On June 16, 1940, the French government, facing defeat at the hands of Nazi Germany, turned to World War I hero Philippe Pétain. Forming a government, Pétain soon led France down the dark road of surrender and collaboration.
Born in 1856, Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain rose steadily in the French army, finally achieving the rank of general in his late 50s during the opening days of World War I. In early 1917, after the French army had suffered appalling losses in the 1916 battle for Verdun, many French soldiers engaged in what were termed “mutinies.”
Rather than full scale revolt against the military authority, however, the French soldiers, recognizing the futility of frontal attacks against prepared positions, essentially declared their intention to no longer attack. They would defend France where the Germans advanced, but they would no longer push against the German lines. For a time, the French high command contemplated drastic measures to restore order, including summary executions. Ultimately, however, Pétain negotiated a compromise.
In his book, “The First World War,” historian John Keegan wrote, “The French crisis of 1917 was national. It was for that reason that the government took it so seriously, as did … Philippe Pétain. For all his outward abruptness, Pétain understood his countrymen. As the crisis deepened … he set in train a series of measures designed to contain it and return the army to moral well-being. He promised ampler and regular leave. He also implicitly promised an end, for a time at least, to attacks ….”
For his role in the emergency, as well as his strategic ability, Pétain became one of France's greatest heroes from the 1914-1918 war. Shortly after the armistice was signed in 1918, Pétain attained the rank of marshal of France, France's highest military honor. In the years after the war, Pétain contemplated a run for the presidency, but ultimately straddled the line between the military and politics. Despite his advancing age, Pétain continued to serve the French republic with energy and elan.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Pétain was serving as the French ambassador to Spain, though many thought he should have a greater role in the government. On May 10, 1940, the same day that Winston Churchill became prime minister in Great Britain, Adolf Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg in the west, invading Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.
The military situation for France went from bad to worse. There are many causes that explain France's fall to Germany in the summer of 1940, not the least of which was its uncertain command structure, in which generals often didn't understand how far up and down the chain of command their authority went. Together, Britain and France possessed a larger and better equipped army than their German rival, though the Germans possessed a quality in abundance that the Allies sadly lacked — daring.
Many have ascribed the French defeat to that nation's reliance on the massive fortification structure along the Franco-German border, known as the Maginot Line. In fact, the Maginot Line did exactly what it was intended to do — prevent a major German attack across the common border and force the Germans to advance through Belgium to the north, where the French army could be concentrated.
The French, however, discounted the dense Ardennes forest as an avenue of attack. Consequently, they concentrated their army further north and were surprised to find German tanks in their rear, which disrupted French military organization even further and soon cornered the bulk of the Anglo-French forces at Dunkirk on the English Channel. Only by the barest of margins did the British fleet manage to save the bulk of the Allied armies and transport them back to England. The Germans, however, had conquered northern France and were preparing to drive on Paris.
Not long after the German invasion, the French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, asked Pétain to return to France, with an eye toward including him in his government. After Pétain's return, Reynaud asked the 84-year-old marshal to become his deputy prime minister. Shouts of “At last!” rang out in the Senate chamber when Pétain's appointment was announced.
Despite the high hopes that Pétain would be able to turn the situation around, the Germans continued to advance. Fearing the destruction of their beloved capital, by mid-June the French declared Paris an open city and the government had fled to the south. On June 14, the City of Lights surrendered to the Germans more or less peacefully. Told that the British could offer no more help, and realizing that his earlier belligerence meant that the Germans most likely would not negotiate with him, Reynaud resigned on June 16 and recommended to President Albert Lebrun that Pétain succeed him.
In his book, “Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944,” historian Robert O. Paxton wrote: “The last government of the Third Republic was formed constitutionally, but not calmly, at Bordeaux around midnight of the night of June 16-17 for the purpose of asking what German peace terms would be. … The Pétain government's formation on June 17 was a big step out of the war but a hardly perceptible step out of republican legality. By such modest steps, and not by conspiracy, a major part of the French masses and elite came to participate in an unforeseen new political world.”
The president expressed relief that Pétain had already selected his government, never an easy thing to do normally in France with its many disparate political factions and ambitious politicians. A few hours later Prime Minister Pétain contacted the Spanish ambassador to France and asked him to approach Germany about a cease-fire.
In his book, “To Lose a Battle: France, 1940,” historian Alistair Horne noted the French reaction to their new leader. “In France, the news that Pétain had requested an armistice was greeted by emotions of widespread relief. 'At last, the nightmare is about to end' was a common reaction. Crowds of refugees gathered around the Government buildings in Bordeaux to cheer the old Marshal. People wept publicly in grief, and in gratitude.”
On June 22, the armistice was signed not far from Compiègne, France, the site of the 1918 armistice signing. Indeed, to drive the French humiliation home, Hitler insisted that the same railroad car in which the belligerents had signed the earlier agreement be brought from its museum to be used for the signing of the new armistice.
Among other punitive actions, the agreement called for the German occupation of northern France, including Paris and the Atlantic coast, as a war measure against England. The rump of France would be given a measure of autonomy and the capital for this truncated state would be the resort town of Vichy.
By mid-July, Pétain began a drastic restructuring of the French government. The Third Republic, which had been born out of the fires of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, had ceased to be, and now the Vichy regime ruled what was left of France. Hitler had expressed his will that no final peace treaty would be signed with France until the war with Britain was concluded, and consequently Pétain and his prime minister, Pierre Laval, introduced a system known as collaboration into French politics.
Essentially, Pétain and Laval hoped to achieve the restoration of French territory, the return of French POWs and a most-favored-nation trading status with Germany after the war. To this end, they worked closely with German administrators, military and security forces. The regime itself echoed Nazi Fascism, and the historic French motto of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” (“Liberty, equality, fraternity,”), words which dated back to the French Revolution, was replaced with “Travail, Familie, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”).
Perhaps most sinister of all, on its own initiative the Vichy French regime would deport Jews to eastern Europe, where they were murdered in the Holocaust.
With the liberation of France in 1944, the new provisional government arrested Pétain and the aged marshal was tried for treason the following year. Found guilty and sentenced to death, the provisional president, Charles de Gaulle, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com