Philippe Pétain

French military leader

• Born: April 24, 1856
• Birthplace: Cauchy-à-la-Tour, France
• Died: July 23, 1951
• Place of death: Port-Joinville, Île d'Yeu, France

During World War I, Pétain was one of the few prominent military commanders to discard the massive offensive as a desired operational method. His skill at defensive warfare contributed to the Allies’ eventual defeat of Germany in 1918. Pétain later entered politics and served as the controversial Vichy chief of state during the entire German Occupation of France.

Early Life

Henri-Philippe Pétain (pay-tahn) was the third of five children born to the peasants Omer-Verant Pétain and Clotilde Pétain. Clotilde died in 1857, and Omer-Verant remarried less than two years later. Three more children followed in rapid succession as the Pétains managed an austere living in the Artois region of northern France. Like most peasant children of the middle-nineteenth century, Pétain spent much of his early childhood working on the family farm and attending a local school.

At the age of eleven, Pétain left home to attend school full-time. From 1867 to 1875, he lived at the Collège Saint-Bertin, where he received an education dominated by religious deference and military discipline. On the urging of several maternal relatives, Pétain eventually decided on a military career. Pétain realized that the first step in this direction was his attendance at the Imperial Special Military School of Saint-Cyr. Despite a poor performance on the entrance examination, Pétain was admitted to Saint-Cyr in 1877. Pétain did not excel at Saint-Cyr; the school’s engineering curriculum frequently baffled him. Saint-Cyr’s moral lessons did, however, help forge an emerging character. By the time of his graduation, Pétain had developed a strong sense of duty and honor. Concerned more with these attributes than career advancement, Pétain entered the army as a second lieutenant in 1878.

Life’s Work

In the early part of 1914, Pétain was apparently nearing the end of an undistinguished military career. Since 1878, he had capably served France, but nothing stood out to indicate greatness. In the age of some of his country’s biggest imperial ventures, Pétain had never left France. He had commanded troops, but a majority of his service was as an instructor at the École de Guerre in Paris. While a teacher, Pétain acquired the reputation of being a military nonconformist when he condemned the French reliance on offensive doctrine. Having studied the then-recent Boer and Russo-Japanese wars, Pétain dismissed large-scale offensive tactics as useless in the era of the modern machine gun. This position, coupled with his blunt personality, made Pétain extremely unpopular at France’s war ministry. His future promotions were therefore severely hindered. By 1914, Pétain was an obscure colonel with thirty-six years of service who awaited retirement in two short years.

The outbreak of World War I , however, quickly changed Pétain’s military and political destiny. The German invasion of Belgium and France in the late summer of 1914 provided Pétain with the opportunity to practice his unorthodox defensive theories. Pétain was a success, and he gained rapid promotion to the rank of general.

Throughout the war Pétain outperformed his peers. In February, 1916, the Germans launched a massive offensive that threatened the capture of Paris. Standing firm on the Meuse River at the town of Verdun, Pétain organized and inspired the French in a bloody defense that lasted until December, 1916. With this victory, the once unpopular Pétain was now known throughout a grateful France as the “Hero of Verdun.”

Appointed the commander of all French armies in May, 1917, Pétain faced another crisis. Approximately 350,000 frontline troops throughout the army had mutinied. Sacrificed in innumerable assaults that served to accomplish no apparent objectives, French soldiers simply left the trenches in droves. Pétain quickly assumed control of a situation that had the potential to spell the defeat of France. Leaders of the uprising were arrested and publicly sentenced to death. Although few of the mutineers were actually executed, this response helped squelch the disorder. In other actions, the commanding general gained the cooperation of his soldiers by visiting their outposts, listening to their complaints, and promising to end useless attacks. Once he had restored order, Pétain led the French army to victory in 1918.

At the close of the war, Pétain remained France’s leading military figure. He was made a marshal of France and placed on the influential peacetime army council, Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre. French citizenry and politicians revered the “Hero of Verdun” and generally followed his military pronouncements. In his most significant decision of the interwar period, Pétain called for the fortification of France’s eastern border against future German attacks. Built at the expense of weapons modernization, this costly series of forts and entrenchments called the Maginot line did not include the border with Belgium. Pétain concluded that this heavily forested area between France and Belgium was impregnable and therefore not in need of fortification. In 1940, this assumption would prove tragically incorrect, but in the interwar years France clung to the strategies of its most popular marshal.

Although war minister for a short period in 1934, Pétain remained outside active French politics. His lack of participation did not, however, represent political apathy. He believed that republican politics and socialism were weakening France. Interestingly, he continued to avoid others’ attempts to draft him into political office. An ambassador to Spain in 1940, Pétain was called home when Adolf Hitler’s German armies easily bypassed the Maginot line and invaded France through the Ardennes Forest. As the armies collapsed, France turned to Pétain as a symbol of greatness and power to save the crumbling nation. In May, 1940, and at eighty-four years of age, Pétain acquiesced to these wishes. He formed a new government and acquired the authorization to abolish the Third Republic and create a new constitution.

