Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the Duff Cooper Prize 2023
A Telegraph Book of the Year
A Times, Spectator and Prospect Book of the Year
One of the great contemporary historians of France on one of the most controversial periods of twentieth-century French history
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 20 October 1940. In a radio speech after this meeting, Pétain told the French people that he was ''entering down the road of collaboration''. He ended with the words: ''This is my policy. My ministers are responsible to me. It is I alone who will be judged by History.'' Five years later, in July 1945, the hour of judgement - 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 armisti
