Challenge: Vichy France survives WWII

You’d need an ASB at the very least. Considering the fact that the vast majority of Allied leadership would see them as nothing less than collaborators of the highest order and complicit in some of the worst crimes that the Nazis perpetrated.
 
The local authorities of Kerguelen are diehard Petainists and refuse to surrender, cutting off all communications to the outside world while proudly flying the Vichy flag.
The sad little island stands firm until they are informed that Germany surrendered a week ago, and the war in Europe is over.
 
Could it have been an alt-Vichy that doesn't behave as pathetic as it did in OTL?

I'm trying to remember how Darlan was able to gain Allied recognition in For All Time (well, it is a dystopia).
 
I'm trying to remember how Darlan was able to gain Allied recognition in For All Time (well, it is a dystopia).

The Allies were already considering promoting him IOTL, keep him alive and have him launch the same purge that he did in FaT and you potentially have your surviving Vichy state.
 
Could it have been an alt-Vichy that doesn't behave as pathetic as it did in OTL?

I'm trying to remember how Darlan was able to gain Allied recognition in For All Time (well, it is a dystopia).

Darlan had been in intermittent discussions with the US through 1942. He had a meet or two with the US Ambassador over the subject of returning to war with Germany. Unfortunately his waffling 6-8 November 1942 and subsequent assassination screwed any residual chance for Petains government.
 
Cut the Free French forces out of the picture and generally have little in the way of a French government in exile of any form. Not only does this solidify the legitimacy of Vichy, but it also makes its leaders (relatively) more attractive to Allied agents who might convince them to flip give the right circumstances. Have a military build-up in North Africa that looks like its going to go after Italy, but through Overlord-like deception operations and pre-reached talks with the resistance, elements of the Vichy military and government, ect. in the South (Preferably during a period when the Germans are getting wollaped hard in the East), get the South to "coup" and allowed Allied forces into the south of France. Since large numbers of the German units in France are re-cooperating or static, and if you still have sufficent forces across the channel to make Germany have to keep an eye cocked towards Britain, with friendly ports and sufficient speed that the Germans can't respond fast enough.
 
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