ABSTRACT
In order to understand the nature of French politics after the Second World War, it is necessary to look briefly at the French experience of the war itself. French defences against German military attack failed in 1940 and the occupying army entered the capital on 14 June, as millions of Parisians fled their homes and their city as best they could. Germany occupied the north and the west of France and a retired French military man, Marshal Philippe Pétain, became head of the remaining État français in the south and east, with a government based in Vichy. Pétain soon established that Vichy would pursue a policy of full cooperation with the Nazi regime and many ordinary French people supported him, particularly at first, because his apparent policy of damage limitation appeared to many to be the best way of surviving, both in a literal, personal sense and as a people.
