1941 in France

Incumbents

• Chief of State: Philippe Pétain
• Vice-President of the Council of Ministers: Pierre-Étienne Flandin, François Darlan

  Events

• 17 January - Battle of Ko Chang. Decisive victory by the French over the Thai Navy.
• 3 February - The Nazis forcibly restore Pierre Laval to office in occupied Vichy France.
• 5 May - Georges Bégué becomes the first Special Operations Executive agent to be parachuted into France.
• 9 May - French-Thai War ends.
• 8 June - Allied invasion of Vichy French-controlled Syria and Lebanon begins, the Syria-Lebanon Campaign.
• 9 June - Battle of the Litani River.
• 13 June - Battle of Jezzine.
• 15 June - Battle of Kissoué begins.
• 17 June - Battle of Kissoué ends with Allied victory.
• 18 June - Battle of Damascus begins.
• 19 June - Battle of Merdjayoun starts.
• 21 June - Battle of Damascus ends, with the Allies taking Damascus.
• 24 June - Battle of Merdjayoun ends.
• 1 July - Battle of Palmyra. Vichy garrison at Palmyra surrenders.
• 3 July - Battle of Deir ez-Zor. Allied victory over Vichy French.
• 5 July - Battle of Damour begins.
• 9 July - Battle of Damour ends, with Allied victory over Vichy French.
• 14 July - Vichy France signs armistice terms ending all fighting in Syria and Lebanon.
• 21 August
• *Drancy internment camp officially opens.
• *In revenge for the execution two days earlier of French Resistance member Samuel Tyszelman, communist activist Pierre Georges shoots and kills German naval cadet Alfons Moser at the Barbès – Rochechouart Paris Métro station, the first killing of a member of the German military in occupied Paris, initiating a cycle of assassinations and retribution that will claim hundreds of lives.
• 22 August - German Occupation Authority announces that anyone found either working for or aiding the Free French will be sentenced to death.
• 27 August - Pierre Laval is shot in an assassination attempt at Versailles.
• 24 November - The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
• 12 December - United States seizes French ship.

  Sport

• 25 May - Coupe de France Football Final won by Girondins ASP.

  Births

• 2 January - Jean-Pierre Destrumelle, soccer player and manager
• 13 April - Jean-Marc Reiser, comics creator
• 19 April - Michel Roux, chef and restaurateur
• 20 May - Raymond Forni, Socialist politician
• 25 May - Jean-Pierre Hubert, author
• 17 July - Gribouille, singer
• 1 August - Étienne Roda-Gil, songwriter and screenwriter
• 13 September - Daniel Bernard, diplomat
• 26 October - François Duprat, negationist writer

  Deaths

• 4 January - Henri Bergson, philosopher
• 19 February - Paul-Jacques Curie, physicist
• 24 February — Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, German Imperial Naval submarine captain in World War I and Kriegsmarine Rear admiral
• 16 April - Émile Bernard, painter
• 26 July - Henri Lebesgue, mathematician
• 14 August - Paul Sabatier, chemist, shared Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1912
• 6 November - Maurice Leblanc, novelist and short story writer