De Gaulle & Petain: Struggling for the Soul of France

Course Code: 2XDP10C20

Start Date: 20/04/2021

• Tuesday

Session: Morning

Length in weeks: 10

Time: 10.00am-12.00pm

Price: £

During the years 1940-44 two soldiers claimed to be leaders of the ‘real’ France; each was projected by his partisans as the embodiment of the true French identity. Famously de Gaulle had ‘a certain idea of France’; what was it, and in what ways did it differ from that of Petain’s ‘Regenerated France’? Is it at all helpful to cast these years in terms of arm-wrestling between a ‘France’ and an ‘Anti-France’?  When and why did the French abandon Petain for de Gaulle?  Are ‘Gaullism’ and ‘Petainism’ now museum pieces or is their shadowy presence still detectable in present day feuding about French identity?