- Robert Paxton
Robert Paxton (b
1932 ) is an Americanhistorian specializing inVichy France and Europe during the World War II era. Paxton is best known for his 1972 book "Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944," in which he argued that Vichy collaboration with Germany was a voluntary program entered into by the Vichy government, not forced upon it by German pressure. This book is considered one of the pathbreaking works on France during the World War II Vichy era, whose thesis has earned respect amongst both American and French modern historians. He was called in for the trial ofMaurice Papon (1910-2007), who was convicted for crimes against humanity in 1998.Additionally, Paxton has put forward a non-traditional definition of
fascism : "Fascism may be defined as a form ofpolitical behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline,humiliation , or victim-hood and by compensatorycult s of unity, energy, andpurity , in which a mass-based party of committednationalist militant s, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democraticliberties and pursues with redemptiveviolence and withoutethic al orlegal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." [ [http://www.tnr.com/blog/openuniversity?pid=35239 "Thoughts about Fascism."] 2006-09-01. The New Republic. Accessed 2007-09-23.]Paxton was born in
Lexington, Virginia and educated atWashington and Lee University before earning his M.A. atOxford University as aRhodes Scholar . He earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Paxton taught at theUniversity of California, Berkeley andState University of New York at Stony Brook before joining the faculty ofColumbia University inNew York , where he is nowemeritus professor of history.References and notes
Bibliography
*Robert O. Paxton, “"Parades and Politics at Vichy",” 1966.
*Robert O. Paxton, “"Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944",” 1972.
*Robert O. Paxton andMichael Marrus , "Vichy France and the Jews"," 1981.
*Robert O. Paxton, "French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgeres' Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939"," 1997.
*Robert O. Paxton, "Anatomy of Fascism",” 2004.External links
* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21061 Vichy vs. the Nazis - The New York Review of Books]
See also
*
Maurice Rajsfus , historian ofFrench police
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