Was he a traitor?

>>1754704
No

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He was a good man, that understood he was leading a bunch of white flag-waving cowards.

>>1754704
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Petain was a right wing authoritarian who seized upon the opportunity of early french defeats and demoralization at the start of the war to become the petty authoritarian strongman he'd always wanted to be. France still had plenty of capability to resist and Germany did not have the resources at that point in the war to occupy the whole country if Petain and his surrenderists hadn't given up. But the cabal of conservatives he led figured sucking Hitler's cock and opening Frances asshole wide for the Nazi's was worth getting made a puppet ruler that could oppress those left wingers he hated so much.

They just didn't want Paris to get as trashed as some of the places that had resisted the Nazzies.
Lotta history there.

>>1754735
he was the one that waved the white flag

literally the worst poster on /his/

>>1754865
t.communist

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>>1754942

disgusting facist who is single handedly responsable for Frances international meme reputation as being cheese eating surrender monkeys.

Saving Paris and its architecture is the only thing commendable about Vichy France

>>1755180
Basically this. It was because of Vichi and the collaboration efforts that France never recovered their honor in the eyes of the rest of the world. At the time just after the Dunkirk evacuation, the King of Belgium was the one accused of being a coward, but the french collaboration overshadowed his (allegedly) unconstitutional surrendering. Unlike Belgium, that was occupied and had it's king taken prisoner and later mistreated and kept in a dungeon, Vichy France actively helped the germans.
He deserves to be called worse than traitor.

>>1754704
Definitely. The whole ">be frog >surrender" thing is a postwar creation to explain the willing surrender of France in a way that didn't involve the bit where they wanted and supported the authoritarians. Better to be a nation of cowards than a nation of Nazi sympathizers.

>>1754704
>Was he a traitor?

No, he realized that France lost, and made the most out of the defeat, by preserving some sovereignty.
Of course we know with the power of hindsight that the french could've fought on and ultimately win, but at the time with what he and everyone around him saw, things looked bad.
Better to salvage whats left, and not throw good money after bad, destroying the whole of France and the french nation because of "honor" or "pride". He made a difficult decision, and I respect his strength.

>>1755180
>Saving Paris and its architecture is the only thing commendable about Vichy France

France would've had its n+1th revolution and ended up as part of the USSR had he not stepped up though.
Look through period papers and journals, the french were THIS close to communism, which would've brought USSR into the war earlier, fucking up Germany at its weakest.
Do you want a Red Belt from one end of Europe to the opposite end of Asia?

>>1755456
desu it wouldn't have been as bad as the ussr in europe though, as they weren't capable of holding such vast ground. there would have been counterrevolutions and while communism would have become the dominant world ideology it wouldn't have existed under the ussr's heel

>>1755471
Earlier USSR, with its cult of science, praise of engineers, science fiction, robotics, space program, and so on, looked much different than Cold War USSR, where most of the funding went to fighting the USA and the state stagnated and went into poverty. They were by no means "the bad guys", or a failing economy.
Friedrich Hayek, the biggest communist hater, in his Road to Serfdom's original edition wrote that the British don't want to follow the Soviet model, even if it is more successful, and even if it will lead to more wealth and prosperity, because of principles of liberty and individualism.
H. D. F. Kitto says something similar in early editions of The Greeks.
So these intellectuals thought the USSR is the future, their economy will overshadow all, and they will be a world leader. Thats how things looked at the time.
France wouldn't be opposed to joining the USSR, because it would appear to them as a great opportunity and the right decision, just like to Petain it seemed like the right decision to save whatever he can from the inevitable communist revolution, even if that means cutting of an arm and a leg.

>>1755456
Communists were not that popular in 40 though.

The climate was favorable to them but the 15 years of petty (though sometimes brutal) squabbling with the socialists, the stalinist purges, the failure of the Front Populaire, and the pact with the nazis did not help.
They only got really popular after the war because of their role in the resistance, but even then that was not enough to get into power.

And yeah, Pétain was a stupid traitor who thought he could make a good deal with Hitler.

>>1754704
He took responsability for the defeat instead of cowardly fleeing to Britain like Polish politicians
As a result, millions less French civilians died than Polish ones

So, we'll hate him, because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian. A watchful protector. A Dark Knight.

>>1756053
why do poles have such shit luck to their leaders?

literally lions led by sheep

>>1754865
>When Germany wants the navy he doesn't co-operate
>Tells north African forces to join with the allies upon their landing
The fact of the matter is the socialists who ruled the country beforehand put the country in enough of a shitty position that made the war unwinnable. Post WWII France needed a fall guy and Petain fit the bill. While he made some mistakes he's not the devil as some seem to believe.

>>1756081
>The fact of the matter is the socialists who ruled the country beforehand put the country in enough of a shitty position that made the war unwinnable.
That's what he said.
And he even organised a trial about it, in which Blum easily demonstrated that this was false and that the blame for the lost war weights mostly on the high command of the army and the right wing governments.

Regarding the Navy he signed a clause that required most of the french ships to go back to ports under the control of the germans to be destroyed.

And he told the north african forces to fight back against the allies, saying that
>France and its honor are at stake. We are attacked. We are defending.
When his general Giraud and admiral Darlan defected to the allies he deprived them of their french citizenship and sentenced them to death.

He was an old fool thirsty for personal power.