The simple answer to this question is, no. After France’s surrender in 1940, the creation of the Vichy government heralded a new era in the eyes of the regime. The government, led by “Hero of Verdun” Philippe Petain, sought to reorganize French society to fix the problems which he and other conservatives believed led to the French defeat during the Battle of France.

The shock of the rapidity of the defeat of France cannot be overstated. In six weeks, German forces had completely routed, encircled, or destroyed significant portions of the Allied armies. Financial troubles during the 1930s and the “lost generation” of men during World War I contributed to an attitude in French society which saw them reluctant to go to war in 1939 and in some ways relieved when France and Germany signed the armistice.

The armistice split France into Occupied France and what became known as Vichy France. Germany had control of some sixty percent of the country, including all of its Atlantic coastline and its most productive industrial areas. Southern France constituted the unoccupied region of France, with Marseille as its biggest city. From here, the new government set out to establish itself.

The aura of Petain gave him an almost mythical status in French society in the quarter-century after WW1 a carte blanche to institute new reforms. This program, known as the National Revolution in Vichy, was widely instituted in Vichy France. It is perhaps best symbolized by the replacing of the traditional democratic slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity,” with the slogan “work, family, country,” to emphasize the return of conservative values to France. The propaganda machine, led by Philippe Henriot and embraced by Petain, had a considerable following in France. Programs like Chantiers de la Jeunesse Francaise served as a program for adolescent boys in Vichy to promote values heralded by the government. The Legion francaise des combattants was designed to teach Frenchmen and women the value of sacrifice as exemplified by the French veterans of World War I. In addition, a celebration of the rural farmer and a return to the earth became important to the regime because rural regions were more likely to be conservative. The French people themselves viewed Petain as the savior of France again, shielding France from the worst excesses of war by surrendering to Germany. If he saved them once, he could do so again.

So from 1940 to 1942, Vichy did not face a substantial amount of resistance internally. The resistance movement existed insofar as some publications were critical of the regime, but there were no roving bands of maquis yet.

The Free French, led by Charles de Gaulle, had a precarious footing at this time. De Gaulle had not yet consolidated control over the French forces which fled France after the Battle of France. He vied for recognition as France’s de facto leader with Henri Giraud. Primary aid to the Free French came from the British, and later the Americans. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Great Britain flew individual commandos into the country to organize bands of resistance in France, but this happened after 1942 and the full German occupation of France.

Resistance in France accelerated rapidly with two main developments. The first was the German occupation of Vichy in November 1942 following the Allied landings in North Africa. Now that France became fully occupied, Petain’s narrative as a savior shielding France from the war became diminished in its influence. Second, Pierre Laval, President of Vichy, negotiated the Service de Travail Obligatoire in 1943 with the Germans, shepherding hundreds of thousands of French civilians from their homes to factories in Germany. This caused thousands of men conscripted for this service to flee their homes, to join the maquis (rural resisters in southern France).

Any attacks that Free France may have performed against Vichy occurred in the context of sending individuals associated with the SOE and the Office of Strategic Services (the American counterpart to the SOE). Even then, most people parachuted into southern France to organize such resistance were often American or British. Here, A.L. Funk’s Hidden Ally is instructive. Attacks against Germans and Vichy personnel increased dramatically in 1943 and continued escalating into 1944, but only rarely were they coordinated from London (where de Gaulle was stationed). Often, they were individual bands of resistants.

So this answer was a long way of saying that the relative popularity of Vichy while it was unoccupied from 1940-1942 meant that the vast majority of the population did not wish to attack Vichy. Following the establishment of the STO and the full German occupation in France, the numbers of resistants increased and the popularity of Vichy plummeted. Yet, attacks on Vichy mostly occurred from the ground up, with little direction from the Free French. To the degree that the Free French movement was able to do so, they mainly did after the June 6th landings at Normandy.

For a synthesis of the French efforts to attack Vichy and the Germans, I’d recommend Olivier Wieviorka’s The French Resistance (2016). It’s a sweeping analysis of the development and consolidation of the Resistance from the end of the Battle of France through liberation.

How did what is basically a civil war effect non-partisan French people?