"Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy France, 1940-1944 offers an unprecedented view of French life during World War II under German occupation. Most of these images came from the Vichy government office of information and propaganda and have not been seen in historical context. Some have never before been published. Other images, such as posters, newspapers, leaflets, and rare photographs that make evident the activity of the Resistance, as well as the machine of German propaganda, are taken from little-known archival sources."--BOOK JACKET.
This book, first published in 1985, examines various aspects of the intellectual achievements of writers and artists in the Vichy period; a strong emphasis on the ambiguity of much of their work emerges from the research. It goes a long way in answering the question of what it was like living under the fascist Vichy regime, and what the collaborators and resistance thought about their purpose and patriotism.
“Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and will not go out.” As Charles de Gaulle ended his radio address to the French nation in June 1940, listeners must have felt a surge of patriotism tinged with uncertainty. Who would keep the flame burning through dark years of occupation? At what cost? Olivier Wieviorka presents a comprehensive history of the French Resistance, synthesizing its social, political, and military aspects to offer fresh insights into its operation. Detailing the Resistance from the inside out, he reveals not one organization but many interlocking groups often at odds over goals, methods, and leadership. He debunks lingering myths, including the idea that the Resistance sprang up in response to the exhortations of de Gaulle’s Free French government-in-exile. The Resistance was homegrown, arising from the soil of French civil society. Resisters had to improvise in the fight against the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime. They had no blueprint to follow, but resisters from all walks of life and across the political spectrum formed networks, organizing activities from printing newspapers to rescuing downed airmen to sabotage. Although the Resistance was never strong enough to fight the Germans openly, it provided the Allies invaluable intelligence, sowed havoc behind enemy lines on D-Day, and played a key role in Paris’s liberation. Wieviorka shatters the conventional image of a united resistance with no interest in political power. But setting the record straight does not tarnish the legacy of its fighters, who braved Nazism without blinking.
Provides the definitive account of Vichy's own antisemitic policies and practices. It is a major contribution to the history of the Jewish tragedy in wartime Europe answering the haunting question, "What part did Vichy France really play in the Nazi effort to murder Jews living in France?"
The French Resistance has an iconic status in the struggle to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, but its story is entangled in myths. Gaining a true understanding of the Resistance means recognizing how its image has been carefully curated through a combination of French politics and pride, ever since jubilant crowds celebrated Paris’s liberation in August 1944. Robert Gildea’s penetrating history of resistance in France during World War II sweeps aside “the French Resistance” of a thousand clichés, showing that much more was at stake than freeing a single nation from Nazi tyranny. As Fighters in the Shadows makes clear, French resistance was part of a Europe-wide struggle against fascism, carried out by an extraordinarily diverse group: not only French men and women but Spanish Republicans, Italian anti-fascists, French and foreign Jews, British and American agents, and even German opponents of Hitler. In France, resistance skirted the edge of civil war between right and left, pitting non-communists who wanted to drive out the Germans and eliminate the Vichy regime while avoiding social revolution at all costs against communist advocates of national insurrection. In French colonial Africa and the Near East, battle was joined between de Gaulle’s Free French and forces loyal to Vichy before they combined to liberate France. Based on a riveting reading of diaries, memoirs, letters, and interviews of contemporaries, Fighters in the Shadows gives authentic voice to the resisters themselves, revealing the diversity of their struggles for freedom in the darkest hours of occupation and collaboration.
France in the Second World War is a wide-ranging and clear introduction to French history during the Second World War and its aftermath. It examines the interwar years, the build up to the conflict, the fall of France and the founding of the Vichy regime, as well as collaboration, resistance, everyday life, the Holocaust, liberation and the echoes of the period in contemporary France. Chris Millington addresses the chief topics in separate chapters that synthesise the key points of history and historiography. He also ensures the French Empire is carefully integrated throughout, crucially enabling the global dimensions of France's war to be highlighted and discussed. In addition, Millington provides an online supplement in the form of an 'Instructor's Guide' to help lecturers looking to use the book in their courses, as well as a helpful glossary and an annotated bibliography of English-language sources to guide students to the most relevant works in the area. France in the Second World War provides you with the history and historiography of France and its Empire during their darkest hour.
