Politics on Trial: France on Trial – Pétain vs De Gaulle

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

History, News, Society & Culture, Politics, Philosophy

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is the first of two on the extraordinary treason trial of Marshal Pétain in the summer of 1945 that ended up putting wartime France in the dock. David talks to historian of modern France Julian Jackson about how Pétain found himself so quickly charged with treason and who was judging him. What was the essence of Pétain’s crime? Conspiracy? Surrender? Collaboration? Complicity in genocide? And what on earth was his defence? Julian Jackson’s France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain is available wherever you get your books https://bit.ly/4oTHcRP Available now on PPF+: our second episode on the Moscow Show Trials in which David and Edward Acton discuss the 1938 trial of Nikolai Bukharin, the most celebrated defendant of them all, whose case inspired some of the world’s great political literature. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ today https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus Next time in Politics on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain Part 2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:09.9	Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
1:16.3	Today, in politics on trial, I'm talking to Julian Jackson, the preeminent British historian of modern France,
1:23.7	about the trial that in many ways helps to define modern France, post-war France, and to define
1:30.5	the post-war order and many of the questions that lie in the background to it.
1:35.2	Who collaborated with whom?
1:37.6	It's the trial in the summer of 1945 in Paris of Marshal Pettin.
1:47.5	We have had lots of requests over the course of this series for particular trials,
	...

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