VICHY - History of a Dictatorship 1940-1944

More than eighty years after its demise, the Vichy regime continues to haunt our collective memory. Within a matter of days in July 1940, the Republic collapsed. Behind Marshal Pétain — national hero turned head of the French State — and the unscrupulous politician Pierre Laval, opportunists playing the German card and far-right ideologues seized power.

The dictatorship settled in, for the worse. Opting for political collaboration in 1940, choosing the path of antisemitic crime in 1942, the government ultimately turned virtually the entire population against it. This dark chapter is told here as never before, drawing on previously unpublished archives, the latest exhumed testimonies, and renewed historical approaches attentive to psychological drivers, the complexity of individual trajectories, and the room for manoeuvre available to the actors involved.

As the reading progresses, a penetrating and nuanced portrait emerges. The work shows at once the headlong flight and egotistical blindness of the main leaders of the Pétainist regime, the implementation of criminal policies sometimes tempered by civil servants forming a genuine grey zone at the heart of the State, and a public opinion long marked by wait-and-see attitudes but gradually inclining in favour of the Allies.

A powerful reflection on the disastrous consequences of amorality in politics, and historical conclusions that challenge our present.