Who is marshal henri petain

A titular French government was set up in an ex-Hohenzollern castle at Sigmaringen. It soon collapsed and the marshal returned to France to be tried for treason. He refused to recognise the authority of the court and how much he was able to take in of the proceedings by this time is uncertain. In his defence it was argued that in appalling circumstances he had done his best to protect French interests and had in fact enabled France to survive.

Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. All rights reserved. Nevertheless, he played an important part in the design and placement of the Maginot line; he himself chose the best sites for its major fortresses. Later, during the mids, he served as minister of war for a brief period.

Vichy provided limited protection to native French Jews, but it adopted repressive measures on its own from to , including property confiscation, dismissals from government service, and exclusions from professions and higher education. Though Jews had a better life in France than they experienced in other Nazi-occupied or Nazi-controlled countries, the Vichy government interned thousands of foreign Jews under primitive conditions, and as many as three thousand Jews may have died in camps under French control.

The Vichy regime also rounded up foreign Jews in the unoccupied zone and handed them over to the Germans. Despite his wish to be buried among the fallen of Verdun, he remains buried on the small island off the coast of Brittany.

Edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. All rights reserved. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

While working as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford built his first gasoline-powered horseless carriage, the Quadricycle, in the shed behind his home.

In , he established the Ford Motor Company, and five years later the company Officially neutral, in practice the regime collaborated closely with Germany, and brought in its own anti-Semitic legislation. But Laval's successors were unacceptable to the Germans and Laval was restored. In November , in response to allied landings in North Africa, the Germans invaded the unoccupied zone of France.

He returned to France after liberation, was brought to trial and condemned to death. This was immediately commuted to solitary confinement for life by General Charles De Gaulle.