Macron right to admit France’s Vichy wrongs

In June 1940, with Paris under occupation, French parliamentarians met in Vichy to hand autocratic power to the First World War hero, Marshall Pétain. His regime – authoritarian, anti-Semitic and virulently Anglophobic – lasted for four years. I visited the spa town this week to see how it was remembered.

Short answer: it isn’t. The plaque at Vichy’s opera house, the place where MPs voted to end the Third Republic, recalls the 80 deputies and senators (out of 649) who voted the other way. They deserve to be honoured, but it gives rather a partial impression of what happened.

Townspeople are understandably determined to emphasise the difference between a Vichyssois

(a local) and a Vichyste (a supporter of clericalfascism). They want Vichy to be known for its mineral water and its architecture: exquisite Art Nouveau and Art Déco buildings amid the cheerful jumble of neo-thisand-that that characterises many 19th-century resorts. The spoor of the early Forties has not exactly been erased; but the visitor has to look determinedly. “Getting your history wrong”, said the French writer Ernest Renan, “is part of what makes a nation”. From Charles de Gaulle onwards, French politicians portrayed Pétainism as an alien and accidental glitch. François Mitterrand, who had himself worked for the Vichy authorities, grandly declared: “The Republic had nothing to do with this. I do not believe France is responsible.”

In fact, Vichy began with popular as well as parliamentary support, and was recognised diplomatically by leading powers, including the US, and the Soviet Union.

Emmanuel Macron is the first French leader to acknowledge that. Last month marking the anniversary of the deportation of French Jews, he went out of his way to stress that no Germans had been involved. “It’s convenient to see the Vichy regime as born from nothing and returning to nothing. It’s convenient, but it’s false.” Bravo, Monsieur le President.