Politics on Trial: France on Trial Part 2 – Vichy vs the Jews

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, News, Society & Culture, Politics, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is the second part of David’s conversation with historian Julian Jackson about the case of Marshal Pétain and the crimes of the Vichy regime. Did Pétain really play a ‘double game’ in which he tried to deceive the Nazis? How then to explain the vicious antisemitism of the Vichy regime? Why did the fate of France’s Jews not get more attention at Pétain’s trial? And how does the case of Pétain and the question of Vichy still resonate in French politics today? Julian Jackson’s France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain is available wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/4oTHcRP Next Time: Chris Clark on Trump-like leaders from German history (and it’s not the one you think!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:09.8	Hello, my name's David Runciman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
1:16.4	Today, it's the second part of my conversation with Julian Jackson about the extraordinary story of the trial of Marshall Petin in Paris in 1945.
1:31.2	And in today's episode, we turn to what is in many ways the central question of the trial. Was the Vichy regime led by Petin a collaborationist regime,
1:37.9	or did it protect the French people? And if it did protect the French people, why the hell didn't it do more to protect France's Jews?
	...

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