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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Goes a long way to explaining the conflicts of an anithero, 8 Jan 2006
I really enjoyed this insightful biography about one of the most interesting of Frances anti/heros - because although he saved France in the First World War his actions in the Second World War have branded him as a traitor in many eyes. Certainly France has turned out some controversial leaders - Napoleon, de Gaulle, and of course Petain. The son of a peasant, the hero of the First world war, the traitor to the French in the second, and died at the age of 95 in captivity. Petain is a controversial figure in history. Certainly his right-wing attitudes and alliances were perhaps more a product of his age than anything else, and in this biography Charles Williams offers an excellent examination of his life and achievements. (INterestingly Williams has also done a biography on de Gaulle.) Petain was already 58 when the first world war began and already feeling like he had done his dash - in fact the best and worst of his life was to come. His organisation of the French army defence was superb and his ability to organise them enormous. The controversy of the western front and the laying of guilt of the generals is dealt with well by Williams, a comparison of Haig's role and his attitude vs that of Petain. It makes interesting comparison. It seems astonishing that the same man who saved France in the first war should so casually give it away to Hitler and the Germans in the second. Yet not only was he prepared to do so, he also allowed some of the worst of the Nazi laws to be enacted in France - the rounding of the jews, forced labour and more. Yet Williams clearly shows that this was not at variance with what we know of Petain and in fact the 1920's and 30's see him clearly moving in this direction. Better anything but communist - a staunch hatred of parliament, and authoritarianism above independence . Petain was a complex man and his background contributed to this. He was very much a man out of his time - he clearly reflected a man of the 19th century, an unacceptable condition for the times. Williams is astute in his analysis and even in his praise and condemnation. Petain died in captivity in 1951 at the age of 95 - his life had been a brief flash of a real glory and a finale which had forever branded him a traitor from the country who had once worshipped him. I would highly recommend this book, it is a bit weighty but it is thoughtful and analytical. It both personalises Petain but also puts him into perspective to an age and its morals, and to the politics. I found I was much more sympatheitc to Petain even if I didn't agree with his actions. The logic of their progress was complex but more understandable in Williams examination. Highly readable.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre biography that never captures the man, 5 Oct 2007
After reading this book, I certainly know more about the sex life of Henri-Philippe Petain then I ever expected I would. But then when an author is writing about a man who sleeps with every woman he can, including the widows of the officers that died under his command, it is a hard subject to avoid. Petain was a hero to all of France after World War I and a traitor after World War II. We can easily think of many men who died too young, John Kennedy, Will Rogers, Buddy Holly. DeGaulle suggested that Petain died too old.
If Petain had died in 1920 he would be remembered as one of the greatest heroes of France, having saved the French army at Verdun in 1916, ended the mutiny of 1917, and stopped the German spring offensive of 1918. Already in his sixties when the war ended (he had been prepared to retire when the war started), Petain lived for 33 more years giving him time to become attracted to the idea of a dictatorship. He was fascinated by Francisco Franco and believed that the only thing that could save France was a single person in power, with himself as that person, of course. When France fell in 1940, Petain signed the Armistice to end the fighting and took up the dictatorship of Vichy France. While there, he let the Jews be deported, let the Nazis take French citizens as slave labor, he fought to stop the Resistance, and created a secret police to control his citizens.
Which leads to my major complaint with the book, that it is much to sympathetic to Petain. The author frequently falls back on Petain's age as being a factor or that Petain thought that he was needed to rescue France from the occupation. The one word that the author fails to use that describes Petain best is narcissist. No one could have possibly had a higher opinion of Petain than Petain. His mistakes were the faults of others. His triumphs were all his alone. Only he could save France. Resigning in the face of Nazi atrocities would destroy France. At the same time he was easily swayed by the last argument he heard on an issue. So it wasn't his policies that mattered to him since he really had none that he held intensely.
I have other complaints as well. The book could have used some maps. Describing the pitch and flow of battles running across the French countryside without having a good idea of where this river or this town is located makes it hard to follow the story. The pictures included were insufficient as they are almost exclusively of Petain. The author describes a picture of Nini (Petain's wife), but does not include the picture. The many people moving in and out of the story could have used brief biographies. It is hard to keep track of a person mentioned on one page who disappears for thirty pages but then is an important part of the continuing story. The final chapters of Petain's trial for treason and his imprisonment are simply too long. I really didn't need to know that at 90, Petain was having issues with incontinence. More detail about why the French government felt unable to move Petain to a military hospital would have been more helpful than gossip about Petain's final days.
Overall, the book is a readable biography of Petain. It certainly isn't a great book and had too many failings to make me truly enjoy it. I know more about Petain than when I started the book but I still feel that Petain himself is in the mist.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
(Some of )the many facets of a complex man, 14 Jan 2008
As always when there are two reviews it is easy to fall between them. And so it is... I read this when it was first published as I wanted to find out more about the enigma that is Philippe Pétain. I knew a little about his First World War career and at the same time this kindly old man's name was almost a swear word in the home of my French parents-in-law. And so I discovered the two sides of the Pétain coin. On one side the one of the few senior officers that gained and kept the respect of the ordinary soldier during the mutinies of 1917 and on the other the womanising showman riding his white horse at the Paris Victory Parade of 1919.
Indeed (as noted by A.Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austin list in their review) his career - as with so many great leaders - appeared to have stalled (although a long and comfortable way from his early life in Pas de Calais) before the Great War sidelined lecturing as he was at the École Militaire and ready to retire. He stepped up and carved a niche for himself as a humanitarian general before the disaster of Vichy.
As for the admiration of Franco - well it was part of the times and many people at many levels in many nations were attracted to the idea of dictatorships. Witness Mussolini, Moseley, Hitler, and Stalin to name but a few.
That in no way excuses the behaviour towards the populations and the deaths such regimes cause, simply to acknowledge that they were part of the times, just as extramarital affairs were.
Thomas Paul's review rightly points up the author's apparent sympathy to his subject. Perhaps this is just a response to the many books that concentrate on Pétain's part in the Vichy regime. I am reminded of a quote attributed to boxer Mohammed Ali: `The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.' People change and this book allows you to see how Pétain changed to capitalise on the opportunities he saw.
I was intrigued, shocked, drawn to and saddened almost from page to page by what this book revealed - the more so as I had just finished Williams' biography of De Gaulle. Overall I enjoyed it greatly, although at times as with any biography there were times when I wanted a different amount of detail some times less sometimes more.
And I guess this is perhaps what I would like to have seen - more on how the two men -both 'Saviours of France' came to admire and then loath each other. Maybe France wasn't big enough for them both.
But that is perhaps a book still waiting to be written.
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