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Author: Robert Gildea
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067491502X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616
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Book Description
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.
Author: Robert Gildea
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067491502X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: Peter Lieb
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1780961162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
A highly illustrated account of the conflict between the German Army and security forces and the French resistance in the Alps. Fighting insurgents has always been one of the greatest challenges for regular armed forces during the 20th century. The war between the Germans and the French resistance, also called FFI (Forces Françaises d'Intérieur), during World War II has remained a near-forgotten chapter in the history of these 'Small Wars'. This is all the more astonishing as agencies like the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) and the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services) pumped a good amount of their resources into the support of the French resistance movement. By diversionary attacks on German forces in the occupied hinterland the Allies hoped the FFI could provide assistance in disrupting German supply lines as well as crumbling their morale. The mountain plateau of the Vercors south-west of Grenoble was the main stronghold of the FFI, and in July 1944 some 8,000 German soldiers mounted an operation on the plateau and destroyed the insurgent groups there. This compact volume examines the battle of the Vercors, the largest operation against the FFI during World War II, and shows how the Germans' suit and crushing victory has caused traumatic memories for the French that persist to the present day.
Author: Olivier Wieviorka
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497039X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584
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Book Description
“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.
Author: Boris Pahor
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
A compelling Holocaust memoir by a concentration camp survivor, who returns, twenty years later, to recollect the horror.
Author: James R. Benn
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641292989
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
US Army Captain Billy Boyle plunges into partisan warfare alongside betrayed French Resistance fighters in his seventeenth WWII investigation. Southern France, 1944: Ex-Boston cop and wartime military investigator Billy Boyle is given a dangerous assignment—to extract a British Special Operations Executive officer from Crete and take him to France to serve on a security detail to identify fascist sympathizers. The mission gets even more complicated when Billy realizes how many enemies the officer he must protect has accrued. In the aftermath of the failed, and costly, Vercors uprising, tensions among Resistance groups are running high, and the mission turns far deadlier than expected. On the quest to weed out Vichy collaborators, Billy takes up an independent investigation to exonerate an innocent comrade of murder. In the process, he crosses paths with the legendary SOE agent Christine Granville and the heroic 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up of Nisei soldiers who are already on their way to becoming the most decorated unit in the history of the US Army. With sacrifice and subterfuge afoot, Billy doesn’t know who he can trust, or how close to death this case may bring him.
Author: Gershom Gorenberg
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610396286
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.
Author: Margaret Collins Weitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0471196983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Critical acclaim for Sisters in the Resistance "Often moving . . . always fascinating . . . women in the FrenchResistance is a key subject. Margaret Weitz has gathered personaltestimonies . . . and set them in an intelligible context thathelps us understand how all French people--men andwomen--experienced the Nazi occupation." --Robert Paxton, MellonProfessor of Social Sciences, Columbia University, and author ofVichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. "Compulsive reading . . . a valuable book which vividly portraysthe intricacies of resistance within France, written in an easy butserious style." --Times Literary Supplement (London). "An absolutely stunning and compelling chronicle of dauntlesscourage and unflagging patriotism." --Booklist. "[Margaret Collins Weitz's] well-researched, thoughtful study. . .has filled a gap in the history of World War II." --PublishersWeekly. "Balancing absorbing narrative and astute analysis, MargaretCollins Weitz has integrated the unsung achievements of women intothe history of the French Resistance." --Carole Fink, Professor ofHistory, The Ohio State University, and author of Marc Bloch: ALife in History. "Fifty years after the end of World War II, Sisters in theResistance renders homage to the courageous women of the FrenchResistance. It is high time for their contributions to be fullyacknowledged, and fortunate indeed that they have found such asympathetic, scholarly, and lucid chronicler in Margaret CollinsWeitz." --Marilyn Yalom, author of Blood Sisters: The FrenchRevolution in Women's Memory.
Author: Robert Gildea
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300067118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
This fascinating book examines how the past pervades French public life, how the French both commemorate their past triumphs, heroes, and martyrs and attempt to erase the more violent events in their history. The book surveys the ways that various political communities in France during the past two centuries have manufactured different versions of the past in order to define their identities and legitimate their goals. Beginning with a discussion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, Robert Gildea moves backward in time to show how rival factions have used various elements of French political culture--from the grandeur of the ancien r�gime to Catholicism, Jacobinism, Anarchism, and Bonapartism--to further their ends. Gildea shows how proponents of revolution and counterrevolution, church and state, centralism and regionalism, and national identity and nationalism campaigned to achieve the widest possible acceptance of their own view of the past. He describes the continuing battle between Left and Right for association with national heroes such as Joan of Arc and Napoleon. He exposes the reworking of collective views of the past by political communities, in order to increase or recover political legitimacy. Written in clear and trenchant prose, the book offers a new perspective on French history and political culture.
Author: Margi Preus
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613123787
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
“Newbery Honor winner Preus . . . delivers a riveting story about teenage freedom fighters in WWII Norway” (Publishers Weekly). After Nazi Germany invades and occupies Norway, fourteen-year-old Espen and his friends are swept up in the Norwegian resistance movement. Espen gets his start by delivering illegal newspapers, then graduates to the role of courier and finally becomes a spy, dodging the Gestapo along the way. During five years under the Nazi regime, Espen, his sister, and their parents live in fear of nighttime raids and arrests, and they begin to question the loyalties of the people around them. Espen gains—and loses—friends, falls in love, and makes one small mistake that threatens to catch up with him as he sets out to escape on skis over the mountains to Sweden . . . Award-winning author Margi Preus crafts a thrilling adventure based on the real-life experiences of Erling Storrusten, a Norwegian spy during World War II. Praise for Shadow on the Mountain “Engrossing. . . . This is at once a spy thriller, a coming-of-age story, and a chronicle of escalating bravery. Multidimensional characters fill this gripping tale that keeps readers riveted to the end.” —School Library Journal, starred review “A morally satisfying page turner.” —Kirkus Reviews
Author: Matthew Cobb
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847377599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550
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Book Description
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.
