France on trial

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Few images more shocked the French population during the Occupation than the photograph of Marshal Philippe Pétain - the great French hero of the First World War - shaking the hand of Hitler on 20th October 1940. In the radio speech after this meeting, Pétain said 'It is I alone who will be judged by History.' Five years later, in July 1945, the hour of judegment - if not yet the judgement of history - arrived. Pétain was brought before a specially created High Court to answer for his conduct between the signing of the armistice with Germany in June 1940 and the Liberation of France in August 1944. Julian Jackson uses Pétain's three-week trial as a lens through which to examine the central crisis of twentieth-century French history. Show more