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Terms and conditions apply. Seaside for details. Hi

1:03

everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. From

1:06

1940 to 1944, Henri-Philippe

1:10

Benoni-Omer-Joseph Pétain,

1:13

commonly known as Marshal

1:16

Pétain, was the

1:18

head of the collaborationist

1:20

government of France, known

1:23

as Vichy France, after

1:25

its capital, Vichy in the south of France.

1:28

He's remembered as Marshal Pétain because he was also a Marshal

1:31

of France. During the First

1:33

World War, he'd become Chief of Staff of

1:36

the Army, and he'd ended the war as a

1:38

national, well really a father figure,

1:41

one of the most famous and beloved men in France. Fast

1:44

forward then to 1945, and

1:46

that same man was on trial

1:48

for treason. It was

1:50

Marshal Pétain who stood in the dock of that trial, but

1:52

really it was France on trial. It

1:55

was the French people and how they'd

1:57

either resisted or collaborated or somewhere in

1:59

between. with the Nazi Germans who

2:01

defeated the French so spectacularly in 1940. To

2:04

talk to me all about Pétain, particularly his

2:07

time as the leader of Vichy France in

2:09

his trial, is a biographer. He

2:11

is Julian Jackson, he's a Emeritus Professor of

2:14

Modern French History at Queen Mary University of

2:16

London. He has just

2:18

written France on trial, the case

2:20

of Marshal Pétain, and

2:22

he brilliantly tells a story of that trial as

2:25

France's first attempt to come to terms with

2:28

its complexity with the horrors of the

2:30

Third Reich. And that discussion,

2:33

the legacy of those years, definitely continues

2:35

to this day. Here's

2:37

Julian, folks. Enjoy. Julian,

2:59

thank you so much for coming on the podcast. No,

3:01

it's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Let's

3:04

start. Tell me about Pétain's background. At

3:07

the time of the First World War, most

3:09

British generals came through this British public school

3:11

pipeline, not all of them, but most of

3:13

them. Is that true of French generals? Is

3:15

that true of Pétain? It is

3:17

no simple generalisation, but the man that we're

3:19

really interested in, Pétain, came

3:22

from a very ordinary peasant background.

3:24

Basically, his mother had died when

3:26

he was very young. He

3:28

was a clever boy, so he was sent to a Catholic

3:30

school for his education and so on. But

3:32

the main point about him is that he was

3:35

genuinely in his background, you could say, a man

3:37

of the people, a man of the

3:39

land, a man of northern France,

3:42

which was not true of all First World War generals in

3:45

France, I mean, and what makes Pétain such

3:48

a revered figure later on, and

3:50

what makes his trial such a

3:52

traumatic event, is that he

3:54

is so beloved because he's seen as

3:56

a general who both came from the

3:59

people and then- cared about the

4:01

people. So in that sense he's very different from

4:03

a Hague if you want, if you want to

4:05

take a British comparison. He's very much of the

4:07

land and of the people. There

4:10

were British general officers, field marshals even,

4:12

from normal backgrounds and

4:15

from outside sort of the public school pipeline. But

4:17

why was the French system able to... was Pétain

4:19

unusual in this or was it quite normal for

4:22

the children of the land to become

4:24

officers and reach high ranks? No, I

4:26

think it was a relatively meritocratic system. So

4:29

he was not exceptional in that, but

4:32

I think it was exceptional that a man

4:34

of that background would rise to be a

4:36

Marshal of France. But the goal, obviously his

4:38

great rival in the Second World War, was

4:41

somebody came from a sort of slightly

4:43

gentry, sort of minor aristocratic background. So

4:45

it's very difficult to generalize, but it

4:47

was a meritocratic system. I suspect actually

4:49

in the British system, which I don't

4:51

know particularly well, there would be that

4:53

same kind of possibility of rising from

4:55

the ranks. So I don't think that's

4:58

unique really. So we'll just quickly

5:00

talk about his First World War experience. He

5:02

has a sort of meteoroid rise, does he? Well,

5:06

on the eve of the First World War,

5:08

he was actually coming to the end of

5:10

his career. So if the Great War hadn't

5:12

happened, no one would remember the name of

5:14

Pétain, because he was just coasting to retirement.

