4 ms·

i never saw petain as such a bad guy. In ww1 he changed the French strategy to something that wasn't batshit crazy and saved many lives. In ww2 he stopped a fig

i never saw petain as such a bad guy. In ww1 he changed the French strategy to something that wasn't batshit crazy and saved many lives. In ww2 he stopped a fight the French could not win. Signed a deal. Did what he had to do. I don't think supporting him is that strange at all. Petain did bad things too but basically anyone who was with the nazis had to. What matters is whose idea it was to slaughter Jews and other civilians and also who forced who to do what.

rosser 8y ago
> What matters is whose idea it was to slaughter Jews and other civilians and also who forced who to do what. Committing genocide is always just an idea, until you leverage the state to make it happen. That takes complicity, not coercion.
mncharity 8y ago
> Did what he had to do. I enjoyed Paris at War: 1939-1944, by David Drake, for its description of every-day living in Paris during the occupation. This paragraph[1] suggests an alternate view exists. Meta observation: So much information is lost when collapsing the complexity of a person, government, subcultures, and historical movements, down to one-liners, and thence to a 'bad guy? or not?' judgment, that it's not clear to me the resulting signal is useful. [1] p365, 2nd paragraph "Patain had a very different reception in the former Unoccupied Zone. [...]": https://books.google.com/books?id=LCxUCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA365#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=LCxUCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA...