Even if we call it “World War II,” what happened in France between 1940 and 1944 was characterized less by its direct violence than by the more subtle and pervasive effects of the policy of the so-called “Etat Français” and occupation. In comparison to the Eastern front, the level of direct violence was rather low, despite the killing of hostages, the deportations of Jews, and the violence of the fights at the end of the period, notably between the German occupying forces and the underground movement. What is certainly the most striking, though, is how the civil society itself, in relation to the state and other institutions, was able to produce and mobilize the very instruments that would diffuse and apply discriminatory measures, eventually leading to the social and even physical annihilation of persons, families, and groups. To understand how this process developed, how “neighbors” (to quote a famous book about Poland) turned into perpetrators, but in a much more legalistic and noiseless way, Fette chose to turn her attention toward two major professions, lawyers and doctors. She rightly assumed that to understand how the professional frame was invested by prejudice and exclusions during World War II, it was necessary to stress the continuities between the interwar period and the Vichy Regime. In doing so, she followed the steps of her co-PhD adviser Gérard Noiriel in this book Les origines républicaines de Vichy. Noiriel had already mentioned in Le creuset français the request of private lawyers to restrict the access of naturalized citizens to their profession, and how quickly they obtained it in 1934. However, the professional and political logic of this trend toward the exclusion of professionals of foreign origin had never been traced in so much detail or comparatively between two professions.

Fette depicts how lawyers made use of their mastery of law and political fora to foster their vision of a profession threatened by democratization of access, even if their bar legislation permitted them to control access (notably regarding the fact that lawyers had to be French to practice). Concerning doctors, she makes clear how they were convinced of their frailty in what was considered an overcrowded profession, as the diploma was (initially) sufficient to practice in the absence of “conseil de l'Ordre.” Contrarily to legal students, who had access to various professions, medical students had only one prospect, to become a doctor; therefore, the growth in the number of students was seen as even more dangerous to the profession in the latter case. However, Fette makes it clear through the use of very convincing statistical data that even if the number of doctors doubled during the Third Republic, the profession was very far from overcrowded. Despite the shortage of doctors in certain regions or during particular periods, the myth developed and led to the scapegoating of foreigners, and to a certain extent of women or elderly practitioners. It was clearly evidenced by numerous riots and gatherings organized against foreigners and/or Jews, often designated by the contemptuous expression “métèques,” in medical schools and law faculties. Concerning lawyers, the will of professional distinction transmuted as well into a discourse of exclusion. Those professionals in their vast majority, and their organizations, were convinced enough to be convincing to others, notably toward the elected chambers, which repeatedly restricted access to those professions during the 1930s, be it with the Ambruster Law of 1933 requiring doctors to be French citizens and to hold a French diploma, the 1934 legislation excluding naturalized French citizens from practicing law during a 10 year waiting period, or the 1935 Cousin-Nast law excluding—sometimes retroactively—more doctors of foreign origin from the practice.

This book contains the first comparative analysis of the laws initiated from the professions themselves. This was necessary to understand that what happened during the Vichy regime was a mere continuation of this process, giving much satisfaction to the professions that had so firmly advocated for what could be seen as anticipatory policies. Even the anti-Semitic legislation, that did not exist as such before the occupation, was rendered acceptable by the fact than xenophobia was long tainted by prejudice against Jews, notably from Eastern Europe. From this perspective, the Vichy Regime was also a “divine surprise” for those professionals, to quote Charles Maurras. Nevertheless, if lawyers and doctors applied those exclusion laws, in the wake of a more general policy in favor of their corporatist organizations, Fette's careful attention to the details of this implementation stresses the limits to their independence that those groups accepted in applying exclusion laws, particularly when it came to the control of their membership, causing the ruin, despair, and, indirectly, the death of colleagues. It is all the more striking that this legislation—and the myth of overcrowding justifying it—had not been totally erased by the new era opened by the liberation of the country.

In conclusion, Fette's book is very convincing in its ambition to present Vichy's policy “as the late Third Republic's exclusionary logic pushed to ever greater extremes once circumstances […] permitted,” even if the first period of occupation is more carefully studied, leading notably to the quasi-absence in the book of the German occupation forces (as in Noiriel's Les origines républicaines de Vichy). More theoretically, one remaining question would be to foster the articulation between this historical study of professions asserting themselves through racial purification during the first half of the twentieth century, and the ways in which the sociology of jurisdiction eluded the question of race and racism in its classical analysis of professionalization.