5:16

And partly because he

5:19

was a slightly non-conformist kind of

5:21

army officer before the First World War, because

5:23

he was one of the very few who

5:26

was arguing that new

5:28

military technology meant that the defensive

5:30

would probably prevail over offensive. And

5:33

that was totally against the prevailing

5:35

doctrine of the French High Command,

5:37

who believed absolutely that everything was

5:39

about offensive, the offensive as

5:41

opposed to the defensive. So

5:43

when the war breaks out, he is

5:45

a colonel, and he

5:47

turns out to be very

5:49

good at leading his men, but also his

5:52

vision of what the war might turn

5:54

out to be turns out very quickly

5:56

to be vindicated. And so he

5:58

does have a very rapid rise and he's

6:00

a general by the end of 1914. But

6:04

I think what makes him more than just

6:06

an ordinary general of the First World War

6:08

is that he's associated for the French above

6:10

all with the defence of the Verdun, the

6:12

greatest battle for the French of the First

6:15

World War. Because for us, the battle that

6:17

the British remember in the First War is

6:19

the Battle of the Somme. Whereas

6:22

the French remember above all the Battle of

6:24

Verdun and where we remember the Somme very

6:27

much as a futile bloodletting

6:29

with actually really no heroism really. The

6:31

Somme is all about tragedy I think

6:34

in the British popular memory. Whereas

6:36

Verdun is about both tragedy but

6:39

also heroism, the French hanging on

6:41

to this fortress city as

6:44

a kind of symbol of France. And Petain

6:46

is the man who's in command. And

6:48

the one thing he does is set

6:51

up this extraordinary complicated system by which

6:53

no soldier in the

6:55

front line at Verdun subjected to

6:57

the terrible artillery battering of the

6:59

Germans is there for more than

7:01

a relatively short time. So he

7:03

creates this sort of endless renewal

7:05

of people at the front. So

7:08

it's felt that he does care

7:10

about soldiers. And that's even

7:13

more the case in 1917 when a wave

7:15

of mutinies broke out in the French army.

7:18

And the French army could have collapsed in

7:20

1917. It's something that we forget. Probably

7:23

the word we often use or you could say

7:25

that the soldiers went on strike after a

7:27

totally disastrous offensive

7:30

in 1917 led by a different general

7:33

Nivelle which was a

7:35

replica of the futile

7:38

suicidal offensive of 1914 and 15. The

7:42

soldiers say we were not going to go on.

7:45

And Petain is put in charge of the whole

7:47

army. And he

7:49

brings the mutinies to an end

7:51

by two methods, partly by some

7:53

summary executions, but mainly by

7:56

improving the daily conditions of the soldiers,

7:58

improving the amount of leave. improving

8:00

rations. And so he has

8:02

this reputation after the end of the war that he's

8:04

the man who saved France in

8:07

the most bloody but also

8:09

heroic battle of Verdun. And

8:11

then the man

8:13

who showed that unlike most of

8:15

his fellow generals, he cared about

8:18

the common people, the ordinary soldier.

8:20

And so his myth is built

8:23

around those two moments, Verdun and

8:25

the ending of the strikes. And

8:29

in 1918, he's a Marshal

8:31

of France, hugely popular national

8:33

treasure celebrated around the world.

8:35

It might have been better if his career had ended there.

8:39

Well, yes, absolutely. For him, he

8:41

was the hero of heroes. He participated

8:45

in a victory parade on Whitehorse on the

8:47

Champs-Élysées in July 1919. And he's one of

8:49

eight marshals. And a marshal

8:51

in France

8:54

is a much more symbolically

8:57

weighted honor than a marshal in

8:59

the British army. It has almost

9:01

a godlike status. And of the

9:03

eight marshals, Péter is the most

9:05

adored and adulated. He also has

9:07

a certain nobility of his bearing.

9:09

He's a very handsome man, the

9:11

piercing blue eyes. Women,

9:14

absolutely. All his life fall for him in

9:16

a big way. He is the national hero,

9:18

as you say, a kind of national treasure.

9:20

And yes, I think it

9:22

would be very good for him if somehow

9:24

it had all ended in 1918. Because we'd

9:27

only remember the hero and we wouldn't

9:29

remember the other Péter that the French

9:31

now remember. If you mention the name

9:33

of Péter, most French people will not

9:35

remember what we've just been talking about.

9:37

They'll remember what one could

9:39

call in a simple word. They'll remember

9:41

not the hero, but the traitor. Oh,

9:44

take me on that road. How do we go from one to

9:46

the other? What does he do at the end of the war,

9:48

apart from being superbly glamorous, does he maintain

9:50

an active role in military or politics?

9:53

Well, for the 1920s, he's

9:55

very much theoretically the official. The title doesn't

9:57

really matter. He's in charge of the war.

10:00

of army planning and he is an

10:02

active figure in the military. He retires

10:04

in 1930-31 and during

10:08

the 1930s he's no longer really actively

10:10

involved. But then he develops a sort

10:12

of another side of his personality, you

10:15

could say, another side of his image

10:17

which is he starts to think that

10:20

France is in a certain amount of political trouble

10:22

and that he could actually be a political savior.

10:25

He's not actually a particularly cerebral

10:28

or intellectual figure, he was

10:30

a great soldier. But

10:32

he has a number of simple ideas that

10:35

school teachers should inculcate values

10:37

of patriotism in their pupils, that

10:40

marriage is a good thing although

10:42

Peter himself was a major philanderer

10:44

and only married quite late, that

10:47

religion is important. So these are quite

10:49

simple, one might say

10:51

right wing ideas, but he starts to

10:53

see himself as a sort of potential

10:56

savior in a case of a national

10:58

crisis. And people

11:01

on the right who don't like

11:03

fringe democracy, who are suspicious of

11:05

the republic, who would like to

11:08

institute an awful authoritarian system, start

11:10

to see Petta as a potential

11:12

figurehead for their purposes. So

11:15

he starts to see himself as a

11:17

savior and people on the right who

11:20

are looking for somebody that they can

11:22

use turn to the figure of Petta.

