Was Vichy France an enthusiastic, active ally of Nazi Germany? Or more of a "we'll do whatever you ask, just please don't kill us" type of ally?

Pétain released a statement on 30th October 1940 after he met and shook hands with Hitler in Montoire. He established that Vichy France would collaborate with the Germans. It was "...a unity of ten centuries within the framework of the constructive activity of the new European Order"

By early 1941 many nationalist parties emerged in the occupied zone. They wished for a closer unity between Vichy and Germany. Many collaborationist groups waged political war against each other to gain a political advantage. Infighting stopped after Hitler's invasion of Russia and on 22nd June 1941 the groups united to form the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism. They wished to participate in the campaign against the Soviets. The LVF did not gain the offical support of Vichy but it did garner a personal blessing from Pétain. LVF volunteers found themselves in the folds of the German Army. In 1943 Germany was in dire need of troops. After suffering huge losses in the east they turned to the occupied zone. On 30th January 1943 the order was given to form SS Charlemagne comprised of French Volunteers.

Many people volunteered willingly to fight for the German Army. The German Army inspired many French citizens. Christian de la Mazière, a French SS volunteer, said after joining he "...saw an army which was all we had dreamed ours might be."

Vichy France allowed many citizens to volunteer to fight in the German Army. As time went by they became more and more active in their collaboration with Germany. French SS units fought in the defense of Germany all the way to the Battle of Berlin.

Source: For Europe The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS by Robert Forbes.

One of the central post-war myths in France was how collaboration was a German policy forced on a defeated French state. This was actively propagated by Vichy officials in their post-war trials, who argued that they had served as a 'shield': protecting France from the worst of German demands and only reluctantly implementing unpleasant decrees. In this, perversely, these officials could implicitly claim that collaboration was a form of resistance, part of de Gaulle's 'nation of resisters'.

Partly because this myth was so powerful in post-war France, there was little desire to seriously question the role of Vichy and collaboration. The post-war purges were not extensive; notoriously Maurice Papon was able to move seamlessly from rounding up Jews in Bordeaux during the war to a highly successful career in government and industry in the following decades. It wasn't until the 1970s that Vichy was seriously re-evaluated by historians.

Robert Paxton's 1972 Vichy France was the seminal work that exploded much of the above. Drawing extensively on German sources, he demonstrated that far from being a reactive protector of the French people Vichy both actively pursued both collaboration with Germany and implemented a (confused but reactionary) domestic programme of its own. Policies such as the anti-Semitic Alibert Law (which placed professional and personal restrictions on Jews) were French initiatives, with no German input.

In terms of relations with Germany, Paxton showed how the Vichy government was constantly looking for closer cooperation with a rather indifferent Germany. Assuming that the war was effectively over, French politicians were desperate to secure a place in the post-war settlement. As Admiral Darlan (head of government at the time) reported after meeting Hitler in May 1941:

This is the last chance for us of a rapprochement with Germany... if we collaborate with Germany... that is to say, if we work for her in our factories, if we give her certain facilities, we can save the French nation; reduce to a minimum our territorial losses...; play an honourable - if not important - role in the future Europe.

My choice is made: it is collaboration... France's interest is to live and to remain a great power.

But as early as Oct 1940 Petain had been able to declare that France was embarking on "the path of collaboration". The greatest problem Vichy encountered was not rebuffing German demands but getting close to Hitler's ear to propose further collaboration. In this:

Collaboration turned out to be a chimera because Vichy grossly overestimated the degree to which France mattered to Germany. Vichy Realpolitik was wishful thinking based on a complete misreading of Germany... State collaboration was the story of a French government desperately seeking a response from a German government which was usually not interested. (The Dark Years)

That's not to say that Vichy was an 'ally' of Nazi Germany. It did remain formally neutral. But this was a strange and increasingly lopsided neutrality. Darlan's meeting with Hitler (above) resulted in the Protocols of Paris, which seriously compromised French neutrality by allowing Germany access to facilities in Africa and Syria. German soldiers surely couldn't be allowed to round up Jews for the extermination camps to the east... so French police did it for them.

This might all be marginally amusing if it weren't for the countless thousands who suffered from Vichy's own home-grown brand of repression. Communist prisoners were handed over to the Germans for execution; the Milice terrorised the countryside; extreme hostility to foreigners and Jews has already been noted; crushing of labour organisations, etc. These were initiatives that had deep roots in pre-war France and were not German imports.

These two strands - foreign and domestic - are, in my opinion, deeply intertwined. Vichy embarked on a programme of national renewal while under occupation. It's mission was to make France great again (to use the modern lingo) through both securing a favourable post-war settlement and (officially) a deeply reactionary domestic programme. It wasn't fear or a need to protect France that drove collaboration but the desire to use the opportunity presented to build a new France; one shorn of the leftists, parliamentarians, Jews, etc who were judged to have led to the defeat of 1940. Collaboration was very much a Vichy initiative.

Reading

As noted above, Robert Paxton's Vichy France remains the classic work. Not only do his core theses remain standing but it's a highly readable piece of history. But for the above answer I've drawn primarily on Julian Jackson's The Dark Years, essentially an updated version of Paxton's work and probably the best overview of Vichy around today.