Petain's Crime

[Elliot Kane]

Interesting book I read whilst incapable of typing. Petain's Crime by Paul Webster is basically the story of Vichy France and just how much complicity they had in the Holocaust.

It's a great book and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the period, not least because of the sheer scale of the revelations involved. It's quite amazing just how divided the French people were, with numerous brave and caring people helping Jews escape whilst others sold them out for a pittance.

The main story though is that of Petain's regime and its criminal acts. Fascinating - and horrifying.

[Glance A'Lot]

Remarkable also that such book is written by a Non-French.

When I lived in France ('69 -'72) I, as teenage foreign national (German above all), got the distinct impression that in WWII there were 50 million people in the resistance.

[Elliot Kane]

Often the way it's portrayed too, Glance! The 'heroic' French Resistance - from the legend you'd have thought they killed half Hitler's forces on their own, wouldn't you?

In actual fact, there were less German soldiers in the whole of France than there were policemen in Paris and what resistance there was was shot through with fifth columnists. And plenty of Frenchmen fought for the Nazis or at the very least helped them.

One of the main reasons why Normandy was chosen for D-Day was because it was the only place where we could trust the Resistance to help.

France's status as an Allied power owes more to propaganda than fact. It was more like a civil war for them.