Hotel du Parc

After the signing of the Armistice, the government of the new regime moved to Vichy. The town was chosen for its large hotel capacity and telephone exchange. It is also only 5 hours by train from Paris.

The Maréchal Pétain will set up his offices and apartments on the hotel's 3rd floor. He occupies rooms 124 and 1252 (his wife will stay in the adjoining Le Majestic hotel, the two hotels being connected). His secretary and personal physician Bernard Ménétrel occupies room 1262. Pétain resided at the Hotel du Parc from July 1940 to August 1944 and his departure "against his will" to Sigmaringen. He lived there mainly in winter, preferring the pavillon Sévigné, 800 meters away, in summer.

In 1942, Pierre Lavaland his cabinet moved to the 2nd floor4. It was in the hotel that Laval would record his famous radio message broadcast on June 22, 1942: "I wish Germany victory because, without it, Bolshevism would take hold everywhere."

The hotel housed other government departments. The Command-in-Chief of the Military Forces, the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs (on the 1st floor) and the Secretariat for Information (with the Central Photographic Service and the National Press Office) were also housed there (the Secretariat for Information later moved to 13 de la rue, in the Hôtel de la Paix). Among the various personalities of the regime who resided and/or worked there, we can cite : Laval's chief of staffJean Jardin, government secretary general Jacques Guérard, writer and diplomat Paul Morand, minister of state Lucien Romier, director of foreign trade Louis-Pierre Coqueline, secretary of state Jacques Benoist-Méchin, Admiral Charles Platon, Government Delegate General in the Occupied Territories Fernand de Brinon, Secretary General for Information and Propaganda Paul Marion or National Defense Chief of Staff Admiral Célestin Bourragué.

After the fall of the Vichy regime, the hotel served as a "complementary hospital" between 1944 and 1945
Source Wikipedia
Photo credit TCY - Personal work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link