11:24

So he really mutates in the 1930s

11:26

to a much more political

11:29

role, not active in politics, but a

11:31

kind of messiah, you

11:33

might say, a hero in the wings in the

11:35

waiting. Isn't that interesting? I

11:37

mean, I don't want to get too much

11:39

into comparisons, but you see Hindenburg in Germany,

11:42

there must be something about the gigantic trauma

11:44

of the First World War and the prominence,

11:46

the adulation that these military commanders received

11:49

that made them just towering

11:51

figures for the rest of their lives. It must

11:53

have been very difficult for civilian

11:55

politicians to sort of go toe to toe

11:57

with them. The

12:00

systems which and germinate was also the

12:02

revival system had only limited legitimacy. So

12:04

ah and withhold miss in Germany that

12:07

they politicians have stabbed the military the

12:09

back biting my t them to the

12:11

dolph develop this idea that's an explosion

12:13

in Germany and France where politics the

12:16

for a contested in the nineteen thirties

12:18

then yes if you've got a contested

12:20

politics then you look for heroes to

12:22

somehow save you from what you see

12:25

as the crisis that you're in. Very

12:27

different for Britain where there was never

12:29

any. Really serious, I'm anti democratic

12:31

movement in the in the into

12:34

Yes, Britain is a relatively stable

12:36

democracy. France's a much more complicated

12:38

case and in that case a

12:41

military figures seems to have a

12:43

certain or thirty above and beyond

12:45

politics. But

12:47

before the Second World War, he's

12:50

seen as up more assertive, a

12:52

savior and wasting it's a D

12:54

doesn't launched into electoral politics. Nope.

12:57

Nope. So. It's only the catastrophe

12:59

of nineteen forties, it's thrusts him back into

13:01

the house of French life. Yeah. Was

13:03

suddenly there's a catastrophe and. People.

13:06

Are looking for an explanation? They're

13:08

looking for reassurance, and they feel

13:10

the politicians That and down and

13:13

Ninety Forty. And so they turn

13:15

to the case of this military

13:17

hero in the wings waiting without

13:19

much and forty. Just as without

13:21

nineteen. Sixteen. Pet. I

13:23

would never become a military hero without

13:25

Nineteen Forty. He would ever become a

13:27

political. Figure. On the

13:30

way that he did so. let's

13:32

just remind people often the French

13:34

army suffers almost catastrophic defeats in

13:37

the history of warfare. Us Germans

13:39

invaded the touch, the French British

13:41

by surprise and many ways France

13:44

falls in a months. Ah, and

13:46

Paris is occupies German troops marching

13:48

down the somebody sites. What's the

13:50

process by which time someone blacksmith

13:53

plow out as a walk. Well.

13:56

basically when the first military reverses

13:58

happened very rapidly The Germans

14:00

launched their offensive against France on the 10th

14:03

of May and really within a week it's

14:05

clear that things take

14:07

six weeks of France to be defeated, but

14:09

within a week it becomes clear

14:11

that the situation is catastrophic. So the

14:13

Prime Minister of the man called Paul

14:16

Vénot, elected Prime Minister, brings PETA into

14:18

his government and he does it really

14:20

because he thought that PETA would

14:22

be a great way of bolstering

14:25

morale because of the extraordinary prestige

14:27

and stature that PETA has. So

14:29

he brings PETA into his government,

14:31

symbolically he doesn't really expect PETA

14:33

to play any particular role. What

14:35

he doesn't realize is that PETA

14:37

has become convinced that France is

14:39

finished or defeated and

14:42

he becomes very much a voice

14:44

for capitulation and defeat, rather paradoxically

14:46

for a military figure. So

14:49

when in June 1940, in

14:51

the middle of June, it becomes absolutely obvious

14:53

that it's over, there's no question. The

14:55

question is what to do next and

14:58

one option is that the French government goes

15:00

abroad to North Africa which is

15:02

part of French Empire

15:05

or even to London which is of course what

15:07

General de Gaulle did. That's

15:09

one option. The government goes abroad, the

15:12

army is in France capitulates, but the

15:14

government, as in Holland where the government

15:16

went abroad, the Queen Villehelmina came to

15:19

London, in Norway the King came to

15:21

London, etc. So in all

15:23

these other countries, although the armies are

15:25

defeated, the governments go on

15:27

playing a part, theoretical or whatever,

15:30

in the war. When

15:32

it comes to the question of what will happen

15:34

next, PETA says no, we need to sign

15:36

an armistice with Germany. And

15:39

there's a massive debate in the government

15:41

where the Prime Minister wants to go

15:43

to North Africa, he wants to continue

15:45

the battle from abroad. PETA

15:47

says no, it's all finished. And

15:49

because PETA is PETA and because

15:51

he's also supported very much in this

15:54

position by the commander

15:56

of the French armies, General Végol, so it's

15:58

very much, you could almost the military

16:00

saying that politicians have let us down.

16:03

It's too late. The situation is now

16:05

irretrievable, so we need to make

16:07

an armistice effectively a piece with Germany.

16:10

It's because it's better. It comes with

16:12

the authority that he has. He'd always

16:15

been, well, now he's a very prudent

16:17

military commander, even in the First World

16:20

War. His prudence always verged

16:23

on defeatism in his way.

