Spectroscopic Analysis of Asteroids

Spectroscopic Analysis of Asteroids

Gary Hughes

UC Santa Barbara

Photonic Propulsion for interstellar missions

Notes by Paul Fischer

Challenges what we can do with a laser in space

Laser array powered by Photovoltaics could be used to heat an asteroid at 10 MW per square meter

Creates melting and evaporation and ablation of substrate

Thermal radiation from the heated spot

Atomic and molecular absorption in ejected plume

Spectrometric detection can then occur to determine the composition of the asteroid

Called: Remote Laser Evaporative Molecular Absorption (R-LEMA) Spectroscopy

Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) as comparative method

Mars Science Laboratory ROver

“Chem Cam”

Differences:

1. Pulsed Laser
2. More energy, 10 TW/ m2, max distance, 8m
3. Molecular dissociation, ionization  -> plasma
4. Optical Emission (atomic Spectroscopy) ???

Laser Induced Thermal Emission (LITE) Spectroscopy

Deep Impact Mission

Comet Tempel 1

Observed from Spitzer

Space Telescope

1. Surface Impactor: 364 kg
2. Particle Emission from Impact ~10^6kg of  ~10um particles
3. Mid-, Long-Wave IR Emission Spectroscopy from Spitzer Space Telescope (from ~.75 AU) determines emissions of materials and do molecular composition

What we envision is Molecular Absorption spectroscopy (gas phase)

Why R-LEMA?

The mission scenario is to Asteroid 2014 HM187

Its orbit does not cross earth, but does cross orbit of Mars

        Between 139 to 312 m

No former spectra exists

Why choose this asteroid?

It is in a central ring of the asteroid belt

Methane, titanium, or water? What is in the asteroid, we propose going to figure out by probing it directly

The main objective is to determine the objective with a resources assay, could be a stopping place to go to Mars as an auxiliary capability (orbital outpost positioning)

An alternative idea could be to evaluate cost of moving the asteroid into a new orbit

What if Jeff Bezos wants to expand his empire into space? Amazon Asteroid

Short discussion of Orbit Alterationa s 2ndary otpion

10 MW/m2 -> 100 uN/W

-> Mars close approaches, could create a “keyhole” with the same tech.

Back to the Arlema system for spectropscopy analysis

About 10 km view of interaction, so we modeled the asteroid, and you can see that the temperature stabilized at 21k Kelvins, making a perfect background to do IR spectroscopy, this seems to suggest that the system has a good chance of working, at the end of phase 1, we made a strong argument that we had reached phase 2, with a strong chance of working

So what to do in Phase II?

We want to test the Spectrometer in the laboratory

Target must be put into a vacuum to simulate a space environment, we had to build all of the components, the laser enters through window and heats the substrate, creating a backlight for the spectrometer view

Based on a Brueger vortex 80 design for a couple of reasons, the vertex 80 has an external port allowing such remote designs

The distance in the laboratory of 1 meter would be expanded in space

Heating things up with a laser is not like an incandescent lightbulb, the heat bounces around everywhere and these 84 hour experiments allow photodiode feedback, which is fed back into the vortex 80, and corrects for any fast changes in backlight

System Validation

Provided by a measured spectra, will be different from a system spectra

We will measure our spectra and compare it to a reference or  predicted spectra

NIST has a chemistry webbook with many spectra, but the reference was difficult to find, ECOSTRESS discusses rocky materials including salt that allow the reflectance spectra and seeing what gets reflected, we hope to see some of the same absorption lines, but we need more gasphase rocky material spectra

Where to go from here? Everything in the lab seems to suggest that this will work.

Well if it works in the laboratory, we can make an argument for reaching TRL 3

We need to do something in a relevant environment, propose a formation fliying CueSat Experiment

        Two CubeSts in a low orbit environment

        One will be equipped with the laser, and the other with rocky material so we can prove the idea will be functional with deployment

        We have already asked the Federal University at Santa Cadarino

In stage II of the NIAC process, we hope to…

At TRL3 we will propose to PICASSO of NASA

That will allow it to hit TRL4 for the Matisse Program

Is there some overlap with other ideas?

Right I think there is some room for integrated resource utilization, if other groups get there, we will be able to send CubeSats to asteroids very efficiently\

How does the vacuum replicate the plume that is expected space?

We calculate that 90% of the absorption occurs within on spot radius, most of the stuff comes off very rapidly, and needs to be quite close to the asteroids

Is the laser big enough, how do you get to that power

The laser is a collimated beam, so that is how you get to your maximal watts

Phil Lubens and the mission context for the NIAC, gives a 2 meter array, with a 10km beam, it would be 1cm in diameter

What is the total power of the beam?

The system would be 2 KW

That would produce a lot of outgassing because you are heating a carbonaceous material?

Right, we see that in the lab, all sorts of things coming off, so we focus on this small spot and what is going on below.

Our need to prospect before we arrive, we take an economic view of the problem, we have studied the problem very seriously, we have looked at mapping asteroid spectroscopy, and we think we can do it with just a few colors, involving a strategy, where we through out ambiguous cases. We do not want to arrive at an asteroid and not have water there. The first generation we avoid such asteroids. If you have to fly to the asteroid to find what it is made of, you have already lost the battle. Prospecting missions can take 20 years, so we need to remotely survey these.

187 by the way does launches to Mars

What Delta V?

3 meters per second

What is the somatic period

About…

Spot on the surface or wavelength?

We envision using monochromatic laser for power to heat the asteroid.

But you need a reference spectrum?

Right, to validate the approach, once the data is acquired.

That is something that has already been validated, but we have not been able to find a reliable reference spectrum.

Do mining or drilling companies have access to these records?

This sort of information is proprietary and more difficult to get in public databases.

