BY LEE PFEIFFER
The darkest period of modern French history was the nation's humiliating defeat by Germany in 1940. France boasted of having the greatest army in Europe but was led by inept leaders who mistakenly used tactics of WWI. The French squandered the opportunity to strangle Hitler's rising armies, preferring to simply protest the building up of his armed forces in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. France and England declared war on Germany after Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939. However, a period of inaction followed, leading many to call the conflict "The Phony War". Although France had ample time to come up with strategies, its armed forces decided to fight a defensive war on French soil. The plan proved to be woefully inept in the era of the Blitzkreig. The fall of France in 1940 led to a period of political discontent that is still being debated today. In the aftermath of the war, General Charles DeGaulle, leader of the free French forces fighting from England, successfully marketed the notion that his nation was filled with patriots who consistently did all they could to resist their German occupiers. In fact, countless French patriots did indeed sacrifice their lives in order to do so - both on the battlefield and through the Resistance. Paris was liberated prior to to arrival of Allied forced by brave men and women who rose up to violently resist the most feared army on earth. Nevertheless, collaboration was the order of the day in occupied France. Hitler installed the WWI hero Marshall Petain as the head of state in Vichy, a region that was supposed to be free of German occupation. However, the world recognized it was a puppet state with Petain acting as a toady for his German masters. Petain and his co-collaborator Pierre Laval, maintained that appeasement of Germany was the only practical way for France to maintain some measure of independence. Indeed, France did avoid many of the atrocities committed in other occupied countries. However, the price of peace was full compliance with the Reich's obsessive oppression against Jews and any other group that was deemed a threat. Consequently, Petain and Laval capitulated by willingly complying with orders that meant certain death for countless French citizens.
The subject of French collaboration was deemed so sensitive that Marcel Ophul's landmark 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity could
not be shown in the nation for years because it addressed the issue in a
devastating way. In 1993, acclaimed director Claude Chabrol made his
own statement on the subject with the release of his documentary The Eye of Vichy, which
consisted entirely of French propaganda newsreels released during the
German occupation. It's a fascinating glimpse into life in a
totalitarian state. On the surface, Germany rewarded France for
collaborating by allowing the niceties of every day life to go on as
usual. The opera houses and movie theaters were packed and the elegant
shops and cafes were doing brisk business. Behind the scenes, of course,
the Resistance movement was being brutally suppressed and the nation
was subject to a massive propaganda campaign designed to show the folly
of siding with the "barbaric" Allies. Petain was given audiences with
Hitler himself in order to propagate the falsehood that he was the
leader of an independent nation.