Petain

Nicholas Atkin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780582070370
• eBook ISBN: 9781317897972
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Pétain (1856-1951) remains one of the most controversial figures in the history of modern France. He was saviour of his country at Verdun in 1916 during the First World War, but tried for treason as head of state of the collaborationist Vichy government after World War II. Were his actions those of a traitor? - or a patriot facing the total disintegration of his country? In exploring the actions of this controversial figure, Nicholas Atkin also reveals the divisions and uncertainties of France herself.

Chapter 1
The Officer, 1856-1914

Given that Pétain exercised little power before 1914, it remains tempting to pass over his days as an unknown soldier. This would be a mistake. It should not be forgotten that, on the eve of the First World War, he was 58 years of age and already possessed a well-defined character which, in many respects, remained unchanged for die rest of his life. Thus an examination of this personality, and the forces that shaped it, is essential in any overall appreciation of his career.¹

Henri Philippe Bénomi Orner Pétain was born on 24 April 1856 at the village of Cauchy-à-la-Tour in the Pas-de-Calais, a department in northern France. Given his vocation as a soldier and future role at Vichy, it was appropriate that his birthplace should have been in an area accustomed to battle and enemy occupation. It was here that the English had set up camp during the Hundred Years War. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, this part of France had again been besieged by the English, this time by the Duke of Marlborough. Then in 1870, 1914 and 1940 came the three German invasions.² Yet apart from a great uncle who had served under Napoleon I and an uncle who had fought for Napoleon III, Pétain's family had few military connections. It was instead of solid peasant stock, able to trace its ancestry back to the seventeenth century.

This rural background left an indelible impression on the young Pétain, helping co shape his personality. Like many peasants from the Artois, he possessed a prudent and phlegmatic temperament peppered with a caustic sense of humour. Undoubtedly, these qualities enabled him to remain calm at moments of crisis, yet they also fostered a pessimism which clouded his vision in both 1918 and 1940. His attachment to the soil also instilled in him a taste for simple things, an abstemiousness that was hardened by years of military service. Even when he knew fame, he retained a humble lifestyle and spurned ostentation. Most importantly, his peasant upbringing engendered a dislike for the 'society born of the Industrial Revolution'.³ In the 1850s Cauchy comprised approximately 400 inhabitants whose lives were regulated by the surrounding countryside. Yet already the Nord-Pas-de-Calais was experiencing the early stirrings of industrialization;⁴ it was here that Emile Zola set his novel Germinal which recounted the brutal conditions of a new workforce condemned to toil in the mines. Later in his career, when he bothered to do any reading at all, Pétain preferred the classical drama of Corneille and the romantic tales of Sir Walter Scott, and considered that it was the values of an unspoiled peasantry which had made France great. During the Occupation, Vichy propaganda never tired of reminding its audience that the marshal was of farming stock; the moral recovery of the nation, it was argued, could only be achieved through a return to the primitive values of the earth.⁵

None the less, it would be a mistake to overplay Pétain's personal attachment either to the land or to his birthplace. It is significant that when in 1918 he thought again of retirement, he chose not to return to the rain-swept plains of northern France, his original intention in 1914. Instead, he preferred the sunnier climes of the south and purchased a country house, L'Ermitage, at Villeneuve-Loubet in the department of Alpes-Maritimes, an area he had known as a junior officer. It is also worth noting that his distaste for industrialization did not mean he was incapable of understanding its dynamics. During the First World War he quickly saw how success in a conflict of attrition depended on the smooth running of a highly developed economy. Clearly, the military had done much to broaden his horizons. So too had several of his relatives.