Space Angels - NIAC 2018

The Space Angles

Justice Killian

Notes By Paul Fischer

How Entrepreneurship is being brought to space

Where money is being put to work

Where there are gaps

Work with 2 different funds:

Space Angels, 250 individuals around the world, high risk, high reward individuals with flexible time horizons

Space Capital Traditional venture capital, operates on a fixed time horizon, which constrains the opportunities we have

Investing in the final frontier of technology and growth

What is Space?

Space is the foundation of our modenr global economy

Space has enabled a 74 trillion dollar interconnected global economy

Integrating how all industries operate on a scale never before seen in the past

In addition, we create new markets

Eg. GPS

Primarily military, in 2005, GPS became widely availabel to the public

2007 to googlemaps

2008 air bnb

….

You hear alot about unicorn billion dollar plus companies

Allowing you to collect your data and unlock your opportunities, new markets

What has changed in the 60 years space has been around, why invest now

There is an incredible established legacy

Technology that has been developed and milestones allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants

Heavy lauch shuttle, saturn v, moon landing as examples

The first driver of a major change in the market is a change in the barriers to entry

The first space shuttle cost 60,000 dollars per kg to deliver, 1981

The Delta IV Heavy 12157 in 2004

Falcon heavy dropped the price by a factor of 10 last year

Miniaturization in satellites

A few very heavy satellites covered the world’s capabilities in the past

This made an inflexible approach, and now that is not the case

Moving from mainframes in satellites to essentially smartphones

From 1972 to 2007 the weight of the satellites dropped by half to 2800 kg

Planet dove in 2017 was just over 5 kg

Market drivers and launch caust has dropped from 77k to 10k per kg

[This means the price of an operational satellite has gone from 400 million to 50,000 dollars!!!!]

Projecting out means that 10,000 satellites can be reached in just decades

We are seeing exponential growth in lower earth orbit and a plateau in geospace orbit

State of the Industry

Going back to space companies

Morgan stanley has estimated that the space industry will reach 1.1 trillion by 2040, an increase of almost 300% over current levels

Space Investment Quarterly

Equity financing into space, looks at the transactions when money is deployed, allowing a fidelity for what is happening in the market

Dawn of the entrepeneurial space age

Beginning in 2009 saw the first successful launch of the Falcon I

Other attempts had burned through 800 million without a successful launch eg kissler

In 2010, spacex published the pricing to get to orbit, this allowed transparency in pricing

Conequetailly we see an exponential growth in business plans

Not only in the amount of capital flowing into the companies, but also the amount of companies

This makes now an exciting time, where we are just on the beginning of an upward curve

Lets dig into the numbers a little bit more, who are the actors providing capital?

Angels and individuals, as high-risk investors as first money to company with flexible time horizons

The next line is venture capitalists, with fixed time constraints, usually around 10 years

        Have been a persistent actor over time

Finally there are corporate venture partners eg boeing and lockheed

        Tech and innnovation and desire to keep a close watch on development

A Lot of the capital, 62%,  comes from the USA

        UK is growing, they hope that in 10 years 5% of GDP will come from space

        France has recently become active

Looking at this year, seeing the amount of investment into various industries, only 26% into investment, while satellites are receiving a much larger investment share.

Space X is the largest corporate investor, lead by Fidelity investments, with 500 million in investments

        These represent late stage investments directly from space x

Spinlaunch operates primarily in stealth, hoping to use centrifugal force to launch objects into space, we did not invest in them, but a number did 40 million, at series A round

Coming back to the venture capitalists, looking at the dawn of the venture capitalists, investors in space. Every top tier venture capital fund now has space investments.

In addition to this, a number of new actors have come in

Sovereign thinks of this from a national perspective

Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and EarthNow

Looking back at the market and debunking common misconceptions

Particularly early on, that space should require more capital than broader tech investments

The data indicates this is simply not true

The amount of capital raised at each stage of investments is marginally higher, but not double or triple as people think, so you can be entrepreneurially competitive in space.

How can space companies such as Spacex ever justify their value?

The price is not high early on, but tends to skyrocket later on

1. Venture capitalists tend to invest in other lower risk tech, the process of getting a tech into orbit and getting to work is challenging and requires risk, so many investors wait through this phase, which later pushes up the price
2. How can space companies justify their valuations? Looking at the revenue vs broader tech financing, series C and D sees space outstripping competition. With a 350 billion dollar industry already in place, there are established customers with big check sizes who can purchase tech once it is available, that is called good fundamentals.

Shows up in exit prices, requiring a company to go public, this creates a small subset that we hope will grow to attract investors engineers, scientists and money into industry

I would like to dig into the themes behind these

Starting with heavy launch, as 2017 saw the first commercial equity backed launchers launched more rockets tahn governments around the world

75% of the contracts launched they were able to secure

This means there is not a lot of opportunity in heavy launch, there are some competition, but we will not be putting money there

The opportunity to be able to launch satellites, and to provide internet from space

The value of data and the ability to connect the last several billion to the internet will change the world

Giving google access to these markets, the rockets are there to do this faster than anyone else

Our new frontier is small launch, eg. VECTOR, which took ten years to achieve a milestone, and now we have 50 small launch vehicles registered, and over the next years will deploy

Why use a small launch vehicle?

Well the data suggests these vehicles charge higher prices, but the time that it takes to integrate the payload and get onto a rideshare is significantly longer, and customers are willing to pay for the access to integrate into an existing system.

Otherwise the money is lost, like an opportunity cost, as the company must wait an extra 12 months for integration

There is a clear economic value proposition

Rail gun tech, balloons and centrifugal force are all examples of new ideas extant, and for us small-launch is quite simlar to automobile manufacturing.

Therefore our investment is in a company called VECTOR, and it should take 2.5 years to get the first rocket in orbit.

