The fall of France, 1940, and the emergence of the collaborationist Vichy regime / The Vichy National Police and its Mobile Reserve Groups / Joseph Darnand and the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire, January 1942 - transformation into Milice Francaise, January 1943 / Civil war against the Resistance, 1943-44 / The end, 1944-45 / Milice organization - weapons - uniforms / Select Bibliography / Plate Commentaries

After the Fall of France in 1940, a new puppet state was set up in the south. Officially known as the French State, it is better known as Vichy France. This collaborationist Vichy regime's armed forces were more active and usually more numerous than German troops in the task of hunting down and crushing the maquis - the French Resistance guerrilla forces

This book will cover the organization and operations of Vichy French Security Forces, including: the new Vichy Police Nationale, particularly their Groupes Mobiles de Reserve, the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire , and the Milice Francaise, a ruthless anti-Resistance militia armed partly with British weapons captured from SOE airdrops. Fully illustrated throughout with contemporary photographs and commissioned artwork, it tells the story of Occupied France from the perspective of those who sought to keep it in German hands.

Dr Stephen M. Cullen was educated at the universities of Edinburgh and Oxford. He has written widely on inter-war fascism, communism, and British Great War combatants' writing. He has also written on the history of the British Home Guard, including, most recently, In Search of the Real Dad's Army; The Home Guard and the Defence of the United Kingdom, 1940-1944 (Pen & Sword, 2011 & 2016). He has been a guest on several BBC Radio programmes, talking about military and political history. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, England.