Essentially the Germans had a very exploitative and self-serving attitude towards the European colonies of occupied Europe. If Germany could not wring any immediate material gain from them, Hitler was indifferent to their fates. In the case of Vichy's colonies in Southeast Asia, by mid-1941, German strategic thought had begun to think that Japanese occupation of these areas was in Germany's interests. Japan's occupation of these resource-rich areas meant that neither Britain nor the US could take advantage of them for their war industries. Similarly, planning at OKW envisioned that a strengthened Japan would tie down significant Anglo-American forces, giving Germany ample time to conclude its invasion of the Soviet Union.

The scale of France's defeat in 1940 put her at a decidedly weak position to defend her colonies against Japanese encroachments. A sharp border clash with Japanese forces at Lang Son in September 1940 (ironically occurring the same day as a Franco-Japanese accord allowing for free passage of Japanese troops while Japan guaranteed Indochina's French sovereignty) raised the spectre of a full-blown Japanese invasion. During the clash, there were reports that Vietnamese auxiliaries deserted to the Japanese and there was a fear in the Colonial Ministry that Japan would back various indigenous groups for its own ends, as it would later do in Burma and the Dutch East Indies. But Vichy was in something of a unique state compared to the rest of occupied Europe in that its government did not go into exile. Therefore, in theory, its colonies were still subject to the metropole's political control. Various entities within the Vichy French colonial service attempted to articulate a vision in which French colonial space would coexist and supplement the new order promised by the Third Reich. One of the most prominent of these advocates was Edmond Vivier de Streel, an industrialist and former cabinet chief of the Colonial Ministry. Vivier de Streel envisioned France as the colonial power within a German-dominated Europe; it would be the standard-bearer of European civilization and act as a source for colonial products for Europe. In the shadow of defeat, Vichy emphasized its colonial presence as evidence of French cultural strength and a vessel for the nation's spiritual regeneration under Vichy's auspices.

The Japanese invasions and German indifference to them were both rude shocks to the Vichy's colonial pretensions. Paul Baudouin, the Vichy foreign minister, was apoplectic about an Asian power occupying a European colonial power. His appeals to Berlin to rein in Japan on the basis of racial solidarity fell on deaf ears as strengthening Japan was geostrategically beneficial to Germany. Like in the post-1940 period, the overwhelming military force of the occupier led to an uneasy collaboration; the Japanese saw that keeping the existing French administration intact (albeit under close supervision) was a beneficial expedient for the smooth running of the colony. Ironically, Indochina remained the last functioning European Asian colony east of India during the war until March 1945 when the Japanese deposed the French colonial government in a coup.

Sources

Jennings, Eric T. Vichy in the Tropics: Petain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-44. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Lackerstein, Debbie. National Regeneration in Vichy France Ideas and Policies, 1930-1944. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2011.