Bringing the auto manufacturers into rocket production, in terms of scale and production is critical to success

Rocket development is not a good business, high risk and difficult, one failure will destroy capability, so the reason we are excited about VECTOR is that designing, building, and manufacturing this launch will serve as a platform that allows us to view this experience as a software to the solutions, and the vehicles will be extant to allow these satellites to get into orbit

Starlight and Softbank -> several billion dollars to continue to provide internet on a global scale

        This was an enormous endeavor that venture capitalists and entrepreneurs cannot become involved in.

        We are able to get involved in the relay, the ground link, and other options

In a matter of 3 months we can provide the RF downlink in a matter of months

Another option is optical, allowing high throughput optical downlink using laser technology, provision of more from space

Earth Observation - has been around for a very long time, now is an exciting time to be a part of this

There are multiple layers

Data layers - existing instruments optical, SSAR, laser etc now being scaled down and being applied in different constellations creates an abundance of different types of data being generated and there are many ways to view this data

Some companies download the data, clean the data, and build products to sell into multiple industries in what is called a vertically integrated approach

        We foresee specialization coming into the industry. We have invested in a company called skywatch, accessible from 150 different data points, through API integration, allowing the data to become ubiquitous into society.

                Distribution is therefore the critical layer wer focus on, because this allows people to experiment with it.

        Then companies can leverage the data in a very powerful way

Looking ahead, we see 2019 as the year of private manned spaceflight

        SpaceX

        Virgin

        Jeff Bezos

We are seeing private spaceflight as an exciting emerging trend, and it has taken many billionaires a very long time to develope the technology

Debris Tracking and Mitigation

        We will need at better understanding of what is floating around in space and associated risk

        We invested in a company with a network of arrays planned to track meter objects in realtime across the world, comparable efforts took a long time and cost 2 billion dollars, our project will cost 1% and provide higher fidelity than the others

        The baseline is to know what is up there with a higher degree of certainty

On Orbit Manufacturing

        MadeInSpace creates products made on orbit and sold into terrestrial markets

                Eg fiberoptic cables with greater efficacy

                Continuing to take advantage of zero gravity to create monetary opportunities

                Cooperation with NASA to enhance practicality

Space Stations

        Handful Of actors worth noting

                Expandible modules, with a marginal size factor gain, no weight factor

                Axiom - hopes to 3D print habitats into space, hoping to reduce cost of space stations to 3 billion dollars, still out of our price range

                Nanoracks was our choice for investment, to deploy the first commercial airline on the international space station how can we radically reinvent what it meant to build space stations, so independence 1 hopes to capture floating booster rockets and repurpose them into the first commercial space station, could cost less than 10 billion dollars.

                        It is a radical idea, but I remind you that skylab was assembled from rocket boosters, so the idea has worked before.

Lunar Transportation

NASA has made a number of successful private partnerships, launched a competition to be able to launch a rover, land it on the moon, capture HD images and beam it back

20 million dollar prize is not a lot to reach the moon, so more capital was made available

Japanese company, iSpace raised 95 million to do this

Israel - Space IL as a non-profit that has similar plans

Our investment is into a firm from carnegie melon that dropped out quite early, and recognized a real commercial opportunity and build partnerships, resulting in winning a 3 million and 10 million dollar contract, the latter is the largest lunar based contract for these services… demand for access to the moon does not only come from governments but from the private sector

Deep Space Platforms

        JPF has produced large scale platforms

        Commercial actors has performed propulsion technology

        Smaller scale solutions, you attach your tech and we will do the rest sort of thing

        Lower earth orbit has been democratized, only five companies have been launched into deep space, we wish to push this further out

Ecosystem Development

        In-Space Resource mapping, extracting, refining, storage

                Big visions of asteroid mining, operation within a very small realm of precious metal mining, stuck at mapping phase

        Big idea of value, and process of extraction has not been developed yet

        All of these components to the value changes have been missing

        More ideas must be identified and the TRL needs to be raised

        What is the unique value on orbit manufacturing, what are the components that must be developed, form a scientific and commercial perspective?

In space fuel production, distribution and storage

        From water, fission or fusion

        There is a gap here

        We are looking for opportunities that could have a direct overlap into terrestrial applications

Helping shape what the future looks like, we are going to be part of a number of emerging industries, the policy risks and challenges we are facing

What is the work that NASA as the foundation for commercial development to happen, has been seeded and increased, great examples of how public and private partnerships can take place

        Looking at how equity financing are happening

        How governmental support has seeded, we hope to continue to foster and grow these opportunities to grow.

Transformation of Laval: How an Anti-War Politician Collaborated in the Final Solution and Germany’s Attempted Supreme Victory in Europe

Transformation of Laval: How an Anti-War Politician Collaborated in the Final Solution and Germany’s Attempted Supreme Victory in Europe

Paul Andreas Fischer

11/26/2017

Professor Steven Zdatny

Word count: 4,971

Table of Contents

Methods and Context of the Rise and Legacy of Pierre Laval	3
A Young Man With Promise Grew Into A Politician Who Kept Promises	5
The Onset of the Madness of War: Two Decisions Demonstrative of Collaboration	8
1943: Obstructionism Loses Favor and Laval Loses Hope in Revolution	11
The Fundamentals of Collaboration: Pierre Laval’s Calculated Decision to Give Germany a Final Year of War and a Second Chance	13
Nazi Germany and Oil	15
Laval Protects the German Lebensraum	17
Negotiating the Road from D-Day to V-Day	20
Appendix A	22
Appendix B	23
References	24

Methods and Context of the Rise and Legacy of Pierre Laval

        Pierre Laval has been made out to be a brutal leader, even a butcher, according to some accounts of his leadership of Vichy France in Germany. In order to evacuate a structured analysis of the polemic criticism made in the post-war period and by his contemporary critics, it is necessary to skeptically evaluate the evidence in a dispassionate manner. The information at hand is enormous; the career of Pierre Laval oversaw the rise of the French Left, the recovery from the Great Depression, the breaking of the chains that surrounded Germany in the form of a web of alliances, and of course the events of the Second World War. For the sake of clarity and focus, attention will be centered on the last of these. It should be clear that his early clairvoyance as an acclaimed leader of France, one who spoke with the voice of the French people, devolved as a result of increasing isolation into full-fledged barbarity and collaboration with the actions of occupying Nazi Germany.

