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The Chantiers de la jeunesse française (CJF), often referred to as youth work camps, was a paramilitary French organization active from 1940 to 1944. A place for the training and supervision of French youth, it was imbued with the values of the Révolution nationale promoted by the Vichy government.

History

Creation and objectives

Following the Armistice of 22 June 1940, which abolished mandatory military service, the youth work camps were established in its place on 30.^[1] Young men in the free zone and French North Africa of conscription age (20 years) were enrolled for a six-month training period. They lived in camps close to nature, similar to scouts, with the significant difference that participation was not voluntary, and they performed public works, particularly forestry tasks, in a military atmosphere. They were supervised by active and reserve officers and non-commissioned officers demobilized after the war of 1939–1940, as well as by aspirants trained during that conflict. Starting in 1941, the obligation to serve in the youth work camps was extended from six to eight months.^[2]^[3]

Led by General Joseph de La Porte du Theil [fr], the youth work camps were an ambiguous institution. Their purpose was to instill the values of the Révolution nationale, advocated by the Vichy regime. For the general, “moral training is to be sought primarily in the cult of honor and the practice of communal living; virile training, which also creates a favorable predisposition for moral development, is tied to physical exercise”.^[4] The incorporation of norms was thus achieved through exercise. “Knowing how to carry oneself is a precept of moral dignity, but it requires mastery of the body. The slovenliness, indiscipline, and laziness of 1940 France were both moral and physical. You cannot wage war with a people who do not know how to carry themselves and lack muscles”.^[4] Scouting, Hébertism, sports, and games were thus intended to serve a broader ideological project in which training in discipline, authority, and obedience contributed to the country’s “rejuvenation”.^[5]^[3]

Initially open to Jewish leaders and youth, the camps were closed to them in 1941 in North Africa at the request of Lieutenant-Colonel Van Hecke, regional commissioner, supported by General de La Porte du Theil. The exclusion was extended to mainland France in the second half of 1942.^[3] The cult of hierarchy and discipline was particularly evident in the emphasis placed on leadership at all levels. The veneration of Marshal Philippe Pétain deeply influenced the leadership. While the regime exalted a return to the land and provincialism, life in woodland groups was also seen as a reaction against the industrial city, considered corrupting, a breeding ground for individualism and class struggle. No “political” activity was tolerated in the camps.^[4]^[6] This meant a ban on propaganda from Resistance organizations, as well as collaborationist parties, and the absence of radios, debates, or other means of communication that, even if censored, would have allowed the youth to follow the evolution of the war and the regime’s politics and form their own opinions.^[3]^[6]^[7]

Critics and defenders

It was not uncommon after the war for former camp leaders to claim they had sought to prepare a force that could be mobilized in case of renewed conflict with Germany. Events in North Africa lent credence to this claim, where former camp members, after the Allied landings on 8 November 1942, were recalled, trained, and assigned to various units of the Army of Africa. They participated in the campaigns of Tunisia, Italy, France, and Germany from 1943 to 1945, the most notable being the 7th Regiment of African Chasseurs [fr] under Lieutenant-Colonel Alphonse S. Van Hecke, to whom The Song of the Africans was dedicated in 1943.^[3]

Critics of the work camps point out:^[8]

The active involvement of the camps in sending 16,000 youths to the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) in Germany, with the camp leadership doing nothing to oppose these transfers;
The camp leaders did not reject the ideas of the “Révolution nationale,” instead ensuring its dissemination across all groups; the leaders and instructors appeared to be convinced and disciplined “Vichysts,” antisemitic, anti-Freemason, anti-leftist parties of the time, and opposed to the core ideas of the Third Republic;
The “resistance myth” of the work camps was not supported by the camp leadership as an organization, which remained loyal to Vichy (except in North Africa after November 1942 and the Allied landings). While some individuals from the camps joined the Resistance, they did so independently, not as part of the organization;
Neither at the start of the camps (in 1941/42) nor after the Allied landings in North Africa or the victory at Stalingrad (February 1943) did camp leaders call on youths to join the Resistance. The thesis and book by Christophe Pécout^[8] thoroughly analyze this resistance myth;
General La Porte du Theil chose to return from North Africa in November at the time of the Anglo-American landings, rather than joining the Allied side as did Vichy armistice army officers led by Darlan and Giraud.

Defenders of the work camps highlight (beyond the militarization of North African camps):^[4]

Sabotage of departures for the Compulsory Labor Service (STO) in Germany in some groups (notably in the Alps);
The support for youths sent from the camps to the STO in Germany under the “Chantier Mission in Germany,” with several dozen young camp leaders volunteering to accompany and supervise them (see the case of Georges Toupet below);
The spirit of revenge among the leadership, particularly Lieutenant-Colonel Van Hecke’s involvement in the “group of five” to facilitate the Allied landing in North Africa;
A concealment effort: hiding young Alsatians (refractory to conscription in the German army) by providing them with false identities; concealing some armistice army equipment;
The sense of responsibility of La Porte du Theil, returning from North Africa on 10 to oversee approximately 70,000 youths in the camps in mainland France;
The existence of secret reports by M. de Brinon, Vichy government delegate in Paris, addressed to Pierre Laval, harshly criticizing the camps for their lack of loyalty to the government and their anti-German sentiments.

