Original release 9 février 2015
Previous episode S2015E01 - Louis XV, l'homme qui aimait trop les femmes
Number S2015E02
Country France
Genre Documentary
External links TheTVDB page
IMDB page
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Last update 21 septembre 2020 - 13:15
on 11 databases

Petiot : le docteur Satan de l'Occupation

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Le 11 mars 1944, à Paris, des pompiers tombent par hasard sur une scène macabre. Dans la cave d'un hôtel particulier du XVIe arrondissement où ils sont entrés pour trouver l'origine d'odeurs pestilentielles qui incommodent le voisinage, se trouvent des corps dépecés, prêts à être incinérés. Le propriétaire des
lieux est Marcel Petiot, un médecin au parcours trouble. A partir de 1942, il proposait à des personnes menacées par la Gestapo de les faire passer en Argentine. Cependant, aucun d'entre eux n'est jamais arrivé en Amérique du Sud. Jugé lors d'un procès très médiatisé après la guerre, Petiot est condamné à mort et guillotiné le 25 mai 1946. Pourtant, de nombreuses zones d'ombre subsistent autour de la personnalité et des actions du sinistre docteur.

BetaSeries' opinion

Secrets d'histoire Season 20 Finale: Stéphane Bern's Messalina Episode Ends a Season About Reputations on Trial

Twenty seasons in, "Secrets d'histoire" can still surprise its audience. The Season 20 finale aired on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at 9:10 p.m. on France 3, and Stéphane Bern closed the season with one of the most notorious women of antiquity: Messalina, the third wife of Emperor Claudius. If you watched it, you already know it was more than a parade of Roman scandal. It was a careful re-examination of a woman whose name has been shorthand for depravity for almost two thousand years. If you haven't caught up yet, this debrief shows why the episode, and the whole season, deserves a place in your watchlist.

A finale that puts history's verdict on trial

The question at the centre of the finale was simple: does Messalina deserve the brutal nickname history gave her? Roman writers handed down a woman driven by insatiable desire and a hunger for power. Bern's team took that portrait apart piece by piece. They asked who wrote the story, why they wrote it, and what they gained from it. This is the series at its best. It doesn't simply retell a legend. It looks into how the legend was made. Messalina's world gave the episode plenty of drama: Caligula, Nero, Agrippina and the freedman Narcissus all appear, each with their own agenda in the deadly politics of the Julio-Claudian court. Without spoiling anything for latecomers, the finale's real emotional pull comes from the gap between the caricature and the young woman caught up in a machine much bigger than she was.

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