France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain

"Yes. It’s by accident, but it’s turned into a French shortlist! We never know until we get to the shortlisting meeting what’s going to prevail. It is true that it’s Pol Roger and that the chair of the judges is a great French expert, but it’s a surprise. This is an extraordinary book, again by a master—there are some very powerful historians on this shortlist. It’s bringing to life this very dark moment in recent French history : the trial of Marshal Pétain at the end of the Second World War . At that point, Pétain was nearly ninety. Pétain had been the hero of Verdun , a great figure, but he was being tried for treason for signing the armistice with the Nazi regime and being the leader of the Vichy regime in France. He was on trial for his life, accused of collusion with Nazi Germany, and the verdict wasn’t much in doubt. It’s about more than the fate of a particular person—it’s a judgment on these four years of French history. It was newly liberated France’s first opportunity to look back on what it had done and how it had come to this. It’s a terrible account of moral ambivalence, and what you should do when faced with a conquering army. France is asking itself what it could have done, faced with total defeat by Hitler. The book takes you to the trial itself, and a cast of pretty repellent characters. Although the book is written with wit, there aren’t any jokes in it. If Pétain is guilty, then so are the French. We see that this still has consequences for modern-day French politics. These horrors haven’t really gone away in French history. The two principal characters are Pétain himself and de Gaulle , but also the trial judges, the jury. The book is asking profound, historical questions about how to act in impossible circumstances, written by a very distinguished historian of France. Yes. The death penalty was taken away from him. It makes you think, too, about Napoleon and Saint Helena. Pétain is not exactly a scapegoat, but he’s a figurehead for this very right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist (in a pejorative sense), racist regime standing against those who we would see as the heroes of the Resistance . It’s the collaborators against the others, and this is a story that doesn’t go away."