The Trial of Pierre Laval
The Trial of Pierre Laval

Author: J. Kenneth Brody

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1351297740

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In a stunning work combining historical memory, legal ambiguity, and profound issues of justice, J. Kenneth Brody provides a picture of France in World War II that continues to haunt the present. Architect in 1940 of Marshal Petain's Vichy French regime and its prime minister from April 1942 to August 1944, at war's end Pierre Laval was promptly arrested on charges of treason. This book tells the story of his trial. Did he betray France, or did he serve France under terrible circumstances? What was the truth of "collaboration"? This book considers the pretrial proceedings, or lack thereof, the evidence, and the arguments of the prosecution, as well as Laval's vigorous defense in the early days of the trial. Because of irregularities in the preliminary proceedings, Laval's defense counsel declined from the outset to participate in the trial. For those reasons and because of the prejudicial conduct of the prosecution, on the third day of the trial, Pierre Laval also declined to participate further. What his defense might have been in a normal pre-trial proceeding and in a fair trial are matters of conjecture. What remains clear is that political trials are a unique form of law and moral judgment. Trials and history share a common goal-the truth. Trial, judgment, and appeal are intended to produce finality. History, on the other hand, is never final. After its performance in the trial of Pierre Laval, the government of France continued its policy of concealment, even though the truth could no longer determine the outcome of the trial. Slowly, by persistence, courage, and loyalty, history's claims to truth were established. This book presents the defense that might have been presented and then relates the final judgment, its grisly execution only eleven days after the trial opened, and its aftermath.

The Holocaust & the Jews of Marseille
The Holocaust & the Jews of Marseille

Author: Donna F. Ryan

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780252065309

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One-fourth of the Jews living in France - once considered an asylum for the politically dispossessed - were identified, rounded up, and deported to the death camps of eastern Europe during World War II. In this carefully documented, gripping account of the treatment and fate of French and foreign Jews in Marseille, Donna Ryan explores the extent to which the Vichy government participated in the German plans to exterminate them. Marseille was a major French city in the Vichy Zone that had a large Jewish population; the Italians, who sometimes thwarted French administrators, never occupied Marseille; and it was a regional office of the Commissariat General aux Questions Juives and the Union Generale des Israelites de France, which could provide documentation.

The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present
The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present

Author: Peter Davies

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-04-12

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1134552963

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The Extreme Right in France, 1789 to the Present surveys the history of a fascinating but contentious political and intellectual tradition. Since 1789 the far right has been an important factor in French political life and in different eras has taken on a range of guises including traditionalism, ultra-royalism, radical nationalism, anti-Semitism and fascism. This book is structured around the five main phases of extreme right activity, and the author explores key questions about each: * Counter-revolution - what was the legacy of Joseph de Maistre's writings? * Anti-Third Republic protest - how was the 'new right' of the 1880s and 1890s different from the 'old right' of previous decades? * Inter-war fascism - how should we characterise the phenomenon of fascisme française? * Vichy - why did Pétain and Laval collaborate with the Nazis? * The Post-war far right - what is the relationship between Poujadism, Algérie Française and Le Pen's FN?

Britain and the Defeated French
Britain and the Defeated French

Author: Peter Mangold

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0857720708

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The four years between the military defeat of France by Nazi Germany and D-Day were vital, dramatic and eventful years in Anglo-French relations. These years saw the first armed clashes between France and Britain since the Napoleonic Wars, including the infamous Royal Navy attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. They also saw a curious relationship developing between Britain and Vichy France. Vichy was at once a hostile power, under German domination, and at the same time a porous regime through which British influence on its politics, attitudes towards the Resistance and the transit of British soldiers and airmen through its territory en route to Spain, could flow quite freely. Britain had an ambivalent attitude towards Vichy - obviously adversarial, but also pragmatic. The history of Vichy France is often viewed as a sideshow in the overall context of World War II. However, Peter Mangold here shows that the Vichy attitude towards the allies, especially the British, was ambivalent and complex. His absorbing and up-to-date account, based on original historical research, highlights the conflicts within the Vichy regime and the ways in which contacts and connections with de Gaulle in London and the British Government were maintained. This exciting and fast-paced book brings to life the major characters in the story - not only Churchill and de Gaulle, but also Macmillan, Petain and Leclerc. In this book, Mangold deftly reassesses the complex international wartime chessboard and, in the process, reveals a little known aspect of the World War II story.

France at War in the Twentieth Century
France at War in the Twentieth Century

Author: Valerie Holman

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 9781571817709

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"There are suggestive and interesting contributions ... Historians of modern France and historians interested in the cultural aspects of war will find much to engage with in this stimulating collection." - French History France experienced four major conflicts in the fifty years between 1914 and 1964: two world wars, and the wars in Indochina and Algeria. In each the role of myth was intricately bound up with memory, hope, belief, and ideas of nation. This is the first book to explore how individual myths were created, sustained, and used for purposes of propaganda, examining in detail not just the press, radio, photographs, posters, films, and songs that gave credence to an imagined event or attributed mythical status to an individual, but also the cultural processes by which such artifacts were disseminated and took effect. Reliance on myth, so the authors argue, is shown to be one of the most significant and durable features of 20th century warfare propaganda, used by both sides in all the conflicts covered in this book. However, its effective and useful role in time of war notwithstanding, it does distort a population's perception of reality and therefore often results in defeat: the myth-making that began as a means of sustaining belief in France's supremacy, and later her will and ability to resist, ultimately proved counterproductive in the process of decolonization.

The Agony of France
The Agony of France

Author: Andrew Sangster

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-06-22

Total Pages: 515

ISBN-13: 144389673X

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The Agony of France is written in three parts in a thematic style to enable easy referencing both for the student of history and the general reader. The first part deals with the Defeat of France in 1940, examining scholarship over the last seventy years in order to extrapolate the major factors. The second part explores Vichy France, the political Collaboration, and the various shades of collaborationism from the criminal and dedicated to that of sheer survival. This part looks at the problems of a modern Western democratic society suffering under a military occupation, the role of the French Church during this period, and the appalling circumstances surrounding anti-Semitism. The third part explores the nature of French resistance, the role of de Gaulle, and finishes with the postwar recriminations and trials. Unlike many Anglo-Saxon histories, this book adopts a more sympathetic attitude towards the French plight, and examines the nature of de Gaulle’s myth-building that France liberated itself. The book demonstrates that historical mythology is part of every country’s history when seeking its own redemption from the past. It will be of use to the student of history, as well as a wider readership interested in the circumstances surrounding Vichy rule in France.

The Fall of France in the Second World War
The Fall of France in the Second World War

Author: Richard Carswell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-02-01

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 3030039552

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This book examines how the fall of France in the Second World War has been recorded by historians and remembered within society. It argues that explanations of the fall have usually revolved around the four main themes of decadence, failure, constraint and contingency. It shows that the dominant explanation claimed for many years that the fall was the inevitable consequence of a society grown rotten in the inter-war period. This view has been largely replaced among academic historians by a consensus which distinguishes between the military defeat and the political demise of the Third Republic. It emphasizes the contingent factors that led to the military defeat. At the same time it seeks to understand the constraints within which France’s policy-makers were required to act and the reasons for their policy-making failures in economics, defence and diplomacy.