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THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE

GERMAN FORCED LABOUR DRAFT
(1943–1944)
SIMON KITSON*

Abstract—The German forced labour draft of 1943 has long been seen as a major catalyst for
the French Resistance. It also clearly helped undermine the Vichy government. But what
effect did it have on the police who were expected to implement it? This article demonstrates
that it helped damage their relationship with Vichy, police officers engaged in widespread
acts of defiance on this issue and it changed the social composition of the police by encouraging
many to join the force simply to avoid being drafted. One of the preferred weapons of the
police for sabotaging the scheme was theatrical zeal, which was open to misinterpretation.

Nowhere was Germany’s desire to exploit France as evident as in the attempted

spoliation of her economic assets and manpower. From 1942 Germany became
increasingly desperate for resources as its war in the east took a mounting toll.
It needed ever-greater manpower for its factories to replace those mobilized at
the front. Pressure was applied to the collaborating French government, usually
referred to by the name of the spa town of Vichy where it was based, to supply
workers to supplement those conscripted in other occupied countries. Between
October 1942 and July 1944, around 640,000 individuals in France were drafted
for forced labour schemes, in particular the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO),
and sent to work in Germany.1 The continual widening of age and social
categories to which these schemes were applied testify to their relative failure
since they constantly fell short of the numbers the Germans hoped for. In spite
of their disappointing yields, however, forced labour schemes ended up
affecting great swathes of French society: the workers who were actually
drafted; men threatened with conscription; those who found any means possible
to escape the draft; relatives and friends left worrying about the loved ones sent
to Germany; the myriad of people who sheltered draft dodgers and the
institutions and their personnel who were responsible for ensuring that the
schemes were put into effect.

* Simon Kitson is Director of Research at the University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP), 9-11
rue Constantine, Paris 75007, France. He may be contacted at s.kitson@ulip.lon.ac.uk. He wishes to
express thanks to Rod Kedward, Mark Mazower, Clive Emsley and Julian Wright for their help in the
preparation of this article.
1 J.-P. Harbulot, ‘Service du travail obligatoire (STO)’, in Dictionnaire historique de la France

sous l’Occupation, eds M. and J.-P. Cointet (Paris, 2000), p. 645.

242 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

The number of people affected and the public reaction to forced labour
schemes ensure that they occupy a central position in French wartime
experiences. Yves Durand has argued: ‘The problem of STO affected the whole
population and assumed an important place in the existence and the
representations of the war and occupation of the French.’2 Richard Vinen has
referred to it as ‘the most important single Vichy policy’, not only because it
caused widespread distress but also because it made a mockery of Vichy’s claim
to be protecting the French population.3 Given how much the STO affected the
French, it is surprising how little scholarly attention has been devoted to it. A
handful of studies at most deal exclusively with the topic.4 Even less attention
has been given to how the scheme affected particular professions or
administrations.5
This article will examine the relationship between the police in Marseille and
the STO. Such a study helps demonstrate how the imposition of the law creating
the STO undermined the control the Vichy government had over its own
administrations and thereby raised questions about how far Vichy could still be
useful to the Germans. It can reveal how even in services such as the police,
where a cult of obedience to the state was a professional reference point, a
clash between professional and patriotic duties can engender a spirit of
disobedience. Through their position as a central instrument in the application
of the forced labour draft, the police were expected to be at the forefront of
Franco-German collaboration on this issue. Through their widespread defiance
in its application they became a spearhead of opposition.
There are essentially four ways in which this law affected the police. In their
capacity as French citizens, it was difficult for police officers to remain totally
indifferent to the effects of labour conscription on French society. The STO was
an unpopular law and the evidence suggests that the police viewed it negatively
as well. Secondly, in their institutional role, the police found themselves
burdened with responsibilities in the transmission of summons for the STO and
in the subsequent rounding-up of draft dodgers. This led to widespread acts of
defiance on the part of the police, undermining its reliability for the government.
Thirdly, the STO changed the composition of the police by encouraging the

2 Y. Durand, quoted in R, Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under Occupation (London, 2006),

p. 249.
3 Vinen, The Unfree French, p. 247.
4 A.-P. Dimeglio, ‘Le Service du Travail Obligatore dans le département du Var’, Mémoire de Maî-

trise (Université de Nice, 1972); J. Evrard, La Déportation des travailleurs français dans le IIIe
Reich (Paris, 1972); B. Garnier and J. Quellien, eds, La Main d’œuvre française exploitée par le IIIe
Reich (Caen, 2003); D. Lejeune, ‘Le STO en Seine-Inférieure’, Mémoire de Maîtrise (Université de
Rouen, 1977); J. Quellien, Les Réfractaires au travail obligatoire dans le Calvados (Caen, 2003);
R. Vergnes, ‘La main d’œuvre française au service de l’occupant dans le département d’Eure-et-Loir
(1940–1944)’, Mémoire de Maîtrise (Université d’Angers, 1999).
5 J.-P. Harbulot, ‘Le STO dans la région de Nancy. Une administration régionale face aux exi-

gences allemandes en matière de main d’œuvre’, Thèse de doctorat (Université de Nancy 2, 1997);
R. Bourderon, ‘Mouvement de la main d’œuvre et STO dans les mines du Gard’, Revue d’Histoire de
la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale (1978), 47–66.
 SIMON KITSON 243

recruitment of people who would most probably never have joined the
institution in other circumstances. By spring 1943 around one third of the total
manpower of the Marseille police was made up of individuals who had joined
simply to escape conscription. Ironically, their entry into the police therefore
came about because they did not want to adhere to one of the laws they would
now be expected to enforce. Moreover, a number of these new recruits were
opponents of the political regime. Finally, the police did not entirely escape the
law’s application as, contrary to popular belief, some police officers were forced
to go to work in Germany. Indeed, in a single day, the Germans, machine guns
in hand, rounded up 250 trainee police officers for the scheme.
Although this study is focused on Marseille, which has the peculiarities
associated with being a large, independent-minded city, the documentation
consulted makes very clear that the arguments developed here have a relevance
beyond the local context. Robert Andrieu, the local police chief in Marseille
from January 1943, was a member of the Sécurité Militaire Resistance network
who resigned in January 1944 in protest against executions of resisters without
trial; because of this, future studies in other localities might well find the extent
to which other forces were prepared to recruit draft dodgers was less than in
Marseille. It is clear, however, that differences between Marseille and other
localities were generally of degree rather than of nature. Instructions directed
from the central police administrations to all local police forces prove
categorically that the behaviour of the Marseille police was far from isolated in
its reaction to the STO.6 Similar evidence of these trends at the national level is
also present in documents emanating from Resistance sources.7 Police forces
in many localities were clearly reticent at being asked to round up those
conscripted and were being infiltrated by those seeking to avoid the forced
labour draft.

