Good ideas.
FlyingDutchie, you underestimate French people fondness of having or findind "savior", even if they are figureheads like Petain. Without the old man to pose as the victorious general of Verdun and the hero of the Weltkrieg and the Civil War, the one that saved France from the reds, even at the cost of a retreat overseas, I can't figure a National France with a popular government and a propaganda appeal on mainland red-occupied France.
Everybody knows Pétain.
Darlan? Reynaud? De Gaulle? Those are émigrés, right, but who are they for the common people, especially those listening to Radio Algier in clandestinity?
Frankly, putting them as Premier does not pose much problems. Nobody ever complained about Kalinin being HoS of Soviet Union in regular HoI2 with Stalin as Premier: it was just how it was! Same With Churchill and George VI. HoS can be figureheads or people without much power.
IMHO, National French is not the french 4th Republic, but sort of "French State" with provisionnal institutions with Petain as Regent/HoS (being mostly a figurehead, the one people rally around and act like he rules, but being mostly a symbol and a moral support/excuse: Everybody knows the Premier and government are the true ruler, but nobody can ignore the Maréchal shadow because of his "historical icon/hero" status. He is the only one to have enough symbolic weight to keep the fiction of French resistance alive.
With Petain dead and National France still sitting around in Algier, it looks so grim: who are these De Gaulle and Darlan Guys?
No appeal at all to french people and veteran (whose impact on daily life was so important in 1920-1930's France IRL, and it should be the same in this timeline. Millions fought in the war and I believe Petain's legend would have stayed vivid in Red France as well, even if it was in clandestinity.
FlyingDutchie, you underestimate French people fondness of having or findind "savior", even if they are figureheads like Petain. Without the old man to pose as the victorious general of Verdun and the hero of the Weltkrieg and the Civil War, the one that saved France from the reds, even at the cost of a retreat overseas, I can't figure a National France with a popular government and a propaganda appeal on mainland red-occupied France.
Everybody knows Pétain.
Darlan? Reynaud? De Gaulle? Those are émigrés, right, but who are they for the common people, especially those listening to Radio Algier in clandestinity?
Frankly, putting them as Premier does not pose much problems. Nobody ever complained about Kalinin being HoS of Soviet Union in regular HoI2 with Stalin as Premier: it was just how it was! Same With Churchill and George VI. HoS can be figureheads or people without much power.
IMHO, National French is not the french 4th Republic, but sort of "French State" with provisionnal institutions with Petain as Regent/HoS (being mostly a figurehead, the one people rally around and act like he rules, but being mostly a symbol and a moral support/excuse: Everybody knows the Premier and government are the true ruler, but nobody can ignore the Maréchal shadow because of his "historical icon/hero" status. He is the only one to have enough symbolic weight to keep the fiction of French resistance alive.
With Petain dead and National France still sitting around in Algier, it looks so grim: who are these De Gaulle and Darlan Guys?
No appeal at all to french people and veteran (whose impact on daily life was so important in 1920-1930's France IRL, and it should be the same in this timeline. Millions fought in the war and I believe Petain's legend would have stayed vivid in Red France as well, even if it was in clandestinity.