Although Pétain frequently alluded to his rural origins, he had not been raised in an inward-looking peasant family. His father, Omer-Venant, had once lived in Paris where he had worked for Daguerre, an early pioneer of photography. Omer would probably have remained in the capital had it not been for the 1848 revolution which forced a return to the family farm. In 1851 he married Clotilde Legrand and together they had five children, including Philippe. Little is known about Pétain's mother except that she died when he was 18 months old and that she too had connections outside of Cauchy. These proved important. After Clotilde's death, Omer remarried and had three further children with his new wife, Marie-Reine Vincent, who displayed little affection towards the offspring of the previous marriage.⁶ Pétain was thus entrusted to the care of relatives, notably his maternal grandmother, Françoise Crossart, who regaled her charge with blood-curdling stories of the excesses of the French Revolution. Two priests also had a hand in his upbringing, the origins perhaps of a later liking for clerical company. The first, abbé Jean-Baptiste Legrand, was Clotilde's brother. The second, abbé Philippe Marcel Lefebvre, Clotilde's great uncle, had once served as an administrator in Napoleonic Italy and enchanted Pétain with his campaign anecdotes.

Indebted to the goodwill of such relatives, Pétain never relinquished a belief that the family was the most effective of social units. It became a key element in his political philosophy and that of the Vichy regime. Yet he himself was hardly the epitome a good family man. An incorrigible philanderer, he did not marry until he was 64 years of age and never had children of his own. It was probably the army rather than a dislike of his step-mother that accounts for the contradictions between his political thought and his private behaviour. Life as a career soldier was dull, enlivened by occasional flutters at the roulette wheel and constant womanizing. His handsome features, notably his piercing blue eyes and blond hair, won over several women; and he himself retained a healthy appetite for sexual pleasures. At the very end of his life, a senile Pétain remarked to his jailor, Joseph Simon: 'le con et la gueule, il n'y a que ça de vrai!'⁷ The marshal further claimed to Simon that he had made love in 1942 at the age of 86!⁸ Whatever the truth behind this boasting, it is clear that as a young man he had actively sought a wife, only to discover that a meagre salary and poor prospects made him an unattractive prospect. Eventually, age also counted against him. In 1901 he proposed to Eugénie Hardon, whom he had known since her childhood, yet her parents vetoed the wedding on the grounds that he was 45 years old and she 21. She married instead a painter, Pierre de Hérain, whom she divorced shortly before 1914. That gave Pétain his chance, and in 1920 he wed Eugénie in a civil service. Because he was marrying a divorcée, a nuptial mass was out of the question; yet when in 1929 his wife's first marriage was annulled, Pétain did not seek a religious ceremony. This was eventually performed by the Church in 1941 without the marshal present.

After adolescence, Pétain appears to have lost his personal faith, seemingly another casualty of his life as a professional soldier. He stopped attending mass and once quipped that an organ concert on the radio was enough for his spiritual needs.⁹ None the less, he retained a deep respect for the Church which had played a significant role in his childhood. Thanks to the influence of abbé Legrand and a small scholarship bequeathed by abbé Lefebvre, Pétain was able to attend the Catholic boarding college of Saint-Bertin in the nearby town of Saint Omer. Had Pétain been born 20 years later, he might have been a beneficiary (as was Pierre Laval, his leading minister under the Occupation) of the wide-ranging educational changes initiated by the Third Republic. Anxious to combat the political threat posed by clericalism, during the 1880s the new regime steadily undermined the grip which the Church had hitherto exercised over primary education. In future, the state elementary school was to be free, compulsory, and neutral in religious affairs. Not having witnessed these reforms first-hand, Pétain nurtured a mistrust of the école publique and was especially suspicious of its teachers, who he believed were motivated by left-wing and anti-patriotic sentiments. By contrast, he possessed a soft spot for Catholic education which he felt had been unfairly victimized by the 'godless Republic'. According to Jérôme Carcopino, one of Vichy's many ministers of education, the marshal sought to crush Catholic schools beneath the weight of his favours.¹⁰

It was, however, the army which commanded Pétain's greatest loyalty and played the most important part in his development. The reason why he joined up remains a matter for speculation. As noted, some biographers have suggested that he was captivated by the campaign stories of abbé Lefebvre. Another possibility is that, while at school in Saint-Omer, he was enthralled by the uniforms of cavaliy officers stationed at a nearby recruiting depot. Others argue that, following the French defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870, he was motivated by a spirit of revenge. After the war, military drill was introduced at Saint-Bertin and Pétain himself became an instructor. In a speech of 1936, he informed army volunteers from Alsace and Lorraine that he had joined up to recover the lost provinces.¹¹ In truth, his reasoning was less romantic. He recognized that when he finished his education he would not be welcome at the family farm. Thus he needed to find another career. The priesthood was one option, engineering another. Neither offered the same kind of financial stability as the army. Accordingly, in 1875 he enrolled at the Dominican college of Albert-le-Grand in Arcueil with the intention of preparing for the military academy of Saint-Cyr. The following year he was admitted to this famous institution, listed 403 out of 412. His life as a soldier had begun.