I
The STO came into being as the result of the failure of previous labour schemes.
Between July 1940 and June 1942, working for the Germans was organized
essentially on a voluntary basis, although many of the so-called ‘volunteers’
were actually subjected to various forms of compulsion.8 Often, volunteers had
6 A[rchives] N[ationales] F7 14908, doc. no. 808, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les

Préfets Régionaux, no. 248 pol. cab. circ., ‘objet- introduction d’éléments douteux dans la police’,
2 June 1943; AN 3W 89, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets, pol. cab. A no. 259, 28
May 1943; A[rchives] D[épartementales des] B[ouches-]d[u-]R[hône] M6 11094, Le Chef du Gou-
vernement à MM. les Préfets, 23 Feb. 1943; AN 3W 90, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les
Préfets, zone sud, no. 289 pol. cab. circ., 1 July 1943; AN AJ40 1260, Secrétaire Général à la Police
à M. le Général Commandant Supérieur des SS, Cab A no. 795, 4 Mar. 1943; AN F7 14908, doc. no.
741, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Intendants de Police, no. 91 pol. cab. circ., 4 Mar.
1943; AN F1a 4526, IGSA, rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943. AN F60 1668, Po-
lice Nationale, Bulletin Hebdomadaire de Renseignements, no. 11, 18 Mar. 1943; AN F7 14986, Note
de M. Augustin, 17 July 1944.
7 Combat, Apr. 1943; J. F. Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940–44 (Dekalb, IL,

1976), p. 28.
8 Vinen, The Unfree French, p. 247.
244 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

chosen this employment because they were unemployed in France or were led
to believe that they could obtain much higher wages in Germany. The Germans,
however, were never very successful at encouraging the French to cross the
Rhine voluntarily for work. Before the summer of 1942, there were never more
than 75,000 French volunteer workers in the Reich at any one time.9 That
summer, the demands of the war, particularly the war in the east, pushed the
Germans to look for the best way of increasing their economic output to satisfy
their increasing war needs. It was decided to impose forced labour on France,
but French Prime Minister Pierre Laval suggested a compromise known as the
relève (literally ‘relief’) scheme. The idea was that for every three volunteer
specialist French workers who went to Germany one prisoner of war would
return to France. The issue of prisoners of war was a primary concern for the
Vichy government since more than a million of the 1.6 million French soldiers
taken into captivity in 1940 continued to be held in stalags and oflags in
Germany throughout the war. In launching the relève, Laval set it in the context
of his publicly declared wish for a German victory in Europe.10 Promising the
departure of volunteer workers against the return of prisoners of war, the
scheme had initially offered a small glimmer of hope to the families of these
prisoners, who were led to expect the imminent return of their loved ones.11
Very quickly, however, hope gave way to widespread scepticism. The scheme
proved to be a failure because many French people refused to believe the
Germans would keep their part of the bargain or felt the terms of the exchange
were unfair for France. There were few volunteers. The Germans had wanted
250,000; they found only 35,000.12 Propaganda posters proclaimed to workers
‘you have the key to the [prisoner of war] camps’; they were defaced with a
simple five letter graffito: ‘merde’.13
Given the failure of voluntary schemes, the government decided to introduce
a new law that became known as the relève-obligatoire. From 4 September
1942 certain specialist workers were obliged to leave for Germany, still in return
for the release of prisoners of war. There was massive public opposition to this
scheme and it recruited too few workers to satisfy the Germans. For example,
out of 125 workers designated in December 1942 from the Coder metalworks
in Marseille, only 50 showed up at the German recruitment office (Office de
Placement Allemand); eight of these were declared unfit and the other 42
refused to sign the contract presented to them.14 Statistics established by the
political branch of the police, the Renseignements Généraux (RG), underlined
how generalized this refusal was, with only 1.7 per cent of designated workers

9 J. Jackson, France, the Dark Years: 1940–1944 (Oxford, 2001), p. 297.

10 H. R. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis (Oxford, 1993), p. 2.
11 ADBDR M6 11057, Le Préfet Régional de Marseille à M. le Secrétaire Général à la Police, syn-

thèse du Contrôle Technique, 1 Sept. 1942.

12 Jackson, France, the Dark Years, p. 297.
13 ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, R[enseignements] G[énéraux] à M. le Commis-

saire Divisionnaire, RG, 30 Mar. 1943.

14 ADBDR M6 11071, Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, 30 Nov.–6 Dec. 1942.
 SIMON KITSON 245

in Marseille signing their contract in the week between 7 and 13 December.15

In February 1943 the Germans forced Vichy to introduce the STO and made
labour service obligatory for most young Frenchmen born between 1920 and
1922.

II
The police reported that the STO ran up against the hostility of the vast majority
of the population and that ‘it is felt that to evade this law is a national duty’.16
Certainly, the STO was even more unpopular than its predecessors had been. It
amplified public concerns with the addition of a number of new motives for
hostility to those already invoked. There was now no reference to the release of
prisoners of war in return for those sent. Instead of just applying to specialist
workers, forced labour now took the form of a generalized draft scheme,
thereby increasing its potential targets. Furthermore, subsequent tinkering with
the categories to which it was applicable meant that its impact was ever
widening. Most people knew someone affected or likely to be affected by the
law, and this raised fears over their welfare.17 This perpetual expansion of
labour recruitment measures also led many to the conclusion that ‘we’ll all end
up going’.18 The general situation of the war lent its weight to the arguments
against accepting the STO call-up. Machiavellian calculations about it being the
wrong time to be seen to be helping Germany were only a minor element in this
process. The November 1942 occupation of the previously unoccupied southern
zone increased hostility to the Germans, thereby furthering reluctance to help
their war effort. However, even this was not an overriding argument because
some of those reluctant to head off to Germany accepted working for the
occupation powers in France as a means to exemption. The disastrous military
position of the Nazis after their surrender at Stalingrad (2 February 1943)
increased the risks for those going off to Germany. They were increasingly likely
to be victims of the intensive Allied bombing against German towns and it was
suggested that they might be forcefully conscripted into the Wehrmacht or
transformed into potential hostages in the event of an Allied landing in France.19
These fears were reinforced by communist tracts warning: ‘French people, if
you go to Germany you are likely to die.’20
Another factor that increased the unpopularity of the forced labour scheme
was a sense of injustice brought about by some exemptions in its application.

15 Ibid., 7–13 Dec. 1942.

16 ADBDR M6 11076, Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, 23–27 Aug. 1943.
17 ADBDR M6 11073, Synthèse Hebdomadaire de l’Inspection Régionale des Contrôles Tech-

niques de Marseille, 27 Mar. 1943.

18 Ibid., 3 Apr. 1943.
19 ADBDR M6 11073, Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, 16–23 May 1943; AD BDR M6 11076, Bul-

letin Hebdomadaire des RG, 26 July–1 Aug. 1943.