16:25

In 1940, he is quite

16:27

clearly defeatist. He believes that

16:29

it's all over. He

16:31

signs an armistice with Germany on the 22nd of

16:34

June, 1940. The armistice

16:39

that Hitler offers is perhaps

16:41

less draconian than the French

16:44

had feared. Hitler says,

16:46

right, you can keep your empire. You can

16:48

keep your fleet. But France

16:50

will be divided into two zones. There'll

16:52

be an occupied zone, which Paris will

16:54

be in. The other half, broadly speaking

16:56

of the country, will not be occupied

16:58

by the Germans. The French could go

17:00

on, as it were, running their own

17:02

affairs. Now, remember, that's an

17:04

armistice. It's not the end of the war.

17:07

It's an armistice before a peace treaty. When

17:10

Petas signs that armistice, he's convinced the British

17:12

will not last more than a month,

17:14

six weeks. Once the British are defeated,

17:16

the war will be over, and France

17:18

will then seek the terms for a

17:20

final peace. Of course, the British don't

17:23

give in. At that point, the armistice, which was

17:25

only meant to be a kind of temporary

17:28

cessation of hostilities before

17:30

a proper peace, becomes a real problem for

17:33

the French, because their country is divided into

17:35

two. There are one and a half

17:37

million prisoners of war in German prison

17:39

of war camps. It's a very, very

17:41

difficult situation. Then in the south of

17:44

France, Petas sets

17:46

up his capital at a small

17:48

town with no real

17:51

political historical significance, Vichy, famous

17:53

essentially for its water and

17:55

its bath, its bath or

17:58

Cheltenham. He sets up his government

18:00

in Vichy and

18:02

it's like thinking that if the same

18:04

had happened in Britain, a capital in

18:06

Harrogate or Cheltenham or Landryd not Wells,

18:08

that's the sort of absurdity really of

18:10

it. So he sets up

18:13

in Vichy and the government, he basically,

18:16

with the help of other politicians, particularly

18:18

the help of an extreme right-wing politician

18:20

called Pierre Laval, what they do essentially

18:23

is to set up an authoritarian quasi-dictatorship,

18:26

you could say, in the

18:28

part of France that is free with Pétain

18:31

at its head. And so that's what we

18:33

call the Vichy regime. Whereas

18:35

in Paris, the Germans are present, but

18:37

in the Vichy part of France, the

18:39

French are ruling their own country, but

18:42

democracy is finished. And then a

18:45

few weeks later, Pétain does something which

18:47

becomes a key piece of evidence against

18:49

him in his trial in 1945. He

18:54

meets Hitler on the 24th of

18:56

October, the little railway station, little town which

18:58

nobody had really ever heard of, except that

19:00

it becomes notorious because of this meeting. Hitler's

19:03

on his way to see Franco. Hitler

19:05

wants to get Franco to participate in

19:07

the war, which he

19:09

fails. And on the way back, he meets

19:12

Pétain at this little railway station, which is

19:14

sort of on the line from Paris to

19:16

Spain. And there's

19:18

a very famous photo, which is immediately

19:20

spread by the German propaganda of Pétain

19:23

shaking the hand of Hitler. And

19:25

after it, he makes a speech where he

19:27

says that I have met Chancellor Hitler and

19:30

I am ready to –

19:32

he uses the C word – I am ready

19:34

to enter down the road of

19:36

collaboration. What collaboration

19:38

means is yet to be defined.

19:41

But basically Pétain didn't need

19:43

to shake Hitler's hand because the two countries aren't

19:45

at peace. I couldn't repeat that

19:47

more often. Vichy France is supposedly neutral. They've

19:49

cited armistice. The war's still going on. The war's

19:51

going on in North Africa. The war's

19:53

going on, the British are very much in the war.

19:56

So to shake Hitler's hand,

19:59

symbolic – is enormously important. That

20:01

word collaboration becomes one

20:04

of the main crimes,

20:06

if you want, which PETA is accused

20:08

when he's put on trial in 1945. From

20:12

that point till Vichy

20:15

France is occupied militarily by the

20:18

Germans, how long does Vichy

20:20

exist? And what is its posture? You

20:22

say it's technically neutral, but it

20:24

seems that it's German leaning, isn't it? Yes,

20:27

I say collaboration is over. What that means

20:29

is cooperating with the Germans. I

20:32

mean, that's the million dollar question.

