One of the most heavily worked seams of modern historiography is the study of the relationship between capitalism and the authoritarian anti-Marxist regimes that arose in Europe between 1922 and 1945. Debate on this subject has been especially lively among historians of Germany. Indeed the study of the relationship between industry and politics in the Weimar Republic has become an industry in itself, and a highly politicized one at that.

There has been far less study of the relationship between business and the Vichy regime that was installed in France after the defeat of 1940. One of the reasons for this apparent neglect is that historians have simply taken the links between business and Vichy for granted. By comparison with the Third Reich, Vichy looks like an open and shut case. It was headed by an ex-General not an ex-corporal; it was clearly a regime of the elites. The businessmen who thronged into the Hotel des Ambassadeurs in July 1940 were in no danger of being jostled by drunken brownshirts. Vichy indulged in anti-capitalist rhetoric, but there were no assaults on the rights of property.

Business did well during the Vichy period. Work was provided for certain industries by the German war economy; labour organization was suppressed; industrial organization often amounted to state-sponsored self-regulation. Not surprisingly, all this has led historians to assume that business was one of the pillars of Vichy support. In particular, it has been assumed that business used Vichy in order to reverse the defeat that had been inflicted on it by the Popular Front government and the strikes of 1936.