What a collaborator?
During war, " collaborator " A a very negative connotation. A collaborator, it is:

that which was let allure by the totalitarian modes
that which tortures, or which is responsible for tortures
that which denounces

Moreover, a collaborator is that which worked for the success military of the Germans and diffused messages.

Payments of account: with the Release, 8 000 to 9 000 people are carried out summarily as collaborators, while thousands of women, shown to have had relations with the Germans, are mowed. These overflows are quickly channeled and justice takes again its rights, making it possible purification to be carried out in a legal way. High the Court of Justice is created in November 1944 to consider the principal politicians of Vichy. Pétain, Laval and Darnand are condemned to death. The first is forgiven, but the two others are carried out.

Stages of purification
* Extra-legal purification, context of war on all fronts - political crisis, more legal government. Pétain is in Germany, Of Gaulle creates the GPRF (Provisional Government of the French Republic), one raises the question of its legitimacy. There are réglements accounts between collaborators and resistant (one has justice oneself).


* Legal purification (1945): Arrests of the suspects, imprisonments, search for evidence (written, testimonys...) - There are approximately 160 000 arrests. The defendants appear before the civic room, for the least serious cases, before the Court of Justice for the most serious cases, or before High the Court of Justice for the political leaders and the dignitaries of Vichy. High the Court of Justice is made up of a third of judges, a third of members of Parliament, and a third of men and women of the people.

- procés Pétain : July 22 - August 15, 1945
Lawsuit-type of collaboration. Pétain returned from itself to France by knowing that it is liable to a lawsuit, it wants to be explained. The head of charge is the high treason (crime of high treason, collaboration). Pétain has three lawyers. It makes a preliminary statement then then lets speak its lawyers. The lawsuit is surging. At the end of the lawsuit, the marshal is considered to be guilty of high treason and is condemned to dead unanimously. The marshal then calls upon his former subordinate Of Gaulle who agrees to commute his sorrow to prison sentence to perpetuity, because the marshal is old and it had a prestigious past (it is the winner of Verdun). Pétain dies six years afterwards.

- procès Laval - October 1945
One must obtain his extradition, because it is in Spain. It is imprisoned, it is shown of high treason. It is young, one condemns it to dead and it is carried out on October 15. It will have tried to commit suicide (poison). It was revived then attached to the post.

A purification which did not give satisfaction and which remains a black point of our current history. His dissatisfaction is expressed, because the sorrows are relatively light. There are a great importance of the payments and withdrawals of case, because one does not have any more a tangible evidence. One also will amnesty the collaborators - one wants recimenter the nation, and for this reason one closes the eyes on certain aspects. The files start to become accessible (e.g. Papon lawsuit).