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Author: Michael S. Neiberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674258568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Shocked by the fall of France in 1940, panicked US leaders rushed to back the Vichy governmentÑa fateful decision that nearly destroyed the AngloÐAmerican alliance. According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the Òmost shocking single eventÓ of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American responseÑa policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American plannersÕ strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military conscription, and domestic spying to weed out potential fifth columnists. Abroad, the United States decided to work with Vichy France despite its pro-Nazi tendencies. The USÐVichy partnership, intended to buy time and temper the flames of war in Europe, severely strained AngloÐAmerican relations. American leaders naively believed that they could woo men like Philippe Ptain, preventing France from becoming a formal German ally. The British, however, understood that Vichy was subservient to Nazi Germany and instead supported resistance figures such as Charles de Gaulle. After the war, the choice to back Vichy tainted USÐFrench relations for decades. Our collective memory of World War II as a period of American strength overlooks the desperation and faulty decision making that drove US policy from 1940 to 1943. Tracing the key diplomatic and strategic moves of these formative years, When France Fell gives us a more nuanced and complete understanding of the war and of the global position the United States would occupy afterward.
Author: Michael S. Neiberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674258568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Shocked by the fall of France in 1940, panicked US leaders rushed to back the Vichy governmentÑa fateful decision that nearly destroyed the AngloÐAmerican alliance. According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the Òmost shocking single eventÓ of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American responseÑa policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American plannersÕ strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military conscription, and domestic spying to weed out potential fifth columnists. Abroad, the United States decided to work with Vichy France despite its pro-Nazi tendencies. The USÐVichy partnership, intended to buy time and temper the flames of war in Europe, severely strained AngloÐAmerican relations. American leaders naively believed that they could woo men like Philippe Ptain, preventing France from becoming a formal German ally. The British, however, understood that Vichy was subservient to Nazi Germany and instead supported resistance figures such as Charles de Gaulle. After the war, the choice to back Vichy tainted USÐFrench relations for decades. Our collective memory of World War II as a period of American strength overlooks the desperation and faulty decision making that drove US policy from 1940 to 1943. Tracing the key diplomatic and strategic moves of these formative years, When France Fell gives us a more nuanced and complete understanding of the war and of the global position the United States would occupy afterward.
Author: Martin Dugard
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593183096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From Martin Dugard, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Killing series with Bill O’Reilly, comes the spellbinding story of the Allied liberation of Paris from the grip of the Nazis during World War II “Taking Paris does for Paris during World War II what The Splendid and the Vile did for London.”—James Patterson • “Heroes and villains abound. You’ll enjoy this fast-paced book immensely.”—Bill O’Reilly • “Succeeds triumphantly.”—The Washington Post May 1940: The world is stunned as Hitler's forces invade France with a devastating blitzkrieg aimed at Paris. Within weeks, the French government has collapsed, and the City of Lights, revered for its carefree lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and love of liberty, has fallen under Nazi control—perhaps forever. As the Germans ruthlessly crush all opposition, a patriotic band of Parisians known as the Resistance secretly rise up to fight back. But these young men and women cannot do it alone. Over 120,000 Parisians die under German occupation. Countless more are tortured in the city's Gestapo prisons and sent to death camps. The longer the Nazis hold the city, the greater the danger its citizens face. As the armies of America and Great Britain prepare to launch the greatest invasion in history, the spies of the Resistance risk all to ensure the Germans are defeated and Paris is once again free. The players holding the fate of Paris in their hands are some of the biggest historical figures of the era: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, General George S. Patton, and the exiled French general Charles de Gaulle, headquartered in London's Connaught Hotel. From the fall of Paris in 1940 to the race for Paris in 1944, this riveting, page-turning drama unfolds through their decisions—for better and worse. Taking Paris is history told at a breathtaking pace, a sprawling yet intimate saga of heroism, desire, and personal sacrifice for all that is right.
Author: Jeremy Mercer
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429936088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
How long did the guillotine's blade hang over the heads of French criminals? Was it abandoned in the late 1800s? Did French citizens of the early days of the twentieth century decry its brutality? No. The blade was allowed to do its work well into our own time. In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured 22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her to death in the Provencal countryside where he left her body to rot. In 1977, he became the last person executed by guillotine in France in a multifaceted case as mesmerizing for its senseless violence as it is though-provoking for its depiction of a France both in love with and afraid of The Foreigner. In a thrilling and enlightening account of a horrendous murder paired with the history of the guillotine and the history of capital punishment, Jeremy Mercer, a writer well known for his view of the underbelly of French life, considers the case of Hamida Djandoubi in the vast flow of blood that France's guillotine has produced. In his hands, France never looked so bloody...
Author: Ernest R. May
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466894288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
A dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.
Author: Michael S. Neiberg
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674049543
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting in 1914, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.
Author: Donald Kladstrup
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767913256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
The remarkable untold story of France’s courageous, clever vinters who protected and rescued the country’s most treasured commodity from German plunder during World War II. "To be a Frenchman means to fight for your country and its wine." –Claude Terrail, owner, Restaurant La Tour d’Argent In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown–until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them. Wine and War illuminates a compelling, little-known chapter of history, and stands as a tribute to extraordinary individuals who waged a battle that, in a very real way, saved the spirit of France.
Author: William L. Shirer
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795342470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1948
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Book Description
The National Book Award–winning historian’s “vivid and moving” eyewitness account of the fall of France to Hitler’s Third Reich at the outset of WWII (The New York Times). As an international war correspondent and radio commentator during World War II, William L. Shirer didn’t just research the fall of France. He was there. In just six weeks, he watched the Third Reich topple one of the world’s oldest military powers—and institute a rule of terror and paranoia. Based on in-person conversations with the leaders, diplomats, generals, and ordinary citizens who both shaped the events and lived through them, Shirer constructs a compelling account of historical events without losing sight of the human experience. From the heroic efforts of the Freedom Fighters to the tactical military misjudgments that caused the fall and the daily realities of life for French citizens under Nazi rule, this fascinating and exhaustively documented account brings this significant episode of history to life. “This is a companion effort to Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, also voluminous but very readable, reflecting once again both Shirer’s own experience and an enormous mass of historical material well digested and assimilated.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Author: Julian Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192805509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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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.
Author: Guy Chapman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Author: Noel Barber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780333178010
Category : France
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
"The week France fell gives a vivid and moving picture of a country in defeat. While the refugees leaving Paris struggled to keep one step ahead of the advancing German armies, their political and military leaders were fighting not so much the Germans as among themselves. There is Paul Reynaud, the French premiere -- courageous in his way but hampered by his pro-German mistress, H?l?ne de Portes; the arrogant General Weygand, commander-in-chief of the French army, and the senile Marshal P?tain both committed to an armistice with the Germans. There is the tall figure of de Gaulle who struggled so hard to persuade the government to fight on from North Africa. And of course there is Churchill, at the very heart of the story, whether planning the war in London or flying first to the French army headquarters, and then to the bomb-scarred airfield near Tours, in last-minute efforts to bolster French morale. Against this background of bickering and futility, Noel Barber has arrayed a gallery of ordinary men and women whose lives were caught up in the tragedy. They include Zena Marshall, then a schoolgirl, who had a terrifying journey from Brussels to Bordeaux after her school had been bombed; Drue Tarti?re whom chance placed in a small room in Bordeaux next to P?tain when he made his surrender speech; and Corrine Luchaire, the French actress, who found milk to save just a few of the starving children, among the eight million refugees who clogged the roads"--Jacket.
