From Defeat to Resistance 1940-44 In 1940 France, humiliatingly defeated, signed a separate peace treaty with the Germans. The French prime minister Marshal Petain , the hero of Verdun, went to shake hands with the conqueror Adolf Hitler. And so the terrible abasement of collaboration began. Five years later, in 1945, France took her place as an equal partner among the victorious Allied powers at the end of World War II. The honour of France, so tarnished in 1940, had been saved by the Resistance, the men and women who fought on after defeat. In the Name of France is the story of these heroic men and women and of the events which propelled them to resistance. It is about those who saved France's name, and who often died a secret and unlovely death, anonymous and alone. Commentator, James Cameron Producer. JULIAN JACOTTET A BBC TV-Bavarian TV Service co-production