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https://www.ft.com/content/4b995644-abe9-11df-bfa7-00144feabdc0
In few European countries do rival interpretations of great historical events set national passions aflame as scorchingly as in France. The 1789 Revolution, the Paris Commune and the Dreyfus affair spring to mind – and so, too, do the dark years of 1940 to 1944 when France, overrun by Hitler’s armies, established an authoritarian regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain that collaborated with Nazi Germany.
For nearly three decades after the second world war, French leaders – starting with the wartime hero Charles de Gaulle, – promoted the myth that the vast majority of French people had rejected Pétain’s regime, which was fundamentally illegitimate and unrepresentative of la vraie France. Pétain himself concocted the “sword and shield” version of history, according to which de Gaulle had fought against German tyranny from London, while Pétain in Vichy had protected his countrymen no less courageously against the Nazi occupiers.
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