Philippe Petain: From French Hero to Nazi Collaborator

today's video is brought to you by Magic spoon cereal reinvented more about them in a bit like all the other countries that suffered the occupation of their country's fine artsy Germany during World War II France proudly remembers those men and women who bravely fought against their oppressors the members of the French Resistance however few Compliments are paid to their opposite numbers those who willingly cooperated with the Germans and helped them achieve their goals of all those tarred with a label collaborators none is more Infamous than the leader of the puppet state set up in France in the wake of the German occupation Marshall Philippe petone what made potasse betrayal so shocking was that he didn't seem the type he was a war hero one of the Victorious generals of the first world war awarded the highest honors and beloved by his countrymen of course baton didn't view what he was doing as a betrayal at all he believed he was saving his beloved France from an even worse fate that by cooperating with the Germans they would eventually leave them alone and they could go back to business as usual despite his high ideals patal's Vichy regime took on many of the West characteristics of their Nazi occupiers and offered a bleak picture of what the future of France might have looked like if the Allies hadn't eventually won the war far from saving France many people accused petor of destroying it when World War one broke out in 1914 Philip baton was at the end of a long and unremarkable Army Career born to a peasant farming family in 1856 petore had joined the army after briefly entertaining the idea of becoming a Catholic priest he graduated from the military academy he had sarcia in 1878 and was commissioned as an officer in an army that was still reeling from the humiliating defeat of the franco-prussian war in 1870. young officers like patar who had been too young to serve back then burned for a chance to get revenge on Germany to regain the honor of France through another more Victorious War over 30 years after entering service however that all seemed unlikely to ever happen and it appeared more and more certain that petal would spend his entire career without ever hearing a shot fired in anger on the battlefield he'll Advance slowly in rank achieving the rank of Colonel in 1911 but being told that he would go no further by the time he reached the mandatory retirement age of 60 in 1916. Petal had also never married and started a family of his own several engagement suits had failed because middling Army prospects and the reputation he had for sleeping with other men's wives it seemed that orbitar had to look forward to was a lonely retirement and a small pension but then Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo tipping over the first domino in an Unstoppable chain who eventually see all of Europe's major Powers at war with each other foreign Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914 bypassing the massive defensive positions of the French army along the German border and advancing deeper to France it seemed like Paris itself might fall the commander-in-chief of the French force is General Joseph joffre managed to stabilize the situation and working in concert with the British and Belgian armies stopped the German advance in the first battle of the man during this fight and in the counter-offensives that followed Joffrey understood a full-scale purge of high-ranking Military Officers that he believed weren't up to the task hundreds of officers were dismissed or reassigned this reorganization proved a boon to Patel who in the span of a single year went from a colonel commanding a brigade to a three-star General commanding the entire French second Army he was certainly no Napoleon but he was an able commander who inspired his men by visiting them at the front speaking to them in the regional Patois of his birthplace rather than the educated Parisian accent used by most senior officers the men trusted general patar which was important because at the end of 14 The War of maneuver had settled down into the horrors of trench warfare a new kind of combat never employed on such a large scale before none of the 19th century tactics the generals of the day had been schooled in worked against the new weapons employed on the Western Front machine guns barbed wire poison gas and massive artillery guns that could fire from Miles Away ah breakfast 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allow for a glorious breakthrough of the German lines and that this was about of attrition that could only be won when one side got tired of the killing this was typified at the Battle of adol in which Patong commanded French forces in the center of the Western Front the Germans attacked at Verdon not to seize a position but to bleed France white by inflicting so many casualties of the country couldn't continue the war Qatar recognized this and turned the tables on the Germans declaring that he would hold his ground and let the Germans come to him in the open so that he could destroy them the same trenches owa fought over again and again with both sides taking appalling losses to keep morale up batard built a road to Vidal the boy sacred that constantly ferried men and supplies that built divisions were on the front lines for only a week or two before being replaced by fresh units eventually almost the entirety of the army served a Vadar during the 10-month-long battle which made the doll symbolic of the entire War for the French