"The man who saved France in 1916 was condemned to die for nearly destroying France at Vichy in 1940, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by General Charles de Gaulle."
"Pétain was the twelfth marshal of France to be condemned by a French court since 1440. Eight of them were executed." An eyewitness account of VJ day as it was celebrated in Paris: "The GIs had managed to keep their VJ spirit bottled up through most of the phony rumors, but when the real thing was announced the cork popped with a vengeance. A spontaneous parade, including jeeps and trucks and WACs and GIs and officers and nurses and enlisted me, snaked from the Red Cross Club at Rainbow Corner down to the Place de l'Opera and back..."
Click here to read about the fall of Paris...
"The game was up. At the Prat de Llobregat airfield outside Barcelona the traitor sat heavily on a camp stool, waiting for the reprieve. It did not come. The Franco government had found Pierre Laval too hot to handle... Laval shrugged: 'I suppose if Petain can face the music, I can'. But later he shouted: 'It is unfair... delivering me to my country.'"
More about Laval can be read here | 
