Pétain

Distinguished biographer Charles Williams sets the record straight on one of the most controversial figures to emerge during World War II.  This is the true story of Pétain—an orphan peasant boy who became Commander in Chief of the French Army and a hero of the First World War, but fell from grace when he collaborated with Nazi occupiers.

In revealing the motivations and determining factors behind Petain's decisions, one of the most complex and tumultuous periods in French history is expertly unraveled. Packed with rich battle scenes and dramatic prose, Williams delivers a startling portrait of a controversial figure who wound up on the wrong side of French history.





ISBN-13: 9781403970114
Author : Charles Williams
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date: 10/21/2005

Editorial Reviews - Publishers Weekly

The deputy leader of the opposition in Britain's House of Lords, Williams is also the author of a well-regarded biography of Charles de Gaulle, the rival and polar opposite of Henri-Philippe Petain (1856-1951). France's savior at Verdun and the author of the army's recovery after the 1917 mutinies, Petain emerged from WWI a national hero. Between the wars, he came to identify inflexibly with the French Right-the "real France" of the countryside as opposed to that of cosmopolitan Paris. He stepped forward in 1940, at an advanced age, to lead a defeated, demoralized nation under circumstances that indicated long-term German hegemony over Europe.

Like many generals before and afterward, Petain exaggerated his own political acumen while coming to despise politicians as a class. Seeking to cut the best deal possible for France, Petain eventually learned the impossibility of compromise with Hitler and went on to condone German atrocities, to create a police state and to accept the deportation of 75,000 French Jews, most of whom were murdered. Williams, without seeking to rehabilitate Petain, describes a man who was a misguided patriot; his lucid, dispassionate examination of a man who grossly overestimated himself gives just as clear a picture of the political conditions that created him.

Meet the Author

Charles Williams is the critically acclaimed author of The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General de Gaulle and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the British House of Lords.