Almost immediately Pétain proclaimed defeat, and he negotiated an armistice with Germany that split France into occupied and unoccupied zones. Pétain remained the “chief of state” of the unoccupied territory, which had its capital at Vichy in southern France. Unlike many resisting Frenchmen, Pétain saw no sense in continuing a guerrilla war after the nation had been defeated. He reasoned that only a functioning French government could help rebuild the shattered country.

Although Pétain was allowed to rule over southern France, Germany exacted many demands on Pétain’s government that forced Vichy into increased collaboration with the enemy. In 1940 and 1941, Pétain maintained some form of autonomy. He was able to purge his cabinet of radical collaborationists such as Pierre Laval and still court the United States as an ally. By 1942, however, Pétain drifted into the role of aging figurehead. Germany installed Laval as first premier, while giving him absolute power to run the government. Decisions now drifted from Pétain’s control. By the end of the war, Vichy would cooperate with Germany in such endeavors as Jewish persecution, munitions exchanges, and recruitment of men to serve with the German armies on the eastern front.

During World War II, Pétain resisted any idea of fleeing France and what he perceived as his duty. Even as the Allies invaded France and his government collapsed, Pétain desired to remain at his post. Detained by the Germans as they fled eastward in late 1944, Pétain protested this treatment. In April, 1945, his captors relented, and he was allowed to return to France. Once on native soil, Pétain was promptly placed on trial by Charles de Gaulle’s new French government for his leadership of the collaborationist government. On August 15, 1945, the deaf marshal of France was found guilty and sentenced to death and national degradation. De Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment on the Île d’Yeu off the Mediterranean coast of France, Pétain remained imprisoned on this island until pulmonary failure ended his life on July 23, 1951.

Significance

Pétain is a controversial figure in French history. During World War I, he received the highest accolades a country can offer. He was then strictly an army officer, and his contribution to the military science of the early twentieth century was enormous. Twenty-seven years later, however, and in the twilight of his life, Pétain suffered national humiliation. Vichy was in shambles, and Pétain bore the stain of leading France along the path of Nazi collaboration.

A stubborn sense of duty had guided Pétain to his greatest triumphs, and it now contributed to the disaster of Vichy. Pétain did not espouse fascism or even crave power; he simply believed himself the only man capable of saving France. The country needed a leader, and his concept of duty would not permit him to back down from his challenge. He therefore offered himself to the nation as a persevering moral example of past glory. Only by such a sacrifice did Pétain think that he could both acquit his duty and return France to the country’s former prominence.

Pétain’s estimation of this situation was wrong, and it altered his place in history. The Vichy experiment demonstrated a failed chapter in Pétain’s life, but it does not detract from either his military reputation or his personal character. Trained to place duty above self-interest, Pétain left a legacy of having struggled in two separate conflicts to save France. At his death, he was most proud of this simple fact.

Bibliography

Curtis, Michael. Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime. New York: Arcade, 2002. Describes the Vichy government’s treatment of the Jews, which led to the deportation of 75,000 Jews, most of whom were murdered. Curtis concludes the government was not a hapless victim of the Nazis but was an enthusiastic collaborator in the “final solution.”

Griffiths, Richard. Marshal Pétain. London: Constable, 1970. The best analysis in any language of Pétain’s military and political career. The book contains eighteen illustrations and a select bibliography.

Horne, Alistair. The Price of Glory. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1962. The definitive account of the Battle of Verdun. This book contains an extensive sketch of Pétain and his role during the battle. Horne’s treatment of Verdun provides an excellent beginning for studies into the tactics of World War I.

Lottman, Herbert R. Pétain, Hero or Traitor. New York: William Morrow, 1985. Based on previously sealed archives, Lottman’s work frequently delves into the personal life and character of Pétain. The narrative reads extremely well, but it lacks both illustrations and bibliography.

Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. This is a comprehensive account of Vichy. The book provides an overview of life, economics, and politics in unoccupied France during Pétain’s period in office. The bibliographic essay contains detailed references for further research.

Spears, Sir Edward. Two Men Who Saved France. Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein & Day, 1966. This is a fine account of Pétain during the mutiny of 1917. The volume contains an eyewitness account plus Pétain’s own version of the crisis.

Williams, Charles. Pétain: How the Hero of France Became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Recounts the events of Pétain’s life and career, focusing on his collaboration with the Germans during World War II. Williams dispassionately explains the reasons for Pétain’s controversial actions.