This encounter regime had abdicated all sovereignty to build in exchange for active collaboration, devoted and obedient, a moral order, and against coercive-Revolutionary (the vast, that of 1789), He wanted, was thought and acted (until Sigmaringen) in accordance with the interests of Germany. In exchange, he tried to stifle any hint of democratic hope among a people shelved by the violence of the collapse, the harshness of daily life and the constant terror of the occupier.
Petain was not De Gaulle shield and sword. The Vichy government, soft variant authentic Nazi regimes (Quisling in Norway, Tyso Slovakia) was orders.
If this had not been the case, this state would rump party in Algeria since the announcement of the Allied landings and Fleet would not scuttled in Toulon in November 1942.
Only De Gaulle was in action since 1940 with the FFL and French Resistance densified since the war of the Soviet Union (and thus entering the armed struggle of the PCF).
This book by Robert Paxton consitutes, over 30 years after its publication, the indispensable key if we want to understand what were those dark years and the abyss in which France almost, because of the political impotence of the parties , inefficiencies of Upper Staff and the will of a few authentic revolutionaries against disappear.
