France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain

by Julian Jackson

ISBN: 9780141993096

Published: 2024-06-13

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize 2023 A Telegraph Book of the Year A Times, Spectator and Prospect Book of the Year One of the great contemporary historians of France on one of the most controversial periods of twentieth-century French history Few images more shocked the French population during the Occupation than the photograph of Marshal Philippe Pétain - the great French hero of the First World War - shaking the hand of Hitler on 20 October 1940. In a radio speech after this meeting, Pétain told the French people that he was 'entering down the road of collaboration'. He ended with the words: 'This is my policy. My ministers are responsible to me. It is I alone who will be judged by History.' Five years later, in July 1945, the hour of judgement - if not yet the judgement of History - arrived. Pétain was brought before a specially created High Court to answer for his conduct between the signing of the armistice with Germany in June 1940 and the Liberation of France in August...