for research. Three different periods can be considered. Before 1939, Germany was trying to stop France and the United Kingdom from entering the war. During the phony war, Germany planned to favor regionalist movements (particularly those of Flanders and Brittany) in order to undermine France. This was in revenge for the Treaty of Versailles, and to ensure that Germany remained the only Continental power, with no threats on its western border. Some weapons were delivered but never used. By the end of June and early July, some Breton nationalists could take it for granted the independence of Brittany was well on the way when the Germans appointed a military governor in Brittany ruling over the five départements of ancient Brittany. However, after the defeat of France a settlement was quickly made with the occupying power. The projects to undermine France were abandoned and the support for the nationalists disappeared (in particular it was formally forbidden to proclaim a Breton state or to harm public order). Moreover, the formal annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was never proclaimed. After the Conference of Montoire nationalist movements were simply tolerated (transport permits were given as well as authorizations for purchases of gasoline that soon meant little in practice), and German support went no further than preventing the Vichy regime from suppressing the nationalist movements. Ideology Bretons were not considered untermenschen (subhuman) by the Nazis, unlike the Jews and Gypsies for example. Mordrel, Lainé and some other Celticists argued that the Bretons were a 'pure' strain of the Celtic race, who had retained their "Nordic" qualities, a view consistent with Nazi Aryan master race ideology. Other Nationalists, such as Perrot, adopted a more conservative-Catholic stance consistent with longstanding Breton anti-radical ideologies that had emerged among the Royalist-Catholic "Whites" during the French Revolution. Strategic rationale A main intention of the German occupiers was to break French national unity. Its support for Breton nationalism needs to be seen in this wider context which included other aspects, for example the division of France into the occupied zone and the Vichy zone. However Breton nationalists very soon realized that Germany was in practice trying to keep its friends in the Vichy government content and therefore refusing to give any priority at all to the Breton nationalist demands. Nazi scholar Rudolf Schlichting toured the region and sent the following comment to his superiors: "from a racial point of view there would be