{{Infobox Biografie|
   jméno=Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph|
   příjmení=Pétain|
   obrázek=Philippe Pétain.jpg|
   bublina=Maršál Pétain|
   popisek=Philippe Pétain, maršál|
   motto=Jen mne samotného budou dějiny soudit.|
   datum_narození=24. dubna | rok_narození=1856|
   místo_narození=Cauchy-à-la-Tour, Pas-de-Calais|
   datum_úmrtí=23. července | rok_úmrtí=1951|
   místo_úmrtí=Port-Joinville, Vendée
|}}

'''Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain''' (24. dubna 23. července francouzský důstojník povýšený na maršála v roce 1918.

==Život==
Jako veliteli ozbrojených sil je maršálu Pétainovi udělována zásluha za vítězství v bitvě u Verdunu. Jako hlava státu bývá spojován s příměřím z června vichistickým režimem, který započal tzv. ''Národní revoluci'' a aktivně spolupracoval s nacistickým Německem.

Po válce byl odsouzen k smrti za velezradu. Generál de Gaulle (který nastoupil na Pétainovo místo po konci 2. světové války) mu trest zmírnil na doživotní vězení.

Pétain zemřel 23. července 1951 ve věku devadesáti pěti let během internace na ostrově Yeu, kde je také pohřben.

==Kontroverze==
Pétain byl za své zásluhy v 1. světové válce oslavován jako hrdina. Po kolaboraci s nacisty (spojené s mnoha nevynucenými činy, nezřídka odporujícími lidským právům) však byl zatracen jako velezrádce. Dodnes je nařčení z ''pétainismu'' vážnou politickou urážkou.

==Odkazy==

{{Infobox Prime Minister 
|name=Philippe Pétain
|image=HPETAIN.JPG
|order=119<sup>th</sup> Prime Minister of France
|term_start    =June 16, 1940
|term_end      =July 11, 1940
|predecessor   =Paul Reynaud
|successor     =Pierre Laval
|order2= Chief of State of Vichy France
|term_start2    =July 11, 1940
|term_end2      =August 20, 1944
|predecessor2   =Albert Lebrun (as President of the French Republic)
|successor2     =President of the Provisional Government)
|birth_date    =April 24, 1856
|birth_place   =Cauchy-à-la-Tour, Pas-de-Calais, France
|death_date    =
|death_place   =Île d'Yeu, Vendée, France
|party=None
}}
'''Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain''' (French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, later Chief of State of Vichy France ''(Chef de l'État Français)'', from 1940 to 1944. Pétain, who was 84 in 1940, ranks as France's oldest Head of State ever.

Due to his military leadership in World War I, he was viewed as a hero in France, but his actions during World War II resulted in a conviction and death sentence for treason, which was commuted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle. In modern France, he is generally considered a traitor, and ''pétainisme'' is a derogatory term for certain reactionary policies. Due to his treason conviction, some historians now only refer to him by his name '''Philippe Pétain''', without his military rank, while for example, resistance leader Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, who was promoted posthumously, is now referred as Maréchal Leclerc.

==Early life==
Born in St Cyr Military Academy in 1887 and the École Supérieure de Guerre (army war college) in Paris. His career progressed very slowly, as he rejected the French Army philosophy of the furious infantry assault, arguing instead that "firepower kills". His views were later proved to be correct during the First World War. He was promoted to Captain in 1890 and Major (Chef de Bataillon) in 1900, but unlike many French officers, served only in mainland France, never in Africa or Indochina. As a Colonel he commanded the 33rd Infantry Regiment at Arras from 1911; the young lieutenant Charles de Gaulle, who served under him, later wrote that his "first colonel, Pétain, taught (him) the Art of Command". In the spring of 1914 he was given command of a brigade (still with the rank of Colonel), but having been told he would never become a general, had bought a house pending retirement - he was already fifty-eight years old.

==World War I==
thumb|right|Pétain at [[Battle of Verdun|Verdun (1916)]]
Pétain distinguished himself in Second Army, which he led in the Champagne Offensive that autumn. He acquired a reputation as one of the more successful commanders on the Western Front.

Pétain commanded the Second Army at the start of the Second Army at Verdun, and who at the very end of 1916 was promoted over him to replace Joseph Joffre as French Commander-in-Chief.

Due to high prestige as a soldier's soldier, Pétain served briefly as Army Chief of Staff (from the end of April 1917) then replaced Nivelle in 1917 as in the French army. Pétain crushed the mutiny by selective punishment of ringleaders, but also by improving soldiers' conditions (eg. better food and shelter, and more leave), and promising that men's lives would not be squandered in fruitless offensives. Pétain conducted some successful limited offensives in the latter part of 1917, but (unlike the British, who conducted a major offensive at Passchendaele that autumn) he held off from major offensives until the Americans arrived in force, which would not happen until the summer of 1918.

The year 1918 saw major German offensives on the Western Front. The first of these, "Michael" in March 1918, threatened to split the British and French forces apart, and, after Pétain had threatened to retreat on Paris, led to the appointment of Ferdinand Foch as Allied Generalissimo, initially with powers to co-ordinate and deploy Allied reserves where he saw fit. The third offensive, "Blucher" in May 1918, saw major German advances on the Aisne, as the French Army Commander had ignored Pétain's instructions to defend in depth, and had instead allowed his men to be hit by the initial massive German bombardment. Later in the year Pétain was stripped of his right of appeal to the French Government, and told to take his orders from Foch, who increasingly assumed direction of the Allied offensives. Pétain was made Marshal of France in November 1918.

