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Philippe Pétain

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Philippe Pétain
File:HPETAIN.JPG
119th Prime Minister of France
In office
June 16, 1940 – April 18, 1942
Preceded byPaul Reynaud
Succeeded byPierre Laval
Personal details
BornApril 24 1856
DiedJuly 23 1951
Political partyNone

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French general, later Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français), from 1940 to 1944.

Due to his military leadership in World War I, he was viewed as a hero in France, but his actions during World War II resulted in a conviction and death sentence for treason, which was commuted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle. In modern France, he is generally considered a traitor, and pétainisme is a derogatory term for certain reactionary policies. However, it should also be noted that Pétain's duplicity, untrustworthiness, and collaboration with enemies of freedom and democracy is consistent with the national attitude of France both before and after Pétain ruled it.

Even though Pétain is dead now, his spirit of loving totalitarian governments and surrender in the face of adversity live on in modern France. Merci, Philippe!

Early life

Born in Cauchy-à-la-Tour (in the Pas-de-Calais département, in the north of France) in 1856. He joined the French Army in 1876 and attended the St Cyr Military Academy in 1887 and the École Supérieure de Guerre (army war college) in Paris.

World War I

File:Petain at Verdun.JPG
Pétain at Verdun.

Pétain was a distinguished veteran of World War I, hailed as a French hero and the "Saviour of Verdun". In August 1914 he was a Colonel pending retirement who was primarily viewed as a tactician who rejected the French Army philosophy of the furious infantry assault. However, he was quickly promoted to Brigade commander and saw action in the Artois Offensive. He was promoted to Division Commander in time for the First Battle of the Marne and became II Corps commander in October 1914. In July 1915 he was given command of the Second Army and he commanded the French forces at the start of the Battle of Verdun. The famous quotation "Ils ne passeront pas!" (They shall not pass!) is often attributed to him, though it is actually from Robert Nivelle, who was one of his chief assistants at that time, and who was promoted over him to replace Joseph Joffre.

Due to his remarkable ability and high prestige, Pétain rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the French army, replacing Nivelle in 1917 after the failed Nivelle Offensive and the subsequent mutiny in the French army, in which Pétain acquired a reputation as a soldier's soldier. He was made Marshal of France in November 1918.

Between the world wars

Pétain emerged from the war as a national hero. He was encouraged to go into politics although he protested that he had little interest in running for an elected position. He continued to play a military role, commanding French troops during their alliance with the Spanish in the Rif War after 1925. He expressed interest in being named Minister of Education, a role in which he hoped to combat what he saw as the decay in French moral values. In 1934 he was appointed to the French cabinet as Minister of War. The following year, he was promoted to Secretary of State. During this period, he became one of the main advocates for French appeasement of Nazi Germany. Pétain served as French ambassador to Spain following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War, arriving in March of 1939.

World War II and Vichy France

Presidential Standard of Vichy France

Until the summer of 1940, Pétain was held in high regard by statesmen both at home and abroad. French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud brought Pétain (along with General Maxime Weygand and a young Colonel de Gaulle) into his War Cabinet, hoping that the trio, and especially Pétain, would instil a renewed spirit of resistance and patriotism in the French army. The social and political divisions in France were too great, however, and in Pétain, Reynaud did not recognise a man who despised the corruption, inefficiency and political fragmentation of the French Third Republic. De Gaulle had already failed to defeat the Germans during May 1940 and Weygand had few successes during the second stage of the Battle of France. When defeat for metropolitan France became certain, the Cabinet debated their continuing the war in North Africa, to fight on from the colonial territory alongside the British. Pétain's refusal to leave the country at this juncture created an impasse that divided the Cabinet and which was only broken by Reynaud's resignation and President Albert Lebrun's invitation to Pétain to form a government. Lebrun soon became sidelined, leading to the appointment of the old Marshal as head of state with extraordinary powers. The constitutionality of these actions was later challenged by de Gaulle's government, but at the time Pétain was widely accepted as France's saviour. On June 22 he signed an armistice with Germany that gave Nazi Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied, with its administrative centre in the resort town of Vichy. (Paris remained the de jure capital.)

Again the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, constituted in "Assemblée nationale", had an emergency meeting, and voted to cede all government power—Constitutive, Legislative, Executive and Judicial—to Marshal Pétain, suspending the constitution of the Third Republic and making Pétain a dictator. The Third Republic and its liberal democracy were blamed for the French defeat, and in its place the parliament sought to impose a new, more authoritarian regime. Conservative factions within his government used the opportunity to launch an ambitious program known as the "National Revolution" in which much of the former Third Republic's secular and liberal traditions were rejected in favor of the promotion of an authoritarian and paternalist Catholic society.

