Some things never change

If you enjoyed Steven Denbeste's account on the decline of the French tourism industry, then you'll love this book review in the Washington Post on Vichy France. It's from a book titled "Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy French Regime" - here's a key quote from the review:

If the French people had recognized Vichy legality for four years, and if the active Resistance had constituted a courageous but barely perceptible fraction of French society, then Free France had a weak claim on power in 1944 -- as Franklin Roosevelt had always argued. Furthermore, contrary to de Gaulle's assertion that France had liberated itself largely through its own efforts, the Allies had received only a feeble assist from an ultimately grateful but otherwise unanimously passive French population. If France had not participated fully in its own liberation, how then could it claim a leadership role in the postwar world?

They can't, not then or now.