We can spend all of our lives paying for some decisions. In the case of a nation, the process of coming to terms with such decisions and taking responsibility for their consequences is the work of generations, and it requires eternal vigilance.
This is the haunting message of France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain by Julian Jackson, Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary, London, and much-lauded author of books on the fall of France in 1940, its Nazi occupation in 1940–44 and a biography of Charles de Gaulle. Here he revisits the trial of Philippe Pétain, a legendary WWI hero who signed the armistice with Germany in June 1940, the first in a series of decisions whose deadly consequences still reverberate in France today.
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