The French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II was a struggle in which ordinary people fought for their liberty, despite terrible odds and horrifying repression. Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen and women carried out an armed struggle against the Nazis, producing underground anti-fascist publications and supplying the Allies with vital intelligence. Based on hundreds of French eye-witness accounts and including recently-released archival material, The Resistanceuses dramatic personal stories to take the reader on one of the great adventures of the 20thcentury. The tale begins with the catastrophic Fall of France in 1940, and shatters the myth of a unified Resistance created by General de Gaulle. In fact, De Gaulle never understood the Resistance, and sought to use, dominate and channel it to his own ends. Brave men and women set up organisations, only to be betrayed or hunted down by the Nazis, and to die in front of the firing squad or in the concentration camps. Over time, the true story of the Resistance got blurred and distorted, its heroes and conflicts were forgotten as the movement became a myth. By turns exciting, tragic and insightful, The Resistancereveals how one of the most powerful modern myths came to be forged and provides a gripping account of one of the most striking events in the 20thcentury.
In this revisionist account of France’s crushing defeat in 1940, a world authority on French history argues that the nation’s downfall has long been misunderstood. Philip Nord assesses France’s diplomatic and military preparations for war with Germany, its conduct of the war once the fighting began, and the political consequences of defeat on the battlefield. He also tracks attitudes among French leaders once defeat seemed a likelihood, identifying who among them took advantage of the nation’s misfortunes to sabotage democratic institutions and plot an authoritarian way forward. Nord finds that the longstanding view that France’s collapse was due to military unpreparedeness and a decadent national character is unsupported by fact. Instead, he reveals that the Third Republic was no worse prepared and its military failings no less dramatic than those of the United States and other Allies in the early years of the war. What was unique in France was the betrayal by military and political elites who abandoned the Republic and supported the reprehensible Vichy takeover. Why then have historians and politicians ever since interpreted the defeat as a judgment on the nation as a whole? Why has the focus been on the failings of the Third Republic and not on elite betrayal? The author examines these questions in a fascinating conclusion.
From 1940 to 1942, French secret agents arrested more than two thousand spies working for the Germans and executed several dozen of them—all despite the Vichy government’s declared collaboration with the Third Reich. A previously untold chapter in the history of World War II, this duplicitous activity is the gripping subject of The Hunt for Nazi Spies, a tautly narrated chronicle of the Vichy regime’s attempts to maintain sovereignty while supporting its Nazi occupiers. Simon Kitson informs this remarkable story with findings from his investigation—the first by any historian—of thousands of Vichy documents seized in turn by the Nazis and the Soviets and returned to France only in the 1990s. His pioneering detective work uncovers a puzzling paradox: a French government that was hunting down left-wing activists and supporters of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces was also working to undermine the influence of German spies who were pursuing the same Gaullists and resisters. In light of this apparent contradiction, Kitson does not deny that Vichy France was committed to assisting the Nazi cause, but illuminates the complex agendas that characterized the collaboration and shows how it was possible to be both anti-German and anti-Gaullist. Combining nuanced conclusions with dramatic accounts of the lives of spies on both sides, The Hunt for Nazi Spies adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the French predicament under German occupation and the shadowy world of World War II espionage.
'Defying Vichy takes us into the heart of the French Resistance: the Dordogne region (in) this moving account of the darkest and brightest period in French history.' – Matthew Cobb, author of The Resistance Vichy France under Marshal Pétain was an authoritarian regime that sought to perpetuate a powerful place for France in the world alongside Germany. It echoed the right-wing ideals of other fascist states and was a perfect instrument for Hitler, who drew more and more power and resources from a beaten France whose people suffered. Resistance was an unknown until a small number sought to make a stand in whatever way they could. Each would play their part in destabilising the Vichy state, all the while rejecting the Nazi occupation of their eternal France. The Dordogne was one of many hotbeds of early refusal and its dramatic stories are here told against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Vichy France. These stories, like so many others of often ordinary people – men and women, young and old – tell of a period of betrayal, refusal and heroism.
