Pétain, (Henri) Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph (1856-1951)

French general and head of state. Voted in as prime minister in June 1940, Pétain signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June before assuming full powers on 16 July. His authoritarian regime, established at Vichy, collaborated with the Germans and proposed a reactionary ‘National Revolution’ for France under the slogan ‘Work, Family, Fatherland’. Convinced in 1940 of Britain's imminent defeat, Pétain accepted Germany's terms for peace, including the occupation of northern France. In December 1940 he dismissed his deputy Pierre Laval, who wanted to side with the Axis powers, but bowed to German pressures to reinstate him in April 1942. With Germany occupying the whole of France from that November, Pétain found himself head, in name only, of a puppet state. Removed from France by the German army in 1944, he returned voluntarily and was tried and condemned to death for treason in August 1945. He died in prison on the Ile d'Yeu, his sentence having been commuted to life imprisonment.

A career soldier from northern France, Pétain's defence of Verdun in 1916 had made him, at the age of 60, a national hero. Promoted in 1917 to commander-in-chief, he came under Marshal Foch's supreme command in 1918. Subsequently, as a leading member of the Higher Council for War, his advocacy of a purely defensive military policy culminated in France's reliance on the Maginot Line as protection from German attack.