        Even with the jackboot firmly placed upon the neck of Laval, it was not a matter of intentionality or functionality. Laval’s stated intention was to restore the honor of France, and he had promised Hitler he would do this without rebellion or at the expense of Germany. As such, the restoration of France’s honor to Laval meant an intrinsically collaborationist relationship with the Germans from the beginning. It is the marked escalation of this relationship and the critical support Laval was able to offer Hitler that must be thoroughly investigated.

        In order to support this thesis a brief history of the background of the career and qualifications of Pierre Laval will be provided. In addition to the direct military support and the supplementary labor he provided will be elaborated on. These shed light on the influences and decision-making procedure of the French politician. In definition of the distinction between collaborator and a complicit actor in a deadly game of treason, it is possible to delineate some of the specificity proposed in conceptualization of the reality of his career. For a motive, it is easy to point to the ambition of a driven working man characterized by diligence. In this case, the path of least resistance is most certainly incorrect. Instead of tracing a complex series of career decisions admittedly marked by opportunism, a specific emphasis on crucial decisions will prove more useful.

        There is a strong temptation to drift into the long-term development of the personality and professionalism of Pierre Laval. This must be put aside for a concrete understanding of his actions during the war. His role in the humiliation of France is best viewed through the corrective lenses of the psychological tropes of the ashes of defeat. In order to do this the period subsequent to his break in defensible logic will be examined. The rationalization that existed behind his early-war actions of fear of coup, of German retaliation, and of the nobility of his cause had been demolished by years of occupation when he commended the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and as he begged Hitler to accept workers for his machinery of armaments. During this late period, he may be judged in the nude, without the pretense of rebellion or chains that fettered his early legitimate work of collaboration and obstruction.

        Marshall Pétain, the Grand Marshall of France, was well-known to have gone mad in his old age and his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. A similar irrationality may have been at play in the actions of Vice-President Laval. In neither case would such a defense have been applicable in the crimes against humanity that could be leveled against these tables with evidence compiled by the French state in the 90s. Included in the crimes against humanity trials are tens of thousands of documents that show a grim determination to co-operate in one of the worst incidents of state-sponsored mass-murder in the history of humankind: the Holocaust. While the attempted suicide and execution of Pierre Laval spared him this trial, looking at his behavior in his last and most important trial will yield insights into the nature of his conviction, as well as to his behavior beforehand.

A Young Man With Promise Grew Into A Politician Who Kept Promises

        Pierre Laval was not by any means a hated figure at the time of the humiliation in 1940. In fact, immediately after defeat he gained popularity already stunted only by his ambition to utilize it. As a young man, the child of a post-master and apparently destined for the same work, he read his books for university while driving a horse carriage. After studying enough, he took on two jobs in order to fulfill his academic ambitions that saw him graduate as an avocat with promise.

        In court, before and during the First World War, he displayed brilliance as an attorney by gathering evidence and using it for socialist causes. This meant he was originally a politician who was fundamentally anti-war, except for what he viewed as the only just struggle in class conflict. While he remained a “socialist of the heart” until his death, he officially broke from the party after his defeat in election in 1919.^[1] This falling out with Socialists and the Communist Party would come back to bite him later.

        In both cases before the war during which Laval rose above his rank as a Senator, a strong argument can be made that he could not have done so at a worse time. As Prime Minister in 1930, the onset of the global depression baffled economists and politicians. His initial instinctive instructions to firmly adhere to a balanced budget later saved the French economy. It became apparent in France, as had been the case in the United States with President Hoover’s construction projects and later the “New Deal” from Roosevelt, that stimulus would be necessitated.^[2] Hoover agreed to co-operate with French plans for German reparations under certain conditions.^[3]

Laval further demonstrated his economic mastery by funding such stimulus with taxes limited to the highest-paid government workers and by keeping the subsequent reduction in their income lower than the rate of deflation.^[4] Leaving office in 1935, he saw the economy had recovered and even if some of his policies did not have their intended effect, economics dictates that one must pay to gain.^[5]

        As a diplomat, however, in 1936 his attempt to fortify the chain about Hitler was undermined by the opposition of the Socialists in France to a Franco-Italian alliance and by the violation by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of the fifth clause of the Versailles Treaty in 1935.^[6] The failure to forge the links made him less of a diplomatic blacksmith than a whack-a-mole. He received the blessing of Stalin and signed a five year agreement, the Franco-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance originally planned by Louis Barthou in the mid-1930s in response to German violations of the Versailles treaty in the reintroduction of conscription.^[7] The ink was hardly dry when socialists and French leftists supported by Stalin decried Laval with slogans of “Jail all the fascists!” and “Laval must resign!” His departure from the popular front to the National Bloc may have been necessary to his political survival but now it would make the containment of Hitler difficult and even impossible. Despite his actions to curtail German ambitions, policies such as accepting a statement of credit secured two thirds by British banks and one third by French banks in lieu of direct German reparations at the behest of the French Financial Minister Snowden and American President Hoover compromised his position as a leader using financial instruments to further the interests of France.^[8]

Pierre Laval demonstrated effective negotiating skills and diplomatic prowess in his ill-fated attempt to establish a lasting alliance with the Italy of Mussolini, and if not for the Marxist skeletons in his closet and British disapproval, a secret agreement would have initiated a declaration of war upon Germany in the event of the coming Austrian annexation.^[9] Laval was close to bringing Hitler’s ambitions to terms against the might of a unified Europe already in 1935. The short-lived rise of the Popular Front he had abandoned in 1919 spelled the end of his ambitions to forge a dominant alliance through Europe.

