RSS
Home | Office Holder | Philippe Petain
|
|
|
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain (-frpetɛ̃; 24 April 1856 - 23 July 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain (Maréchal Pétain), was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français), from 1940 to 1944. Pétain, who was 84 years old in 1940, ranks as France's oldest head of state. Because of his outstanding military leadership in World War I, particularly during the Battle of Verdun, he was viewed as a hero in France. However, as the highest ranking military authority of the 1920s and 1930s, he did not modernize the French military except for the Maginot Line. After the French defeat in June 1940, Pétain was legally voted in as Head of State (Chef de l'Etat) by the French Parliament to make peace with Germany. Along with his cabinet, which later included Pierre Laval, he transformed the French Republic into the French State, an authoritarian régime administered from the town of Vichy in central France. As the war progressed, the Vichy Government collaborated more closely with the Germans, who in 1943 finally occupied the whole of metropolitan France. Petain's actions during World War II resulted in a conviction and death sentence for treason, which was commuted to life imprisonment by his former protégé Charles de Gaulle. In modern France he is remembered as an ambiguous figure while pétainisme is a derogatory term for certain reactionary policies. |