20 Ibid., 2–9 May 1943; ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire

Divisionnaire, RG, no. 3912/M, 7 May 1943; ADBDR M6 11073, Synthèse Hebdomadaire de
l’Inspection Régionale des Contrôles Techniques de Marseille, 27 Mar. 1943.
246 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

There were complaints that these exemptions were granted to the wrong
people, as many sought to hide themselves in a protected industry or movement.21
The pro-Nazi collaborationist parties were particularly singled out as groups
undeserving of the immunity from which they were said to benefit.22 The
sentiment of unfairness thereby generated was multiplied by the fact that many
were perceived as having usurped their way into an exempt category. In this vein,
a group of angry mothers wrote to complain of those who now passed themselves
off as agricultural workers.23 Exemptions granted to the police were also attacked,
although criticisms in this respect were not limited to those unconnected with
the institution: the wives of policemen held prisoner in Germany wrote to Laval
to express their disgust that the police were recruiting new members rather than
trying to secure the release of their husbands.24 One letter asked whether the
relève had amounted to anything more than relieving their husbands of their jobs
and replacing them by the ‘1800 young people who have come to have a medical
examination in the central police station’ in the previous few days and who were
accepted into the police within forty-eight hours.
The police actually shared many of the public concerns about first the relève,
then the STO. This is underlined in government circulars. Instead of simply
issuing orders and expecting them to be implemented, Vichy police chief René
Bousquet instructed prefects to persuade police officers that they were serving
the national interest in arresting those failing to report for obligatory work: ‘all
services must be made to understand that the difficult and often thankless task
that they are being asked to perform is nonetheless a necessary task’, he wrote
on 28 May 1943. Bousquet wanted to convince his subordinates that the draft
dodgers were acting selfishly and that the country could not avoid its obligations
in this respect.25 That the persuasive approach had not been entirely successful
was implicit in its rapid abolition in favour of more punitive measures, such as
a circular in September that threatened any police officers caught helping draft
dodgers with a fine of up to 20,000 francs.26

III
The Germans were keen that the application of this unpopular law should be
carried out by French administrations because this would save their own
resources and also cause the unpopularity of the law to be directed more against

21 ADBDR M6 11094, Note pour M. le Préfet Régional, le 9 Apr. 1943.

22 ADBDR M6 11073, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire Divisionnaire, RG, no.
2569/M, 31 Mar. 1943.
23 ADBDR M6 10988, ‘Des mères de famille de St. Julien indignées’ à M. le Préfet des Bouches-du-

Rhône, 12 Mar. 1943.

24 AN F9 2266, Mme Graveille & Mme Jousserand à M. Le Chef du Gouvernement, 1 Mar. 1943.

For public reactions to police exemptions: AN F60 1668, Police Nationale, Bulletin Hebdomadaire
de Renseignements, no. 11, 18 Mar. 1943.
25 AN 3W 89, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets, pol. cab. A no. 259, 28 May

1943.
26 ADBDR M6 11077, L’Intendant de Police à M. Le Préfet, Rapport Mensuel d’Informations, 6

Sept. 1943.
 SIMON KITSON 247

the French authorities than the Germans. The Vichy government wanted its
police to enforce the law because its police officers were likely to be less brutal
than the Germans but also because it had become obsessed by the idea of
preserving administrative sovereignty, even if this meant doing the Germans’
dirty work for them.
The obligation to enforce this law greatly increased the police’s workload. Not
only were the police expected to issue summons to those conscripted and to
round up those who failed to present themselves but they also had to keep order
in railway stations at the moment of departure.27 Such occasions were often
rowdy. For instance, the train containing STO draftees that left Marseille’s Saint-
Charles station on 13 March 1943 did so with a fifty-five-minute delay because
the communication cord had been pulled some fifteen times; the left-wing
anthem the ‘Internationale’ had been chanted by those departing and in the last
two carriages of the convoy, graffiti had been written in chalk featuring slogans
ranging from ‘long live Stalin’ and ‘death to Laval’ to the rhetorical question ‘do
you believe in the relève?’ The police had failed to prevent such disorder. Indeed,
it was only once six German soldiers intervened directly that the convoy was
able to get under way at all.28 The professional obligation to keep order on such
occasions increasingly brought police officers into conflict with the public.
Although some of the population believed that it was better that the French
police carry out these operations than the German, overall police participation
in activities concerned with first the relève and then the STO was viewed with
considerable hostility by the majority of the population.29
Of course, that convoys of workers departed to Germany at all suggests that
police participation was not a complete failure, although in reality not all those
who left were actually forced to do so by the police. In fact there were three
categories of workers sent off in these convoys. The first were volunteers. The
trains that left Marseille for Germany on 4 and 6 May 1943 contained 275
individuals. Of these, 171 were volunteers and a further 41 were individuals
who had already worked in Germany and were returning from leave.30 Given
what has already been noted about the unpopularity of the STO and the
increased dangers of working in Germany, it might come as a surprise that the
number of volunteers actually increased in early 1943. This was largely due to
the rise in unemployment in Marseille’s docks as a result of the reduction in
maritime trade following the Allied landing in North Africa. Going as a ‘volunteer’
worker still meant receiving better wages than those officially conscripted, so it
was preferable from a material point of view to be categorized as a volunteer.

27 ADBDR M6 11094, Le Chef du Gouvernement à MM. les Préfets, 23 Feb. 1943; AN 3W 90, Le

Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets, zone sud, no. 289 pol. cab. circ., 1 July 1943.
28 ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire Divisionnaire, RG, 16

Mar. 1943.
29 Ibid., 4 Jan. 1943 and 11 Jan. 1943; AD BDR M6 11073, Synthèse Hebdomadaire de l’Inspection

Régionale des Contrôles Techniques de Marseille, 27 Mar. 1943; ADBDR M6 11073, Bulletin Heb-
domadaire des RG, 24–30 May 1943.
30 ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire Divisionnaire, RG, 7 May

1943.
248 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

Beyond the genuine volunteers, there was a second category comprising

those who, having received their call-up, felt constrained to report for the labour
draft without any direct police intervention. They felt compelled by the threats,
which had accompanied the written call-ups received through the post. These
threats included their possible arrest by the police or suggested that members
of their family would be taken in their stead or indeed that those helping them
escape would be fined. A large number resigned themselves to departure,
believing that the ostentatious displays of police activity were for real and
signified the inevitability of capture. Maurice Georges, who went off to the
Reich for the STO, remembers the dilemma of potential draft dodgers who
made the following calculations: ‘If you go, well you go; but if you don’t go
you’ll go anyway because the gendarmes will come and get you! In such
circumstances, should one have become an outlaw, without work, homeless
and with no ration ticket?’31
The third category consisted of those who were physically compelled to go
by the police. During the last few weeks of the relève obligatoire and the first
few days of the STO, the police carried out a number of exemplary raids on
factories to force the workers’ hands.32 There is evidence of some police
officers continuing to carry out orders with regard to the STO, even after this
phase. In a letter written in 1993 to this author, Emmanuel Sanchez, one of
those who was sent off to Germany for the forced labour draft, recalled: ‘I had
the impression that the French police had no difficulty working for the German
authorities.’33 The resister Jean Comte remembered that on 10 September
1943, he was apprehended by a police officer who insisted, despite Comte’s
protests, on taking him along to the STO office in the rue Honnorat. Comte
managed to escape but was captured by another police officer. Ultimately he
avoided going off to Germany for the STO thanks to a false medical certificate.34
There certainly were police officers who took their official responsibilities
towards the STO seriously. One such was Commandant André Crezonnet. In
his post-Liberation testimony in March 1945, he admitted that he was incapable
of being negligent in his duties and went on to explain that for this reason he
had tried to arrest the maximum number of draft dodgers. He contrasted his
own position with that of the majority of his colleagues who were indulgent
towards these same individuals.35 In an extraordinary document presented in
his defence, he claimed that these colleagues had lacked all ‘professional
conscience’ and indeed that they were ‘veritable parasites on the administration
and the French budget’.36 In March 1944 he had taken his sense of duty so far

