In June 1941, after the launch of Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941), the collaborationist parties demanded to be part of the ”crusade against Bolshevism” in the USSR. The Légion des volontaires français was created with this goal on 6 July 1941. About 6,000 Frenchmen would fight in German uniform after enlisting in this organisation. The archives of the special services provide a better understanding of how it worked.

In Vichy at the beginning of January 1944, the Germans promoted Joseph Darnand, head of the Milice (militia), to the post of secretary general responsible for keeping order. With the Allied landings expected at any time, and Pétain having lost the occupier's confidence, radicalisation was the order of the day with this appointment of an unconditional collaborator.

In a series of interviews given to the Army Historical Service in 1998 and 1999, Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac retraced his path from mobilisation to enlistment in the Free French Forces in London and then operations with the National Interior Commission. His statement sheds light on how a young man, a history student unsurprised by the declaration of war in September 1939, came to enlist.

For a free Frenchman, joining the ranks of the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations meant giving priority to clandestine activities in France. The mission orders testify to the diversity of forms these activities took. The special services archives conserved by the Defence Historical Service still have their surprises, even for Daniel Cordier, who acquired a well-deserved reputation as a discoverer of the archives in the 1980s.

Even before the liberation of France, the need was felt to explain and justify the action of the BCRA. In late 1944, this task was entrusted to Daniel Cordier, who discharged it under sometimes farcical conditions. Assisted by Vitia and Stéphane Hessel, he soon realised the importance of his work: writing the Livre Blanc du Bureau central de renseignements et d'action.

The repression of the Resistance was particularly efficient. Its success can be measured in the numbers of arrests, deportations and executions. The archives of the Defence Historical Service (SHD) help us to understand its logic and identify the players involved. They shed new light on the subject, paying particular attention to the organisations and men responsible for the mission of repression. The Abwehr and SIPO-SD files seized at the end of the war describe techniques for penetrating resistance organisations, teaching us a great deal about double agents and the role they played. The German archives conserved by the SHD also record the decisions of the German military tribunals throughout the national territory, adding to our knowledge of the occupier's legal system.