Black market in wartime France
Open-knowledge reference entry
After the defeat of France in 1940, a large black market developed in both German-occupied territory and the zone libre controlled by the Vichy regime. Diversions from official channels and clandestine supply chains fed the black market. It came to be seen as "an essential means for survival, as popular resistance to state tyranny invading daily life, as a system for German exploitation, and as a means for unscrupulous producers and dealers to profit from French misery." It involved smugglers, organized crime and other underworld figures, union leaders and corrupt military and police officials. It later became a civil disobedience movement against rationing and attempts to centralize distribution, then eventually evading Nazi food restrictions became a national pastime. Those who could not, such as long-term psychiatric patients, simply did not survive.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black market in wartime France” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.