FRANCE ON TRIAL

A captivating account of the 1945 trial of the French marshal who had agreed to an armistice with the Nazi regime in 1940.

Jackson, a professor emeritus of history and author of the prizewinning De Gaulle, reminds readers that Philippe Pétain (1856-1951) “was unanimously viewed as a savior when he took over as head of the so-called Vichy regime”—although opinion was far more divided by the end of the war. The trial was obviously a political event with a guilty verdict almost guaranteed, but it was not a charade. Pétain’s lawyers mounted a vigorous defense, and the trial that obsessed the nation was compared to those of Louis XVI and even Joan of Arc. Jackson begins with the events following August 1944 when, with Allied armies sweeping across France, the Nazis forcibly evacuated Pétain and many loyal followers to a castle in Germany, where they occupied themselves with fantasies about returning after Hitler recovered from this temporary setback. Leaving in April 1945, Pétain returned to France, where preparations for his trial in absentia were already in progress. Few French officials, de Gaulle included, welcomed his arrival. Readers will be intrigued by Jackson’s lucid explanations of the unfamiliar French legal system in which both judge and jury can quiz witnesses. He was tried for treason, and the author delivers a dense, informative account that confronts broad moral and philosophical questions, enlivened by the witnesses’ often bitter hatred of Pétain and each other. Convicted, he was sentenced to death, which de Gaulle commuted to life imprisonment, “as the court had recommended and as he had always privately intended.” Readers will not be surprised to learn that this was a controversial decision, and they will thoroughly enjoy Jackson’s final 100 pages, which recount the persistent, often grotesque efforts to rehabilitate Pétain and Vichy that continue to this day.

A highly insightful work of French history.