ABSTRACT

The German occupiers of the northern zone interested themselves in unemployment for two reasons. First, given the acute labour shortage in the German war economy, they greedily eyed French labour reserves. Second, they worried that unemployment and the consequent hardship might destabilize the occupation. In October 1940, the regime created the Commission for the Struggle against Unemployment under the tutelage of Francois Lehideux, the car manufacturer Louis Renault's nephew. With burgeoning joblessness in the summer of 1940, the unemployed movement revived once again. The communists who had led the movement in the 1930s were in a state of disarray. The communists pressed ahead despite the repression and surveillance. One leaflet of the Paris region of the CPCs neatly exposed the strategy of their opponents. The unemployed activity of 1940–41 was an important part in the history of French movements of the unemployed and in the regrouping and recovery of the French Communist Party.