At first glance this appears innocuous. It is a little coin, made of aluminum. Obviously it is French. The axe and sheaves of wheat are a little peculiar, the former being disturbingly close to the symbol of Fascist Italy, which resembled an axe in a bundle of sticks.
And here's the flip side. The date is ominous. 1944. The inscription reads "Work, Family, Fatherland".
These days the study of history is not what it once was, but most people know that France was conquered by Germany in 1940, and was only liberated by the Allies in the latter half of 1944.
This coin was issued by the Vichy government....collaborators with the Nazis.
But the issue is as advertised a complicated one. Although France was a deeply divided nation that had factions across the board from communists to extreme right wing types, there was never any love for Germany. What there was in the summer of 1940 was -arguably - simply no choice. France had been defeated so quickly and so completely that accepting whatever terms were available was perceived as the only alternative to a nation destroyed entirely. And of course England - also never popular - was felt to have skedaddled at Dunkirk, leaving the French behind. They then went on to attack and destroy French naval assets abroad with much loss of life. A resigned Gallic shrug and getting along with the government they had did not seem so bad in this light. They'd had bad governments many times before.
But it would not have worked without one man. Philippe Petain, Marshal of France and the most respected public figure of the day. He'd been called in at the 11th hour to form a government as the panzers approached Paris. It was his gravitas that made the deal with Hitler seem like a regrettable necessity. Because he had saved France before. More than once actually.
Petain was already near retirement when he began the war commanding a single brigade. He fought with distinction when France was saved by the Miracle on the Marne in 1914. Promoted, he commanded the army that held fast at Verdun in 1916, defeating the great German assault at such a high cost. He later commanded the entire French Army in 1917 when half the divisions on the Western Front mutinied and refused to go over the top for yet another round of futile slaughter. Always a soldier's commander he was fair, compassionate and able to correct many injustices while holding the ring leaders accountable. Of the 600 plus death sentences handed down, all but 26 were commuted.
Only Petain could have brokered the deal that kept half of France unoccupied and nominally free. But of course it ended badly. At first the French and Germans had an uncomfortable coexistance. The movie Casablanca set in Vichy controlled North Africa gave a fair sense of this. But as the war turned against Germany all semblance of independence was stamped out. Southern France was occupied, Nazi laws were brutally enforced, and neighbor turned against neighbor on matters of real or imagined collaboration.
Petain was In Switzerland at the end of the war, but come to France voluntarily....but what to do with him? Imagine some alternate history America where George Washington lived long enough to see England triumphant in the War of 1812. Imagine further that he was given a choice. "Be your King's Viceroy in our reclaimed American colonies. If you refuse we shall burn all your cities to ash and execute the traitorous American soldiers in our custody".
It was necessary to put Petain on trial and to find him guilty. He was sentenced to death but in an echo of his stern but humane actions of 1917 the sentence was commuted. He died in prison in 1951, aged 95.
His sometime protege Charles de Gaulle said of him that his life was: "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre"
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