Even by peacetime standards, Pétain's pre-war career was an undistinguished one.¹² On leaving Saint-Cyr, he spent five years as a sous lieutenant in the 24th Battalion of Chasseurs at Villefranche-sur-mur (1878-83) and then another five as lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of Chasseurs at Besançon (1883-8). Next, he proceeded to the prestigious École de Guerre (1888-1900) where he attended lectures delivered by some of the most distinguished military theorists in France. Now a captain, he was assigned to the 15th Corps at Marseilles (1890-2) before being put in charge of the 29th Battalion of Chasseurs at Vincennes (1892-3). This brought him close to the nub of mili tary affairs and, within a year, he was in the capital attached to the staff of General Saussier, military commander of Paris.¹³ This posting lasted for much of the decade (1893-9) and under Saussier's successors, Zurlinden and Brugère, he became an ojftcier d'ordonnance.

To achieve further promotion, Pétain was required to take another command;¹⁴ so he joined the 8th Battalion of Chasseurs based near Amiens (1899-1900) reaching the rank of major. Noted as a skilful rifle instructor, he then taught at the École Normale de Tir at Châlons, yet only stayed a few months (1901) . His unorthodox views on fire-power contradicted those of the director, Colonel Vonderscherr, and Pétain requested a transfer. After a spell with the 5th Infantry Regiment in Paris (1901), he returned to the École de Guerre as lecturer in infantry tactics (1903-11). Here, his dry sense of humour and terseness of speech earned him the nickname, among students, of 'Précisle-sec'.¹⁵ His superiors were more agitated by his unconventional military thinking, and he found himself temporarily posted to the 104th Infantry Regiment (1903) and the 118th Infantry Regiment (1907). By 1911, however, he was a full colonel and left Paris to lead the 33rd Infantry Regiment at Arras (1911-14); on the eve of war, he moved to the 4th Infantry Brigade, expecting this to be his last posting before retirement.

Why was his rise through the ranks so slow? In fairness to Pétain, it should first be remembered that promotion was difficult in peacetime. Contrary to what sometimes is believed, the officer corps was not dominated by an aristocratic elite eager to monopolize eveiy post. Instead it comprised an eclectic mix, including former NCOs and sons of gendarmes, minor civil servants and better-off peasants.¹⁶ All looked to the army for financial security with the result that competition for jobs was fierce. It should be further noted that peacetime allowed officers little opportunity to excel in action. One way to shine was through colonial campaigns, yet Pétain expressed no desire to leave metropolitan France and did not fight overseas until the Rif war of 1925 when the French and Spanish Protectorates in Morocco were threatened by an uprising of the Berber tribes led by Abd el-Krim.

Pétain's initial lack of interest in colonial ventures has led to suggestions that he lacked ambition, something he had aplenty after 1914. Apparently in 1903 he was offered the directorship of the rifle school at Châlons, yet considered himself too junior for such responsibility. It has also been speculated that he refused th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Dedication
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1 The Officer, 1856-1914
• CHAPTER 2 The General, 1914-18
• CHAPTER 3 The Marshal, 1919-39
• CHAPTER 4 The Saviour, 1939-40
• CHAPTER 5 Le Chef, 1940-2
• CHAPTER 6 The Collaborator, 1940-2
• CHAPTER 7 The Figurehead, 1942-3
• CHAPTER 8 The Exile, 1944 ...
• CHAPTER 9 The Man and the Myth
• Bibliographical Essay
• Maps
• Index