The historian who recast Vichy collaboration
“The Vichy regime had its own active project to remake France after the defeat of June 1940.”
Robert Paxton is an American historian of modern Europe whose work examines Vichy France and the social and political conditions of fascism. By reading German occupation records alongside French sources, he showed that Vichy was not merely a passive instrument of Germany but a collaborator pursuing its own project of national reorganization. Co-authored with Michael Marrus, Vichy France and the Jews argued that Vichy's early anti-Jewish statutes originated in French policy rather than direct German orders, reshaping French historiography and public memory. His work made collaboration and resistance legible through the interaction of state institutions, social forces, and wartime conditions, while leaving room for debate over particular interpretations.
Career Timeline
- 1954Earned a bachelor's degree at Washington and Lee University
- 1961Earned an M.A. at Merton College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar
- 1963Received a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University
- 1966Published Parades and Politics at Vichy
- 1969Joined the history faculty of Columbia University
- 1972Published Vichy France, prompting a shift in the study of collaboration
- 1981Co-published Vichy France and the Jews with Michael Marrus
- 1997Testified as an expert on Vichy collaboration at the Maurice Papon trial
- 2004Published The Anatomy of Fascism
- 2009Appointed an officer of France's Légion d'honneur