When England agreed to allow German rearmament in the form of U-boat construction, Laval was one of the few to realize that Hitler’s ambition reached beyond his borders and recovery from the damage of the Great Depression. The young German leader had worked out an alternative, though more limited, solution in hyperinflation and was desperate to impart a dystopian vision upon not only Germany but across Europe. Leaders did not yet know how dark this vision was.

The Onset of the Madness of War: Two Decisions Demonstrative of Collaboration

        

        Pierre Laval became Vice-President of France under the Grand Marshall Pétain. As a war hero from the battle of Verdun in the First World War, Pétain was a trophy for Hitler but allowed Laval to secure formidable respect and power in the period of the Armistice. At its front, the agreement to cease hostilities, barely and controversially approved by what would later become the Allied nations of America and Great Britain, seemed an easy way out of what would become a bitter and expensive military conflict. It is important not to forget at this time that the USSR had divided Poland with Germany in their neutrality pact. They could become allied with the Axis powers at any time and that America remained lamentably neutral. The very treaty that created Vichy France, in which Laval was now in a position of power, included the word collaboration in the third article.^[10]

In addition to the aforementioned creation of a battalion of soldiers to aid German directives on the Eastern Front, one that would later be attached to the SS Waffen, and his supplication of workers for the German cause, Pierre Laval demonstrated a willingness to engage in brutal measures through the employment of a domestic militia actively employed to solidify his own power. This was necessary because, while Laval was a successful politician and skillful negotiator, he had trouble solidifying popular support with a nation that resented their occupiers. The phrase, “les boches nous prennent tous!” hung on the lips of every Frenchman^[11].

        Closer to his trial, he would attempt to distance himself from the Milice as the sole project of the butcher Bousquet, and Laval entertained paranoid delusions that the media conspired against both him and this leader of the interrogatory police militia.^[12] This is confounded by his claims to use such organizations as a means of obstructing the German presence in France. The most notable of these goals was to head off the antisemitic ambition of Darquier de Pellepoix with creation of the Commission on the Jewish Question and cessation of the raids by the special police.^[13] By pre-empting the German attempt to deport the Jews, and in later negotiations with sympathetic diplomats such as Otto Abetz, Laval successfully saved nearly 90% of French-born Jews.^[14] Approximately the same proportion of civilian casualties was suffered by this sub-group of European Jews sought after by the SS as the general civilian population in Europe.^[15] Evidence before total occupation shows that in the first two thirds of deportations the vast majority of Jews deported were in the Occupied Zone and estimates of the mass murder using this corrective lens can be seen in table 3.^[16] Darquier claimed at the time that Laval artificially suppressed the number of what he claimed to be a 54,000 strong community of foreign-born Jews in unoccupied France to just 11,000.^[17] If substantiated, the claim corroborates the assertion that Laval actively obstructed the deportation of foreign and native-born French Jews during World War II. Using either statistic, however, betrays the filth that Laval had to cover himself in to make deals with the Germans.

        It was not a moment of diplomatic mastery for Laval, however, and an inverse proportion of foreign-born Jews were killed on French soil or through deportation procedures. In fact, documentation has been made available showing that he actively ‘traded’ this population for the other. In this manner, the ultimate humiliation of the nation of France was achieved. Regardless of the legality of the means of escape for the population of foreign-born Jews to France, by negotiating and using them as a bargaining chip for the return of hostages, POWs, or supplies the highest echelons in French government not only took the complicit role it is known for in the Final Solution, but became traders in the flesh. Worse, with the execution of the wanted Jews in the ensuing Holocaust, France became a partner in the sale of the blood of civilians.

1943: Obstructionism Loses Favor and Laval Loses Hope in Revolution

        1942 and ‘43 were turning points in the Second World War. For Laval it represented a period in which he returned to a more prominent place after a year of ‘mingling in crowds’ and out of the spotlight while François Darlan took over the operating government. GDP tables demonstrate how the early war had changed the economic makeup of Europe.^[18] Tactically, the German underbelly seemed safe after deployment of elite soldiers to Tunisia halted the complicating Allied Operation Torch and the Eastern frontier appeared to be yielding resources.

Before the American Army was immobilized in the mud of North Africa, Hitler asked Laval for a conscript army of North African Imperial Legionaries to serve with the Germans. This was prior to Laval having lost hope in the Allied cause.^[19] Nonetheless, the formation of this battalion in the days that his opinion began to turn in a dark fashion to sympathize with Nazis created the foundation for broader French involvement in crimes against humanity and for Laval to make an offer that would give the Reich extra precious months at a cost of between a quarter and half a million Jewish lives each month.

        Laval initiated a furious debate with himself on the topic and what pursued was among the most humiliating and tragic decisions of France’s military history. One afternoon, at the last minute and perhaps at the whim of a Tarot reading, Laval approached the microphone to broadcast an appeal to all conservative Frenchmen. Over ten thousand paranoiacs and radicals signed up for what became known as the French Volunteers Against Bolshevism. Many were rejected as unfit to serve, but a legion of 5,000 was eventually prepared and deployed in German uniforms with a French patch.^[20] On February 8 1942, the legion was deployed to Eastern Europe to fight in German uniforms. Laval did make later attempts to bring them under direct French control but in doing so made them stronger.^[21] By May 1942, 150,000 workers had joined Germans in the factories.^[22]

        This was followed by a period of political inaction. This is an interesting development historically because while historians such as Robert Paxton and Kenneth Brody do include Hitler’s request, the commendation that Laval issued to the battlegroup that was formed is overlooked. Pierre Laval’s own diary indicts him in this case. It has already been discussed that he encouraged the unit’s use in Eastern Europe rather than in North Africa, but he also believed this to be a better strategic decision for Germany.^[23] The soldiers were much needed by the Third Reich and after taking casualties numbering over half of the unit, the remaining volunteers formed ranks in Paris and the unit was redeployed into the SS Waffen. The last deportation of Jews from France would later occur in Paris as the American army advanced upon the city to secure liberation.