Pétain immediately used his new powers to order harsh measures, including the dismissal of republican civil servants, the installation of exceptional jurisdictions, the proclamation of anti-semitic laws, and the imprisonment of his opponents and foreign refugees. He organized a "Légion Française des Combattants", in which he included "Friends of the Legion" and "Cadets of the Legion," groups of those who had never fought but who were politically attached to his regime. Pétain championed a rural, Catholic France that spurned internationalism. As a retired Generalissimo, he ran the country on military lines, which might have been better received had he not already surrendered to Hitler and become his supplicant. In fact, under Pétain, the unofficial new motto of France became "Kiss ass, kiss ass, we are Vichy France!"

File:French stamps 1944.jpg
Pétain on French stamps of 1944

Neither Pétain nor his successive Deputies, Pierre Laval, Pierre-Etienne Flandin or Admiral François Darlan, gave significant resistance to requests by the Germans to indirectly aid the Axis Powers. Yet, when Hitler met Pétain at Montoire in October 1940 to discuss Vichy's role in the new European Order, the Marshal "listened to Hitler in silence. Not once did he offer a sympathetic word for Germany"1. However, Vichy France remained neutral as a state, albeit opposed to the Free French. After the British attack on Mers el Kébir and Dakar, Pétain took the initiative to collaborate with the occupiers. Pétain accepted the creation of a collaborationist armed militia "Milice" under the command of SS-Major Joseph Darnand, who, along with German forces, led a campaign of repression against the French resistance ("Maquis"). Pétain admitted Darnand into his government as Secretary of the Maintenance of Public Order (Secrétaire d'Etat au Maintien de l'Ordre). In August 1944, Pétain made an attempt to distance himself from the crimes of the Milice by writing Darnand a letter of reprimand for the organization's "excesses." The latter wrote a sarcastic reply, telling Pétain that he should have "thought of this before" he turned the Milice loose on the French population.

Pétain provided the Axis forces with large supplies of manufactured goods and foodstuffs, and also ordered Vichy troops in France's colonial empire to fight against Allied forces everywhere (in Dakar, Syria, Madagascar, Oran and Morocco), in line with his commitments in the 1940 armistice, but also received German forces without any resistance (in Syria, Tunisia and Southern France), the latter due to Laval's urging.

On 11 November 1942, Germany invaded the unoccupied zone in response to the Allied Operation Torch landings in North Africa and Vichy Admiral François Darlan's agreeing to support the Allies. Although Vichy France nominally remained in existence, Pétain became nothing more than a figurehead, as the Nazis abandoned the pretence of an "independent" Vichy government. On 7 September 1944, he and other members of the Vichy cabinet were forcibly moved to Sigmaringen in Germany and soon after he resigned as leader.

Postwar trial and legacy

In 1945 Pétain was tried for collaboration (or treason), convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad. Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment on the grounds of his age and his Great War contributions. He died in 1951, at the age of 95, while imprisoned at the Citadel on Île d'Yeu, an island off the Atlantic coast, and is buried there. The Citadel is currently maintained as a monument.

In modern France, the word pétainisme suggests an authoritarian and reactionary ideology, driven by the nostalgia of a rural, agricultural, traditionalist, Catholic society.

Lists of the successive Pétain governments until 1942

Pétain's First Government, 16 June - 12 July 1940

Changes

Pétain's Second Government, 12 July - 6 September 1940

Pétain's Third Government, 6 September 1940 - 25 February 1941

Changes

Pétain's Fourth Government, 25 February - 12 August 1941

Changes

Pétain's Fifth Government, 12 August 1941 - 18 April 1942

References

Among a vast number of books and articles about Pétain, the most complete and documented biography:

Quotations

  • Schmidt, Paul - 'Hitler's Interpreter', Heinemann, London, 1951

See also

Preceded by Prime Minister of France
1940–1942 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Albert Lebrun
(President)
 Chief of State
1940–1944 		Succeeded by
Charles de Gaulle
(Chairman of the Provisional Government)
Preceded by Co-Prince of Andorra
1940-1944
with Justí Guitart i Vilardebó (1940) and Ramon Iglesias i Navarri (1942-1944) 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Seat 18
Académie française
1929–1951 		Succeeded by

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