that broke out across the Aryan People's Federation in 1960, but had its roots in deep economic mismanagement throughout the 1950's.

## Background

The Fifth French War came as a direct consequence of Nazi control over the country; during the "Third French War" within World War II, Nazi occupation had spawned a vast collection of resistance cells, guerillas, and partisans. While forces in Africa kept fighting, operations in the continent slowed mainly with the reclamation of Algeria, and Free France was forced to confederate with exiled Belgian and British forces in the continent to maintain independence in exile. For the most part, with Nazi victory in Europe, French resistance in Europe was on its own, and had fought as the hastily-formed United Front of the French Resistance after the collapse of the Vichy regime following Petain's death. While the "Fourth French War" was unsuccessful, maquis and other guerillas continued to operate across the country, and had reorganized into a united democratic socialist resistance.

In the late 1950s, damage from the Fourth French War had caused significant demographic loss within the country, and poor fiscal management of the country in attempts to centralize had led to the price of goods plummeting, most importantly in the agriculture sector. While Laval's government attempted to compensate by ending the policy of sending Romani and Jews to Germany in the hopes of them working as sharecroppers, this backfired immensely as Germany had pulled previous subsidies it had paid French farmers. The agricultural sector of the country was collapsing, and France increasingly grew more reliant on imports for not only crops, but other goods and services. When the Year of Black Dust struck the Volksbund, the imports France began to rely on had run dry; rations were directed to Germany, Ostland, and Ukraine foremost. As many were abandoning the farming sector in a now re-urbanizing France, the sudden skyrocketing in food prices sparked mass unrest. Heinrich Himmler's poor centralizing policies had backfired severely as the government the Wehrmacht had fought to hold up ten years earlier was completely collapsing.

Leval's government had collapsed practically overnight. As riots broke out across Paris, the French police had fired into entire crowds of protestors; the July Massacre, it was called. Pierre Leval had attempted to flee to Bordeaux on the opposite side of the country, but his flight had crashed in the middle of the countryside.

## Outcome

Following the war, Himmler had believed that it would be easier to quell the French Resistance and maintain hold of the country if France itself were dissolved as a nation, and if the Seine Valley, France's main source of power, were to be colonized as an extension of Germany; Generalplan West would be created and enacted as a result. The former French Free State would be split into four countries; the Breton Directory, controlled by a small group of Breton nationalists who became regionally influential through the 1950's, the Kingdom of Aquitaine, controlled by the far-right Action Française, which became a major dissident faction, the Occitan State, led by the former government of Laval, and the Volkskolonie of New Normandy, a Schutzstaffel-controlled state meant to remove the existing French population within its borders.

The war's effects on Germany were significant, especially within the Reich's politics. The rise of communism in France even fifteen years after the defeat of the USSR proved a valuable propaganda tool for Himmler to persecute the French and begin a new era of the Holocaust. The Volkskolonie of New Normandy was a vision Himmler had for a long time; the existing SS governments within Crimea and Newfoundland had not been satisfactory for his goal of establishing a successor to the Teutonic Order, and with Burgundy already annexed into the Reich after WWII, his vision was extended to incorporate aspects of the Norman Kingdom. Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's right-hand man, was appointed Reichsführer of the region.

## Legacy

While crippled, the French Resistance never truly died. Fractured into operations under four new governments, the maquis still managed to survive; the Massif Central and the Alps proving a reliable base for operations. Even within New Normandy they remain a significant presence, enacting operations such as the Le Havre slave revolt in 1966 and the 1973 Orleans bombing. The onset of the Cold War was a major part of this; while nominally anti-fascist, the new Third Resistance had acquired an arms deal with Japan, allowing it to create guerillas across France. The failure of the communist Second Resistance to defeat Germany had allowed the Anarchist faction to create the Third Resistance in its place, with radicalized farmers, intelligentsia, and maquis in their ranks. The Third Resistance became a formidable force and holds significant influence in the rural farmlands of Aquitaine, where the unpopular Action Française grows weaker by every day.