François Mauriac
Bardèche explained that he felt like a "foreigner" in a France he perceived as a "foreign country", or worse an "occupied country", in the immediate post-war. In 1947, he wrote a letter to François Mauriac ("Lettre à François Mauriac"), who had unsuccessfully tried to convince Charles de Gaulle to grant Brasillach amnesty in 1945. In the letter, Bardèche dismissed the Resistance and the "épuration", declaring the Vichy regime and Collaboration legitimate. One year later, he established the "revisionist school", railing against what he called the "falsifications" and "manipulations" of history committed by the Allies.