One was that the Vichy regime did not exist, that it was an illegal aberration that concerned a handful of men who were puppets controlled by the Germans. The other was that France emerged victorious from the war. These myths have been harmful for France. Recognizing this, President Jacques Chirac announced in 1995 that the responsibility for Vichy lay with the French nation and that this applied to the sending of Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. As for the suggestion that France won the war, here it is observers outside France who have propagated with relish the idea that the role of France in its own liberation was but small.
British journalists can sometimes enjoy laughing at the French resistance.
Naturally, de Gaulle can be defended. It is curious to think that there are those who now criticize him for not having acted fiercely enough at the liberation. At the time there were many who denounced the epuration, as it was called, as a mockery of justice. The Vichy administration was carefully scrutinized. Nearly 4,000 men were condemned to death and 767 of these sentences were carried out.