Why are French politicians obsessed with world war two?

War talk is all the rage in France. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza are often cited, but the war that has come to increasingly obsess the political class in recent weeks is the one that began in 1939. Almost every day brings another reference to a period that barely anyone in the Republic experienced first-hand.

The latest example was a radio interview on Tuesday morning between Marion Maréchal, Vice President of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest party, and a journalist from France Inter, a radio station that describes itself as ‘progressive’. ‘What difference is there,’ the journalist asked Maréchal, ‘between the defence of the family that you propose and that proposed by Marshal Pétain?’ Maréchal did not appreciate the comparison to Pétain, the figurehead of the Vichy regime during the four years of Nazi occupation, calling it a ‘stupid, crazy and outrageous question’.

The question was asked of Maréchal because a few days earlier she had criticised the Cannes film festival for awarding its best female actor accolade to the ensemble cast of a film that includes the transgender actress.