        The discussion of this unit is primarily symbolic. The consternation Laval exhibited in issuing a commendation to them in 1943 empirically proves this symbolism was controversial at the time as well. In later times, had Laval not been convicted of the humiliation of France, the recruitment of French soldiers to the SS Waffen for the explicit purpose of killing civilian Jews and political leaders would have weighed heavily against him in a trial of crimes against humanity. Combined with his negotiation for the return of French-born Jews at the cost of foreign-born Jews, Pierre Laval’s malfeasance in leadership and misunderstanding of the interest of France is are both laid bare.

The Fundamentals of Collaboration: Pierre Laval’s Calculated Decision to Give Germany a Final Year of War and a Second Chance

        The moment Laval lost hope in Allied victory or even restoration of France as he had formerly conceived it, and as General de Gaulle portrayed it, also marks a distinct about face in the nature of the acts of collaboration. This development operates in tandem with the marked reduction his obstructionist activity. By taking an extended break from politics in this critical war-period, he established a period of non-contact before making an about-face in policy with profound implications. The proof lies in his popularly quoted “hope” for supreme German victory in 1942.^[24] His restoration to power by Pétain at the request of the Germans initiated a series of decisions with bloody consequences that must be skeptically evaluated because circumstances seldom offered him much choice.

        The seriousness of the allied situation already in 1941 can be seen by returning to table 2. The entry of America into the war disrupts a fundamentally economic analysis of the war for a couple reasons it will be necessary to explain. Pierre Laval could not have foreseen the American war machine to be critical to the liberation of Europe yet. During trial after V-Day, despite Marshall Pétain’s claims not to be cognizant of Laval’s short incarceration, the former Prime Minister described the interlude as the final and only time he had felt hatred towards the figurehead of collaborationist policies in Vichy France, his Grand Marshall.^[25]

The industrial base of the United States did provide the Allies with the ability to win. In 1942, however, German U-boats were adeptly sinking such a great number of supply and war ships, that the military had to cease the deployment of these resources until a solution could be found. When the British violated the Versailles treaty and allowed the Germans to build their U-boat navy to 35% of Britain’s tonnage in the bilateral British-German treaty of 1935, they operated from the fundamental assumption that U-boats were inferior to destroyers and could only make a marginal impact on shipping or merchant concerns.^[26]

They were wrong. The Germans had sunk almost 4,000 allied merchant vessels in the Atlantic before a solution to the U-boat problem was found, and had lost just over two dozen vessels in return. In detail the Wülfgrüppe or “wolf-pack” technique allowed the Germans to successfully raid a high percentage of merchant vessels.^[27] More importantly, they were able to deploy and sink convoys that had an escort attached. By the time the Allies succeeded in mass-producing British Magnetrons in the American industrial heartland, Laval had been lost to the darkness of despair.

Nazi Germany and Oil

        With the Allies prepared to open a front on two sides, the Germans faced a critical decision. The “living room” of Nazi Germany, in Eastern Europe and Russia, could be protected and expanded by diverting workers from armament and synthetic oil factories to the Eastern front. Doing so, however, would put the supply of critical resources such as grain, labor, and fuel in peril. The most apparent of these resources was oil.

        At the outset of the war, Germany had a stockpile of 20 million barrels of oil. The war machine the Nazi empire required would cost almost this much each year. It was perhaps in recognition of this that Churchill made the courageously controversial decision to divert half of the armored units in Britain to overseas colonies, namely Egypt.^[28] This was done in the face of the firestorm that became the Battle of Britain and what was assumed to be a coming German invasion.

        While it seems as though the German plans were doomed from the start, instead they were only realistically based on projections about the continued efficiency of this extremely costly war machine. Conquest in the Mediterranean would allow the system to break even, and the Russian oil fields would permit the war machine to grow. High Command anticipated an easy compromise between the numbers of workers producing synthetic oil and their troop levels because conquered territories would provide all of the necessary raw materials.

        Germany was instead faced with the difficult decision of cutting into the marrow of the bone in their precious remaining fuel supplies and deploying soldiers to the protective shell of territory gained in Operation Barbarossa. The year after the initial deployment of the 4 million strong Wehrmacht saw the loss of around 420,000 German soldiers.^[29] Revitalizing these divisions completely exhausted military units and new conscription from factories would be necessitated in order to continue offensive operations or even to defend Germany.

        During this early phase in Germany’s offensive war, the demand for manpower allowed a greater level of negotiation than it would later. What Laval failed to obtain at the bargaining table, he simply did not procure later. His negotiation with the Germans saw the demanded number of workers drop to a quarter of a million in 1942 and by the October only 17,000 of 150,000 crucial skilled workers were actually delivered; the unskilled workers looked unlikely to meet their quotas either.^[30] This early negotiation noted that the French in North Africa and the French Navy had contributed to Germany and Laval obtained the release of 3,000 of the millions of French POWs held.^[31]

        German leadership was so attached to the idea of maintaining their grip on conquered territories that units deployed in Germany dropped to just two divisions at one point; the entirety of the war effort was focused on the perimeter. Hitler decided to bargain with chips that he did not have, and instructed Sauckel to demand 500,000 workers from Pierre Laval at a rate of 100,000 per month at the end of 1943. This demand was gargantuan under the stress of the economic times. Laval had more pressure due to intensifying mass executions of hostages as the standard response to assassinations by the Resistance.^[32] The practice had initiated as a reprisal to the insubordination of François Darlan before Laval was restored to power.

 While the French could not fight in great numbers for Germany, their workers could produce synthetic oil and armaments. At 3.6 million barrels of oil per year, maintaining the German synthetic oil production was critical to the war effort.^[33] To put this in perspective, the oil produced in synthetic oil reactors was many folds greater than all of the oil won in the campaign into Southern Russia’s major oil fields. Success in this industry meant that Hitler could embark on a counter-offensive at his leisure while failure would spell the end of the war as Nazi Germany would return to a pre-Barbarossa deficit in the vital resource. The next time, though, there would not be the padding of reserves and the entire “empire” would grind to a halt on its own ambition.        