people and the Army it was also symbolic of the uselessness of the whole Affair despite a combined 800 000 casualties nothing of consequence was gained by either side if anyone had won the battle of it was General Patton who became the hero of France and gained a sparkling reputation for Valor that he would bask in for the rest of his life [Music] in 1917 the French army was in trouble after yet another for ild assault by the Allies the troops were on the verge of mutiny almost half the French units on the Western Front were engaged in various forms of Disobedience refusing to leave their trenches abandoning their posts ignoring orders even attacking their officers if morale dipped any further the war would be lost button now commander-in-chief of French forces following shafra's retirement and the dismissal of General Robert Neville knew that he had to do something he told the front lines promising better treatment of his soldiers exhausted units were sent to the rear to rest or home leave was granted and conditions in the trenches improved most important of all no more Mast assaults patan was determined to hold the line until sufficient numbers of another new weapon the tank were produced as oil as the arrival of the American expeditionary Force following the United States as entry into the war he also had 49 mutineers executed by firing squad in 1918 the Germans mounted a series of desperate assaults on the Western Front trying to defeat the allies before the Americans arrived in strength the first assault threat him to split the British expeditionary Force commanded by field Marshal Hague from the French army which would cause it to be destroyed tar who greatly disliked Hague seemed willing to let the British be destroyed until he was ordered to come to their aid by the new Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand fosh this animosity towards the British would rear its head again in later decades still this mistake was forgotten in the glory of Victories the German offensives were stopped and the Allies pushed back bolstered now by American sport the Germans meanwhile had no resources left they'd run out meta material an Armistice was agreed on November the 11th ending the war to end all wars baton was made Marshall of France 10 days after the end of the war one of three alongside farsh and jafra and for the rest of his life he would be addressed as Marshall baton he relished his role as a war hero continuing actor's service until 1928. that decade's orbital overseeing a Army in transition from war to peace and like many generals he was unhappy about the severe defense Cuts enacted by the government but in all honesty they had no choice the war had nearly bankrupted France four percent of the population had been killed and much of her industry destroyed or damaged instead of relying on a large field Army for defense the country instead would build a series of strong fortifications the magino line which would guard the border between France and Germany outside of the military patar also enjoyed an active social life he had finally gotten married in 1920. supposedly one of his Mistresses Eugenie Nini hardor had threatened him with a gun until he finally agreed to tie the knot the marriage would not be a particularly happy one because Nini was a divorced woman baton's marriage to her was not recognized by the Catholic Church polite society would not accept her so patal usually attended events and Gatherings by himself most of the guests Batar entertained at home never saw her either as she was kept in her own separate apartment from the Marshall if martial guitar had died before World War II broke out it is likely that it would remain one of France's most revered war heroes with statues and commemorations to him all over the country but unfortunately for him he didn't instead he lived long enough to see his hard-won reputation brought to ruin Batar was not in France When The War Began instead serving as France's ambassador to Spain and Madrid by the time he was recalled to Paris in May 1940 the country was in crisis Germany had invaded France not through Belgium as expected but through a gap in Allied defenses in the Arden Forest thought to be impossible tanks this move cut off the British expeditionary force and a chunk of the French army from the rest of the Allied armies which was surrounded at the Port of Dunkirk the Germans had mastered a new style of warfare the Blitzkrieg or lightning War while the British and French commanders had expected the conflict to play out similarly to the first world war 20 years earlier along with other ministers soon came to believe the war was lost and that the best thing they could do now was to seek an Armistice with the Germans on as favorable terms as possible after Prime Minister Paul Renault resigned the task fell to Batar who agreed to the humiliating terms on June 22nd 60 of the country was to be occupied by German and Italian troops including Paris the remainder would be self-governing and the government chose the resort town of Vichy as a seat of government in the Free Zone this was to be a temporary State of Affairs only until Britain now fighting along against the Axis powers came to terms which was expected imminently after all if Mighty power like France had collapsed in the face of the Nazi Onslaught what chance did the British have on July the 10th 1940 the French Parliament met in Vichy and voted itself out of existence the third Republic was replaced by an autocratic French state with Marshall batana's head baton believed