History being made at a urinal. [View all]

Because of the times we're in, I am reading a long monograph on the trial of a former Head of State for treason.

It's history for hope.

France on Trial The Case of Marshal Pétain by Julian Jackson

I'm reading it in bite sized portions (a few pages in bed before going to sleep) and have been at it for some time.

It's an interesting piece of history from which I've learned a lot about a topic in which I've had only superficial familiarity, the French defeat in 1940, the legal basis for signing the armistice - no other country conquered by the Nazis signed one - and the legal basis, shallow as it was and as contrived as it was, for the end of the Third Republic and the installation of Marshal Petain as the Head of State the rump Vichy government. (The legal basis was strong enough to cause the United States to send an ambassador to Vichy France.)

I am also learning that the signing of the armistice was not an inevitable outcome, many members of the French Government that was retreating across France considered evacuating to Algeria - then considered a part of France, a province - without surrendering, continuing the war from abroad. (This is what Churchill proposed for Britain in his famous "Fight on the Beaches" speech should Britain be invaded and defeated.)

I am also learning about the creation of the Fourth Republic, and the French criminal justice system of the time with large partisan juries, the role of De Gaulle - his mentor/mentee relationship with Petain before the war - who despite the armistice did choose to fight on.

Anyway, it's an interesting work, well written and very detailed. I came across an amusing passage, because one seldom sees in histories, the fact that the participants in important histories are never actually described as having the basic character of humanity, the need to pee and crap.

The book describes the interaction with one of the "Resistance jurors," Jacques Lecompte-Beniot, who during a break in the trial ran into De Gaulle and wanted to discuss the writing of the Constitution of what would become the Fourth Republic, which would not last as long as the Third or Fifth Republics. (The Algeria crisis in 1958 resulted in the Fifth Republic which functions to this day.)

De Gaulle, however, needed to pee as Lecompte-Beniot sought to pigeon hole him.



OK, I'm amused.

Lecompte-Beniot was concerned that the trial was degenerating into a kangaroo court, a show trial, and he wanted to be "fair."

Another interesting thing about the trial, to which I previous referred in this space, was that Petain was very old at the time - he was the oldest Head of State in French history, and remains so to this day - pushing 90.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death, a sentence which de Gaulle commuted to life in prison.

Anyway. Historical figures did have to pee sometimes. We're kind of aware of that in the case of the orange pedophile in the White House, a head of state who is a traitor taking a wrecking ball to the Constitution, possibly bringing to an end the long lived "First Republic" of the United States (or Second Republic if one considers the Articles of Confederation), given that much has been made of the stench of his diapers.

Have a nice weekend.