Laval Protects the German Lebensraum

        The initial demands for workers did not present the opportunity for negotiation, and when refused the Germans doubled down in their attempt to expedite the extraction of labor from France. After Laval’s quiet period, during which François Darlan had taken over his duties and refused to send 150,000 skilled workers to Germany the process of German execution of hostages initiated. Had Allied operations not been bungled at the Kasserine pass in Africa and stymied in Tunisia during Operation Torch, it is safe to say that this refusal may have been sufficient to supplement a three-pronged attack on Germany and won an early war.^[34]

Before Laval reclaimed his position as Prime Minister with German backing, a new German department to extract labor was established. The head of this department, Fritz Sauckel, would be responsible for obtaining hundreds of thousands of workers to replace the soldiers departed for the Eastern Front. Doing so required the expansion of German training camps, occupation, and motorized units in France.^[35] Diversion of each of these hindered the German war effort.

        Laval’s close confidant and source, the German Ambassador Otto Abetz, had been recalled to Berlin under allegations of being a francophile but Laval retained informants within the German hierarchy. He was able to intercept the incoming demand for labor prior to writing Ribbentrop, the foreign minister of Germany at the time and the man Abetz had reported to.^[36] With his notorious announcement of the relève, covering the mandatory labor system, Laval hoped to pre-empt a counter-bargain and secure the return of a third of the married POWs in return for just 150,000 skilled workers.

In doing so, he bargained with chips he did not have just as Hitler had played with chips he did not have by deploying Sauckel to France and preparing for an increased occupation of France. In the final days of the war this would become a total annexation in one of Hitler’s mad split decisions and about-turns that marked his leadership style throughout the war. The behavior of Pierre Laval indicates he did not foresee this annexation coming, and while skilled workers were late and few to meet German demands, only 50,000, a couple percent of the total, “peasant” POWs returned to their families.

        The final demand for 500,000 workers by Germany was refused, though Laval agreed to send the remainder of the 60,000 workers from the 350,000 agreed upon in early 1943.^[37] He slavishly begs for France to be treated generously as a defeated nation. While this statement from France, recorded in the report of Sauckel back to the Führer, is courageous, in August 1943 it comes too late to save the reputation of Laval. His offer of one worker for every POW returned to France torpedoed his popular opinion rating among the French and extended a needed hand to the flagging German economy.^[38] He may have realized the coming Allied victory, but the damage done by providing critical workers six months before and extending the war had already been done.

        In October 1943 the P-51 fighter accompanied the B-17 Flying Fortress on the first successful strategic bombing runs of southern Germany and by April 1, 1944 the war for air supremacy had been won thanks to the long-range fighters.^[39]  Targeting synthetic fuel depots, this military technology succeeded where Laval’s integrity had failed. As a long-range fighter plane, day-time bombing campaigns were initiated and forced Hitler to recall dozens of remaining troop divisions to form, for the first time since the Maginot line, a home front in Germany. American daytime bombing campaigns could measure their accuracy in feet while the sledgehammer of British nighttime bombing runs measured accuracy in miles.^[40] Without fuel for the armored divisions to launch a counteroffensive, low levels of aviation fuel for the Luftwaffe and inadequate defensive forces, the Third Reich and their Axis allies would crumble within a year.

Negotiating the Road from D-Day to V-Day

        The year and a half of darkness that dominated the decision making process of Pierre Laval may have lifted by the time the P-51 fighter was deployed and Allied air control and victory became clear. At this point, it should be emphasized, Laval could never rectify his actions in the past. The war was won by brute force, and he would never again stand with the opportunity to sacrifice his political career under the Axis in order to save the French cause, and the lives of the millions of victims of Nazi persecution during 1943 and 1944.

        The guilt for his actions, and the profundity of his failure to obtain critical pieces of information that could have guided him to make a more conscientious decision at the time must have weighed heavily upon him. He knew of the German oil shortage, the pressing needs of the Eastern Front, and that his workers would provide Germany with a critical second chance. The most important component to the argument that indicts Laval using the evidence at hand is the psychological atmosphere of despair that impaired his decision making process. Before his execution at the hands of the French government under charges of humiliating France, he attempted suicide by cyanide.

        Demonstration of the symbolic role that Pierre Laval played in the destruction that Germany wrought upon France, Europe, and the world necessitates supplementary evidence. Inclusion of data regarding the holocaust is evidence of a level of collaboration horrific to today’s reader. The Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism provides a tempered look at the level of complicity and collaboration that Pierre Laval played in the course of the occupation.

        There is a deeper penetration into the submerged mechanisms of political and military developments with the analysis of the conscripted labor forces. There is a timeline in the development of the German demands and Laval’s cooperation that develops a sturdy understanding of the Second World War. The negotiation process offered by Laval, and the importance of his actions to the natural resource crisis experienced by the German war machine eliminates doubt that he created a role crucial to the outcome of the war. The tragedy is that he failed to use this position to aid the allies at such a critical moment. With few other options and despair dominating his psychology, he had to make a difficult decision. Failure to aid the Allied cause with every resource and opportunity is still fundamentally a failure.