20:34

What does collaboration mean? It's a

20:36

kind of skewed neutrality. Vichy is

20:38

never an ally of Germany, never

20:40

fighting with the Germans, and never

20:42

declares war on the British. So

20:44

Vichy's posture is supposedly

20:46

neutral, but actually is

20:49

a skewed neutrality because Vichy

20:51

is giving a certain amount of military

20:53

aid to the Germans, and also the

20:55

new political regime that's been set up

20:58

is very much what you might call

21:00

an authoritarian model. Well,

21:02

extraordinarily, Vichy does the last Anglo-French war

21:04

in history. I mean, the Vichy forces

21:06

do fire upon British and allied troops,

21:08

don't they, in various parts of the

21:10

world? Yes, barely

21:12

actually, but in Madagascar in 1942,

21:14

yes, but Vichy is not at

21:16

war with the British. Vichy is

21:19

neutral, but I repeat a kind

21:21

of skewed neutrality. What

21:23

about domestically, particularly around the Jewish

21:25

question, how does Peter approach

21:28

German requests for help

21:30

with the final solution? Well, Vichy

21:32

has its own anti-Semitic legislation,

21:35

excluding Jews from all kinds of French

21:37

Jews and foreign Jews from all kinds

21:40

of professions. Jews

21:42

can't be doctors, university professors, teachers,

21:44

and so on. That's all part

21:46

of what we might call Vichy's

21:50

homegrown domestic anti-Semitism,

21:53

but it's not the same as the

21:55

anti-Semitism of the Germans, which is exterminatory,

21:57

you might say, which is about killing

21:59

Jews. Jews. And when

22:01

in 1942 the Germans start to

22:03

want to deport Jews from

22:06

all occupied countries in

22:08

Europe for extermination, the great

22:11

controversy is what is Vichy's

22:13

response? To what degree

22:15

did Vichy participate? To what

22:17

degree was Vichy complicit in

22:19

that? We know

22:22

that it was French police that arrested

22:24

Jews in 1942. So

22:27

the French police are doing it, but they're doing it under

22:29

the orders of the Vichy government. And

22:31

the Vichy government, the defense after the

22:33

war, would be that, yes,

22:35

we had no choice. The Germans were

22:38

there. So what we did

22:40

was a deal with the Germans by which,

22:42

yes, we will allow our police to participate

22:46

in the round-ups of Jews that you are

22:48

ordering that will be done by us. But

22:52

it will be only foreign Jews, not French Jews.

22:55

That is the line of Vichy, after the

22:57

defense of Vichy, that they defended French citizens

22:59

as Jews rather than foreign

23:02

Jewish refugees. If

23:04

you were putting Peter on trial

23:06

today, it's the Jewish question which

23:08

would be the one that seems

23:10

to us the most important, the

23:13

most culpable act of which Vichy is

23:16

committed. If you listen

23:19

to Dan Sineau's history, we're talking about Peter

23:21

and his trial all coming up. This

23:30

is After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds

23:33

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23:35

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23:37

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23:40

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23:42

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23:44

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23:46

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23:48

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23:51

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23:53

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23:55

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bluenile.com What

25:01

do you think is going with Pétain? Was

25:04

he a believer? Did he actually think

25:06

that France's future lay in this

25:08

more authoritarian direction? Or was he just trying to salvage

25:10

some shreds of dignity or stability for the French

25:12

people? Well,

25:16

I think he believed that, again, I keep

25:18

coming back to the trial, and it's

25:20

the trial that interests me. Not

25:23

the truth in a way. I'm interested

25:25

in the way the thing is debated at

25:27

the trial in 1945. But yes,

25:29

I think his defense was that things

25:31

would have been worse if he hadn't been there.

25:33

If he hadn't been there, then the Germans would

25:36

have occupied the whole of France. And

25:38

at that point, the French would have had no shield,

25:40

as it were, between the

25:42

Germans and the French population. And that's what he was doing. And

25:46

at that point, the French would have had

25:48

no shield, as it were,

25:50

between the Germans and the French population.

25:53

So his defense was that the gold in

25:55

London was the sword, and I was the

25:57

shield. I was the shield of the French.

26:00

French against the Germans. And again, the whole

26:02

issue of the trial is to what extent

26:04

did Vichy act as a shield and to

26:06

what extent did it not. So

26:08

France has liberated the Vichy regime, escaped

26:10

Germany and it's involved in the Celtic

26:12

destruction of the Third Reich. And

26:15

then Petal, he arrives back into

26:17

France voluntarily, does he? Did he know there's going to be a trial?

26:19

There's going to be a public

26:21

humiliation? To

26:24

D-Day, the Allies are moving

26:26

towards Paris. Paris is liberated in August 1944.

26:28

By then, the

26:31

Germans have seized Petal in Vichy

26:33

and basically kidnapped him. He's put

26:35

in a castle in Barben-Bürttemberg called

26:38

Sigmarungen. And that's where the Vichy

26:40

regime lives out its last days

26:42

on German soil. When

26:44

it's quite clear that Germany is

26:46

going to be totally defeated by

26:49

March, April 1945, Petal, unlike

26:51

most of the other people at Sigmarungen

26:53

in this public government who want to

26:55

escape to Spain or to northern Italy,

26:58

somehow not to go back to France,

27:00

Petal is insistent that he will go

27:02

back to France. And he knows that

27:04

there's a high court. A high court

27:06

has been set up to try collaborators.

27:10

And obviously, the person they most want

27:12

is the man who'd been at the head of

27:15

the regime, which is Petal. So a

27:17

high court has been set up. The purge

27:19

is a beginning of collaborators. And

27:21

Petal arrives

27:23

at the Swiss border. The

27:25

Swiss authorities are a bit unsure what to do with him.

27:28

I think if he had

27:30

wanted to take refuge in

27:32

Switzerland, they would have been probably would have

27:34

accepted. But he's quite clear he wants to

27:36

go back to France, which is an extraordinary

27:39

decision in a way. And I think

27:41

it's partly because for

27:43

four years, he'd been living in a

27:45

bubble of propaganda.

