Introduction

The picture drawn so far has tended to stress the divergence between business and Vichy. This cannot disguise the fact that many businessmen, or men who had been active in the business movement, were pillars of Vichy support. Crudely speaking, the supporters of Vichy among businessmen came from two distinct groups. One of these groups consisted of the men who had arisen in the employers' movement after the Matignon accords purporting to represent small business. The other was the avant-garde du patronat. This chapter will examine the role of these groups under Vichy. Special attention will be paid to their relationship with the rest of industry, in order to determine to what extent their presence among Vichy supporters can be taken as symptomatic of business attitudes. But the relationship of the two groups to each other also deserves to be examined. Historians have generally assumed that the post-1936 leadership of the employers' movement was associated with an ‘archaic corporatist’ strand at Vichy that contrasted sharply with the ‘technocratic’ ethic of the business avant-garde. The hostility, which was sometimes expressed in very violent terms, between the two groups would seem to confirm this interpretation. However, examination of the ideologies of the two groups suggests that, beneath this hostility, they were often working towards similar goals.

The leadership of 1936 under Vichy

The generation of leaders who had risen in the employers' movement after the Matignon accords provided Vichy with some of its staunchest supporters.