that this was the only way to ensure order in France while the Germans still occupied half the country comparing himself to a Roman dictator during the Republican era who assumed emergency powers to save the nation petal and others believed that one of the key reasons for their defeat was the liberalization of the country over the course of the previous two decades the shifting away from Traditional Values such as family the Catholic church and the honor of the military the only way to save the country was to remake it in his own image in essence batal ended up imitating what Hitler Mussolini had done in their regimes soldiers and public officials were required to swear an oath of loyalty not to the nation but to patar himself images of the Marshal appeared everywhere from money to sculpture attempting to build a cult of personality around Baton the regime's revolution National had a new motto labor family Fatherland the Vichy regime arrested most of the political leaders of the country from the last decade who had remained in France imprisoning them and subjecting them to trials where the entirety of the defeat in 1940 was laid at their feet also imprisoned was anyone that criticized the government in any way another popular Target of attack by Qatar was the British in radio broadcast the French people Batar accused Britain of dragging France into a war that they didn't want and then abandoning them to the Nazis claiming that they were only interested in seizing France's overseas territories for themselves baton and his ministers particularly his vice Premier Pierre Laval were attempting to maintain a delicate Balancing Act trying to Stave off a complete German takeover of their country while avoiding outright collaboration with their conquerors their two biggest bargaining chips were the French naval fleet disarmed but still under their control as well as France's North African colonies which they maintained administration of even though most of them declared for child gauze free France government in Exile in London which viewed Vichy as an illegitimate government set up by traitors to the nation in order to appease the Nazis the Vichy government either willingly or was forced to make more and more concessions in favor of collaboration Batar was fiercely anti-communist coming down on the side of the Germans when they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and had no qualms about suppressing leftist dissidents within France he had a harder time with the attacks made against France's Jewish population but did sign laws stripping French Jews of citizenship and confining them to internment camps and gave only token protest when the Germans decided that they should be shipped off to concentration camps in Germany Laval even magnified the Carnage by insisting that children under 16 which had been Exempted by the Nazis be deported with their parents Vichy officials would later claim that the Germans never told them they were being sent to their deaths only that they were being deported to labor camps in the event over 70 000 French Jews were murdered many of them having been arrested and turned over to the darpo by French police officers tall was an odd choice to become an autocratic dictator Not only was the man 84 years old when he took power he had also never been elected to a single political office and had shown almost no interest in politics that didn't pertain to the Armed Forces prior to 1940. he was going deaf his vision was fading and he tended to nod off during official meeting sometimes even when he was speaking he tended to be most active in the morning pumped up with stimulants by his personal physician and then he crashed in the late afternoon and evening willing to sign almost anything put in front of him so that they would leave him alone at times patan was astonished to discover what exactly had signed law not having even read the decrees before putting his signature on them he deluded himself into believing that he had been the only man to save France in its hour of need but now he was starting to realize that he'd been wrong about one crucial fact Britain had not been defeated by Germany and now both the Soviet Union and the United States were in the war on the side of the Allies for the first time he started to believe that Germany might lose the war and he began to play a double game of trying to court both the Allies especially the US and the Germans at the same time trying to make sure that he ended up on The Winning Side at the same time he grew frustrated with the growing resistance to the German occupation and the Vichy collaborators within France patar came down hard against the French Resistance labeling them all communist traitors Laval organized the militia a collaborationist paramilitary group that fought the resistance fighters in the Hills its Leader Joseph Dana was given extrajudicial powers to summarily execute enemies of the state upon capture without trial the resistance fought back just as brutally targeting militia and Vichy leaders for assassination and executing paramilitaries that fell into their hands the resistance only continued to grow in strength however especially after September 1942 when petos signed a law that permitted the Germans to deport hundreds of thousands of French workers to work as forced laborers in German factories while they were subjected to dismal conditions and frequent bombing raids by the Allies the government had also agreed to allow more than a million French soldiers taken prisoner in 1940 to remain imprisoned