NJ street named after Marshal Petain stirs controversy, according to Robert Paxton
“Don’t know much about history,” goes the song first recorded by Sam Cooke, and, no, we don’t. But it can get complicated very fast when we have to learn.
Just ask local officials, aggrieved residents of a neighboring town and the folks on Petain Avenue, a tiny, two-house side street in this placid central New Jersey borough. All have suddenly had to confront the legacy of the French World War I war hero and World War II Nazi collaborator, for whom the street is named, and the balance between the burdens of the past and the demands of living in the present.
Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was just one of the military leaders of the Great War (others were Foch, Pershing, Joffre and Haig) so honored in that part of town. From 1920 onward, Petain Avenue existed quietly, populated by 17 people in four families over the last half century. No doubt that quiet existence would have continued had not Eli Mintz, from nearby East Brunswick, dashed off a letter to Mayor Gloria M. Bradford in 2006....
The historical record is at once clear and as murky as human behavior. Robert Paxton, a retired Columbia University history professor and an expert on Vichy France, said Pétain’s life ended in disgrace, his death sentence for treason commuted to life. But rather than one of history’s great villains, a Hitler or Pol Pot, he’s a more representative historical figure, Professor Paxton added, someone long revered who in his 80s, whether out of vanity, weakness, a desire to save France, delusion or some combination, made a pact with the devil that led him into tragedy and ignominy.
“I don’t see him as a profoundly wicked man, but a deeply misguided one,” Dr. Paxton said. “His priority was to get along with the Germans, and as a result he got dragged in deeper and deeper. He was an accomplice, not an instigator.”
Professor Paxton said he understood why people would take offense, but that if we want to understand history, remembering Pétain’s fall from glory to infamy is more worthwhile than effacing his name. “His story is so much a part of the way history unfolds,” he said. “I don’t think obliterating it adds to our understanding in any way.”...
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Just ask local officials, aggrieved residents of a neighboring town and the folks on Petain Avenue, a tiny, two-house side street in this placid central New Jersey borough. All have suddenly had to confront the legacy of the French World War I war hero and World War II Nazi collaborator, for whom the street is named, and the balance between the burdens of the past and the demands of living in the present.
Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was just one of the military leaders of the Great War (others were Foch, Pershing, Joffre and Haig) so honored in that part of town. From 1920 onward, Petain Avenue existed quietly, populated by 17 people in four families over the last half century. No doubt that quiet existence would have continued had not Eli Mintz, from nearby East Brunswick, dashed off a letter to Mayor Gloria M. Bradford in 2006....
The historical record is at once clear and as murky as human behavior. Robert Paxton, a retired Columbia University history professor and an expert on Vichy France, said Pétain’s life ended in disgrace, his death sentence for treason commuted to life. But rather than one of history’s great villains, a Hitler or Pol Pot, he’s a more representative historical figure, Professor Paxton added, someone long revered who in his 80s, whether out of vanity, weakness, a desire to save France, delusion or some combination, made a pact with the devil that led him into tragedy and ignominy.
“I don’t see him as a profoundly wicked man, but a deeply misguided one,” Dr. Paxton said. “His priority was to get along with the Germans, and as a result he got dragged in deeper and deeper. He was an accomplice, not an instigator.”
Professor Paxton said he understood why people would take offense, but that if we want to understand history, remembering Pétain’s fall from glory to infamy is more worthwhile than effacing his name. “His story is so much a part of the way history unfolds,” he said. “I don’t think obliterating it adds to our understanding in any way.”...