27:48

And I don't think he really knew what the

27:51

state of French public opinion was. So

27:53

he presents himself on the

27:55

21st of April 1945, at the Franco Swiss border. order

28:01

and he's met there by representative of de Gaulle

28:03

and he's taken back to Paris and he's imprisoned

28:05

in a fortress for a trial that will begin

28:07

on the 21st of July. But

28:10

it does seem in some ways an

28:13

odd choice and my

28:15

explanation is essentially that he

28:18

had, was not really aware

28:20

of the way in which public opinion

28:22

now saw him as a guilty man.

28:26

Yes, I'm very struck in your book when

28:28

you said that his case of defence and

28:30

his lawyers articulated was that if Pétain is

28:32

guilty, so were the French. So

28:34

was France. He kept thinking of himself as this

28:36

sort of embodiment, as authoritarian leaders

28:38

often do, this sort of embodiment

28:40

of the French people. And

28:43

therefore, how could the French people be wrong? Yes,

28:46

I think for me the interest of

28:48

the trial is that it's unlike the

28:50

Nuremberg trials, for example, which were the

28:52

victorious allies trying the Germans. So it

28:54

was not a trial by

28:57

the Germans of the

28:59

Germans, it was a trial by

29:01

an international allied tribunal of the

29:03

Germans. The same was true

29:05

Tokyo trials. So what you get in

29:07

France is if the French putting their

29:10

former hero on trial. So

29:13

this is a Franco-French trial,

29:15

it's a Franco-French debate

29:18

and I think what's interesting about

29:20

the trial is precisely that because

29:22

Pétain is kind of way

29:24

the embodiment for many people of France,

29:27

he is France, it

29:29

is France that is being put on

29:31

trial. It's a beginning of what you

29:33

might call 70-year debate

29:36

about what France did in the

29:38

war. Is it justifiable? Were

29:40

there alternatives? What were the alternatives? And

29:43

that debate, which still up to a

29:45

point is present in French memory,

29:48

almost even in French politics in

29:50

a minor way today, that debate

29:52

starts the day that Pétain walks

29:55

into the courtroom on the 22nd of July 1945. French

30:00

trying the French, the French beginning a

30:03

kind of debate amongst themselves

30:05

about these four traumatic years

30:07

of their history. And

30:09

you've mentioned the shield defense already. He was the

30:12

shield of France. The idea

30:14

was that what France could have, had

30:16

it not been for him, France could have

30:18

looked like occupied Poland, where monstrous

30:21

crimes against humanity were carried out

30:23

regularly and entire Polish state was

30:25

decapitated, the church, aristocrats,

30:27

men of learning women. That's

30:30

the argument that was put forward to support

30:32

Peter. Well, one of the

30:34

arguments, I mean, there were three defense lawyers,

30:37

and again, one of the main themes of

30:39

my book is to look at,

30:41

to tease out the different positions of the

30:43

different defense lawyers, two of whom hated

30:45

each other. But one major

30:48

defense was, yes, things would have

30:50

been worse without me. Things

30:52

may not be great, but it would have been worse. Often

30:55

the argument that you just used

30:57

that France would have suffered the fate of

30:59

Poland was often raised. So they called it

31:01

Polandization. We would have had all the things

31:03

you said, I mean, the complete really

31:06

destruction of all our institutions and

31:08

so on. But

31:11

I think that argument, whatever you think

31:13

about the defenses that could

31:15

be made for Peter, if they

31:17

can be made, that isn't a

31:19

good one, because there's no way

31:22

in which the Germans ever intended

31:24

or in any occupied country in

31:26

Western Europe, Belgium, Holland, Norway,

31:28

Denmark as well, to a point, nowhere

31:31

did they treat those countries like

31:33

Poland, because Poland is quite different

31:35

for the Germans. The Poles were

31:38

Slavs. They were really only a little

31:40

bit above the Jews in racial

31:42

hierarchy. So the treatment of

31:45

France wouldn't, you can't be sure, and

31:47

that's the whole point about these kind

31:49

of discussions, counterfactual, what if? What if

31:51

better happen be that would things have

31:54

been worse? But the

31:56

argument, the defense is yes, that

31:58

without the shield. or

32:00

the oak tree or protecting oak tree

32:02

that was better things would be worse

32:04

and that one could play with

32:06

that argument but i don't think the

32:09

using the the poland argument which they

32:11

did i know you raised it but

32:13

it was also raised offered by the

32:15

defenders of peta is completely fallacious equally

32:17

another argument news was i'm trying to

32:19

be ruled by a girl lighter you

32:22

know german gal lighter would have imposed

32:25

stream nasty measures in front

32:27

again nowhere in western europe did the

32:29

germans impose a girl is one exception

32:31

i wrote this in my book and

32:33

then somebody from nuxenberg actually wrote to

32:35

me to say well actually we had

32:37

a gal lighter in nuxenberg and this

32:39

person is absolutely right i should not

32:41

have forgotten nuxenberg but i think that

32:43

the argument that it's inconceivable that the

32:46

country the size of france would have

32:48

been ruled by a gal lighter nuxenberg

32:50

is obviously a very different case so yes

32:52

there is a what if but i think

32:54

that if we're going to have a what

32:56

if discussion i think we can immediately rule

32:58

out that france would have suffered the fate

33:00

of poland what was the most

33:02

potent argument put forward for the prosecution.

