An aide to Pierre Laval, Pétain’s prime minister, recalled: Sigmaringen, a massive structure with 800 rooms, seemed like a fantasy German schloss reimagined by Viollet-le-Duc, or Walt Disney. The destination of the Vichy rump was southern Germany, to the former castle of the princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Yet in the case of an eventual reconquest of France – a fantasy still considered possible – a “legitimate” French government would have been useful. It may seem odd that Hitler should have cared, not least because Pétain, now 88, was refusing to exercise his (nominal) powers, on the grounds that he was effectively a German prisoner. His Vichy-based collaborationist regime had claimed authority over the country, but now, with the Allies advancing and Paris liberated by the forces of General de Gaulle, the Germans seized Pétain during their retreat. After the collapse of the Third Republic four years earlier, Pétain – the former “lion of Verdun” – had signed an armistice with Nazi Germany. On September 6 1944, the head of the French state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, was forcibly removed from France.
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