Person1856 – 1951
Philippe Pétain
French general who became a hero for leading the defence of Verdun in 1916, but after France’s 1940 surrender headed the Vichy regime and was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason after the war
Where they went
1 related event
- 1
The German army attacked the fortress zone of Verdun for nearly ten months to bleed the French army dry, but the French under Pétain held. Casualties on both sides reached some 700,000.
Themes this person appears in
- World War I and the Russian Revolution1908 – 1923
From the Balkan crises to a war of trenches and total mobilization that toppled four empires; the Russian Revolution it unleashed, which created the first socialist state; and the Versailles settlement of national self-determination and the League of Nations