Book description
For three weeks in July 1945 all eyes were fixed on a humid Paris, where France's disgraced former head of state was on trial, accused of masterminding a plot to overthrow democracy. Would Philippe Petain, hero of Verdun, be condemned as the traitor of Vichy?
In the terrible month of…
Why read it?
3 authors picked France on Trial as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I find how history is remembered as fascinating and compelling as I do history itself because it says so much about a culture or society. Jackson's detailed and riveting account of the trial of Marshall Petain reveals a great deal about the cultural and political divisions that remind one of the Dreyfus Affair or the divisions characteristic of our own times. You won't need to have a special interest in French history to find this account riveting - it deals with a past that affected the entire world and left ramifications that still haunt us today.
A "blend of courtroom drama, political intrigue and brilliant narrative history" that examines the life and after-life of a trial that shaped modern France: the 1945 prosecution of Philippe Pétain, Vichy France's head of state.
A detailed and well-written narrative of France’s attempts to purge herself of Vichy guilt at the end of the Second World War and the trial of Marshal Petain, who went from venerated hero to public enemy number one.
How France came to fall in 1940 has always interested me, as has the fact that the nation accepted the Vichy regime. I found the tortured legal process through which the French prosecuted those they judged guilty of collaboration most interesting, especially when related to the ‘cancel’ movements of today.
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