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French Marshal Philippe Pétain points to the order he gives to our photographer at the meeting of the Council of Ministers in Vichy, in central France, on June 9, 1941. (AP)
James McAuley
Correspondent abroad on French and European politics and culture
PARIS – In France, the name of Philippe Pétain is synonymous with national shame, synonymous with the darkest chapter of modern French history, even European.
Petain was the leader of the French government of Vichy, the reactionary regime that openly collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War and participated in the deportation of 76,000 Jews during the Holocaust. In the aftermath of the war, he was tried and sentenced for treason. Without his advanced age, he would have been executed.
On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a bitter public debate by supporting the idea that France should pay tribute to Petain at a ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.
Before taking over the government of Vichy, Petain was a military hero of the First World War. He became known in Verdun, the longest battle of the war. More than 300,000 soldiers – French and German – died in this battle, one of the bloodiest of the war.
"It was a great soldier", Macron m said. "It's a reality". Petain will be recognized with seven other marshals who successfully conducted military campaigns during the war.
"Political life, like human nature, is sometimes more complex than we would like to believe," said Macron. "I have always watched the history of our country in the eye."
These remarks scandalized Jewish groups and a number of historians, who saw the movement align with the recent wave of historical revisionism. It has also benefited from the coverage of almost all major French newspapers and has generated widespread condemnation on social media.
Former President Francois Hollande, Macron's predecessor, was the subject of a scathing criticism on Wednesday night. "History does not isolate a single step, not even a glorious military career," Hollande wrote in remarks posted on Twitter. "She judges the immense and unworthy responsibility of a marshal who deliberately concealed his name and prestige, the treason, collaboration and deportation of thousands of Jews from France.
"The only thing I want to remember about Petain, is that in 1945, he was struck by national indignity, which makes him ineligible for any tribute," he said. Francis Kalifat, president of the Council of Representatives of French Jewish Organizations (CRIF), the largest group defending the rights of Jews in France, in a statement.
The Vichy regime is notorious for pursuing, largely independently of the German pressure, its own series of antisemitic laws in line with the "national revolution" it sought to inspire.
The Statute of the Jews, adopted twice in October 1940 and June 1941, prohibits Jews from public life and free professions. Vichy also continued the agenda of "Aryanization", under which the French authorities liquidated Jewish property to enrich the coffers of the state.
On October 24, 1940, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler shakes hands with French Head of State Vichy Marshall Marshall Petain Petain. Behind the center is an interpreter Paul Schmidt and on the right German Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop. (AP)
In general, the memory of the Second World War has for decades been one of the most explosive subjects in French public life. For years, admirers – including former French presidents – have left flowers on Petain's grave every year, on the occasion of the anniversary of the armistice.
This practice abruptly ended in 1992 when François Mitterrand, socialist president who served in the Vichy administration between 1941 and 1943, succumbed to pressure from public opinion. In 1995, President Jacques Chirac put an end to decades of ambiguity by declaring that Vichy was indeed the French state and that the deportation of Jews during the war was the fault of France.
However, in recent years, attempts have been made to rehabilitate Petain, mostly on the far right.
Holocaust denier and co-founder of the National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen, for example, wrote the warlord with tenderness in a memoir published earlier this year; Right-wing commentator Eric Zemmour did the same thing in a book published last month.
Zemmour wrote that Petain was a "double game", trying in a way to save the country and the French Jews backstage. The vast majority of Jews deported from France never returned.
These are no longer marginal opinions: Zemmour's book and Le Pen's memoirs have been instant bestsellers.
For many, the question is whether Macron's decision would support Petain's reconsideration in one way or another. Pressed by reporters, the 40-year-old president immediately went on the defensive. "I do not hide any page in history," he said.
For some historians, however, the problem is the potential effect of Macron's words.
"The problem is that the statement comes from the President of the Republic," said Laurent Joly, expert on Vichy France's history and author of a new book on Vichy's anti-Semitism. "If the army had wanted to commemorate Petain, nobody would have reproached him.
"But there is a consensus since 1992. It's like coming back to this consensus. This creates ambiguities.
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