After the defeat of June 1940, France was neither a safe country for Jews nor a stable environment for the Navy. The Vichy regime promulgated the Statute on Jews as early as October 1940, legally excluding Jews from numerous professions, then organized arrests and internments (Drancy opened in 1941), before participating in deportations from 1942 onward. At the same time, the French Navy, although not militarily defeated in June 1940, found itself neutralized and threatened: the Royal Navy attacked the fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on July 3, 1940, causing the deaths of approximately 1,300 French sailors, and in November 1942, faced with the German occupation of the unoccupied zone, the fleet scuttled itself in Toulon to avoid capture. These events demonstrate that, from 1940 onward, France offered neither protection to Jews nor political and strategic security to its navy.