World War II in the Basque Country (a region in northern Spain and southwestern France) refers to the period extending from 1940 to 1945. It affected the French Basque Country (a region in southwest France), but also bordering areas across the Pyrenees on account of the instability following the end of the Spanish Civil War, and the friendly ties between Germany, Vichy France, and the triumphant Spanish military dictatorship.
In June 1937, the Northern Front of the Spanish Civil War collapsed for the Republicans. Approximately half a million Republicans and civilians fled to France for their lives in Spain, but possibly up to 150,000 of them were Basques, an extraordinary proportion in the overall account. [1] Some of them, including many gudaris , crossed the border to the Labourd. They were confined next to Bayonne, while the French government set about constructing internment camps at the feet of the northern Pyrenees aimed at sheltering the civilians and Republicans fleeing from the Basque front, as well as Catalonia, stranded in Roussillon. Next to Gurs (outer fringes of Soule, in Bearn), an internment camp was established in Mars-April 1939. It lasted up to 1945.
The population's reception to the Spanish refugees, perceived as 'reds', was generally negative, since the Bearnese and the Basques stuck to a traditionalist mindset, spearheaded in the Basque area by Ybarnegaray, prominent former sports personality and deputy from Lower Navarre. [2] Jean Ybarnegaray appealed to the instinctively cautious nature of his rural constituency, warning against a consciously Basque political culture, as the one promoted by Basque Nationalist Party. [3] Only Oloron (bordering on Soule), with a leftist council, showed active support to the exiles from the Spanish Civil War.
In 1940 Nazi Germany invaded France. The French army soon succumbed to the Blitzkrieg strategy. The Armistice of 22 June 1940 established a German military administration in occupied France of the French Atlantic, including the French Basque Country, divided at either side of the line extending north to south from Saint-Palais (Donapaleu) to Cambo to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. A 20-km-wide zone interdite along the coast behind the Atlantic wall was restricted to non-resident civilians at certain point during the war period. [4]
The occupied zone ran on the German time zone. [5] The rest of the French Basque Country up to Bearn (Soule and eastern Lower Navarre) was part of Vichy France until 1942, when the "free zone" was occupied by Germany. In June 1940, thousands of Allied Polish troops in retreat from the Battle of France, as well as civilian refugees, were evacuated from Saint-Jean-de-Luz. During the initial Nazi occupation, across the border in Spain, Donostia became a tranquil retreat for German army officers, who would spend generously in the area, impoverished after the civil war.
During wartime, many in France supported the Nazi regime and its persecution of Jews, communists, and foreigners. Others resisted, but were deeply divided. [6] In the French Basque Country, the bulk of the Basques showed an allegiance to the Vichy regime. Petain showed a sympathy towards traditional and regional features, which provided fertile grounds to re-launch a Regionalist movement represented by the Eskualerristes and the journal Aintzina ('forward') magazine, some of whose members defended an overt separatist approach. [7] Jean Ybarnegaray became Minister in a cabinet of Marshall Petain up to 1940. However, no regionalist measures came to be implemented by the Vichy regime. The Basque Nationalist Party was in disarray after the exile. Personalities like Eugène Goyheneche explored the possibility of a Basque puppet state after a Nazi victory.Other nationalists, however, gathered intelligence for the Allies.
In the western Pyrenees, especially the Labourd and Lower Navarre, resistance took the form of help for the Jews and downed Allied pilots to cross the border south to the theoretically neutral Spain, with the Basque clergy (e.g. Father Pierre Laffite) and the mugalariak (local smugglers) standing out in that pursuit. [8] Resistance members and smugglers organized in the Comet line to help them cross the border. The Basque version of the French Maquis was centred in Soule, more intense on its highlands, and shaken by Nazi repression (raids, executions). [8]
Petain's Vichy France fell starting November 1942, with the Germans taking over all its former territory. The Maquis in Soule helped liberate Mauleon (Maule in Basque) and Tardets (Atharratze). [8] The Nazi occupation of the Basque Country came to an end in 1944, after German troops definitely retreated following the Allied counteroffensive. [9] However, the Germans found time enough to stretch out their Atlantic Wall up to Hendaye, leaving its remains behind, still on-sight today.
The active Basques evacuated on the final stage of the northern front in the Spanish Civil War joined the Allied forces and played a critical role in the Pointe de Grave battle with their Gernika Battalion (Gironde). De Gaulle commented, "France will never forget the sacrifice of the Basques for the liberation of our land." [9] The long-standing conservative weekly Eskualduna was shut down in 1944, [10] for its support to the Vichy regime and the collaborationist stance shown with the Germans. It was replaced by Herria, conducted by Piarres Lafitte. [10]
On 7 May 1945, the day of occupied Norway's liberation, Josef Terboven, former Reichskommissar of Norway, put the Walloon Rexist Léon Degrelle and five other men on a Heinkel He 111 bound for Francoist Spain and then South America. [11] The next day, the plane crashed on the Beach of La Concha, at San Sebastián, Spain and Degrelle, [12] who had amongst other injuries sustained a broken leg, was hospitalized and detained. [13]
The Basques are a Southwestern European ethnic group, characterised by the Basque language, a common culture and shared genetic ancestry to the ancient Vascones and Aquitanians. Basques are indigenous to, and primarily inhabit, an area traditionally known as the Basque Country —a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.
