“The Children’s War” intends to explore the history of a unique generation, children aged 10 in 1940, who grew up in exceptional times : 650,000 orphans, 120,000 juvenile delinquants, 90,000 children lost during population movements, 11,500 Jewish children deported. Caught between Collaboration and Resistance, wartime childhood experiences and stories have for a long time been hushed up. Far from being spared by the brutal conflict, they were thrown into the chaos of dark and sinister times. For 4 years, this age group became the epicentre of national upheaval. Placed at the heart of Maréchal Pétain’s ‘regeneration’ project, put to work out of necessity, exposed to hunger, death and deportation, and widely condemned by a fragile and incompetent judicial system, war children were both the instruments and scapegoats of a totalitarian regime. “The Children’s War” invites us to listen to the testimony of those, on the fringes of history in the making, who came of age in the shadows of the ‘national revival’ imposed by Vichy during the worst world war in history.