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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to Battleground 44 with me, Patrick Bishop.

Today we're going to be talking about two intriguing characters who came to symbolise

the traumatic fracture that opened in French society under the shock of the Second World War.

On the one hand, we have General Charles de Gaulle, who in 1940 in the wake of catastrophic defeat,

sprang from obscurity to become the symbol of France unbowed, and whose quixotic refusal to accept defeat

raised the standard for French resistance outside the country.

On the other stands Marshal Philippe Petan,

who incarnated the idea of stoical acceptance

of the new and unpleasant reality of occupation

and presented himself as a self-sacrificing father figure

who unlike D Gaulle stayed behind

to shield his people from the worst the Germans could do to them.

Eighty years ago, the struggle between these two men and the version of France they represented

was coming to a climax. The Allies were ashore and the Battle of Normandy, while far from over, was almost certain to end in German defeat.

We'll talk about that later, but first, I want to focus on the personalities and characters of this fascinating pair.

And we're very privileged to have with us today, a man who I would say is the paramount historian of mid-20th century France.

That is Julian Jackson, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London.

...