as part of the Armistice and they were also put to work the French economy was in Ruins as the Germans forced the French to pay for the privilege of hosting the occupying troops and seized food and other resources to feed their own War Machine food shortages or ramp and especially in the cities and this only added to the anger against the Vichy collaborators who were noticeably not going hungry in November 1942 the double game came to an end following the Allied invasion of French North Africa Operation Torch in which Vichy French forces put up only token resistance Hitler demanded either that Vichy declare war on the Allies or the rest of the country would be put under occupation Batar refused and the Nazis rolled in cities that had been largely left alone up to that point now found themselves subject to Nazi atrocities like those committed by Klaus Barbie or the Butcher of Leon who while acting as the head of the city's gestapo secret police was known to take a sadistic pleasure in torturing captives including women and children Barbie is believed to be personally responsible for the deaths of 14 000 people Marshall baton was now little more than a figurehead still nominally in charge of France but in practice a prisoner of the Germans the Allies wanted nothing to do with him eventually throwing their support behind to Gaul and oh when they invaded France in 1944 the Germans brought the Vichy government with them when they retreated into Germany in April 1945 with the German government and Military collapsing his captors took him across the border to neutral Switzerland to Gaul who had once been a subordinate and bar of petal led the Swiss authorities know he wouldn't mind very much if they refused the French extradition request for the Marshal allowing him to live out his remaining days in Exile however baton to fire to the end insisted on returning to France where he was arrested and put on trial for treason patal was more fortunate than most to even make it to trial the days following The Liberation saw an orgy of violent retribution by French citizens against collaborators with up to 10 000 of them killed women who had slept with German soldiers were humiliated by having their heads shaved and they were marched through City streets branded with swastikas Once order was restored the trials against collaborators the legal Purge as it was known would eventually convict some 120 000 French citizens and almost 800 of them including Pierre Laval and Joseph dinar were executed potato and trial began in July 1945. it was not exactly an impartial proceeding as many of those tasked with ascertaining his guilt had been imprisoned by baton during the war criticizing the vishi regime it wasn't really a surprise to anybody that he was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death to Gaul by now head of the provincial government of France commuted a sentence to life imprisonment both because of his Advanced age and because he was worried about sparking riots among baton's remaining supporters the Marshall now stripped of his uniform and his medals was transported in November to the ildu a small island off the Western French Coast where he was to be imprisoned in a 19th Century Ford nobody expected the old man to survive his gloomy prison for long but incredibly he lingered on for years growing steadily more in firm and senile until he finally died in 1951 at the age of 95. he was buried on the island and is still there today despite protests from his supporters who insist that he should be buried near the graves of the soldiers who died of a door as he had wanted one gang even disinterred the Marshal's coffin and stole his remains in an attempt to force the issue in 1973 but was soon captured and the body was re-buried felipator is considered one of the best defensive generals of the first world war able to understand the new weapons and tactics needed to fight this unique conflict better than almost anyone of his time he was a man made for his time as many war heroes are the problem was he refused to remain in his time he lingered on far beyond the point when most people his age would have retired past the point where most of his contemporaries were dead and buried because of this he ended up caught up in something he probably didn't fully understand he wasn't the most willing participant in Nazi atrocities but he wasn't naive either he either knew what was going on or he should have many of his supporters claim that baton was only a figurehead that the real power behind the vishi regime lay with committed collaborationists like Laval even if it were true which would contradict the historical record that Batar played an active role most of the time in the administration of his state it still wouldn't excuse the crimes committed by the government in his name his face was on the money after all rather than becoming the savior of the French Nation patal's children as he called the French people simply cast him down and moved on without him re-establishing Republican Rule and throwing his National Revolution right in the trash where it probably belongs in the end pattar always believed that he would become a man of Destiny who would change history and he did is probably not in the way intended foreign

Channel: Biographics

Views: 156,259

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler, nazi collaboration, henri philippe petain, petain on trial, personalities - criminal, personalities - politicians, petain

Id: ZQ6qL0V6CRI

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023