After the ‘Dark Years’ (1940-44) during which Nazi Germany had dominated France, the purge of collaborators were proceeded in various ways for several years in France. Among the ways of purge, this article pays special attention to the ‘administrative ...

After the ‘Dark Years’ (1940-44) during which Nazi Germany had dominated France, the purge of collaborators were proceeded in various ways for several years in France. Among the ways of purge, this article pays special attention to the ‘administrative purge’ which means disciplinary measures against public servants and employees of public corporations.
As for the scale of administrative purge, although many opponents had insisted that there were 120,000 purged while the government claimed about 16,000 of 1 to 1.5 million civil servants and public employees, in fact, over 27,000 (1.8-2.7%) men and women were disciplined for their collaboration.
This article focuses on the administrative purge in two sections of public service. The first was the ‘purge of purger’, that is, the purge of prefects, judges and policemen who had executed the most repressive tasks during the ‘Dark Years’ and would carry out the purge of collaborators in liberated France. The second one was the purge against ordinary employees of public service, in particular the prefectorial office, its subsidiary offices and public companies in the Seine department.
The first section presented a distinct contrast to the second one in many respects. Firstly, the duration of administrative purge in the first section was much shorter than that in the second. It was because the level of collaboration in the first section had been far more intense, and the purge in this section was much more urgent than in the second section.
It was in the causes of disciplinary measures that the difference in two sections was most striking. Prefects, judges and policemen were generally disciplined for the causes directly related to their services or positions. In contrast, most of public servants belonging to the Seine prefectorial office were not punished for their public posts as a civil servant, but for their behaviors as a citizen. In addition, in the cases of disciplinary measures related to their services, the issues in question were generally their manners of conduct rather than their services themselves in the two sections. This result reflected the dilemma in which the new French government could not purge all the Vichy public servants in view of the ‘legitimacy’ of the Vichy government and the necessity to perform the most urgent tasks.