Pétain, Marshal (Henri) Philippe

Pétain, Marshal (Henri) Philippe (1856–1951),French Army officer who was head of the French Vichy state from July 1940 to August 1944.

A regular officer born of farmers, Pétain was about to retire as a colonel in 1914 when war catapulted him to high command; and in December 1918, as the victor of Verdun and a public hero, he was made a Marshal of France. On 18 May 1940 the prime minister, Paul Reynaud, appointed him minister of state and vice-premier to act as a rallying-point for the army and the people. Churchill's liaison officer in Paris, Maj-General Edward Spears, found Pétain infinitely pathetic and that France was fading out, as he put it, on an old man's evocation of a heroic past. There was certainly nothing heroic about Pétain in 1940. He advised seeking an armistice and immediately began negotiating for one when he replaced Reynaud late on 16 June. On 1 July his government settled in Vichy—the small town in central France which gave its name to Pétain's regime—and ten days later the National Assembly vested all its powers in him as Chef d'Etat. Now head of state as well as prime minister, the government he formed, with Pierre Laval as vice-premier, contained more military men than any ministry since Marshal Soult's in 1832. With the approval of the Germans, it launched, under the slogan of ‘Work, Family and Country’, a ‘National Revolution’, and Pétain saw himself, and was seen as, the embodiment of France whose soil he pledged he would never leave.

In October 1940, at Laval's behest, Pétain met Hitler at Montoire to offer collaboration with Germany. Although Montoire was a disappointment, for which Pétain blamed Laval, France's true predicament was probably not brought home to Pétain until his meeting with Göring at the end of 1941. When Pétain told the Reichsmarschall that he thought collaboration implied treating between equals, a furious Göring shouted, ‘who are the victors, you or us?’

In December 1940, when Pétain dismissed him, Laval called him ‘a puppet, a windbag and a weathercock which turns with the wind’ (quoted in P. Webster, Pétain's Crime, The Full Story of French Collaboration in the Holocaust, London, 1990, p. 74). He certainly swung with whatever breeze last blew on him, but his efforts to blame others for the disasters of 1940 backfired (see Riom trial). He was as devoted to secrecy as he was to power, and by intrigue and double-dealing he maintained an aura of aloofness. To the French he stood above the collaboration they quickly came to hate, but there seems little doubt that Pétain must bear his share of the responsibility for such pro-Nazi acts as the deportation of Jews, the execution of hostages, and the formation of the notorious Milice.

Pétain's substitute for Laval, Pierre Flandin, proved unacceptable to the Germans as, in the end, did Flandin's successor, Admiral Darlan, and in April 1942 they forced him to have Laval back and to give him increased powers. However, towards the end of 1943 the mounting threat of the French resistance within, and of de Gaulle and the Free French without, pushed Pétain into overplaying his hand. He tried, unsuccessfully, to replace Laval and though no supporter of democracy he attempted to strengthen his own legitimacy by making the defunct National Assembly his successor, not Laval. The Germans refused to allow it, Pétain virtually went on strike, and he only climbed down when Hitler threatened dire consequences. From that time the make-up of the Vichy government became increasingly dictated by the Germans and after Marcel Déat joined it in March 1944 Pétain ceased to attend its meetings.

Though the Vichy government was by that time as hated as it was impotent, Pétain himself was still seen by many as the symbol of French unity and was warmly received when he visited Paris in April 1944. On 19 August, when pressed to leave Vichy, he resigned, but was removed first to Belfort and then to Sigmaringen in Germany. In April 1945 he persuaded the Germans to take him to Switzerland where de Gaulle hoped he would stay. Indeed the Free French leader apparently asked the Swiss to refuse any extradition requests. However, Pétain chose to return to France and was put on trial that July. He put up a stout defence—‘Every day, with a knife at my throat, I struggled against the enemy demands’—against a prosecution that hardly bothered to study the available evidence. Inevitably, he was condemned to death, but was reprieved and spent his last years a prisoner on the Île d'Yeu. See also France, 3(c).

Bibliography

Griffiths, R. , Marshal Pétain (London, 1970).
Lottmann, H. , Pétain (New York, 1984).