Philippe Pétain (1856 - 1951)
Pétain meets Adolf Hitler
July 23rd 1951: Philippe Pétain dies
On this day in 1951, French military officer and former head of the Vichy government, Philippe Pétain, died aged 95. Born to a farming family in 1856, he joined the French army in 1876 and rose through the ranks slowly in the years before World War One. However, his successes in the war catapulted him to national fame. Pétain’s most famous victory was leading the defense of Verdun, which made him a national hero in France and resulted in his becoming marshal of France in 1918. In the postwar years he held a number of political offices, finally being appointed vice premier in 1940 as France faced attack from Nazi Germany. Pétain called for an armistice, which ceded large parts of France (including Paris) to the Nazis. Pétain, as ‘chief of state’, ruled the remainder of the country from Vichy; the authoritarian Vichy government collaborated with Germany, even introducing anti-Semitic legislation banning Jews from certain professions. Pétain himself, though indeed reactionary, favoured neutrality over even closer collaboration, trying to maintain relations with the Allies. As the war progressed, Pétain’s influence waned and French resistance mounted against Vichy collaboration, and he was taken to Germany when the Allies landed in France. After the end of the war, with France free from German rule, the ‘hero fo Verdun’ was tried and condemned to death for treason. His sentence was commuted to life in solitary confinement, and Pétain remained imprisoned in a fortress on the Île d’Yeu until his death in 1951.
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