Vol. 24, No. 15	February 16, 1999

Prof. Robert Paxton, Renowned Scholar of France's Vichy Regime, Wins Prestigious Award from the American Historical Association

BY HANNAH FAIRFIELD

Robert Paxton, the Columbia history professor whose research changed the historical understanding of France's Vichy Regime, has won the American Historical Association (AHA) Award for Scholarly Distinction.

The prize is the AHA's most prestigious, honoring the career contributions of senior historians in the United States. Paxton accepted the award at the AHA annual meeting in Washington last month.

"Professor Paxton's meticulous scholarship, powerful understanding and elegant prose have won him the respect of colleagues both in the United States and throughout Europe," said Professor Martha Howell, chair of the history department. "This award, which is granted in recognition of a lifetime's exemplary work, caps an extraordinarily distinguished career."

Paxton, who is the Mellon Professor of Social Science emeritus, launched the first historical investigation of the Vichy regime. He revealed the inner workings of the regime and its collaboration with Nazi leadership. His 1972 book, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, has had a profound effect on French national consciousness.

"I started my research on the difficult decisions that the French people had to make in the 1940s," he said, referring to his doctoral work at Harvard after his Rhodes Scholarship in 1956. "Officers had to struggle with decisions about duty and obedience. I found German, French and American diplomatic records and other documentation that showed that Vichy didn't just suffer under German efforts; the regime accommodated the Nazis and really sought a pragmatic association in Europe with what they thought was permanent German dominance."

Despite the controversy that his research generated, Paxton has been able to create a more nuanced perspective of the German occupation years in France from 1940 to 1944. The French government has awarded him two honorary distinctions: The National Order of Merit in 1992, with the rank of an officer, and the Order of Arts and Letters in 1996, with the rank of commander.

Though he officially retired in 1997, Paxton still occasionally teaches in the history department, which he joined in 1969. His undergraduate and graduate courses, popular at Columbia for almost three decades, included topics on the history of France, 20th century Europe and fascism.

His other books are: Parades and Politics at Vichy (1966); Europe in the 20th Century (3rd. edition, 1997); Vichy France and the Jews, with Michael R. Marrus (1981; reissued 1995), which was translated into French and Hebrew and won the National Jewish Book Award; De Gaulle and the United States, edited with Nicholas Wahl (1995), and Le Temps des chemises vertes (1996), which was translated into the English French Peasant Fascism (1997).