Commentary Winston Churchill once observed that nations which go down fighting have the capacity to be reborn. Those that surrender tamely, he thought, might never rise again to their former glory. Such was the case with the French Third Republic. After the country was invaded by Germany in May of 1940, French forces rapidly lost the will to fight and the French government pursued the course of armistice with National Socialist Germany. Rather than sign the nation away himself, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned. The leadership of France fell to the aging Marshal Philippe Pétain, who thereafter signed an agreement with Hitler that effectively dissolved the Third Republic. Pétain’s government was evacuated from Paris to the resort town of Vichy where it remained nominally responsible for the civil administration of France. Pétain was granted dictatorial powers by a collaborative National Assembly and established an authoritarian regime that reversed genuinely liberal …