In The Haunting Past, French historian Henry Rousso discusses the varied and controversial treatments of French collaboration with the Nazis during the Vichy regime, focusing specifically on the roles played by historians, and history itself, in the postwar trials of accused collaborators.

While discussion of Nazi collaboration was mostly suppressed in the years immediately following World War II, recent changes in public sentiment paved the way for formal trials of former Vichy officials charged with collaborating with Nazi Germany. In a series of pointed interviews conducted...

When the Allied forces of World War II formed an international tribunal to prosecute Nazi war crimes, they introduced two major innovations to court procedure. The prosecution projected film footage and newsreels shot by British, Soviet, and American soldiers as they discovered Nazi camps. These images, presented as human testimony and material evidence, were instrumental in naming and prosecuting war crimes. At the same time, the Nuremberg tribunal was filmed so that the memory of "the greatest trial in history" would remain strong in future generations. In the decades that followed, the...