Nicholas Atkin - Petain

PTAIN

Profiles In Power

General Editor : Keith Robbins

ELIZABETH I
Christopher Haigh

RICHELIEU
R.J. Knecht

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS (2nd Edn)
Michael Roberts

OLIVER CROMWELL
Barry Coward

PETER THE GREAT (2nd Edn)
M.S. Anderson

JOSEPH II
T.C.W. Blanning

NAPOLEON
Geoffrey Ellis

ALEXANDER I
Janet M. Hartley

DISRAELI
Ian Machin

JUREZ
Brian Hamnett

CAVOUR
Harry Hearder

NAPOLEON III
James McMillan

FRANCIS JOSEPH
Steven Beller

ATATURK
A.L. Macfie

LLOYD GEORGE
Martin Pugh

PTAIN
Nicholas Atkin

HITLER
Ian Kershaw

CHURCHILL
Keith Robbins

NASSER
Peter Woodward

DE GAULLE
Andrew Shennan

FRANCO
Sheelagh Ellwood

MACMILLAN
John Turner

KENNEDY
Hugh Brogan

CASTRO (2nd Edn)
Sebastian Balfour

Nicholas Atkin

First published 1998

by Addison Wesley Longman Limited

Published in the United States of America
by Addison Wesley Longman Inc.

Published 2014

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

ISBN: 978-1-315-84547-0 (eISBN)

Taylor & Francis 1998

The right of Nicholas Atkin to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved; no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

ISBN 978-0-582-07037-0 PPR
ISBN 978-0-582-07036-3 CSD

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atkin, Nicholas.
Ptain / Nicholas Atkin.
p. cm. (Profiles in power)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-07036-8 (case). ISBN 0-582-07037-6 (pbk.)
1. Ptain, Philippe, 1856-1951. 2. MarshalsFranceBiography.
3. France. ArmeBiography. 4. Heads of stateFranceBiography.
5. FrancePolitics and government20th century. I. Title.
II. Series: Profiles in power (London, England)
DC342.8.P4A9 1997
944.08'092dc21
[b] 97-14220
CIP

At first sight, Philippe Ptain might seem a curious choice for inclusion in a series entitled Profiles in Power'. On the eve of the First World War, at the age of 58, the only authority he had exercised was that which a middle-ranking officer commands over his men in peacetime. Retirement already beckoned. It was the outbreak of fighting in August 1914 that propelled him into positions of importance. In 1916 he was placed in charge of Verdun, for many the most momentous battle ever fought by French soldiers; in 1917 he was named Commander-in-Chief of the French armies, and quelled the mutinies that were born out of nearly three years of unforgiving trench warfare; and in 1918 he received his marshal's baton. None the less, to that date the offices he had enjoyed were largely in the military domain. The same was true of the 1920s when he occupied a seat on the many committees that comprised the High Command; in 1925 he even returned to active service, directing colonial troops in the Rif. Political office came late in the day: in February 1934 he served as Minister of War in the brief-lived Doumergue cabinet. Thereafter, a number of newspapers campaigned for a Ptain government, yet the marshal himself discouraged their efforts, and wisely kept a distance from the extreme right-wing leagues that sought to overthrow the Third Republic. Unwilling to play the part of a Boulanger, he preferred semi-retirement, resurfacing in March 1939 to take up the minor post of ambassador to Spain.

Given the pattern of this career, it is tempting for the historian interested in power to begin any study of Ptain on 17 June 1940 when the 'Victor of Verdun' announced on the radio that he was taking charge of government and had offered the although in practice the marshal's influence was severely curtailed by a number of factors: the German presence; the division of France into several zones; inter-ministerial rivalries; and the wider developments of the war. By 1942, the year in which the Germans occupied all of France, he had become little more than a figurehead. Yet he had not lost his appetite for wheeler-dealing, and retained an enormous popularity in the countryside, an appeal that was vital for the survival of the Vichy regime.

There exists a further temptation for beginning this study in summer 1940: the legacy of the Nazi occupation of France. This episode has left an indelible imprint on the French national consciousness, an imprint which is perhaps deeper than that of die Revolution of 1789. Indeed, the experience was so traumatic that it has only been in the last two decades that the French public has begun to reconcile itself to what actually happened. There remains particular shame and embarrassment over the fate of die Jews, and it is telling that much of the recent literature on the Occupation has concentrated on racial persecution. In the words of one historian, this process of coming to terms with the Vichy years has constituted a 'syndrome', an evocative term that conjures up the image of an illness.

There are, then, compelling arguments for focusing this profile in power on Ptain's time at Vichy, and it will not go unnoticed that five of the nine chapters presented here deal with the post-1939 period. By and large it is only hagiographers that dwell on his early years, especially his life as an unknown soldier, perhaps with the intention of distracting attention from the role he played during the Occupation.