33:06

i think for the prosecution the

33:08

problem with the trial and again i

33:11

think it's interesting to tease

33:13

out the arguments the

33:15

prosecution itself kept shifting what it thought

33:17

peta was guilty of. so

33:19

there were so many things he could have been considered

33:21

to be guilty of was he guilty

33:24

of signing the onus is was that the

33:26

crime of peta. That was the

33:28

gold you the gold said we

33:31

were defeated but we could go on

33:33

fighting for the broad therefore the crime.

33:35

Reason is the signing of an

33:37

armistice when you could have gone on fighting capitulation

33:40

that's the gold few but

33:42

then other people thought well you okay the

33:45

office is what's probably necessary and

33:47

peta's crime was once the armistice

33:50

have been signed. Collaborated with germany

33:52

handshake other people said better be

33:54

plotting against the republic since the

33:57

nineteen thirties if he was a

33:59

conspirator. against the Republic. Other

34:01

people said that there was no reason in 1940

34:03

for him to set up

34:06

a new authoritarian government. So that was

34:08

his crime. For other people, it was

34:11

what happened to the Jews. So there

34:13

are many different versions of what his

34:15

crime was. And one of

34:17

the problems for the prosecution was as we

34:19

were nailing, nailing the crime,

34:22

because this was an unprecedented situation. There was

34:24

nothing in the French penal code that

34:27

gave an answer to this. So the article

34:30

of the French penal code that they used

34:32

against Péter was an article which existed before

34:34

the war, which is called Complicity with the

34:36

Enemy, Antélicence avec l'Enemy. So

34:38

the idea is right. That was

34:41

Péter's crime. Although the word collaboration

34:43

isn't in the French penal code,

34:45

collaboration is complicity, Antélicence, the French

34:47

called it, with the enemy. So

34:49

that's his crime. But the problem

34:51

was there were so many possibilities

34:54

of what his crime was. And

34:56

it was very difficult to find the smoking

34:58

gun. Remember, this has been done only

35:01

a few weeks after the end of

35:03

the war. So amassing the necessary documentation

35:05

to show what Péter

35:08

actually did was very, very difficult. And

35:10

on the Jewish question, which you mentioned

35:12

earlier, the evidence about

35:15

Vichy's complicity in the Holocaust,

35:18

which now seems to us the most

35:21

shameful thing that Vichy did,

35:23

the evidence to actually show what Vichy

35:25

did in his negotiation with the Germans,

35:28

they just didn't have it. It was

35:30

too soon. So the question, what was

35:32

the main argument of the prosecution? One

35:34

of the problems of prosecution is there

35:37

were so many potential things he could

35:39

be accused of that no one could

35:41

quite decide which was the one they

35:43

really wanted to focus on, which meant

35:45

that it was an unsatisfactory conclusion. But

35:47

that conclusion came on the 15th of August, as you say,

35:49

so rapidly after the end of the war, remarkable 15th of

35:52

August 1945. And he was

35:55

condemned to death. Yes,

35:57

he was condemned to death by this

36:00

high court which had 24 jurors.

36:02

12 of

36:05

them were eminent members of the

36:07

resistance. 12 of them

36:09

were former politicians of the defunct

36:11

democratic system before the war. So,

36:14

24 jurors. They voted by

36:16

one vote for the death

36:18

penalty. They all agreed he was guilty. There was

36:20

no question. He wasn't going to be acquitted. But

36:23

had he committed the crime which required under

36:25

the article which I mentioned 75 the death

36:28

penalty. So, actually by only one vote did

36:30

they vote for the death penalty which shows

36:32

that it was a trial. It wasn't a

36:34

sort of Stalinist trial. It was

36:36

a real debate. So, he

36:38

was sentenced to be executed. But

36:40

they all knew and indeed they

36:43

even made a recommendation for jurors

36:45

that the sentence not be carried

36:47

out. So, symbolically for them he

36:49

needed to be sentenced to death

36:52

symbolically to show that he had committed the

36:54

ultimate crime which was treason. But he was

36:56

89 years old. He

36:59

had been a revered figure and

37:01

it would have been immensely divisive

37:04

to shoot an 89 year old former

37:07

war hero. So, they

37:09

recommended that the sentence be commuted to

37:11

life imprisonment. And that is what General

37:14

de Gaulle would always intended to do

37:16

that the next day did. So, Peter

37:19

is sentenced to death. The next day

37:21

the death sentence is commuted and

37:24

he's sent to a prison of a

37:26

little island of the west coast of

37:28

France, the Ile d'Hieu. And he finally

37:30

dies at the age

37:32

of 95 or 94 1951 by which time he is really senile and

37:34

it's a rather sad end. We're

37:40

seeing the re-emergence of many strange political phenomena in

37:42

our world at the moment, things we never thought

37:44

we'd see again. There is in modern France is

37:47

there a kind of neo patanism. I mean can

37:49

you briefly talk to me about that?