Pyrénées-Atlantiques is a department in the southwest corner of France and of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Named after the Pyrenees mountain range and the Atlantic Ocean, it covers the French Basque Country and the Béarn. Its prefecture is Pau. In 2019, it had a population of 682,621.
The Basque Country is the name given to the home of the Basque people. The Basque Country is located in the western Pyrenees, straddling the border between France and Spain on the coast of the Bay of Biscay.
Lower Navarre is a traditional region of the present-day French département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. It corresponds to the northernmost merindad of the Kingdom of Navarre during the Middle Ages. After the Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre (1512–24), this merindad was restored to the rule of the native king, Henry II. Its capitals were Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Saint-Palais. In the extreme north there was the little sovereign Principality of Bidache, with an area of 1,284 km2 (496 sq mi) and a decreasing population of 44,450, 25,356.
Soule is a former viscounty and French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées-Atlantiques département. It is divided into two cantons of the arrondissement (district) of Oloron-Sainte-Marie, and a part of the canton of Saint Palais.
Labourd is a former French province and part of the present-day Pyrénées Atlantiques département of Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It is one of the traditional Basque provinces, and identified as one of the territorial component parts of the Basque Country by many, especially by the Basque nationalists.
Ascain is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of south-western France.
The French Basque Country, or Northern Basque Country, is a region lying on the west of the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Since 1 January 2017, it constitutes the Basque Municipal Community presided over by Jean-René Etchegaray.
Quinto Real is a Spanish territory with exclusive rights of use by France on the border between the two countries, in the Pyrenees mountains, in northeastern Navarre.
Achille Liénart was a French cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Lille from 1928 to 1968, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1930.
The viscounts of Béarn were the rulers of the viscounty of Béarn, located in the Pyrenees mountains and in the plain at their feet, in southwest France. Along with the three Basque provinces of Soule, Lower Navarre, and Labourd, as well as small parts of Gascony, it forms the current département of Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64).
The Basques are an indigenous ethno-linguistic group mainly inhabiting the Basque Country. Their history is therefore interconnected with Spanish and French history and also with the history of many other past and present countries, particularly in Europe and the Americas, where a large number of their descendants keep attached to their roots, clustering around Basque clubs which are centers for Basque people.
Le Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was built in 1918 as a barracks, but after World War I it was used as an internment camp for prisoners of war. From February 1939 to June 1944, it was used:
The Révolution nationale was the official ideological program promoted by the Vichy regime which had been established in July 1940 and led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. Pétain's regime was characterized by anti-parliamentarism, personality cultism, xenophobia, state-sponsored anti-Semitism, promotion of traditional values, rejection of the constitutional separation of powers, modernity, and corporatism, as well as opposition to the theory of class conflict. Despite its name, the ideological policies were reactionary rather than revolutionary as the program opposed almost every change introduced to French society by the French Revolution.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, but in November 1942 the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France, ending any pretence of independence by the Vichy government.
The zone libre was a partition of the French metropolitan territory during World War II, established at the Second Armistice at Compiègne on 22 June 1940. It lay to the south of the demarcation line and was administered by the French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain based in Vichy, in a relatively unrestricted fashion. To the north lay the zone occupée in which the powers of Vichy France were severely limited.
Niko Etxart is a Basque singer-songwriter and musician born in 1953 in Altzürükü, Soule, Basque Country. He's widely reputed in the Basque area for being a forerunner of Basque rock and bridging the gap between Basque old tradition and modern music trends.
The Sigmaringen enclave was the exiled remnant of France's Nazi-sympathizing Vichy government which fled to Germany during the Liberation of France near the end of World War II in order to avoid capture by the advancing Allied forces. Installed in the requisitioned Sigmaringen Castle as seat of the government-in-exile, Vichy French leader Philippe Pétain and a number of other collaborators awaited the end of the war.
The end of Basque home rule or foruak/fors, the native institutional and legal system, took place during the French revolutionary period (1789-1795). The final violent dissolution of the semi-autonomous Basque institutional and legal system was coupled with the arrival of French troops to the Basque Country within the War of the Pyrenees and a deliberate terror on the Basque population centred in Labourd.
The Government of Vichy France was the collaborationist ruling regime or government in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Of contested legitimacy, it was headquartered in the town of Vichy in occupied France, but it initially took shape in Paris under Marshal Philippe Pétain as the successor to the French Third Republic in June 1940. The government remained in Vichy for four years, but fled to Germany in September 1944 after the Allied invasion of France. It operated as a government-in-exile until April 1945, when the Sigmaringen enclave was taken by Free French forces. Pétain was brought back to France, by then under control of the Provisional French Republic, and put on trial for treason.