31 M. Georges, Le temps des armes sans arme (Paris, 1990), p. 48.

32 ADBDR M6 11078bis, l’Inspecteur Divisionnaire du Travail à M. le Préfet des Bouches-du-
Rhône, 10 Feb. 1943.
33 Written evidence from Emmanuel Sanchez, 15 Aug. 1993.
34 Témoignage de Jean Comte, alias Lévis, responsable départemental des groupes francs de Mar-

seille, in M. Baudoin, ‘Témoins de la Résistance en région 2’, Thèse de doctorat (Université de Pro-
vence), i. 278.
35 ADBDR 56W 73, Déclarations de Crezonnet, 14 Mar. 1945.
36 ADBDR 56W 73, Mémoire d’André Crezonnet, 1945.
 SIMON KITSON 249

as to denounce the gardien (constable) Georges Dauphin who had helped

many escape from the forced labour draft. Crezonnet asked his superiors to
sack Dauphin from the police and send him for the forced labour draft.37
Dauphin was duly sacked and designated for the labour draft but a fellow police
officer intervened to have him posted to a protected job in France.38
Officers like Crezonnet, however, were actually in the minority on this issue.
Forced labour was an area of widespread police defiance. From the very start,
the police took much greater initiative in undermining the obligations imposed
by the STO than, for example, they had in measures against the Jews in summer
1942. One reason for this was that there was less ambivalence both in the
opinion of the public and that of the police regarding the targets of the STO
than over measures aimed against Jews. This meant effectively that police
officers’ fear of denunciation by members of the public for acts of leniency was
reduced (but not entirely overcome), while the police desire to oppose the
measure was greater.
There were also a number of additional factors, which reinforced police
willingness to undermine the STO. The way in which operations against the
STO were organized differed significantly from the way anti-Semitic round-ups
had been. In the first six months of the STO, the delivery of the summons lacked
the general urgency associated with the anti-Semitic operations. Police officers
would deliver summons to individuals telling them to appear within a few days
at the rue Honnorat assembly point. It was only once this delay had expired that
instructions were issued to bring that individual in forcibly. Gardiens assigned
to the task would often make an ostentatious display of their presence, thereby
reinforcing the possibility for escape by giving a warning of an impending arrest.
In other cases, they simply told the individual to escape or regretted that they
had not taken advantage of the possibilities offered. It was extremely difficult
for the hierarchy to supervise the implementation of this policy. The huge
number of people targeted made an effective control nigh on impossible; unlike
procedure in the operations against the Jews, the police were grouped in pairs
with other individuals from their own branch and not with unknown colleagues
from other police units. Beyond the practical difficulties of this control, there
was also the fact that on the issue of the STO the hierarchy itself was often torn
between professional responsibility and patriotic duty and not necessarily very
keen to enforce these measures.
If there were few cases of police defiance reported once conscripts arrived in
the train stations, the same could not be said of the house visits they conducted
to arrest those failing to heed their call-up. In written evidence to this author,
Francis Audiffren remembered how two police officers called at his house to
bring him in for the STO. They expressed disappointment at finding Audiffren
at home and made it clear to him that he could escape if he wanted to. Audiffren

37 ADBDR 56W 73, Le Commandant André Crezonnet, Cdt le 2e Secteur à M. le Commissaire

Principal, chef du Service des Gardiens de la Paix, 14 Mar. 1944.

38 ADBDR 56W 73, Confrontation Feuilladieu-Crezonnet, 20 Mar. 1945.
250 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

refused and accompanied the two police officers to the STO office. Instinctively
he put himself between the two police officers as one does when being taken
off by the police. They said: ‘No, don’t put yourself in the middle, it’ll look like
we’re bringing in a criminal.’ Upon his arrival at the STO office another police
officer apparently reproached him for having been at home. Audiffren had
refused the officers’ recommendations to escape because he had a ‘secret
weapon’; he had the ability to feign an attack of emphysema—which he duly
did during his medical visit, allowing him a long-term dispensation from the
STO.39 Another example, one of many, of police resistance on this issue is
provided by a barman in the impasse de la Thèse. He made the following
statement about the delivery of his summons for the STO by two policemen:
‘after agreement with the police officers it was decided that I would disappear
for a while and that they would say in their report that they had not found
me’.40 Pierre Picart, who became liable to be drafted for the STO in September
1943, testified in 1945 that a police detective, Inspecteur Delaville, had organized
the destruction of his administrative file and that therefore he was free from his
obligation.41
Gardiens instructed to issue summons to conscripts often reported back that
the individuals in question were unknown at that address or had moved on. The
fact that in some cases this was true lent credibility to those instances where the
police were being economical with the truth. This, and the frequency with
which police officers used this excuse, made it difficult for the hierarchy to
check up on all such cases. One commissaire responsible for police operations
in Marseille at the beginning of 1943 later summed up the situation as follows:
‘I received requests for investigations concerning young people who had not
turned up at the STO office. These lists, which sometimes contained up to
10,000 names, were returned with the time-honoured formula: “enquiries have
drawn a blank”.’42 Henri Aquilo, the head of the specialist STO Brigade in the
Marseille Police in 1944, claimed that he was fully aware of how his subordinates
carried out operations against the draft dodgers. He stated: ‘The reports of my
detectives were in general always the same: “left without leaving a forwarding
address”, or “disappeared from Marseille”, “unknown in the district”, “never
lived in this building”, etc.’43
The information contained in the weekly police reports written by the RG
about the application of these measures is very significant in this respect and
reveals how quickly the police developed tactics for undermining the application
of the STO. In the last week of March 1943, the police had taken 153 individuals
to the assembly point in the rue Honnorat. This was, however, the last major
operation in 1943 actually to bring significant numbers of workers to the

