Prison Journal, 1940-1945

Prison Journal, 1940-1945 PDF Author: Edouard Daladier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100030812X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Even after fifty years, and in spite of the reams of documents now available,it remains difficult-especially in France-to form an objective view of what things were like in the period between the wars and in 1940.The greater, the swifter, the more unexpected the disaster, the less people are willing to deal with it squarely. Once a certain threshold of suffering,shame, and humiliation is reached, actual facts become unimportant,analyses become bothersome. History falls prey to myth and rumor.People refuse to hear any more, but they still need someone to blame. In France, the strangest of bedfellows have come to speak about it in one voice, and the good people have remained mute.

Prison Journal, 1940-1945

Prison Journal, 1940-1945 PDF Author: Edouard Daladier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100030812X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Even after fifty years, and in spite of the reams of documents now available,it remains difficult-especially in France-to form an objective view of what things were like in the period between the wars and in 1940.The greater, the swifter, the more unexpected the disaster, the less people are willing to deal with it squarely. Once a certain threshold of suffering,shame, and humiliation is reached, actual facts become unimportant,analyses become bothersome. History falls prey to myth and rumor.People refuse to hear any more, but they still need someone to blame. In France, the strangest of bedfellows have come to speak about it in one voice, and the good people have remained mute.

The French empire at War, 1940–1945

The French empire at War, 1940–1945 PDF Author: Martin Thomas
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526121433
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book Here

Book Description
The French empire at war draws on original research in France and Britain to investigate the history of the divided French empire – the Vichy and the Free French empires – during the Second World War. What emerges is a fascinating story. While it is clear that both the Vichy and Free French colonial authorities were only rarely masters of their own destiny during the war, preservation of limited imperial control served them both in different ways. The Vichy government exploited the empire in an effort to withstand German-Italian pressure for concessions in metropolitan France and it was key to its claim to be more than the mouthpiece of a defeated nation. For Free France too, the empire acquired a political and symbolic importance which far outweighed its material significance to the Gaullist war effort. As the war progressed, the Vichy empire lost ground to that of the Free French, something which has often been attributed to the attraction of the Gaullist mystique and the spirit of resistance in the colonies. In this radical new interpretation, Thomas argues that it was neither of these. The course of the war itself, and the initiatives of the major combatant powers, played the greatest part in the rise of the Gaullist empire and the demise of Vichy colonial control.

The Fall of France 1940

The Fall of France 1940 PDF Author: Andrew Shennan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315293676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Offering a fresh critical perspective on this momentous event, Andrew Shennan examines both the continuities and discontinuities that resulted from the events of 1940. The main focus is on the French experience of the war, but this experience is framed within the larger context of France's - and Europe's - protracted mid-twentieth century crisis.

The Fall of France

The Fall of France PDF Author: Julian Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192805509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
On 16 May 1940 an emergency meeting of the French High Command was called at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. The German army had broken through the French lines on the River Meuse at Sedan and elsewhere, only five days after launching their attack. Churchill, who had been telephoned by Prime Minister Reynaud the previous evening to be told that the French were beaten, rushed to Paris to meet the French leaders. The mood in the meeting was one of panic and despair; there was talk ofevacuating Paris. Churchill asked Gamelin, the French Commander in Chief, 'Where is the strategic reserve?' 'There is none,' replied Gamelin.This exciting book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies, and thus to a dramatic new phase of the Second World War. The search for scapegoats for the most humiliating military disaster in French history began almost at once: were miscalculations by military leaders to blame, or was this an indictment of an entire nation?Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries, Julian Jackson recreates, in gripping detail, the intense atmosphere and dramatic events of these six weeks in 1940, unravelling the historical evidence to produce a fresh answer to the perennial question of whether the fall of France was inevitable.

Prison Journal, 19401945

Prison Journal, 19401945 PDF Author: Edouard Daladier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367299729
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
Even after fifty years, and in spite of the reams of documents now available, it remains difficult-especially in France-to form an objective view of what things were like in the period between the wars and in 1940.The greater, the swifter, the more unexpected the disaster, the less people are willing to deal with it squarely. Once a certain threshold of suffering, shame, and humiliation is reached, actual facts become unimportant, analyses become bothersome. History falls prey to myth and rumor.People refuse to hear any more, but they still need someone to blame. In France, the strangest of bedfellows have come to speak about it in one voice, and the good people have remained mu

Mirrors of Destruction

Mirrors of Destruction PDF Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195077237
Category : Ethnicity
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
He then examines the pacifist reaction in interwar France to show how it contributed to a climate of collaboration with dictatorship and mass murder.

The Last Battle

The Last Battle PDF Author: Stephen Harding
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN: 0306822083
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
The true story of US & German soldiers fighting side by side in the final days of WW II

The RAF's French Foreign Legion

The RAF's French Foreign Legion PDF Author: G. H. Bennett
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441192050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines and analyses the relationship between the RAF, the Free French Movement and the French fighter pilots in WWII. A highly significant subject, this has been ignored by academics on both sides of the Channel. This ground-breaking study will fill a significant gap in the historiography of the War. Bennett's painstaking research has unearthed primary source material in both Britain and France including Squadron records, diaries, oral histories and memoirs. In the post-war period the idea of French pilots serving with the RAF seemed anachronistic to both sides. For the French nation the desire to draw a veil over the war years helped to obscure many aspects of the past, and for the British the idea of French pilots did not accord with the myths of "the Few" to whom so much was owed. Those French pilots who served had to make daring escapes. Classed as deserters they risked court martial and execution if caught. They would play a vital role on D-Day and the battle for control of the skies which followed.

Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945

Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940-1945 PDF Author: Claudia Baldoli
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441180486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first book to treat bombing during WWII as a European phenomenon and not just the 'Blitz' on Britain and Germany. With Western Europe now at the heart of a united continent, it is even more difficult to explain how only 70 years ago European states destroyed much of the urban landscape from the air. There were many blitzes between 1940 and 1945 with an estimated 700,000 people killed. The purpose of this book is to provide the basis for a comparison of the experience of western states under the impact of bombing. In particular, it considers the political, cultural and social responses to bombing rather than the military, strategic and social dimensions which have formed the core of the discussion hitherto. This book will correct the popular perception of the British Blitz as the key bombing experience by exposing the reality of life under the bombs for communities as far apart as Brest, Palermo, and Rostock. An international panel of historians consider the issues raised amidst the bombing of human rights and protection of civilians in this seminal event in C20th history.

Resistance and Liberation

Resistance and Liberation PDF Author: Douglas Porch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009161148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 833

Get Book Here

Book Description
New history of la France libre, Vichy collaboration, and the resistance from the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation.