France on Trial

For three weeks in July 1945 all eyes were fixed on a humid Paris, where France’s disgraced former head of state was on trial, accused of masterminding a plot to overthrow democracy. Would Philippe Pétain, hero of Verdun, be condemned as the traitor of Vichy?

In the terrible month of June 1940, few things shocked the free world more than seeing Marshal Philippe Pétain—the supremely decorated hero of the First World War and now head of the French government—shaking hands with Hitler. Pausing to look at the cameras, he announced that France would henceforth collaborate with Germany. “This is my policy,” he intoned. “My ministers are responsible to me. It is I alone who will be judged by History.”

Five years later, in July 1945, Pétain was put on trial for his conduct during the war. He stood accused of treason, of heading a conspiracy to destroy France’s democratic government and collaborate with Nazi Germany, enemy of the Third Republic. The defense claimed he had sacrificed his personal honor to save France. Former resisters called for the death penalty, but many identified with this conservative military hero who had promised peace with dignity.

The award-winning author of a landmark biography of Charles de Gaulle, Julian Jackson uses Pétain’s three-week trial as a lens through which to examine one of history’s great moral dilemmas. Was the policy of collaboration “four years to erase from our history,” as the prosecution claimed? Or was it, as conservative politicians insist to this day, a sacrifice that placed pragmatism above moral purity? As head of the Vichy regime, Pétain became the lightning-rod for collective guilt and retribution. But he has also been an icon of the nationalist right ever since. In France on Trial, Jackson blends courtroom drama, political intrigue, and brilliant narrative history.

Julian Jackson is Professor of History, Emeritus, at Queen Mary University of London and one of the foremost experts on twentieth-century France. His De Gaulle, published in the UK as A Certain Idea of France, won the Duff Cooper Prize and Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, among other awards, and was a New Yorker, Financial Times, Spectator, Times, and Telegraph Book of the Year. His previous books include France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The Fall of France, which won the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques, and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.