37:51

As you say the debate goes on and

37:54

if anything the debate is intensified.

37:57

All over Europe at the moment and indeed in Britain. as

38:00

well. You can see the rise

38:03

of extreme right politics and also in the

38:05

United States as well. So there's something going on.

38:07

And obviously that thing that's going

38:10

on in France immediately has in

38:12

people's minds ghosts are

38:14

raised of this period that we're talking

38:17

about, the occupation. So the main party

38:19

of the extreme right in France today,

38:21

it used to be called

38:23

the National Front, the Front Nationale, Front

38:25

Nationale, is now called the Vreth-Amblam-Aund-Nacionales, the

38:28

RN. And the leader of that party,

38:30

as I'm sure most listeners will know,

38:32

is Marine Le Pen. And Marine

38:35

Le Pen is the daughter of

38:37

a politician who had founded that party

38:40

who is still alive now, but he's no longer

38:42

anything to do with the party. And he was

38:45

an unashamed supporter of

38:47

the Vichy Reh. He hadn't been active at the period, he

38:49

was too young. But he believed in the values of the,

38:52

when all the values you might

38:54

say associated with Peternism. Now,

38:57

Marine Le Pen's position today is

39:00

that de Gaulle is the hero and

39:03

she has distanced herself totally in

39:05

theory, and I repeat in theory,

39:07

on the surface from the Vichy

39:09

regime. Every year she goes and

39:11

lays a wreath or somebody from her party on

39:13

the tomb of General de Gaulle, whereas

39:16

her father used to go and pay homage

39:18

to Petter's grave and so on. None of

39:20

that happens now from her party. There is

39:22

an even more extreme party on the right,

39:25

a very small run by someone called

39:28

Eric Zemour. And at the

39:30

last election, he stood against Macron,

39:32

who was reelected in current president of France

39:34

in 2022. And this man is called

39:39

Eric Zemour. His platform

39:41

is quite simple, it's anti-immigration. It's

39:43

the Muslims or Islam is

39:46

a threat to France, we need to

39:48

legislate against the influence of Islam, immigration

39:50

and so on. And he explicitly

39:53

defends Petter and he said that

39:55

what the Vichy regime did was

39:57

to, I repeat that argument I

39:59

mentioned, earlier to save French Jews,

40:02

even if it had to sacrifice foreign Jews.

40:04

So he's tried to rehabilitate Péter. He

40:06

only got 7% of the vote in 2022. And

40:12

then at the second round, due to the French

40:14

election, there can be many candidates. In the

40:16

first round, in the second round, there are only two candidates.

40:19

And so the two candidates, Zémore, with his

40:21

7% was eliminated. And

40:23

the only two candidates in the second round were

40:25

Emmanuel Macron, who is now president, and

40:29

Marine Le Pen, who is

40:31

leader of this right-wing party,

40:33

which has supposedly distanced itself

40:35

from Péter. But you

40:37

use the term, which I would

40:40

totally accept and agree with, Neopetanism.

40:42

And what I would mean

40:44

by Neopatonism is that

40:46

many of the arguments of the extreme

40:48

right today, directed very

40:50

much against the Muslim population of

40:53

France, are the kind of language

40:55

– these are not real French.

40:57

These are foreign bodies in our

40:59

body politic, poisoning the blood, sort

41:01

of thing that Trump actually recently

41:03

said about foreigners in the United

41:05

States. They can't be fully

41:07

assimilated and so on. That for me is

41:09

a kind of Neopetanism, which in this case

41:11

is not applied to the Jews, but

41:14

is applied to a different minority. So

41:17

yes, I do think there is a

41:19

kind of Neopetanism in France. And

41:21

I think that for all that Marine

41:23

Le Pen says, I've distanced myself from

41:25

Péter, it's all very well to

41:27

say that, and she's only saying that because

41:29

the name Péter is problematic to use today.

41:31

But I think you scratch the surface of

41:34

her beliefs and the beliefs of the

41:36

people around her. And

41:39

there's a link, a

41:41

very clear ideological, emotional

41:44

link to that period we're talking about

41:46

of the Biché regime between 1940 and 1944.

41:51

And that period itself has links to

41:53

a case which is often

41:55

compared to the Péter trial of

41:57

the Dreyfus affair when this Jewish

42:00

officer was falsely accused of spying for

42:02

the Germans. So there's a tradition of

42:04

the extreme right in France which goes

42:06

from Dreyfus to

42:08

Bichy to now. And

42:10

so yes, I think it is there today.

42:12

And I think that's why actually writing about

42:15

the Péter period and showing

42:17

people what that really meant

42:19

is possibly a necessary way

42:21

of exposing what lies under

42:24

these ideas that are trying to portray

42:27

themselves as respectable in the 2020s, but

42:29

they have actually got

42:31

a very sinister history. Well,

42:34

thank you very much for writing it. Now it's up to everyone

42:36

to read it. What is the book called? So

42:38

the book is called France on Trial,

42:41

The Case of Marshal Péter and it's coming

42:43

out in paperback in June. Well,

42:45

thank you very much, Julian Jackson. Thanks so much. Ready

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