waves destroyed both plants before they could become net power generators. (Net power is the amount of power generated after subtracting power needed to run the system.) Wartime collaboration and post-war imprisonment Even as a young engineer, Claude was unsympathetic to democratic rule. In 1933 he joined the Action Française, which favored restoration of a monarchy in France. He was a close friend of the monarchist leader Charles Maurras. Following the 1940 defeat of France by Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, the subsequent German occupation of northern France and establishment of the Vichy regime in the south, Claude publicly supported French collaboration with Germany. Among his other activities, he published several tracts supporting collaboration. He was a member of a Distinguished Committee of the Groupe Collaboration, which had been founded in September 1940. He was nominated by the Vichy regime as a member of the Conseil National Consultatif in 1941. Following the Allied liberation of France in 1944, Claude was taken into custody on 2 December 1944 because of his collaboration with the Axis Powers. He was removed from the French Academy of Sciences. In 1945 he was tried and convicted of propaganda work favoring collaboration, but was cleared of another charge that he helped design the V-1 flying bomb. He was condemned to life imprisonment, and was imprisoned. In 1950 he was released from prison, with acknowledgment of his research on ocean thermal energy conversion. Selected bibliography Claude wrote several semi-popular descriptions of his research, in addition to his wartime tracts and a memoir. Claude's first book, Electricity Made Accessible to Everyone, was a very popular exposition. It won the Prix Hébert de l’Académie des Sciences, and was translated into German. Christine Blondel writes of it, "In fact the success of the book was enormous. More than 60,000 copies were sold, nearly double the number of Jean Perrin's famous book, Les atomes." Liquid Air: Its production, its properties, and its applications, published shortly after the founding of Air Liquide. Translated by Henry E. P. Cottrell from . Bulletin, No. 486. On the Utilization of the Thermal Energy of the Seas. My Battle Against the High Cost of Living. La vie chère literally refers to "dear life" (expensive living). It was an obsession of interwar France (1919–1939). My Life and My Inventions, Claude's autobiography, published a few years before his death in 1960. References Further reading