What were French collaborators specifically accused of after the Liberation of France in WWII?

Thanks to the link posted by another user, I was able to download and read parts of the book in question--France: The Tragic Years, 1939 - 1947 by Sisly Huddleston, a prominent journalist, with scores of pieces in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and The New Republic under his belt and a world exclusive interview with British Prime Minister Lloyd George at the Paris Peace Conference to his name. In addition to his journalistic success, he had published thirty books (!) on France and counted US Ambassador William Bullitt a close friend.

Writing just after the war, and as an eye-witness, Huddleston writes,

"It is estimated that 20,000 persons lost their lives under the Reign of Terror; that 18,000 fell in the frightful butchery that followed the war and insurrection of 1870-1871. The American services put the figures of "summary executions" in France in the first months of the Liberation at 80,000. A former French minister later placed the figure at 105,000.

The Minister was M. Adrien Tixier, a Socialist, who in March 1945, when he was minister of the interior and, therefore, presumably acquainted with the facts, told "Colonel Passy," one of the chief agents of De Gaulle, that from August 1944 to March 1945 there had been 105,000 executions. The statement has been frequently made: there can be little doubt that it was repeated in good faith; and, of course, the executions were regarded as deplorable both by the minister and by the colonel. That there were many executions both before and after these dates is a matter of public notoriety.

It may also be noted that, on October 15, 1943, the Central Committee of the Resistance at Algiers addressed a circular to the metropolitan groups, envisaging the insurrection between the departure of the Germans and the arrival of the Anglo-Anerican forces, thus "guaranteeing the revolutionary suppression, in a few hours, of the traitors, in conformity with the legitimate aspirations of reprisals of the Resistance," and "paralyzing the dispositions of the Vichy administration." The elimination of all officials should be accomplished "by authority." This order confined the revolution to "a few hours" and the time in which reprisals were to be taken, Vichy liquidated, and the functionaries eliminated was foreseen as of short duration. It is obvious, however, that such an operation could hardly be effected so quickly.

As the police records show, there were still sporadic killings at a much later date...

The "Central Committee"specifically planned the mass executions for the time between the retreat of the Germans and the arrival of the Anglo-Americans. These killings explicitly were to be extra-judicial, which is to say, no specific charge was necessary. No proof of any inculpable act was necessary.

In the book he then goes on to describe what a brutal and hideous form the slaughter took.

The whole thing smacks of Bolshevism, which, indeed, Huddleston calls it in the dedicatory letter in the beginning of the book to former Ambassador Bullitt:

My Dear Bill:

More than thirty years have elapsed since you read to me in Paris your letter of resignation from the American Peace Delegation, and since then everything that has happened has justified your protest against a Treaty which was a betrayal of our hopes, a repudiation of our principles, and a frustration of the purpose for which we fought the First World War. We both realized that the statesmen of Versailles had doomed mankind to a future bloody trial of strength.

Our friendship, which has never faltered from those faroff days when you took your stand for truth in diplomacy, is stronger than ever as we enter the dark era in which the ineptitude and the pernicious untruths of the past decade threaten to overwhelm humanity.

More appalling than follies and errors are lying legends. It would be possible to correct mistakes, however damnable, did we possess the courage to acknowledge them. We prefer comfortable falsehoods, fatal expedients, purblind propaganda; and we are disturbed by testimony which upsets the conventional views.

In our correspondence you remark that there are "few of us left who have some understanding of the whole swing of events since 1914," when Sir Edward Grey dolefully observed: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lighted again in our time." A bad peace culminated in a Second World War, and a badly conducted Second World War is leading us to a third world war, with the prospect of Bolshevism triumphant on the ruins of our civilization.

You are good enough to call me "an old friend who has always been right." I have, alas, often been wrong, but at least I have tried to see clearly and to state the plain facts.

My birth in England, my twenty years of working association with America, and nearly a lifetime of residence in France, have made me neither altogether English, nor American, nor French, but something of all three. From my coign of vantage, I have, aided by forty years of training in diplomatic affairs, watched not only the heroic efforts but also the blunders, unrealized in Washington or London, committed in our fight against the evil forces that threaten to enslave us.

My position is unique; my post of observation enabled me to look on with some detachment, though often I was in the heart of things; and it is my duty to refute the strange fictions which falsify all our conceptions. I witnessed in France the civil war and the revolution to which we still refuse to give their rightful names, and the effects of the astounding miscalculations of the statesmen, French, English, and American.

After hopelessly shattering Europe, we are now told that the urgent task is to create Europe. But Europe existed before 1914, when I could travel where I pleased without passport, without permission, without formality. Even after 1918, Europe still lived, and I could enjoy the spectacle of happy and prosperous countries. Today, where is the old Europe? Much of it is behind an iron curtain, and is lost to us. The rest lives in fear, subjected to innumerable restrictions, poor, and dependent on charity.

Having smashed every barrier to Communism, having divided country after country, having abolished tbe sense of justice and of pity, we await, inadequately defended, the coming of the Police State, with the promise of a new liberation when the Continent has become a cemetery.

I try to render one last service, and I am fortified in placing your name in the forefront of a work which is inspired not by hate (deadlier than the atomic bomb) but by the love of our fellows which alone can save us.

SISLEY HuDDLEsToN Troinex, 1952

Just as had been going on in Russia already for nearly 30 years, where nothing more specific than a charge of "enemy of the people" was needed to be executed by the Bolshevik monsters, nothing more specific than an accusation of "traitor" was needed to find yourself the victim of the Bolsheviks in France.

Here is Huddleston's account of his arrest, which only serves to bolster my conclusion in the preceding paragraph.

I speak not from hearsay but at first hand. A full month after the landing, I too was arrested by as ruffianly-looking a band of fellows with machine guns as you can imagine; and the next day my wife was arrested, and my house and belongings sequestrated. Nobody signed any warrant at any time, no accusation was brought, there was not even an "administrative order." It was just like that-anybody could arrest anybody on any pretext-or without pretext. I do not regret this incident, which was ended by the intervention of the representatives of General Eisenhower and of the British ambassador; and General de Benouville, acting for General De Gaulle, also came to my rescue. I was fortunate in having highly placed friends; without them I might have fared-badly.

I know the private reasons which dictated this attempt-there were certainly no public reasons-and despicable indeed they were. My activities, such as they were during the war, were directed to informing the British authorities of the situation in France, and I ran great risks. I do not propose to talk of them, but certainly they should have commended themselves to the Resistants. To forestall any malevolent misunderstanding, I would add that, not content with our release, with suitable excuses, I considered it my duty to launch an action for arbitrary and illegal detention before the highest tribunal in France-the Conseil d'Etat, one of the few bodies that maintained a judicial spirit in the tragic years. The government spokesman admitted the mistake, and the court condemned in the most unequivocal terms, the "gross blunder" committed by its "agents." The administration was ordered to pay me and my wife substantial damages. It will be seen, therefore, that I have little to complain of personally, nor do I harbor the smallest resentment. On the contrary' I pay my tribute to the impartiality and fairness of ordinary French justice. That I should have come off so well, however, cannot blind me to the terrible injustices of the "exceptional" procedure. I was fortunate, but many thousands of victims could not hope for redress.