When they invaded the southern zone, the Germans ordered the Vichy government to disband the Armistice Army on 27 November 1942 but, divided on the issue, chose to maintain the work camps. However, they significantly altered their locations starting in March: groups in Provence, the Pyrenees, and the Alps were relocated to the Massif Central, Dordogne, and Landes, respectively. The occupiers feared their potential support for an Allied landing via the Mediterranean (Provence groups), assistance in escapes via Spain (Pyrenees groups), or aid to the maquis (Alps groups). On 20, the Wehrmacht conducted forceful inspections in three-quarters of the camp groups.^[3]^[4]^[7]

Many former camp members joined the Resistance, while others went to North Africa. The camps’ stocks of food and clothing were frequent targets for the maquis, who were often in dire need. Numerous raids, sometimes with complicity from within, allowed maquisards to seize these supplies. This explains why many photographs show maquisards dressed in youth work camp uniforms, which were not originally intended for such use.^[3]^[6]

General de La Porte du Theil

Starting in September, General La Porte du Theil, facing new German demands that would have amounted to sending nearly all remaining camp members to Germany, categorically refused any further provision for the occupier (prompting the Wehrmacht’s forceful inspections). However, he also declined invitations from the Resistance to join them or to go to Algiers to continue the fight alongside the Anglo-Saxons after their landing on 8 November 1942.^[4]

Warned of an imminent arrest at the end of December, he also refused to flee. Removed by a Vichy government decree at the beginning of January 1944, he was arrested on 4 at his office in Châtel-Guyon by the Germans and taken to Germany, first interned in Munich, then in Austria, where he was liberated by a French army detachment on 4 May 1945 and returned to French territory.^[4]

His activities before his arrest and internment in Germany were investigated by a commission of the High Court of Justice starting in July 1945. This investigation led to a dismissal of charges in 1947. Four main reasons explain this decision:^[4]

The youth work camps acted as a shield for youth against German or collaborationist influences;
Despite testimonies from about a hundred former group leaders subordinate to the accused, it was not established that General de La Porte du Theil served the occupier’s interests with zeal; his consistently anti-German stance was even confirmed;
General de La Porte du Theil categorically refused to send or provide camp members to the occupier starting in September;
Former camp members participated in large numbers in the Liberation battles of 1944–1945: 38,000 from North Africa, 60,000 voluntary enlistees from mainland France between June and September 1944, and 100,000 youths from the 1943 class mobilized starting in January.

Germany

Under the law on the Compulsory Labor Service (STO), which applied to young men born in 1920, 1921, and 1922, the work camps mobilized the class called up in November, totaling 32,000 young Frenchmen. 16,000 of them were actually sent to Germany (National Archives [file F60 1452, for example]). Of the remaining 16,000 camp youths who did not go to Germany, 7,000 disappeared, sometimes with the assistance of group leaders (notably in the Alpes-Jura province), and 9,000 were assigned to compulsory labor in France.^[3]

In Germany, many requisitioned camp leaders accompanied their youths. Some volunteered to supervise them on-site, with the groups remaining intact. Until 1945, practices of the discredited Révolution nationale persisted in occupied and then liberated France: the cult of the Marshal, collective patriotic ceremonies such as flag-raising or “facing west,” etc. Having reissued uniforms to their demobilized youths, leaders had young Frenchmen marching in German streets in uniform, in ranks, with banners unfurled, sometimes led by music.^[3]

These same leaders, while mostly remaining steadfastly Pétainist, also countered the propaganda of extreme collaborationists, for example, by dissuading STO youths from enlisting in the Waffen SS. They also fought to improve living conditions in civilian worker camps.^[3]

The most well-known experience was that led by the young leader Georges Toupet [fr] in Silesia. Aged around 25, he managed to take charge of a chaotic camp housing 2,500 French workers, located near the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination complex. He and his deputies combated neglect, lack of hygiene, alcoholism, and prostitution, promoting a cultured, sporting, and educational life. Simultaneously, Toupet participated in an escape network for prisoners of war and an Allied intelligence network, providing information about the nearby death camp.^[3]

While the Germans initially appreciated the discipline and efficient organization of the work camps, which helped maintain order among thousands of exiled forced laborers, relations gradually deteriorated. In total, of nearly 200 camp leaders present in the Reich, about thirty paid with their lives for proven acts of resistance; roughly the same number endured prolonged arrests or deportation to concentration camps, from which some did not return.^[3]^[7]

As for the youths sent to Germany by the camps, many, while not necessarily forgiving the institution for delivering them to the STO, acknowledged they were not abandoned in Germany. Group life, the prestige of the uniform, and discipline also offered them some advantages.^[3]

Organization

To avoid appearing as a military organization to the occupier, the work camps were placed under the authority of the State Secretariat for National Education and Youth. After the arrest of La Porte du Theil, the camps came under the control of the Minister of Labor and Industrial Production, Jean Bichelonne, a collaborationist responsible for implementing the Compulsory Labor Service. This change intensified their transformation into a labor pool for the occupier, both in France and Germany.^[3]

The General Commissariat coordinated regional commissariats. Each regional commissariat oversaw a leadership school and 8 to 10 groups, comparable to regiments, with 1,500 to 2,200 men. Each group was divided into 6 to 12 teams, comparable to companies of 150 to 200 men each. Teams were subdivided into squads.^[3]

General Commissariat

Based in Châtel-Guyon (Puy-de-Dôme) at the “Splendid Hôtel,” it was dissolved on 17. Until then, it consisted of:

The cabinet;
The 1st section: organization, command, social services;
The 2nd section: personnel, staffing, and disputes;
The 3rd section: education;
The 4th section: budget;
The 5th section: works;
The 6th section: health;
The 7th section: transport and meetings;
Internal services and chaplaincy;
Vichy liaison;
Occupied zone;
Administrative school;
Women’s social school;
The CJF equestrian establishment in Chamberet (Corrèze), created in March and dissolved on 24;
General medical supply store;
The CJF national band, created in March and dissolved in July.
Group #42 “La Marne,” based in Châtel-Guyon (Puy-de-Dôme). Dissolved on 30. Motto: “Forward, boldly”. Publication: Au cœur des chantiers.