Descended from aristocratic lineage, Robert de La Rochefoucauld could’ve fled to a neutral country but chose instead to stay and fight for his country.
“One of the first things that I had to try to figure out (was) why does he choose to fight?” said author Paul Kix at a June 19, 2018, Meet the Author presentation at the Museum. “Because he could’ve done something that the vast majority of the French did, which was absolutely nothing. Scholars have later contended that perhaps as few as 80 percent, perhaps as much as 90 percent, of the French populace neither aided the Allies nor aided the fascists. About 10 percent of the French populace were openly collaborating with the Nazis. A much smaller percent of that, perhaps as few as 2 percent of the French populace, according to scholarly estimates, were active in the Resistance. Robert was one of them, but what really fascinated me was he didn’t have to be.”
Watch the presentation below to learn about this amazing character from World War II, who, fittingly, is soon to be the subject of a major motion picture. Shop the Museum Store for a signed copy of The Saboteur. Learn more about upcoming Museum programming here. Learn more about the Museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy here.