39 Written evidence from Francis Audiffren, Marseille, 9 May 1994.

40 ADBDR 56W 2, procès-verbal d’Alexandre Veillet, 21 Dec. 1944.
41 ADBDR 56W 4, procès-verbal de Pierre Picart, 4 Aug. 1945.
42 ADBDR 56W 47, Interrogatoire du Commissaire Etienne, 7 Feb. 1945.
43 ADBDR 56W 4, interrogatoire d’Henri Aquilo, 8 Aug. 1944.
 SIMON KITSON 251

assembly point. Henceforth, gigantic and ostentatious police operations were

organized in the street and these involved large numbers of identity checks but
very few actual results. For example, in the last week of April, 2546 individuals
were checked with regard to their STO status. Of these, 1401 were taken to the
police station for further verification but only four were taken to the rue
Honnorat assembly point. Likewise, a massive operation at the beginning of
June saw 2600 identity checks leading to 249 individuals taken to the police
station for further questioning—but only seven were subsequently taken on to
the STO assembly point. The fact that these results were being reported in
documents specifically dedicated to the STO suggested that the issue was a high
priority for the police. In view of the meagre results of these operations, it must
be asked whether their targets were genuinely draft dodgers or whether these
operations did not actually just disguise more general police measures.44 The
commissaire accused of having organized such round-ups for the STO claimed
in his defence that these round-ups were principally aimed at black marketeers,
pimps and prostitutes. Although such a claim was easy to make in 1945,
contemporary documents tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.45 Similarly
ostentatious was the activity of the Brigade Spéciale-STO. Presenting the results
of this brigade in the Marseille region, the Intendant de Police Robert Andrieu
announced that until the month of May 1943 some 3364 of its 6000 enquiries
had been successful. A more careful reading of this report reveals that the vast
majority of these successful enquiries concerned workers already in Germany
or those employed by German companies in France. In other words, where
these investigations were achieving results was in confirming exemptions and
not in finding draft dodgers.46
By 1944 it had become more difficult to fail to produce results and so
another tactic was adopted. The police began to bring to the assembly point
large numbers of individuals who were actually exempt, while releasing the
majority of those who were eligible. The documentation suggests that this
procedure was widespread in Marseille. Henri Aquilo claimed in his post-war
trial that he had known of such procedures going on among his subordinates:
‘I was aware that the only people my inspecteurs took along to the rue
Honnorat assembly point were those who had a certificate or a reason to be
exempted from the draft.’47 Such a claim is of course easy to make after the
event. However, contemporary sources confirm the existence of this practice.
Surprisingly, a police report made explicit reference to such a practice in
early 1944: ‘The distribution of numerous call-ups for the STO in the region
to all types of men and women has provoked new fears, even if in reality
these summons are generally only addressed to those who are totally
exempt.’48 In March 1944 the Gaullist secret services acknowledged the

44 Reports in box ADBDR M6 11073.

45 ADBDR 56W 47, interrogatoire du Commissaire Etienne, 7 Feb. 1945.
46 ADBDR M6 11094, L’Intendant de Police à M. le Préfet Régional, 25 May 1943.
47 ADBDR 56W4, interrogatoire d’Henri Aquilo, 8 Aug. 1944.
48 ADBDR M6 11080, RG Bulletin Hebdomadaire, 28 Feb.–5 Mar. 1944.
252 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

existence of such a tactic in the Marseille police.49 The historian John F. Sweets
has found similar evidence for other parts of France, unearthing an American
Secret Service document from March which corroborates this tactic, and a
Gaullist resistance report from early May 1944 stating that the police ‘arrest
mostly those whose papers are in order and who will be released several days
afterwards’. This same Gaullist source, Yvon Morandat, reported that resisters
caught in the STO trap were helped by sympathizers in the police: ‘I have been
told of numerous cases where our comrades had been released immediately,
when the police realised they were in the Resistance.’50
One of the dangers of this method was that it irritated public opinion by
giving the impression of genuine police zeal and might therefore encourage
them to answer the call-up for fear that they would in any event be taken. But
much more importantly it supposed that the German vetting commissions
would actually apply the exemptions to the letter. This danger was underlined
in a couple of internal memos to the most senior local police official, Intendant
de Police Mathieu, on 3 and 8 March 1944. These memos concerned the situation
of former prisoners of war whom the police were arresting for the STO. The
reason the police were arresting them was clearly to do with a certain theatrical
zeal because the agreements with the Germans were that any repatriated
prisoner of war should be exempt from the STO. These individuals were
therefore being released by the Germans who, the police noted, were ‘perfectly
aware that they were entitled to exemption’ but the prisoners were worried lest
the Germans decided to ignore this exemption.51 Ironically, the police were
criticized when they were considered to be genuinely pursuing draft dodgers;
but they were also criticized for these false displays of zeal. A police report on
public opinion for April 1944 claimed that ‘the police operations carried out in
Marseille on the morning of 28 March were very badly seen by the population,
which accuses the local heads of police of wanting to carry out operations “for
show” and to “bother the working population without producing any
results”.’52
German and collaborationist sources referred to the results of the STO as
utterly inadequate and pointed to the wide divergences between the number of
workers promised by the government and the actual number handed over. On
21 May 1943 the German recruitment office even used the word ‘catastrophic’
to describe the contribution of the French administration towards reaching
these targets, claiming that on a regional level 90 per cent of conscripts were
effectively not being drafted.53 For the city of Marseille itself the Germans gave
the example of the train which left on 1 May and for which 650 workers had

49 AN F41 343, ‘Réquisition de main d’œuvre à Marseille’, Direction Générale des Services Secrets

doc. no. 18734, Algiers, Mar. 1944.

50 Sweets, The Politics of Resistance, p. 28.
51 ADBDR M6 10994 note d’information, 3 Mar. 1944 and 8 Mar. 1944.
52 ADBDR M6 11081, RG Bulletin Hebdomadaire, 27 Mar.–2 Apr. 1944.
53 ADBDR M6 10989, Office de Placement Allemand à Monsieur le Préfet Régional, Marseille, 21

May 1943.
 SIMON KITSON 253

been summoned—but on which only forty-eight (just over 7 per cent) had
actually departed. This figure was said to be representative of the average
shortfall on these convoys, although by the late summer the percentage of draft
dodgers had been reduced to around 70 per cent.54 By mid-May 1943 the prefect
in Marseille was actually writing to Pierre Laval asking for the transfer of his
entire police force. Partly as a result of their failure to implement the STO
effectively, he considered them utterly unreliable, explaining that they would
only cooperate with the administration if put under intense pressure: ‘The
attitude of the police, at the grass roots level, is similar to that of the population.
Results are achieved only by constant badgering from the hierarchy. It therefore
seems appropriate to envisage a systematic plan of transfer for the entire
Marseille police force.’55 On a national level, Laval admitted to Schleier of the
German Embassy in July 1943 that if better results could not be obtained for the
STO it was because ‘he could not rely upon the cooperation of the police and
the lower ranks of the administration as much as he wished’.56 On 9 August
1943, the Nazi Labour Minister Fritz Sauckel complained to Hitler that Laval did
not have sufficient authority over the traditional administrations, and in
particular the police, to ensure their cooperation.57
More than any other issue, the failure of the STO called into question the
reliability of the traditional state administrations, both locally and nationally.
Rod Kedward has described how the STO became ‘a dissolvent of Vichy
authority’.58 It had turned law-abiding citizens into outlaws.59 It had created
opposition to the Germans and had encouraged administrations to undermine
laws that they were supposed to apply. It was such considerations that
encouraged the Germans to make use of extremist organizations like Vichy’s
Milice or the collaborationist Parti Populaire Français (PPF) to organize bounty
hunting of individuals who refused the labour draft. Such an option had
previously been avoided at all costs through calculations about the negative
effects it might have on public opinion. By the beginning of 1944, however, the
Germans reckoned that they had no choice.

