# Vichy and collaborationist culture conscript Joan as a national-revolution emblem

Date: 1941

## The fact

In the early 1940s Vichy public ritual and propaganda used [Joan of Arc](/people/joan-of-arc) as a national-revolution saint. This Fact stores that conscription of the name. It is not 1429 and not 1456.

## Context

The same name had already been a Third Republic statue. Vichy is a distinct, worse capture: an authoritarian state using a victim of occupation to moralise another occupation.

Joan of Arc is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Archives nationales as the French public-records frame and independent press histories of Vichy ritual independently document the Jeanne cult.

Official or archival record: Archives nationales (France) (https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/; Archives nationales).

## Significance

Authoritarian-memory path. High confidence that Vichy used Joan publicly.

A fête is not a rehabilitation. Do not wash 1456 with 1941.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Vichy-era public use of Joan. Not established: that 1429 captains designed 1940, or that every Catholic fête in 1941 was collaboration.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Joan of Arc: https://factrail.ai/people/joan-of-arc

## Drivers

- Political Polarization: https://factrail.ai/drivers/political-polarization

## Sources

- https://www.theguardian.com/
- https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-vichy-cult-1940s