Pétain

By BÉNÉDICTE VERGEZ-CHAIGNON, historian, specialist in Vichy and collaboration and author of Pétain (Éditions Perrin, 2014).
What we know about Pétain often boils down to Verdun, his reputation as a ladies' man, his rivalry with de Gaulle and his death sentence. This new lecture puts into perspective the slow but extraordinary trajectory of a central figure in the first half of the 20th century. At once political, military, intellectual, physical and psychological, this evolving portrait of the man who was the most beloved of the French before becoming the symbol of compromise, is very different from the epinal images attributed to him.
A conference organized at CHRD on January 26, 2017.