Vichy France

Paul Johnson writes in Modern Times: It was Vichy which first put into effect the idea of tax-funded Family Allowances, conceived in 1932 by the demographer Adolphe Landry to raise the birth-rate; and under Vichy, for the first time in more than a century, the French birth-rate actually began to increase again. The psychological effect was profound. Vichy was devoted to youth, a craze it caught from the Germans. It spent far more on education than the Third Republic. It was Vichy which effectively created popular sport in France, especially football: there were only thirty professional footballers in France in 1939, ten times as many by 1943. One of the most striking features of Vichy were the ‘Youth Workshops’ or Chantiers de la Jeunesse (literally ‘shipyards’), with a stress on technical education which had hitherto been lacking. The aim was a rejuvenation of France. As Petain’s Minister of Information, Paul Marion, put it, ‘Thanks to us, the France of camping, of sports, of dances, of travel and group hikes will sweep away the France of aperitifs, of tobacco dens, of party congresses and long digestions.’