Henri Philippe Pétain

The French general and statesman Henri Philippe Pétain (1856-1951), a military hero in World War I, headed the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II. Officially considered a traitor, he is admired by many of his countrymen as a supreme patriot.

Philippe Pétain was born to peasant parents on April 24, 1856, at Cauchy-à-la-Tour. After a private boarding-school education, he entered Saint-Cyr in 1876 and graduated 2 years later. An advocate of defensive rather than offensive strategies, he became an instructor at the école de Guerre in 1888. Nearly 60 years old and without active-duty experience in 1914, Petain had had a far from brilliant career. World War I changed that radically.

Hero of Verdun

Promoted to brigadier general on Aug. 31, 1914, Pétain distinguished himself at the Battle of the Marne (1914) and in June 1915 was named a full general and given command of the 11th Army. When the Germans decided in 1916 to end the war with a massive concentrated attack on the French line at Verdun, Pétain was ordered to stop the offensive at all costs. Promising that "they shall not pass, " he held Verdun but at the enormous cost of 350, 000 men. Subsequently a great popular hero, he became chief of the general staff in April 1917, and a month later he succeeded Gen. Robert Nivelle as commander in chief.

Pétain assumed his command over a French army near disintegration. Years of indecisive war had sapped morale, and mutinies were endemic. Combining harsh disciplinary measures with humane redress of grievances, he very quickly reestablished order. Without these reforms the French army would not have withstood the final German offensives of 1918.

Between the World Wars

Named marshal of France on Nov. 21, 1918, Pétain emerged from the war second only to Ferdinand Foch in prestige. It was only natural that Pétain was regarded as a high military authority, but the consequences later proved catastrophic. Vice president of the Supreme War Council after 1920 and inspector general of the army after 1922, Pétain used his influence to orient French military planning along defensive lines. He favored the construction of heavily armed fortifications along the Franco-German frontier. Against the protests of such young rebels as Charles De Gaulle, who urged a strategy of mobile mechanized warfare, Pétain's influence was decisive, and the Maginot Line was constructed on the Franco-German border. French government and military leaders were determined to prepare France for any future war.

Retiring from the army in 1931, Pétain entered politics in 1934 as minister of war in the short-lived authoritarian government of Gaston Doumergue. Increasingly contemptuous of parliamentary politics and such Socialist experiments as the Popular Front, and a known partisan of dictatorial regimes, Pétain provided a figure in the late 1930s around which right-wing opponents of the Third Republic could rally.

Vichy Regime

Ambassador to Spain at the outbreak of World War II, Pétain was recalled and appointed vice-premier in May 1940 by Premier Paul Reynaud in an attempt to bolster his foundering government. With the fall of France imminent, Reynaud resigned on June 16, 1940, and President Albert Lebrun asked the 84-year-old Pétain to form a new government whose first task would be to negotiate an armistice with the Germans. No one seemed to care that the rapid collapse of the French army in 1940 had been largely due to the outdated principles on which Pétain had organized it and to its lack of mechanized equipment, whose supply he had opposed.

On June 22 Pétain concluded an armistice with the Nazis that divided France into two zones: the north and the Atlantic coastline under German military occupation, and the rest of France under the direct administration of Pétain's government. Militarily, France retained control of its fleet, but its army was drastically reduced to 100, 000 men.

Meeting in national assembly at Vichy on July 10, 1940, a rump parliament voted full constituent powers to Pétain. The next day he was named chief of state, and with Pierre Laval he then began the task of constructing a hierarchical and authoritarian regime under the formula of his so-called National Revolution. Little more than empty rhetoric ("Work-Family-Fatherland") and the cult of Pétain, his Vichy regime was a scarcely disguised client state of Nazi Germany.

Of necessity, Pétain's central principle in foreign policy was collaboration with the Third Reich. Above all, he wanted to keep France out of the war and to keep Germany as faithful to the armistice terms as possible. Opposed, however, to the all-out collaboration urged by Laval, Pétain replaced him with Adm. Jean Darlan in 1941. Under pressure from Berlin, Laval returned to office in April 1942.

The crisis of the Vichy regime occurred in November 1942 following the Allied landings in North Africa and the German occupation of Vichy France. Urged to flee, Pétain refused, believing that it was his duty to share the fate of his countrymen. He still refused even after ultracollaborationists were imposed upon him by the Germans, and thus he implicated himself in their treason. Arrested by the retreating Nazis on Aug. 20, 1944, and sent to Germany, Pétain voluntarily returned to France in April 1945. Immediately arrested and brought to trial by the provisional government of his onetime protégé Charles De Gaulle, Pétain was convicted of treason, militarily degraded, and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by De Gaulle, and Pétain died 6 years later, on July 23, 1951, on the Île d'Yeu.

Estimates of Pétain's Career

Pétain remains an acutely controversial figure in recent French history. He is the object of an as yet unsuccessful effort at rehabilitation, his right-wing admirers depicting him as the "crucified savior of France" and claiming that his self-sacrifice after 1940 "will one day count more for his glory than the victory of Verdun." Not only did Pétain save France from the fate of Poland, they insist, but by playing a double game he tricked Adolf Hitler into staying out of North Africa, which made possible the eventual Allied victory in 1945. Preposterous as these claims are, the impression they give of Pétain is only slightly more misleading than that given by official Resistance historiography, which unfailingly portrays him as an arch-villain and as a criminal traitor to France.

