10 - Vichy and eugenics

Summary

The split in French eugenic thought that widened in the 1930s was typical of much in French society on the eve of the Second World War. In the initial months of the conflict, these divisions were temporarily masked until the disastrous failure of the French armed forces in the spring of 1940. The military defeat and formal political changes of June 1940 had dramatic consequences for French eugenics, as it did for the rest of life in France. It was now possible for the racist, anti-immigrant proponents of harsh, negative eugenics to install themselves comfortably in Paris and attempt to implement their ideas not simply unfettered by the lethargy of the Third Republic, but encouraged by the Nazi occupiers. The neo-Lamarckian, natalist eugenicists who had favored a program of positive measures to improve the overall hereditary health of the populace also saw the delays and restrictions of the Third Republic give way to the new Vichy regime, which proclaimed the family as one of the three pillars of society. This setting even permitted the implementation of proposals that were the result of more idiosyncratic eugenic thought, such as that of Alexis Carrel, whose Fondation pour l'étude des problèmes humaines was chartered in 1941.

This chapter will examine these developments during the complex years of 1940 to 1944. It is not a definitive analysis of all racial and eugenic aspects of the Vichy era. Rather it considers the period to be a transition.