Petain: How the Hero of France Became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History ... Book

Philippe Pétain was a French hero of one war and a French traitor of another. If I had just one sentence to explain him, that is the sentence I would use. In fact, if you pull him up on the Goog, his last office is given as "Former French Ambassador To Spain", which tells you how twisted his perception is in France.

In WWI, Pétain was the saviour of France, the Gandalf of Verdun ("they shall not pass"). He believed that firepower destroyed the enemy, so his tactic was to hurtle some 15 million shells upon the advancing Germans. Needless to say, the Germans were not advancing after such an assault. Then the French Army mutinies started. Pétain came to the rescue again, being a soldier's soldier. He stopped the mutinies and began a wait for the Americans tactic, which allowed the French soldiers to stay in the trenches without the worry of further heavy offensives. They say defense wins games. Pétain was the ultimate defensive practitioner.

...he was forever the outsider - a peasant in the company of swordsmen, a bachelor in the company of husbands, a lapsed believer in the company of devout Catholics.

WWI was Pétain's war. Alas, there was also WWII, which undid everything he had accomplished. No offensives for him, he accepted German victory as inevitable and moved quickly to save France by allowing the Germans to take over 60% of the country while his own Vichy government controlled (well, not really) the remaining 40% of France. Pétain believed that a United States of Europe was coming and wanted France to be in the forefront.

Like many old men, he just could not let go.

By the early 1930s, it was already apparent that Pétain was being gnawed by age, memory gaps showing. Yet within 10 years, he would be the man in charge of France, which tells you how bad it was in Gaul. Forever anti-British, forever anti-communist, he felt a closer kinship with the Germans. This allowed the other, nastier, Frenchmen, such as Laval, to use him to gain their goals. While this doesn't remove the full guilt of Pétain, it's also clear that a man with dementia should have never been placed in charge of France's future.

After Hitler was defeated, and other French leaders fled, Pétain honorably requested he be returned to France, to face the charges that were inevitably coming. The immediate end of WWII was not a good time for the French, as it's now estimated thousands were killed by their own countrymen in reprisal for being too close to the Germans. A sentence of death was passed upon Pétain, which de Gaulle had commuted to life imprisonment, as he wanted...well, de Gaulle always wanted what he wanted.

This was a difficult book for me, as I simply did not like the subject. Long before both wars, it's apparent that Pétain was not the sort of man one would respect. Throw in what France did in WWII, including the obsessive transport of their own Jewish citizens to the death camps, and it was hard to feel anything for the Old Man. However, Pétain himself was hard to peg...fervently distrustful of Churchill, trying to placate Hitler and his own countrymen, and always waiting for the Americans to save the day. I feel that he was definitely used, due to his own senility, but he also had a huge ego that allowed him to believe that he, and only he, could save France.

The author has done some excellent research and presents the life and career of the general in detail. However, I certainly don't agree with the assessment of Pétain as a top-notch military leader.

He was not a Napoleon or a Wellington, but he comes very high in the ranks just below them.

Perhaps I will never really understand the way France just bowed down to the Nazis, but this book gave me a bit more knowledge toward that end.

Book Season = Autumn (the hollow season)