During my talk about Dutch-Paris on WW2TV someone asked if Vichy patrolled the Franco-Spanish border as tightly at the Germans did. The answer is no, but possibly only because Vichy didn’t have the same resources as the Third Reich did.

The German occupation authorities posted a number of units in the forbidden zone of the Pyrenees including Gestapo agents and Austrian border guards who were used to patrolling on skiis. These and other German units in the area also enjoyed a near monopoly on the telephone system and on the roadways. They not only controlled most of the gasoline supply but they were able to set up check points and ambushes at key junctions.

Before the Germans arrived in full force, what did Vichy have? Their usual border patrols and the gendarmerie. Their enforcement is better described as “selective” than as “weak.” Selective because officers in the mountains had some leeway in what they enforced. But also selective because Vichy’s xenophobic and racist policies were selective. In every aspect of its policies, Vichy was far more accommodating and friendly to Dutch citizens than, say, people from anywhere at all in eastern Europe.

Here’s an anecdote from Dutch-Paris from the early fall of 1942, before the Germans openly occupied southern France. A group of Dutchmen travelled illegally from Geneva to Toulouse with the help of Weidner and his colleagues. Their intention was to go to Spain and from there travel to England to fight with the Allies. In Toulouse they joined a passeur arranged by Weidner and his colleagues. They took the local train into the foothills of the Pyrenees and spent the night as a small hotel in a village. They left the village in the dead of night and started walking. At one point they walked right into a French gendarme. But after they explained that they were Dutchmen going to join the Allies, the gendarme waved them on with best wishes for their journey.

Unfortunately they ended up in the notorious Spanish internment camp of Miranda del Ebro for long enough to undermine their health. This was before the Spanish government made a deal with the American, British and Dutch governments to turn their nationals over to their representatives instead of interning them.

That story points out that there was danger on both sides of the Franco-Spanish border for fugitives. The Spanish Guardia Civil turned French nationals as well as citizens of several other nations right back over the border into the hands of the Germans. Most fugitives had to get quite far into Spain before they could consider themselves safe.