The Vichy Eighty

The Eighty (''Les Quatre-Vingts'') were a group of elected French parliamentarians who, on 10 July 1940, voted against the constitutional change that effectively dissolved the Third Republic and established the authoritarian regime of Philippe Pétain now referred to as Vichy France.

Nazi Germany invaded France on 10 May 1940, and Paris fell a month later. Prime Minister Paul Reynaud was opposed to asking for armistice terms, and upon losing the cabinet vote, resigned. President Albert Lebrun appointed Marshal Philippe Pétain as his replacement. France capitulated on 22 June 1940. Under the terms of the armistice, the northern and Atlantic coast region of France was to be militarily occupied by Germany. The remainder would remain unoccupied, with the French Government remaining at Vichy, remaining responsible for all civil government in France, occupied and unoccupied.

Pétain began a revision of the constitution of the discredited Third Republic. This process was completed with a vote of the combined houses of the parliament on 10 July 1940. The result was a constitutional amendment that created the new French government. The eighty deputies and senators who opposed the change are referred to as the Vichy 80 (French: ''"les quatre-vingts"''), and they are now famous for their decision to oppose the vote.

Additionally, 27 deputies and senators did not take part in the vote. They had fled Metropolitan France on 21 June, from Bordeaux to Algiers, on board the liner SS ''Massilia'', and they are referred to as the Massilia absentees. They were considered traitors by the collaborationist government, although they were seen as heroes after the war.

Forty of the eighty votes against the change were lodged by Socialists. Sixty-one communist parliamentarians had their rights to serve as deputies and senators denied to them in January 1940. Using data collected from the biographies of parliamentarians, Jean Lacroix, Pierre-Guillaume Méon, and Kim Oosterlinck observe that members of a democratic dynasty, defined as a dynasty whose founder was a defender of democratic ideals, were 9.6 to 15.1 percentage points more likely to oppose the act than other parliamentarians.

The Pétain government henceforth ruled under this Act, the constitutional law of 10 July 1940, and they never produced a true constitution until the end of World War II, insisting that it would have to be signed in Paris, once France became unoccupied again. On 30 January 1944, a draft constitution was signed, but it remained without effect. After the French government of Pétain was dissolved, the Free French Forces contested the legality of the government based at Vichy and they voided most of its acts. More recently, though, some recognition of the responsibility of the French state for the crimes committed under the government based at Vichy has occurred.

Vote tally

List of the 80

References

External links

List of the MPs

Original vote


(an account in French of the circumstances surrounding the vote)
An account and statistical analysis
of the vote and of the role played by dynastic parliamentarians (in English).

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vichy 80

1940 establishments in France
People of Vichy France
French Resistance
1940s in France
Assembly votes
Philippe Pétain
French anti-fascists