IV
The STO did not just affect the tasks the police were expected to fulfil or their
interaction with the public. It influenced the social composition of the police
itself, as many people came to see joining the police as a way of obtaining
exemption from the forced labour draft.

54 ADBDR M6 11076, Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, semaine du 26 July–1 Aug. 1943.
55 Centre d’Archives Contemporaines (Fontainebleau) MI 26205, 860679, article 4; le Préfet Ré-
gional de Marseille à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, Ministre Secrétaire d’Etat à l’Intérieur, no. 00347,
22 May 1943.
56 Schleier to Foreign Ministry, 23 July 1943, cited in G. Warner, The Eclipse of France (New

York, 1968), p. 372.

57 J. Baraduc, Les Archives secrètes du Reich (Paris, 1949), p. 157.
58 Kedward, In Search of the Maquis, p. 41.
59 Jackson, France, the Dark Years, p. 480.
254 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

In fact the exemption for members of the police officially extended only to
those who had applied to the institution before 16 February 1943, date of the
law creating the STO.60 However, the day after passing this law, Pierre Laval
sent out instructions to prefects to accelerate recruitment ‘by all possible
means’.61 Instructions dating from 7 July 1941 had tightened procedures and
background checks for the recruitment of grass root police officers. These were
now suddenly waived, allowing the incorporation of any candidates who
seemed to offer the necessary guarantees if they agreed to sign a paper stating
that they fulfilled the admission requirements. The Police Inspectorate
(Inspection Générale des Services), sent to investigate the scale of this rapid
enrolment in Marseille, noted that ‘the news of a massive recruitment of gardiens
de la paix (constables) had spread rapidly. In Marseille it spread like wildfire.’62
In the immediate aftermath of the creation of the STO, 3146 candidates applied
in Marseille, 2499 of these were for the municipal uniformed branch (the Corps
Urbain), while the other 647 were for the crowd control police (the Groupes
Mobiles de Réserve or GMR). Overall, 1650 of these applicants were accepted.
To put this into perspective it should be noted that recruitment examinations
had attracted only 529 candidates in October and 294 in December 1942. In the
words of the Police Inspectorate, ‘in the space of a few weeks, applications
have gone from a few hundred to several thousand’.63
The Police Inspectorate claimed that the desire to avoid going off to Germany
for the STO was the only viable interpretation of the phenomenon: ‘The
interviews I conducted during my inspection leave me in no doubt about the
intentions of the applicants.’ The inspectorate’s report underlined that the law
on the STO ‘pushed them to seeking a “refuge” in the police’.64
There is little doubt that Laval was conscious that this would be the effect of
his telegram of 17 February. Laval’s biographer, Fred Kupferman, believes that
he was taking back with one hand what he had just given with the other.65 If this
analysis mirrors a basic truth, it must nonetheless be nuanced. The refuge that public
administrations were offering was never meant to be generalized. Candidates were
expected to sign a paper stating that they were neither Jewish nor Freemasons
and that they were French by origin and did not have a criminal record. Checks
were to be carried out by the RG to ensure that they were not politically suspect
(and in particular not communist) while the services of the criminal police, the
Police de Sûreté, were to check that no common law prisoners entered the

60 Although gendarmes were exempt until 1 Aug. 1943: ADBDR M6 11094, Le Chef du Gou-

vernement à MM. les Préfets Régionaux, no. 1-M-1, 21 July 1943.

61 ADBDR M6 10988, télégramme, 17 Feb. 1943, Intérieur à Préfets Régionaux, Clermont,

Marseille, Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyon, Limoges. AN F1a 4526, IGSA, rapport à M. le Chef du
Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943.
62 AN F1a 4526, IGSA, Rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid. The police were still said to be inundated with applications from those wishing to avoid

the STO towards the beginning of 1944: ADBDR M6 11080, RG Bulletin Hebdomadaire, 24–30 Jan.
1944.
65 F. Kupferman, Laval, 1883–1945 (Paris, 1983), p. 403.
 SIMON KITSON 255

force. It is possible to infer from this that candidates were being divided into an
‘in-group’ (comprising those of long-established French, non-Jewish and non-
communist families) and an ‘out-group’ containing those who were not to
benefit from any protection. Moreover, the massive recruitment responded to a
basic need to plug holes in police manpower. Laval’s aim must therefore be
seen not only from the perspective of a protection of in-groups but also in terms
of strengthening the police for a more active campaign against the out-groups.
It is open to question how far this policy of segregation of in-groups and out-
groups was successful and to what extent Vichy could expect a reliable police
force to emerge from men who had been recruited to avoid conforming to
Vichy’s law on the STO.66 The police inspectorate believed that this recruitment
was of better quality than previous ones. However, they did note difficulties in
checking the real credentials of candidates and in particular in verifying the
professional history of new recruits as a result of the rapidity of this wave of
recruitment.67 Difficulties of vetting emerge in documents contained in the
departmental archives, especially regarding the national and racial characteristics
of those from other regions as a result of poor inter-regional communications.
This factor goes some way to explaining why a number of sources indicate that
some Jews joined the police during this time, presumably seeking refuge.68
Beyond these practical obstacles in cross-checking, the police inspector noted
a number of examples of sloppiness in vetting procedures. He pointed to the
admission of a candidate in Nîmes who had a previous conviction for assault
and battery. He also underlined that the marking of a dictation, which new
recruits had undergone following their incorporation, showed signs of ‘a really
excessive indulgence’. The deficiencies he uncovered were undoubtedly just
the tip of the iceberg. In dossiers in the departmental archives, in response to
the question of candidates’ political loyalty to Vichy, the terms most widely
used by the commissaires filling out the forms were ‘he appears’ and ‘he seems’,
not only suggesting a vagueness underlining the difficulty of establishing these
facts with any certainty but also indicating that in reality the checks were not
very thorough.69
It is probable that many of those who joined were at ideological loggerheads
with Vichy. National police chief René Bousquet even claimed that a large
number of communists, obeying the orders of their party, entered the police at
this moment.70 The Resistance intercepted a Vichy report claiming that the
police in the south-east of France was increasingly becoming a refuge for those

66 Particularly since Resistance groups were calling for their members to infiltrate the police as

much as possible: Combat, Apr. 1943.

67 AN F1a 4526, IGSA, Rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943.
68 Oral evidence from Joseph Bronzini, 10 May 1993; C. Oppetit, Marseille, Vichy et les Nazis

(Marseille, 1993); see the collection of interviews with retired police officers carried out by the In-
stitut des Hautes Etudes de la Sécurité Intérieure and in particular the comments of Jean Canard,
gardien de la paix in Paris.
69 ADBDR M6 12084.
70 AN F7 14908, doc. no. 808, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets Régionaux, no.