Further Reading

A well-researched and interesting work on Pétain is Richard Griffiths, Pétain: A Biography of Marshal Philippe Pétain of Vichy (1972). For the period before 1940 the major work is Stephen Ryan, Pétain the Soldier (1969). For the Vichy period there is an enormous partisan literature whose purpose is either to condemn or exonerate Pétain. An example of the first is Robert Aron, The Vichy Regime, 1940-1944 (1955; trans. 1958); and of the second, Sisley Huddleston, Pétain: Patriot or Traitor? (1951). Recommended for general background are Denis W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870-1939 (1940; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1966), and Paul Marie de La Gorce, The French Army: A Military-Political History (trans. 1963).

Additional Sources

Lottman, Herbert R., Pétain, hero or traitor: the untold story, New York: W. Morrow, 1985.

Smith, Gene, The ends of greatness: Haig, Pétain, Rathenau, and Eden: victims of history, New York: Crown Publishers, 1990. □

Henri Philippe Pétain , 1856–1951, French army officer, head of state of the Vichy government (see under Vichy ). In World War I he halted the Germans at Verdun (1916), thus becoming the most beloved French military hero of that conflict. In 1917 he was appointed French commander in chief and in 1918 was made a marshal. He later went to Morocco, where he brought the joint French and Spanish campaign against Abd el-Krim to a successful conclusion (1926). He was briefly (1934) war minister in the cabinet of Gaston Doumergue. In 1939, Pétain was named ambassador to Spain after France had recognized the new regime under Francisco Franco , who had served under Pétain in Morocco.

In World War II, when France was on the brink of collapse, Premier Paul Reynaud recalled (May, 1940) Pétain from Spain and made him vice premier in an effort to bolster French morale with the name of the hero of Verdun. Believing that the nation's defeat was inevitable after the collapse of its military forces, Pétain urged that France sue for an armistice, and on June 16 he succeeded Reynaud as premier. The armistice went into effect on June 25, and more than half of France was occupied by the Germans. On July 10, 1940, a rump parliament suspended the constitution of the Third Republic, and Pétain took office as "chief of state" at Vichy, in unoccupied France. The Vichy government was fascistic and authoritarian. Pétain sought to improve the lot of France and of French prisoners of war by collaborating "honorably" with Germany, but his popularity decreased as he yielded to harsh German demands and obtained little in return. In Apr., 1942, Pierre Laval took power, and thereafter the marshal was chiefly a figurehead.

After the Allied invasion of France (June 6, 1944) Pétain was taken, allegedly against his will, to Germany. In 1945 he voluntarily returned to France to face treason charges. His trial (July–Aug., 1945), at which much contradictory evidence was heard, ended with conviction, a sentence of death, degradation, and loss of property. General de Gaulle , then provisional head of the French government, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in a military fortress. Detained at first in the Pyrenees, Pétain was later transferred to the island of Yeu, where he died.

Bibliography: See biographies by R. M. Griffiths (1970) and C. Williams (2005); J. Roy, The Trial of Marshal Pétain (tr. 1968).

Pétain, (Henri) Philippe (b. 24 Apr. 1856, d. 23 July 1951). French marshal and Nazi collaborator Born in the Pas-de-Calais region and educated at a Dominican college, he graduated from the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr and was commissioned into the infantry in 1878. He was promoted to colonel in 1912, and rose rapidly during World War I, becoming general in 1915 and the commander of the 2nd Army. He became a national hero as the defender of Verdun (1916–17), and became Commander-in-Chief of the French army in May 1917. He fought successfully against Abd al-Krim, and served as inspector-general of the army 1922–31. He was Minister of Defence in 1934 and subsequently retired, but in 1939 he was appointed ambassador to Spain. He was recalled to serve as Deputy to Prime Minister Reynaud in May 1940, and became the last Prime Minister of the Third Republic on 17 June 1940 following Reynaud's refusal to sue for peace against the Germans.

Pétain concluded an armistice with the Germans which left him in control of two-fifths of French territory, which he proceeded to govern from the spa town of Vichy. On 10 July 1940, the National Assembly transferred to him all executive and legislative powers. Initially, he hoped to gain concessions from Germany in return for his collaboration, such as the return of French prisoners of war. He was also eager to secure for France a special place in the German world order which he believed to be the inevitable consequence of the war. As Germany became increasingly defensive against the Allies, he hoped that France would take a pivotal role in negotiating a compromise peace. He was forced by the Germans to retreat across the Rhine to Sigmaringen in 1944, and surrendered to the French authorities in April 1945. He was sentenced to death, though the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The role of Pétain in the Vichy regime has been very controversial. He was the octogenarian leader who gave the government its credibility, but there is general agreement that some of his deputies, notably Laval, were the main culprits of Vichy. At the same time, rather than being an unpolitical patriot who stepped in to save his country, he had been dallying with shady right-wing figures for years in order to win political power. Through giving credence to the regime, he was greatly responsible, amongst others, for his government's persecution of Jews and the sending of French people to forced labour in Germany.

Pétain, (Henri) Philippe (Omer) (1856–1951) French general and statesman, head of state (1940–42). He became a national hero in World War I for halting the German advance at Verdun (1916) and later became Commander-in-Chief of French forces (1917). In World War II he concluded an armistice with Nazi Germany after the collapse of French forces in 1940 and established the French government at Vichy (effectively a puppet regime for the Third Reich) until German occupation in 1942. After the war Pétain received a death sentence for collaboration, but this was commuted to life imprisonment.

Pétain, Henri Philippe (1856–1951) French general and politician. In World War I, his defence of Verdun (1916) made him a national hero. He was appointed commander-in-chief in 1917, and held high positions between the World Wars. With the defeat of France in 1940, he was recalled as prime minister. He signed the surrender and became head of the collaborationist Vichy regime. He was charged with treason after the liberation of France in 1945 and died in prison.