ABSTRACT
In the months that foHowed, there were to Ье other moments when the experience of the defeat broke through to the surface again. In the spring of 1945, the repatriation ofhundreds ofthousands ofprisoners ofwar brought French society [асе to [асе with the теп who had disappeared from view in 1940. It was, оп both sides, ап uncomfortable reunion. Having Ьееп cut off from the rest of French society during the Occupation, the ex-РОWs had missed the evolution that had occurred in their absence - the emergence of
Another kind of uncomfortable reunion with the past took рlасе in courtrooms, where former members of the Vichy regime were forced to answer for their actions after June 1940, and in some cases before. In 1943, de Gaulle's authorities had prosecuted an ex-Vichy minister, Pierre Pucheu, оп the grounds that he had plotted the illegal modification of а legal regime in 1940. Il In the wake of Liberation they levelled similar charges against Petain and other prominent Vichyites. Perhaps more than any other event, the trial ofMarshal Petain iпJulу-Аugust 1945 focused the public's attention back to the circumstances preceding the armistice. The former head of state was tried before а newly created Haute Соит de ]ustice, whose jurors were selected Ьу the members of the Consultative Assembly. The indictment contained two counts: that Petain had engaged in а premeditated plot to undermine the security of the French State; and that he had colluded with the enemy to advance the latter's interest as well as his own. In fact, the charges said more about Petain's alleged prewar plotting than about his conduct under the Occupation. Collaboration was largely construed as the outgrowth of а pre-defeat conspiracy, the means whereby the conspirators maintained themselves in power. 12 In line with these priorities, the prosecution began the trial Ьу focusing оп the first charge. Prosecutors argued that both the armistice and the parliamentary vote of July 10 had been the product of an organised anti-republican conspiracy involving Petain, Laval, and а motley collection of French right-wing extremists, and assisted Ьу Franco, Mussolini and Hit1er. А series of witnesses testified to Petain's associations with members of а notorious pro-fascist terrorist group called the Cagoule. They also testified to the Marshal's suspicious prescience about the events of Мау 1940: in March 1940, for ехатрlе, while still ambassador to Madrid, he was alleged to have told а government minister, Anatole
de Monzie, that "in the second half of Мау, they will need me".13 The former President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, bolstered the premeditation theory Ьу recalling that, when he asked Petain to form а government оп June 1 б, 1940, the latter pulled out а piece of paper with his list of ministers already written. Other witnesses, who had worked under him in the embassy in Madrid, testified that in the [аВ of 1939 he had been drafting lists of ministers (always including Laval) in the event that he would Ье called back to Paris to head the government. Some evidence (аВ of it hearsay) was presented to establish that Petain and Laval had been in contact throughout the phony war.
