The Service d'ordre légionnaire was a collaborationist militia created by Joseph Darnand, a far right veteran from the First World War. Too radical even for other supporters of the Vichy regime, it was granted its independence in January 1943, after Operation Torch and the German occupation of the South Zone, until then dubbed "Free Zone" and controlled by Vichy. Pierre Laval himself passed the law which accorded the SOL its independence and transformed it into the Milice, which participated in battles alongside the Nazis against the Resistance and committed numerous war crimes against civilians. After the Liberation, some members of the Milice escaped to Germany, where they joined the ranks of the SS. Those who stayed behind in France faced either drumhead courts-martial, generally followed by summary execution, or simple lynching at the hands of résistants and enraged civilians.

Joseph Darnand was a French collaborator with Nazi Germany during World War II. A decorated soldier in the French Army of World War I and early World War II, he went on to become the organizer and de facto leader of the Milice française, or French Militia, the collaborationist Vichy government's paramilitary police force. Darnand also served as an officer in the Waffen-SS. He was tried and executed after the war for treason.