Appendix A: GDP Tables Before and After the German Occupation of France^[41]

Table 1: Allied and Axis GDPs in 1939

Allied	GDP (billions)	Axis	GDP (billions)
France	23	Germany	55
UK	45	USSR*	59.5
		Japan	27.5
Total	68	Total*	92.5 (142)

* The USSR was neutral to Germany by means of a mutual non-aggression pact but could join war against Allies

Table 2: Allied and Axis GDPs Prior to Pearl Harbor:

Allied	GDP (billions)	Axis	GDP (billions)
UK	49	Germany	59
		Vichy	18.5
		Italy	20.5
		USSR*	51
		Japan	28
Total	49	Total*	126 (177)

* The USSR was neutral to Germany by means of a mutual non-aggression pact but could join war against Allies

Appendix B: Estimates of French Jewish Populations in the Vichy Occupied Zone Before and After Occupation

Table 3: Number of French Jews in the Vichy Occupied Zone (estimate)

	Before World War II	After World War II
French-born Jews	90,000	75,000
Foreign-born Jews	90,000	15,000
Total	180,000	90,000

References:

Cole, Hubert., and Laval, Pierre. Laval, a Biography. 1st American Ed.]. ed. New York: Putnam, 1963.

Chambrun, René De. Pierre Laval : Traitor or Patriot? / René De Chambrun ; Translated by Elly Stein under the Supervision of the Author. New York: Scribner, 1984.

George, Simon, WWII From Space, Directed by Simon George (2012; London: October Films, 2012), DVD.

Harrison, Mark. The Economics of World War II : Six Great Powers in International Comparison / Edited by Mark Harrison. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Jacquemin, Gaston. La Vie Publique De Pierre Laval 1883-1945. Paris: Plon, 1973.

Laval, Pierre. The Diary of Pierre Laval / with a Pref. by Josée Laval. New York: AMS Press, 1978.

Messenger, Charles. The Chronological Atlas of World War Two / Text by Charles Messenger. New York: Macmillan, 1989.

 Reynolds, David, Hitler’s Soft Underbelly, Directed by Russel Barnes (2011; London: Clear Story, 2011), DVD.

Germany . Statistisches Bundesamt. Statistisches Jahrbuch ... Für Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland., 1960.

Stranges, Anthony. "Germany’s synthetic fuel industry, 1927–1945." In The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century, pp. 147-216. Springer Netherlands, 2000.

Thomson, David. Two Frenchmen: Pierre Laval and Charles De Gaulle. London: Cresset Press, 1951.

Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968.

Werrell, Kenneth P. "The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments." The Journal of American History 73, no. 3 (1986): 702-13.

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[1] De Chambrun, Rene, Pierre Laval: Traitor Or Patriot?, (New York, Scribner Book Company, 1984), 30-1.

[2] Warner, Geoffrey, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, (London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), 90.

[3] Warner, Geoffrey, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 47.

[4] Hubert Cole and Pierre Laval, Laval: a Biography, (New York, Putnam, 1963), 68.

[5] Warner, Geoffrey, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 129.

[6] Jacquemin, Gaston, La Vie Publique de Pierre Laval, 1883-1945, (Paris, Plon, 1973), 101.

[7] Thomson, David, Two Frenchmen: Pierre Laval and Charles de Gaulle. (London, The Cresset Press, 1951), 47.

[8] Jacquemin, Gaston, La Vie Publique de Pierre Laval, 1883-1945, 83-5.

[9] Thomson, David, Two Frenchmen: Pierre Laval and Charles de Gaulle, 50.

[10] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, (New York, AMB, 1978), 76.

[11]Jacquemin, Gaston, La Vie Publique de Pierre Laval, 1883-1945, 180. The term boche is derogatory slang for the German occupiers. The slogan translates to: “the Germans have taken all that is ours.”

[12] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 105.

[13] Hubert Cole and Pierre Laval, Laval: a Biography, 210.

[14] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 99. Pierre Laval made attempts to save the lives of French nationals before others.  De Chambrun, Rene, Pierre Laval: Traitor Or Patriot?, 30-1. Pierre Laval attempted to save nearly 95% of French-born Jews.

[15] Messenger, Charles. The Chronological Atlas of World War Two, (New York, Macmillan, 1989). The total population of Europe prior to the Second World War was around 420 million and conservative estimates of civilian casualties are 50 million.

[16] Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 305

[17] Hubert Cole and Pierre Laval, Laval: a Biography, 210.

[18] Tables 1 and 2 contain GDP charts for 1939 and 1940

[19] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 30. Pierre Laval recognized German military superiority at this point in his diary.

[20] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 134.

[21] Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 315.

[22]Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 111.

[23]Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 32.

[24] United News, Release 170, 1945. Vol. 170. United News. Neighborhood Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood: United Newsreel Corporation, 1945.

[25] Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 263.

[26] De Chambrun, Rene. Pierre Laval: Traitor Or Patriot?, (Scribner Book Company, 1984), 19.

[27] George, Simon, WWII From Space, Directed by Simon George (2012; London: October Films, 2012), DVD.

[28] Reynolds, David, Hitler’s Soft Underbelly, Directed by Russel Barnes (2011; London: Clear Story, 2011), DVD.

[29] Germany, Statistisches Jahrbuch Für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, (1960), 78.

[30] Hubert Cole and Pierre Laval, Laval: a Biography,  208-9.

[31] Warner, Geoffrey. Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 314.

[32] Thomson, David. Two Frenchmen: Pierre Laval and Charles de Gaulle, 101.

[33] Stranges, Anthony. Germany’s Synthetic Fuel Industry, 1927–1945.  (Springer Netherlands, 2000), 148. The Germans produced a total of 21 million tons of liquid fuel from synthetic fuel over 6 months of war, or around 3.6 million barrels per year and just under 3 hundred thousand barrels per month.

[34] Reynolds, David, Hitler’s Soft Underbelly.

[35] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 215.

[36] Warner, Geoffrey, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 300.

[37] Laval, Pierre, The Diary of Pierre Laval, 216-8.

[38] Hubert Cole and Pierre Laval, Laval: a Biography, 206-8.

[39] Werrell, Kenneth P., The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments. The Journal of American History 73, no. 3 (1986), 706.

[40] Werrell, Kenneth P., The Strategic Bombing of Germany in World War II: Costs and Accomplishments, 706.

[41] Harrison, Mark, ed. The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison. (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 10.