r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/procrastambitious 9h ago

I went down a rabbit hole on Petain. There are organisations in France literally called something like "organisation for the rehabilitation of Petain's legacy". They're all right-wing lunatics as far as I know, but this exists.

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u/Slackbeing 5h ago

You can even find monarchists in France today, a great number of them, mostly on Facebook. I don't recommend the rabbit hole though.

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u/DeliciousPangolin 2h ago

I stumbled on a tiny local museum in Brittany at one point, near Quiberon IIRC, that was all about the horrors of the French Revolution. Discovered later that it was run by a group of neo-monarchists.

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u/ReachHistorian 59m ago

The French Revolution was pretty horrible though. It descended into rampant slaughter and mass totalitarianism. There is a reason the people of France saw Napoleon as a hero and so many supported his being crowned Emperor.

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u/abqguardian 7h ago

There's a very good argument that Petain is unfairly vilified. He wasnt a secret Nazi or anything. France was collapsing and someone needed to step up and lead what was left of France the best they could. Its easy to vilify Petain, but that ignores the reality of the time.

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u/nolok 6h ago

He could have surrendered, the armistice was a betrayal like no other that fucked our allies and even French people.

Also, that point of view stopped working the moment he went ahead and pushed for more than the nazi asked for, notably against jews, specially because he wanted to earn good boy points from Germany to be they happy 2nd / good loyal dog in controlling Europe. That's when he went from "yeah what else could he do" to "fuck everything about that guy".

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u/DeliciousPangolin 2h ago

One of the main things the French public was expecting out of an armistice was the swift return of French POWs. Instead, Hitler kept them for the rest of the war to use as slave labor in Germany. Pétain was totally fine with that, and in fact collaborated to ship hundreds of thousands of French civilians to Germany throughout the war to use as slaves.

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u/Vacant_Motto 4h ago

He was just the man in ww1, it's so hard to not want to stick up for him. Probably the best answer to this question, really. What a bastard. I would have been SO pissed of if I was a French guy back then

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u/hurdeehurr 3h ago

It's easy to judge in hindsight and because well.. It's Nazi's but IMO he made the right choice.

Of all the countries involved in WW2 you can't say that France came out hurt the most and that the population suffered. Humiliation yes but compare Paris to Berlin and you get the idea.

They were cooked as soon as Hitler made it through the Ardennes and the only chance at retaining any tiny fraction of control of the country would have to be a collaborative government.. What other choice?