Occupation of France

[Irmgard]

All,

My Name is Randy, I am a new member of the Feldgrau research group and I am currently involved in writing a book about the first year of the German Occupation of France, the Good Year (at least from a relative standpoint) June '40-June '41. It is concentrated especially on the day-to-day life of all involved factions, the arrival of handfulls of SS and SD functionaries for this trumped up reason or that, the French black market and its underpinnings primarily as it related to Werhmacht and Abwehr materials and food stuff procurements, and finally all motorized vehicle, parts and early armaments production around Paris, especially in US-owned or formerly owned factories. I have a litany of questions that I will pose over the next months and my first is one that has bugged me for a year:

The Reich Economics Ministry and especially the arm that dealt with the automobile industry established a "commission", for lack of a better word, that, in the early years of Germany's rearmament efforts, developed a policy requiring motor vehicle parts to be interchangeable wherever possible. Zum Beispiel, Delco, Philco and German brand voltage regulators, generators, starters and so-on-and-so-forth needed to be produced to specs which allowed them to be used on everything from an Opel Blitz truck to a Daimler Half-track or a Ford FLAK cannon tractor. In this way during a blitz offensive a starter, say, from a destroyed vehicle could be used on one that was in need of a starter. Herr Hitler was even involved in the initial stages of this program and for that matter probably took most of the credit for it. My notes are sundry on this as is my memory, but I have zero documentation! And search as I may, I now cannot find a thing on it.

Do you know the name of the commission and the name of the program and in both cases, can you tell me where to document it?

Thanks, Randy

[ljadw]

see Axis history forum :Economy and search standardisation
Btw:if yoy read French and if the work is attainable ,a very good source on the occupation of France is " La Vie des Français sous l'occupation " from Henri Amouroux

[JEROME Georges]

hello,

if you read french or german you will find here the report of préfets (French) and Mil bef Frankreich (german)
which give a very precise and first hand information on any aspect of the occupation. It's the most important raw material I ever seen.
www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/prefets
it complete the cited book which remain a Reference in France

Georges