Claude Vajda

An investigation into the nature, details and reasons for the collaboration, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II, between the Vichy regime, established in the south of France and headed by Marshal Pétain, and Nazi Germany.

The story of the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), directed by Marcel Ophüls, which caused a scandal in a France still traumatized by the German occupation during World War II, because it shattered the myth, cultivated by the followers of President Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), of a united France that had supposedly stood firm in the face of the ruthless invaders.

From testimonies and medical explanations, an evocation of the last fifty years, seen through the different illnesses of the main heads of state in the world. The state of health of the men in power who have made the history of the last half-century has often been deficient at critical moments of decisions that affected millions of people. The dramatic consequences of Chamberlain's illness in front of Hitler in Munich, Roosevelt's illness in front of Stalin in Yalta.