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Categories: French heads of state | Prime ministers of France | History of Morocco | Members of the Académie française | World War II political leaders | 1856 births | 1951 deaths | Vichy regime Philippe PétainMarshal Henri Philippe Pétain (April 24, 1856 - July 23, 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French soldier and Head of State of Vichy France. He became a French hero because of his military leadership in World War I, yet he was tried and imprisoned for treason in his old age because of his collaboration with the Germans in World War II. Early lifeBorn in Cauchy-à-la-Tour (in the Pas-de-Calais département, in the north of France) in 1856. He joined the French Army in 1876 and attended the St Cyr Military Academy and the École Supérieure de Guerre (army war college) in Paris. World War IPétain was a distinguished veteran of World War I, and in particular the Battle of Verdun. As a result of his brilliant defence at Verdun, he became known as the "saviour of Verdun" and hailed as a French hero. Verdun became a symbol of French determination, inspired by Pétain’s declaration: "they shall not pass!" Due to his remarkable ability and high prestige, Pétain rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the French army during World War I; it could be argued that because of his successful defensive strategy, France survived the devastation of German invasion, thus led to the Allied victory in World War I. Moreover, it was his advocacy of a defensive strategy that led, in large part, to the construction of the Maginot Line. Between the warsPétain emerged from the war as a national hero. He was encouraged to go into politics, and although he had little interest in running for an elected position in 1934 he was appointed to the French cabinet as Minister of War. The following year he was promoted to Secretary of State. World War II and Vichy FranceIn the spring of 1940 France was invaded by Nazi Germany. Marshall Pétain was then appointed as Prime Minister of France and granted extraordinary powers. The constitutionality of these actions was later challenged by de Gaulle's regime, but at the time Pétain was widely accepted as France's saviour. On June 22 he signed an armistice with Germany that gave the Nazis control over the north and west of the country, including Paris, but left the rest under an "independent" government that located its capital in the resort town of Vichy. Again the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, constituted in "Assemblée nationale", had an emergency meeting, and voted the allowance of every power (Constitutive, Legislative, Executive and Judicial ones)to Marshall Pétain, so as to suspend the constitution of the Third Republic and make Pétain supreme dictator. As Pétain despised the republican form of government, which he considered to be weak and responsible for France's failure in the war, he took "Head of the State" as his only title, and abolished the positions of president and prime minister. As leader of this dictatorial regime, a personality cult was set up and Pétain's image was spread throughout France, portraying him as a father figure to the nation (le Maréchal = "the Marshal"). Conservative factions within his government used the opportunity as an occasion in which to launch an ambitious program known as the "National Revolution" in which much of the former Third Republic's secular traditions were overturned in favor of the promotion of a more traditionalist, Catholic society. Pétain used immédiately its new powers to order measures of suspension of republican civil servants and to intern opponents and foreign refugees. He adopted also, as soon as october 1940, hitlerian inspirated laws against Jewish (largely stronger than Mussolini ones), and against "Francs-Maçons". He organized a "Legion Française des Combattants" (very different from American Legion), where he included "Friends of Legion" and "Cadets of Legion" having never fought, but politically attached to serve his dictatorial regime. Pétain never refused any of the the requests, by the Germans and his successive Deputies Pierre Laval and Admiral François Darlan, to side with the Axis Powers. On 11 November 1942 Germany invaded the unoccupied zone in response to the Allied Operation Torch landings in North Africa. Although Vichy France nominally remained in existence, Pétain became nothing more than a figurehead, as the Nazis abandoned the pretense of an "independent" Vichy government. On September 7, 1944 he and other members of the Vichy cabinet fled to Sigmaringen and soon after he resigned as leader. Post-war trialIn April 1945 he was returned to France, where he was tried for collaboration (or treason), convicted and sentenced to death by firing squad in July-August 1945. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle on August 17, 1945, on the grounds of his old age. He died in prison on Île d'Yeu, an island off the coast of Brittany, in 1951. Nowadays, in France, the word pétainisme suggests an authoritarian and reactionary ideology, a nostalgy of a rural, agricultural, traditionalist, Catholic society. Bibliography
Lists of the successive Pétain governments until 1942Pétain's First Government, 16 June - 12 July 1940
Changes
Pétain's Second Government, 12 July - 6 September 1940
Pétain's Third Government, 6 September 1940 - 25 February 1941
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Pétain's Fourth Ministry, 25 February - 12 August 1941
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Pétain's Fifth Government, 12 August 1941 - 18 April 1942
See also
Categories: French heads of state | Prime ministers of France | History of Morocco | Members of the Académie française | World War II political leaders | 1856 births | 1951 deaths | Vichy regime The contents of this article are licensed from Wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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