What was the Nazis long term goal for France?

Paxtons history 'Vichy France' and Jacksons 'The Dark Years' both have some remarks about this. The short version is Hitler & Ribbentrop regarded the Armistice as a temporary affair & a peace treaty would eventually provide a permanent basis for peace.

Hitler & his foreign minister left little in writing on this subject. Just some remarks about a grand peace with Britain and France that would ensure Germanys dominace of Europe. Until this point he had little or no interest in dismantling the empires. He wanted to punish France and ensure neither would interfere with his conquest of the Slavic nations. He was actually surprised that they had declared for war over Poland and was a bit angered over their continuance after Poland became a dead letter.

When Britain failed to ask for a cease fire in the summer of 1940 Hitler placed the French peace treaty on hold until England saw reason. He kept thinking Britaian would eventually give in and negotiate for the comprehensive peace treaty he wanted in the west.

Petain understood little of this in the summer of 1940. He and the other French leaders were quite ready to negotiate anything irrespective of what Britain did. like Hitler they expected the English to see reason and opt for a peace treaty. But, the French government was ready to negotiate even with Britain still at war. Petain was nonplussed that autumn when inquiries to the German government about treaty negotiations were fruitless. Petain had gained popular support with his public policy of seeking peace and getting the Germans out of France. This started erosion of his support as the occupation dragged on & occupation conditions became worse.
 
I read that once Hitler mentioned for the far future (even after the greater Germanic-Gothic Reich) a "Francian-Gothic-Carolingian Reich". No idea though what it meant - did he plan to add France and Northern Italy to Germany??
 
This brings to my mind the question - what is the best feasible policy by Nazi Germany on France? They're not subhumans to be eliminated in Nazi thinking. Could there have been more to be gained?
 
Long term I'd expect Germany to seize a bit of French land and absorb that directly into the Reich. Alsance-Lorraine had already been returned to Germany, but there may have been a portion of Northern France going to the Channel. Otherwise I believe the German's plans for most of non-Germanic Western Germany was to effectively "Warsaw Pact" it. That is to say, ensure there are governments in place in France and Britain that would be friendly to the Reich and supportive of its goals. France would placed in suzerainty to the Reich, and left to largely handle it's non-Jewish related domestic questions by itself. Foreign policy and military forces would be nominally independent but largely dependent on the Reich for direction.
 
Wasn't SS-ruled Burgundy supposed to be carved out of France?

Paxton spoke about this in Old Guard and New Order if memory serves, there were plans for other regions as well so that France would end up largely balkanised. Not sure how feasible such a plan really was, or whether or not it was entertained outside of the SS. As was often the case with Fuhrerprinzip, it’s hard to get a clear answer.
 

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The goal for Western Europe overall was to cleanse them of "those unworthy to live", install vassal leaders, and reeducate the population until they saw the light. Once that happened you actually get a faux EU, with Europe as a great single political partnership under the benevolent leadership of Berlin.

Stated more realistically the Reich intended to liquidate all Jews, Roma, Communists, and opposition leaders while turning France any any other Western European occupied area into Reich colonies under locally sourced Nazi leadership.
 
Paxton spoke about this in Old Guard and New Order if memory serves, there were plans for other regions as well so that France would end up largely balkanised. Not sure how feasible such a plan really was, or whether or not it was entertained outside of the SS. As was often the case with Fuhrerprinzip, it’s hard to get a clear answer.

Of course, with anything the Nazis did, twelve different factions made twelve different versions of every plan.
 
Did they plan to keep or occupied forever?
The general plan was to carve out the old HRE borders and add a few bells and whistles like the Calais region (e.g. everything north of the Somme) and give the rest back to Vichy France. 1Blomma's maps are a perfect representation of this.
 
Paxton spoke about this in Old Guard and New Order if memory serves, there were plans for other regions as well so that France would end up largely balkanised. Not sure how feasible such a plan really was, or whether or not it was entertained outside of the SS. As was often the case with Fuhrerprinzip, it’s hard to get a clear answer.

The only one I recall was a vague notion of independent Brittany, but I wouldn't put it past the Nazis to try and turn back the clock several centuries in order to break France apart.

The general plan was to carve out the old HRE borders and add a few bells and whistles like the Calais region (e.g. everything north of the Somme) and give the rest back to Vichy France. 1Blomma's maps are a perfect representation of this.

This is what I recollect from reading Norman Rich's Hitler's War Aims. (Someone really needs to do an updated version of that book - there must've been lots of new research on the topic over the last ~45 years.) There was also some perhaps idle talk about permanently keeping German bases along the Channel and Atlantic coast, while the Italians wanted Corsica as well as Nice and Savoy.
 
The only one I recall was a vague notion of independent Brittany, but I wouldn't put it past the Nazis to try and turn back the clock several centuries in order to break France apart.
Hitler mused about an independent Brittany but in the end didn't really care much for it.

This is what I recollect from reading Norman Rich's Hitler's War Aims. (Someone really needs to do an updated version of that book - there must've been lots of new research on the topic over the last ~45 years.) There was also some perhaps idle talk about permanently keeping German bases along the Channel and Atlantic coast, while the Italians wanted Corsica as well as Nice and Savoy.
There may have been a few Marinenstützpunkte around the coast such as Brest, Cherbourg, and Bordeaux but it seems that these would in be French bases that the German's used and not any sort of official annexation like they planned to do with Baku.
 
I agree with most posters on the substance.

Mazower in Dark Continent suggests the Nazis wanted to make western Europe part of a German-dominated Grossraum, an economic union run for the benefit of German industry and making the German population wealthy at the expense of the people of the rest of Europe. The conquest of Eastern Europe and European Russia too would make this zone virtually self-sufficient in natural resources (or so Hitler thought) and hence invulnerable to embargoes or competition from the UK-US.

How this would have been organised politically IDK. Probably Hitler never decided on the detail and his subordinates had different views, self-serving of course.
 
What would have happened to France's military?

Would there be a significant contingent of Frenchmen in the Heer/Waffen SS like IOTL?
 
I suspect the French Army would be restricted ala Versailles. It would be required to have a light infantry/gendarmerie orientation. The good stuff would be a French component inside the SS, as part of a Pan-European Army. Firmly under the control of German officers of course.
 
What would have happened to France's military?

Would there be a significant contingent of Frenchmen in the Heer/Waffen SS like IOTL?

Historically there was a French SS "Division"[1]. I would imagine that there would be another. France would likely have a fairly decent military to deal with the colonies such as Algeria and Indochina but they would work closely with the OKW.
 
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