Vichy's Last Castle

Historisk laveste pris

Comic-operetta stage set, or ghost town haunted by the walking dead – Sigmaringen still fascinates long after its collapse at the end of the Second World War. This enclave of French Vichy officials and fascists on German soil – refugees and hostages maintained at the Nazis’ pleasure – played out the last residue of French collaborationism in the closing months of the war, presided over by the inert figurehead of Marshal Pétain, against the fairytale backdrop of Sigmaringen Castle. No single English-language history of the Sigmaringen enclave exists, yet it brought together some of the most colourful and controversial collaborationists, from the militant French SS officer Joseph Darnand to the delirious writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, in a petri dish for the last samples of the collaborationism that had infected France and laid her low.Vichy’s Last Castle brings together contemporary documents, eye-witness reports, diplomatic communiques and protests, and personal chronicles, alongside p