In 1918, Philippe Pétain was the most admired man in France—having beaten the Germans at Verdun and played a critical role in leading French forces to victory. In the next world war, when France was collapsing before the German onslaught, Pétain was made prime minister and promptly negotiated a surrender, presiding over the Vichy regime until the Allies liberated the country. He was then tried and convicted of treason, although many decades would go by before serious attention was paid to the part he played in the extermination of his country’s Jews.
Today, many in France—including, the rightwing Jewish television commentator and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour—continue to believe Pétain’s self-serving claims about his wartime activities. Robert Philpot examines a new book by Julian Jackson that puts paid to this version of events:
Pétain’s defense—elements of which have continued to be propagated by his apologists in the subsequent decades—principally rested on the notion that he had acted as a “shield” against the worst excesses of Nazi rule. . . . And, according to the defense, Pétain’s “shield” had also been thrown over France’s Jews. “I always vehemently defended the Jews; I had Jewish friends,” Pétain argued in pre-trial questioning.
Jackson is dismissive of the idea that Vichy should be credited with protecting Jews. Its “home-grown” anti-Semitism, he believes, aimed to “exclude Jews from the national community” rather than murder them, as the Nazis set out to do. But, he says, the Germans would not have been able to deport and murder Jews in such numbers without Vichy’s assistance.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/history-has-confirmed-guilt-of-vichy-leader-petain-so-why-do-some-question-it/