Comic-operetta stage set, or ghost town haunted by the walking dead ? Sigmaringen still fascinates long after its collapse at the end of the Second World War. This enclave of French Vichy officials and fascists on German soil ? refugees and hostages maintained at the Nazis' pleasure ? played out the last residue of French collaborationism in the closing months of the war, presided over by the inert figurehead of Marshal Petain, against the fairytale backdrop of Sigmaringen Castle. No single English-language history of the Sigmaringen enclave exists, yet it brought together some of the most colourful and controversial collaborationists, from the militant French SS officer Joseph Darnand to the delirious writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine, in a petri dish for the last samples of the collaborationism that had infected France and laid her low. Vichy's Last Castle brings together contemporary documents, eye-witness reports, diplomatic communiques and protests, and personal chronicles, alongside post-war analyses, war crimes trials, apologetics and memoirs, to provide a complete picture of the Sigmaringen enclave, from daily life to political chicanery. From the vain, formal protests of Marshal Petain to the hallucinatory stream-of-consciousness of Celine, the book draws on contemporary photographs as well as texts to encapsulate this bizarre milieu, where the rank-and-file starved and suffered, while the elite played and plotted their tragicomic endgame, in a sublimely appropriate Wagnerian setting. AUTHOR: Paul StJohn Mackintosh lives in France and is a British author of historical and imaginative works, as well as an historian, journalist and game creator. As well as full-length historical publications, he has contributed extensively to historical reference works and popular history books. He is a member of the Historical Writers Association, and is a Masters graduate in History and Art History from Trinity College, Cambridge. 30 b/w illustrations
