Marshal Philippe Petain
Philippe Pétain was the hero of Verdun and the head of a collaborationist state. Born in 1856 to a peasant family in the Pas-de-Calais, he was a colonel at fifty-eight and near retirement in 1914, having spent his career teaching that firepower governs the battlefield against a doctrine of relentless attack. The war proved him right and promoted him fast. He took command at Verdun in February 1916 with the line collapsing, organised the road that supplied it, and rotated divisions through so that most of the French army passed the battle rather than a few being destroyed by it. He is credited with the phrase that they shall not pass. He was made commander-in-chief after the Nivelle offensive broke the army in 1917, and ended the mutinies by improving leave, food and rest, executing a small number, and waiting for the Americans. He was made a Marshal in 1918. In June 1940, at eighty-four, he was brought into the government as France collapsed, became premier, and asked for an armistice. In July the National Assembly voted him full powers, and the Third Republic ended. Vichy was not merely a defeated administration. It legislated against Jews without German demand, in October 1940, and its police carried out the round-ups, including the Vél' d'Hiv in July 1942, that sent some seventy-five thousand people to the camps. He was tried in 1945 and sentenced to death; de Gaulle commuted it. He died in prison on the Île d'Yeu in 1951. The verdict stripped him of every honour except the rank of Marshal.
- Lived: 1856 CE – 1951 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: field_marshal, head_of_state