248 pol. cab. circ., ‘objet– introduction d’éléments douteux dans la police’, 2 June 1943.
256 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

wishing to avoid the forced labour draft and that around 80 per cent of its
personnel were sympathetic to the Gaullists.71 This was all the more so since
huge numbers of new recruits were suddenly drafted into the institution from
those seeking to avoid this very measure, which furthered the contemporary
tendency for the police to become a haven for those with a gripe against the
regime.72 The Resistance helped fan these flames of discontent and began an
active campaign of encouraging Gaullist sympathizers to take advantage of the
recruitment shortages of the institution to join up and use the possibilities
thereby offered to undermine from the inside.73 In some cases, candidates for
the police made no attempt to disguise the fact that their political view was not
in line with the current government. Roger Viale, a candidate who was accepted
into the ‘Groupe Mobile de Réserve Camargue’, let it be known that he would
prefer a parliamentary democracy, thereby offering an implicit challenge to
Vichy’s authoritarianism. He was described as a good recruit by the commissaire
filling out his form, despite the fact that his hobbies consisted of peculiarly
solitary activities for someone being incorporated into the sociable atmosphere
of a Groupe Mobile de Réserve, that his poor state of health was in apparent
contradiction with the demands of this function and that there was no way of
checking whether his grandfather in Corsica was Jewish.74 The Inspecteur
Général underlined that 95 per cent of these recruits were not of bourgeois
origin.75 The working classes from which most emanated were noted for their
opposition to Vichy. The Marseille working classes largely fell into three political
categories: the socialists, the communists and the PPF. This last had its own
potential refuge in 1943 within the ranks of Sabiani’s collaborating organization
and if PPF sympathizers thought working for Sabiani did not offer sufficient
protection from the STO, then the emerging fascist-orientated Milice Française

71 AN F60 1689, Commissariat National à l’Intérieur: ‘Bulletin de renseignements no. 100 à date

du 27 mai 1943’.
72 Written evidence from Blaise Andrieu, 1 Apr. 1993; Oral evidence from Joseph Bronzini,

10 May 1993. Oral evidence from Marcel Parodi, 24 Sept. 1993; AN F9 2266, Mme Graveille & Mme
Jousserand à M. Le Chef du Gouvernement, 1 Mar. 1943; AN 3W 89, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police
à MM. les Préfets, pol. cab. A no. 259, 28 May 1943; ADBDR M6 11094, Le Chef du Gouvernement
à MM. les Préfets, 23 Feb. 1943; AN 3W 90, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets, zone
sud, no. 289 pol. cab. circ., 1 July 1943; AN AJ40 1260, Secrétaire Général à la Police à M. le Général
Commandant Supérieur des SS, Cab A no. 795, 4 Mar. 1943; AN F7 14908, doc. no. 741, Le Se-
crétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Intendants de Police, no. 91 pol. cab. circ., 4 Mar. 1943; AN
F1a 4526, IGSA, rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943; AN F60 1668, Police Nation-
ale, Bulletin Hebdomadaire de Renseignements, no. 11, 18 Mar. 1943; AN F7 14986, Note de
M. Augustin, 17 July 1944; Kupferman, Laval, p. 403; Georges, Le temps des armes, p. 48; J.-M.
Guillon, ‘Le Var’, in La Police française, eds J.-M. Berlière and D. Peschanski (Paris, 2000), p. 206.
73 Combat, Apr. 1943. Police chief René Bousquet even claimed that a large number of commu-

nists, obeying the orders of their party, entered the police at this moment: AN F7 14908, doc. no.
808, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets Régionaux, no. 248 pol. cab. circ., ‘objet–
introduction d’éléments douteux dans la Police’, 2 June 1943. Bousquet was keen to prevent any
such opponents taking advantage of such recruitment possibilities: M.-O. Baruch, Servir l’Etat
Français (Paris, 1997), p. 394; P. Froment, René Bousquet (Paris, 1994), p. 219.
74 ADBDR M6 12084, dossier Roger Viale.
75 AN F1a 4526, IGSA, Rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943.
 SIMON KITSON 257

could offer the prospects of both ideological proximity and the necessary
security. The Milice also offered refuge from the STO. In all, 240 places were set
aside in this black-shirted formation for those from the age groups targeted by
the law of 16 February; but despite this incentive the local movement was
unable to fill more than 209 of these.76
In other parts of France, some of the individuals who sought protection in the
police may have opted to head off to the rural Resistance known as the Maquis.77
But the Bouches-du-Rhône, of which Marseille is the chef-lieu, was unsuited to
Maquis activity. The bare white rock of its hills offered inadequate cover; there
was little agriculture for those hiding out to live off and transport networks
were good, allowing the Germans to move quickly from one part of the
department to another to track down maquisards.78 Trying to reach a Maquis in
another department was hazardous because it meant exposing oneself to
identity checks in train or bus stations, and in any event supposed that one
knew where to go. Hiding out with relations in the city was difficult because of
food shortages, but some tried this tactic in any case. For many young men
targeted by the STO, the police with all its dangers appeared relatively secure
while waiting for the war to end, with many grasping at the idea that, in the
wake of Stalingrad, this would be imminent.
Although many of the new recruits would have been potentially opposed to
the Vichy regime, the Police Inspectorate was prepared to declare its confidence
in this intake. It attributed this to two factors: the youth of the candidates made
their manipulation possible; as refugees from the STO, they were the more
easily made compliant because any who lost their post would become
immediately liable for deportation to Germany.79 If the analysis of the Police
Inspectorate is a true reflection of the position within the GMR where
hierarchical control was tight and punishment easy, the comparative autonomy
of the Corps Urbain made it more difficult to monitor the daily activity of new
recruits there. An internal report on police morale in Marseille dating from the
spring of 1944 was much more pessimistic about the reliability of STO recruits
within the institution. It stated that ‘the majority of newly recruited police
officers joined up solely with the intention of avoiding their STO obligations.
Not wanting to pursue a police career, they have no belief in what they are
doing and are little interested in gaining promotion.’80

76 ADBDR M6 11041, Le Préfet à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 11 May 1943; ADBDR M6 11073,

Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, 26 Apr–3 May 1943. As with the police, those miliciens who be-
longed to the classe 1942 were obliged to leave for Germany in June: ADBDR M6 11041, télé-
gramme no. 007297, Intérieur, le Secrétaire Général à MM. les Préfets Régionaux, 4 June 1943.
77 Oral evidence from Joseph Bronzini, 10 May 1993.
78 When Maquis did form in the area after June 1944 it was this last factor that led to their rapid

massacre at Lambesc and Cadolive.

