Putting an End to Vichy

Will Vichy always haunt the French conscience? What relationship will France then maintain with very old wounds? Will we still know that Vichy was born from the most cruel and total defeat in all of French history, that it cannot be imagined apart from the harsh demands of the occupier and the daily inquisition of the Parisian "collaborators"? These questions — and a few others — are at the origin of this book, which I wanted to be almost like a testament. Forty years of work, the written testimonies of thousands of readers, have given me the right, and perhaps the duty, to write it. I wanted to emphasize points that have been too often neglected and whose understanding would allow for a less black-and-white judgment, which does not mean indulgent. Because regarding Vichy, I hold as valid what Germaine de Staël, recalling the Terror, wrote in 1810: "To allow oneself bad means for a goal one believes good is a maxim of conduct singularly vicious in its principle..." I know all the more what can be reproached to Vichy — the compromises, the complicities, the initiatives — as I keep, alongside photos of my children, the photo of Régine Adjelson, an eight-year-old Jewish girl deported to Auschwitz in the convoy of August 17, 1942... Putting an end to Vichy... Will it ever end? But understanding the evolution of feelings, clearing up confusions, protecting oneself from the overlapping of dates and events (1940 is not 1941, which is not 1942...), doing the work of explanation to repair the "forgotten memories" — that is the ambition of this book.