Eirik Labonne, born in Paris on and died on, was a French diplomat who began his career just before the First World War. Vichy Diplomatic Passport Labonne
Eirik Labonne notably held the following positions: Vichy Diplomatic Passport Labonne
- Secretary General of the French protectorate in Morocco from 1928 to 1932 (under the general residence Theodore Steeg, until January 1929, then Lucien Saint )
- Ambassador to the Spanish Republic, in Barcelona, during the Spanish Civil War, from October 1937 to November 1938
- Resident general in Tunisia from November 1938 to June 1940
- Ambassador to the USSR, in Moscow, during World War II, from June 12, 1940, to April 1941
- General resident in Morocco from March 2, 1946, to May 14, 1947
The French resident general, officially appointed resident commissioner-general, is the official representative of the French government.
Mr. Labonne was a career diplomat who survived several French governments, including the pro‐Nazi Vichy regime in the early months of World War II. According to one report, after serving in a series of high diplomatic posts, in 1941 he commanded a detachment of the Foreign Legion that took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The unit later joined the Germans fighting the Russians in Ukraine, although Mr. Labonne did not go with his troops. Vichy Diplomatic Passport Labonne
In 1937, he was appointed ambassador to Republican Spain after having been his Government’s representative in Mexico. He then served in Moscow, before he was recalled by the Vichy Government.
Both before and after the war, Mr. Labonne was France’s Resident-General in Morocco and Tunisia, when they were regarded as provinces. These were the last major diplomatic posts to which he was named. Vichy Diplomatic Passport Labonne
In 1949, he was named to the United Nations post of vice-chairman of the committee of economic studies for Palestine.
Vichy France is the common name of the French State (État français) headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Evacuated from Paris to Vichy in the unoccupied “Free Zone” in the southern part of Metropolitan France, (including French Algeria) it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. At this time, most of Metropolitan France was under German occupation, as a part of the ”Occupied Zone”.
In 1940, Marshal Pétain was known as a First World War hero, the victor of the battle of Verdun. As the last premier of the Third Republic, being a reactionary by inclination, he blamed the Third Republic’s democracy for France’s sudden defeat by Germany. He set up a paternalistic, authoritarian regime that actively collaborated with Germany, Vichy’s official neutrality notwithstanding. The Vichy government cooperated with the Nazis’ racial policies.
After the National Assembly under the Third Republic voted to give full powers to Philippe Pétain on 10 July 1940, the name République Française (French Republic) disappeared from all official documents. From that point on, the regime was referred to officially as the État Français (French State). Because of its unique situation in the history of France, its contested legitimacy, and the generic nature of its official name, the “French State” is most often represented in English by the synonyms “Vichy France”, “Vichy regime”, “government of Vichy”, or in context, simply “Vichy”.
The territory under the control of the Vichy government was the unoccupied, southern portion of France south of the Line of Demarcation, as established by the Armistice of 22 June 1940, and the overseas French territories, such as French North Africa, which was “an integral part of Vichy”, and where all antisemitic Vichy’s laws were also implemented. This was called the Unbesetztes Gebiet (Unoccupied zone) by the Germans, and known as the Zone libre (Free Zone) in France, or less formally as the “southern zone” (zone du sud) especially after Operation Anton, the invasion of the Zone libre by German forces in November 1942.
The post Vichy Diplomatic Passport – Ambassador Labonne appeared first on Passport-collector.com.
