Chuck and Marco take you inside France’s darkest wartime chapter—the Vichy years—and follow the story all the way through liberation and the long, complicated afterlife of memory and justice. Expect sharp analysis, human stories, and our trademark banter—powered by the latest AI architecture for crisp, evergreen history.
In this episode you’ll hear about:
- France’s collapse in 1940 and the birth of Vichy’s “National Revolution.”
- Collaboration in practice: the Statut des Juifs, French police roundups (Vel’ d’Hiv), the Milice under Joseph Darnand, and the Bousquet–Oberg police nexus.
- Resistance as a shadow state: de Gaulle, Jean Moulin, the CNR, maquis networks, SOE/Jedburgh teams, and Plans Vert/Violet/Tortue around D-Day.
- Liberation’s jagged path: Vercors, Oradour-sur-Glane, Operation Dragoon, and Paris 1944.
- Reckoning and rebuilding: épuration (savage and legal), trials of Pétain and Laval, later cases (Barbie, Touvier, Papon), and the CNR-inspired social settlement—women’s suffrage, Sécurité sociale, and key nationalizations—plus the empire’s postwar flashpoints (Sétif, Indochina).
Stay tuned after the episode for our original track: “Shadows in Vichy.”
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