Since the Second World War, French collaboration has been a lively and provocative topic in histories, films, and novels and a troubled theme in public and private memory. The implicit assumption is that this collaboration involved French and Germans. In her innovative new book, Karine Varley makes the powerful and transformative contention that French collaboration cannot be fully understood without situating Vichy France in its relationships with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Caught in a “double bind” that both broadened and constrained potential policy, Vichy France developed its theory and practice of collaboration within a relationship that was more triangular than bilateral, whether at state level or in areas of foreign occupation. Focusing on this double bind offers a new perspective on Vichy's foreign policy and shifts from a Germano-centric history of the Second World War toward a more comparative and transnational approach.

Varley's book is a scholarly tour de force, grounded in the meticulous analysis of rich diplomatic and ministerial archives from national and departmental collections. In two substantial sections, the book moves chronologically and thematically from Vichy's relationships with the Axis powers at state level toward local attitudes and tensions in areas of Italian (and, to a lesser extent, German) occupation, notably in south-eastern France and Corsica between November 1942 and September 1943. The first and longer section pays close attention to ideological debate, exploring the development of Vichy's foreign policy toward Italy in the aftermath of defeat in 1940, brief pursuit of military collaboration in North Africa in the winter of 1941–1942, frustrated efforts to establish ideological closeness with Rome, and uneven success in playing the two Axis powers against each other to counter conflicting requirements. The second section focuses on working relationships in areas of Italian occupation, highlighting the divergent attitudes of French authorities toward Italian and German occupiers, and exploring how Vichy's acceptance of Alsace-Lorraine's de facto annexation constrained its range of responses to Italian territorial demands. A further key theme is the unpredictable and frequently brutal character of Italian surveillance and repression, with the total number of arrests in Italian-occupied zones sometimes surpassing those in areas of German control. Yet at times Vichy was the more brutal. When Jews were exempted by Italians from compulsory labor requirements, it was the French authorities who pursued them—with the backing of Berlin. Even when currying favor with one occupier at the expense of the other, however, Vichy “always overestimated its ability to manipulate Rome and Berlin” (191), deluding itself about its bargaining power and consistently undermining its ability to protect France and the French.

Vichy's Double Bind rightly reminds readers that French responses toward the two Axis powers and their occupations could be markedly different. Although Mussolini had declared war on France on June 10, 1940 with the opportunistic aim of securing himself a place at the victor's table, France never formally accepted defeat by Italy, and the French authorities were generally more “flexible and even pragmatic” (75) when dealing with their Italian counterparts. The terms of the German armistice were harsher than those of the Villa Incisa agreement; and, significantly, the Italian armistice did not stipulate a commitment to collaboration. Equally, the Italian occupation of French territory between November 1942 and September 1943 was less devastating that its occupation of other zones, even if the counterfactual future of life fully under Italian occupation would have been “far from benign” (194).

Varley's emphasis on difference, however, develops the crucial and cumulative point that most models of collaboration developed by historians of France and the Second World War fail to encompass the complexity of this three-way relationship. Stanley Hoffmann's classic distinction between “voluntary” collaboration for reasons of state and “involuntary collaboration” for ideological purposes makes little sense when applied to Franco-Italian relations, where ideological collaboration or “collaborationism” was not systematically pursued. The narrative arc lurching toward ever greater collaborationism in the case of Vichy and Germany, and petering out in the puppet govt at Sigmaringen, likewise fails to fit the “fundamentally opportunistic” (65) approach of French government officials toward their Italian counterparts (though approaches to Germany could be opportunistic too). Similarly, arguments that Vichy was committed to the defense of French sovereignty—even if such claims rang increasingly hollow as the situation deteriorated—do not match Varley's evidence that “Vichy treated sovereignty like a currency, whose value fluctuated but which could be bought and sold as well as saved” (161). Lastly, and this surely deserves further exploration, the classic dichotomy between collaboration and resistance is challenged by French responses to Italian occupation that expressed explicit loyalty to Vichy, as for example in the display of images of Marshal Pétain.

Inevitably, the very strength of the central hypothesis leaves other areas less fully explored. Tensions between French and Italians in French Somaliland and the Levant are mentioned in the introduction but only briefly considered elsewhere, while the intriguing absence of Italian occupation in public memory is only fleetingly referenced in the conclusion—although Varley herself has worked extensively on memory in other contexts. Equally, while there is some fascinating discussion of Paul Baudouin's concept of a “Latin Union” to counterbalance German power, and an important re-evaluation of Pierre Laval's supposed obsession with Germany, differences between individuals within Vichy are sometimes acknowledged rather than explored, leading “Vichy” itself to seem, at times, overly homogeneous.

Yet these tantalizing absences in no way detract from the overall strength of this impressive book. Clear, accessible, and rich in detail, Vichy's Double Bind will be of interest and benefit to both scholars and students of France and the Second World War. Above all, it contributes to a significant rethinking of the complex, multifaceted relationships within which wartime collaboration was both imagined and experienced.