==Between the wars==

Unlucky in love early in life, Pétain was a bachelor until his sixties, and famous for his womanising - women were said to find his piercing blue eyes especially attractive. At the opening of the Battle of Verdun he is said to have been fetched from Paris by a staff officer who knew which mistress he could be found with. After the war Pétain married an old lover, Madame Hardon, then widowed; although the couple were too old to have children, they remained married until the end of Pétain's life.

Pétain emerged from the war as a national hero. He was encouraged to go into politics although he protested that he had little interest in running for an elected position. He continued to play a military role, commanding French troops during their alliance with the Spanish in the Rif War after 1925. Pétain is also on record as a strong supporter of the Rif War, de Gaulle was sometimes known to observe "Marshal Pétain was a great man; he died in 1925". Pétain finally retired as Inspector-General of the Army, aged seventy-five, in 1931.

He expressed interest in being named Minister of Education, a role in which he hoped to combat what he saw as the decay in French moral values.  In 1934 he was appointed to the French cabinet as Minister of War. The following year, he was promoted to Secretary of State. During this period, he repeatedly called for a lengthening of the term of compulsory military service for draftees entering the military service from to three years.  Pétain served as French ambassador to Spain following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War, arriving in March 1939.

==World War II and Vichy France==
right|200px|thumb|Presidential Standard of Vichy France
Until the summer of 1940, Pétain was held in high regard by statesmen both at home and abroad. French Prime Minister de Gaulle - whose 4th Armoured Division had launched one of the few French counterattacks in May 1940) - into his War Cabinet, hoping that the trio, and especially Pétain, would instill a renewed spirit of resistance and patriotism in the French army. The social and political divisions in France were too great, however, and in Pétain, Reynaud did not recognise a man who despised the corruption, inefficiency and political fragmentation of the French Third Republic.

Maxime Weygand was unable to stem the German advance during the second stage of the Battle of France. When defeat for metropolitan France became certain, the Cabinet debated their continuing the war in North Africa, to fight on from the colonial territory alongside the British. Pétain's refusal to leave the country at this juncture created an impasse that divided the Cabinet and which was only broken by Reynaud's resignation and President Albert Lebrun's invitation to Pétain to form a government. Lebrun soon became sidelined, leading to the appointment of the old Marshal as head of state with extraordinary powers. The constitutionality of these actions was later challenged by de Gaulle's government, but at the time Pétain was widely accepted as France's saviour.

On Nazi Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied, with its administrative centre in the resort town of Vichy. (Paris remained the ''de jure'' capital.)

The Chamber of Deputies and Senate, meeting together as a "Congrès", had an emergency meeting on 80 (with 18 abstentions) to grant Pétain the authority to draw up a new constitution - effectively voting the Third Republic out of existence. On the next day, Pétain formally assumed near-absolute powers as "Head of State."

Pétain was reactionary by temperament and education, and quickly began blaming the Third Republic and its liberal democracy for the French defeat.  In its place, he set up a more authoritarian regime.  The republican motto of ''"Catholic society. 

Pétain immediately used his new powers to order harsh measures, including the dismissal of republican civil servants, the installation of exceptional jurisdictions, the proclamation of anti-Semitic laws, and the imprisonment of his opponents and foreign refugees. He organized a "''Légion Française des Combattants''", in which he included "Friends of the Legion" and "Cadets of the Legion", groups of those who had never fought but who were politically attached to his regime.  Pétain championed a rural, Catholic France that spurned internationalism.  As a retired Generalissimo, he ran the country on military lines, which might have been better received had he not already surrendered to Hitler and become, especially after 1942, his puppet.

right|200px|thumb|Pétain on French stamps of 1944
Neither Pétain nor his successive Deputies, Mers el Kébir and Dakar, Pétain took the initiative to collaborate with the occupiers. Pétain accepted the creation of a collaborationist armed militia "SS-Major Maquis"). Pétain admitted Darnand into his government as Secretary of the Maintenance of Public Order (''Secrétaire d'Etat au Maintien de l'Ordre''). In August 1944, Pétain made an attempt to distance himself from the crimes of the Milice by writing Darnand a letter of reprimand for the organization's "excesses."  The latter wrote a sarcastic reply, telling Pétain that he should have "thought of this before" he turned the Milice loose on the French population. 

Pétain provided the Axis forces with large supplies of manufactured goods and foodstuffs, and also ordered Vichy troops in France's colonial empire to fight against Allied forces everywhere (in Dakar, Syria, Madagascar, Oran and Morocco), in line with his commitments in the 1940 armistice. He also received German forces without any resistance (in Syria, Tunisia and Southern France), the latter due to Laval's urging.

On figurehead, as the Nazis abandoned the pretence of an "independent" Vichy government, although he remained popular with the French public, and was cheered by the crowd when he attended Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at Easter 1944. On 7 September 1944, he and other members of the Vichy cabinet were forcibly moved to Sigmaringen in Germany and soon after he resigned as leader.