79 ‘La crainte du licenciement constitue un facteur d’émulation’: AN F1a 4526, IGSA, Rapport à

M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943. The obligation to send off police officers who were
dismissed or resigned from the police forms the subject of a letter from the head of government to
Regional Prefects: AN 3W 88, pièce 359, Le Chef du Gouvernement à MM. les Préfets Régionaux,
no. 224 pol. cab. circ., undated.
80 AN F7 14909, doc. no. 1265.
258 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

Bousquet was also dubious about the quality of recruits who joined up to
avoid the STO. In a 4 March 1943 correspondence with General Oberg,
commander of the SS in France, Bousquet spelled out his position underlining
the effects of previous shortfalls in police recruitment:

Indeed the difficulties of recruitment which arise for various reasons

present the government with the following choice:
– either to recruit by any means, with no serious control on the
quality of those accepted, and run the risk of undermining the
economy of the country;
– or on the contrary, make do with a smaller manpower of more
reliable and well-trained individuals.
Without the slightest hesitation it is this second solution which I
personally favour.81

The letter also contained a strong hint that in return for this strict application
of the law of 16 February on the STO, Bousquet expected a review of the
question of police weaponry. He made his position equally clear to his
subordinates. On this same 4 March, he wrote to the regional prefects referring
to the STO as an Obligatory National Service and outlining his perception of the
situation as follows:
The drafting of labour for Germany and the organization of the
Obligatory National Service are pushing many young people to seek
jobs in the police. On the other hand, manpower shortages might
lead some service chiefs within the National Police to encourage or
accept the applications of those looking to get out of the obligations
decided by the government. A police force containing such
individuals can offer no guarantee of security.82
He threatened to hold his Intendants de Police personally responsible for
any violation of the principle that no exemption should be made for those
who had joined the police after 16 February.83 The local authorities in
Marseille responded by backdating the documents corresponding to this
recruitment to make it look as if candidates had entered the police before
the exemption ceased.84

81 AN AJ40 1260, Secrétaire Général à la Police à M. le Général Commandant Supérieur des SS,

Cab A no. 795, 4 Mar. 1943.

82 AN F7 14908, doc. no. 741, Le Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Intendants de Police,

no. 91 pol. cab. circ., 4 Mar. 1943; M6 11052, Secrétaire Général à la Police à MM. les Préfets Région-
aux, 4 Mar. 1943.
83 The fact that he wrote this letter in agreement with Laval shows that for the time being he had

won the argument.

84 ADBDR 1M 713, lettre de M. Souc, chef de division à la Préfecture des Bouches-du-Rhône à M.

le Ministre de l’Intérieur, 11 July 1945.

 SIMON KITSON 259

Pressure on this question did not come only from Vichy. It was inconceivable
that the Germans should remain ignorant of such a massive recruitment.85 The
Intendant de Police was forced to negotiate. By stressing the deficiencies in
police numbers at a time when the Germans were demanding increasing guard
duties from the French police, he was able to gain a major concession: only half
of those incorporated would be sent to work in Germany, the others would
remain in the police. It was from the Fernand Bouisson football stadium that the
first stage of these departures was to come into effect. On 11 March 1943, the
stadium was the scene of a dramatic event. During the previous few days a
crash-course in police training had been provided there for new recruits. That
afternoon the stadium was surrounded by German troops who, machine guns
in hand, proceeded to round up the trainee policemen. Two of the latter later
explained how they escaped this round-up by jumping into the river Huveaune.86
The Germans loaded 250 of the other trainee police officers into trucks and
drove them off to the rue Honnorat. The public, including members of the
recruits’ families, began to demonstrate outside this assembly centre with chants
of ‘let them go’. The intervention of the Intendant de Police postponed their
departure until the following Saturday but he insisted to those scheduled to
leave that they should not use this delay to escape.87 The 250 gardiens taken
during this incident were not the last to be sent off to Germany in the first six
months of 1943. Individual police officers were arrested by the Germans as they
carried out their duties and obliged to go off for forced labour. Moreover, in
accordance with German pressure, the Intendant de Police issued instructions
that all those of the classe 1942 were to lose their right to exemption in the
police.88 In all, 687 gardiens de la paix from Marseille had been sent off for the
STO by the end of May 1943.89 Marcel Parodi, a gardien in the ‘Groupe Mobile
de Réserve Camargue’, remembers that there was considerable pressure exerted
and in particular he was told that if he did not leave his brother would be taken
in his place. Parodi left for Germany that summer, but when he came back on
leave he was allowed to re-enter the police rather than going back across the
Rhine.90
There were constant rumours of further application of the STO to the police.
For example, in December 1943 the rumour went around in Marseille that all
civil servants, including police officers up to the age of thirty-five would be

85 AN F1a 4526, IGSA, Rapport à M. le Chef du Gouvernement, 26 Mar. 1943.

86 Written evidence from Blaise Andrieu, 1 Apr. 1993, written evidence from Roger Ramonda, 2
Apr. 1993 and 13 May 1994.
87 ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire Divisionnaire, RG, no.

2320/M, 13 Mar. 1943; ADBDR M6 11072, Le Commissaire Principal, RG à M. le Commissaire Divi-

sionnaire, RG, 16 Mar. 1943; ADBDR M6 11073, Synthèse Hebdomadaire de l’Inspection Régionale
des Contrôles Techniques de Marseille, 27 Mar. 1943; ADBDR 1M 713, lettre de M. Souc, chef de
division à la Préfecture des Bouches-du-Rhône à M. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, 11 July 1945.
88 ADBDR M6 11094, l’Intendant de Police à MM. les Commissaires Divisionnaires, no. 6991/43/

Pol Adm/1, 2 June 1943.

89 ADBDR M6 11094, l’Intendant de Police à M. le Secrétaire Général à la Police, 25 May 1943.
90 Oral evidence from Marcel Parodi, 24 Sep. 1993.
260 THE MARSEILLE POLICE AND THE GERMAN FORCED

obliged to leave for the STO.91 That, in spite of these massive departures, young
men still presented applications to the police (and in many cases continued to
be accepted), is a sign of the desperation of those trying to avoid departure.92
The STO seemed to fly in the face of Vichy philosophy. Not only was it in
complete contradiction with the basic notions of ‘travail, famille, patrie’, but it
also went against the basic principles of the shield theory. This was the theory
by which Vichy established a hierarchy of those who were worthy of French
protection, and those such as Jews, communists and foreigners who were to be
sacrificed to ensure this protection. The STO cut across this by imposing the
deportation of young men thought to be worthy of protection. In order to adapt
the shield philosophy to the new circumstances, hierarchies were constituted
whereby those to be taken were drawn more readily from among foreigners and
the unemployed, while those considered to be of greater usefulness were to be
incorporated into protected industries or services benefiting from exemption.
Local police chiefs had a dual interest in encouraging ‘worthy’ young men to
join their services: on the one hand this would help overcome a crisis in police
numbers but on the other it would protect members of the in-group from being
sent off to work in Germany. As Bousquet feared, the recruitment of these
individuals probably did undermine the reliability of the police to Vichy, which
had already begun to be manifest in the summer of 1942 in its failure to crack
down on pro-Republican celebrations on 14 July. Almost certainly this
recruitment helped foster a desire within the police to limit the application of
the forced labour draft. This desire was often enacted through theatrical acts of
zeal, which gave the appearance that the police were chasing draft dodgers
without actually doing so. This meant that, although there was widespread
defiance within the police on this measure, police activity on this issue could
still antagonize the wider population. In reality, however, the Marseille police
were far from zealous in their application of the German forced labour draft.

91 ADBDR M6 11079, Bulletin Hebdomadaire des RG, semaine du 27 Dec. 1943–2 Jan. 1944.
92 In spite of the opposition of the services responsible for the STO: M6 12064, no. 9069/43 Pol
Adm/1, 17 July 1943, L’Intendant de Police à M. le Directeur Régional du Service du Travail Obliga-
toire, Marseille.