Petain's Crime [Hardcover]

Paul Webster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0929587553 | ISBN-13: 978-0929587554 | Edition: 1St Edition

A controversial best-seller in Paris, this shocking history of French collaboration in the Holocaust accuses Petain and the Vichy government of independently and enthusiastically seeing to the extermination of French Jews.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A controversial bestseller in France, this shocking book by the London Guardian 's Paris correspondent charges that French complicity in the Holocaust ran far deeper than previously known. Webster traces the history of French anti-Semitism to its climax in 1940, when Marshal Philippe Petain, head of the collaborationist Vichy government, signed into law a statute declaring French Jews enemies of the state. Petain then launched a program of arrest and deportation that resulted in the deaths of 72,000 French, foreign and stateless Jews in the extermination camps of the East. Purportedly, four thousand others were killed in a gas chamber on French soil. The book presents evidence indicating that the program was conceived, organized and carried out independently of the Germans. In addition to providing details on what he calls "the most shameful period in French history," Webster exposes the postwar coverup based on the false impression that Vichy resisted German demands to assist in the "final solution." Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book for general readers purports to sell the "complete story of the French collaboration in the Holocaust." Written in the tone of an expose of previously unrevealed secrets, it points to the willing participation of Vichy French leaders and citizens in the arrest, deportation, and extermination of French Jews. He further contends that Marshal Petain, as absolute leader during the Vichy era, participated fully in these crimes. Unfortunately, the author's arguments are not original, nor does he bring new evidence to support them. There is something to be said for reading accounts of these atrocities to remind us of the brutality that lies just below the surface of our civilization. But readers can find the same arguments better documented and more persuasively presented in Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton's Vichy France and the Jews (Schocken, 1983).
- Frank L. Wilson, Purdue Univ., W. Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 239 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; 1St Edition edition (February 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0929587553
• ISBN-13: 978-0929587554
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,587,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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