This volume presents the intellectual autobiographies of fourteen leading scholars in the fields of history, literature, film and cultural studies who have dedicated a considerable part of their career to researching the history and memories of France during the Second World War. Basedin five different countries, Margaret Atack, Marc Dambre, Laurent Douzou, Hilary Footitt, Robert Gildea, Richard J. Golsan, Bertram M. Gordon, Christopher Lloyd, Colin Nettelbeck, Denis Peschanski, Renée Poznanski, Henry Rousso, Peter Tame, and Susan Rubin Suleiman have playeda crucial role in shaping and reshaping what has become a thought-provoking field of research. This volume, which also includes an interview with historian Robert O. Paxton, clarifies the rationales and driving forces behind their work and thus behind our current understanding of one of the darkest and most vividly remembered pages of history in contemporary France.

No leader of modern times was more uniquely patriotic than Charles de Gaulle. In his twenties, he fought for France in the trenches and at the epic battle of Verdun. In the 1930s, he waged a lonely battle to enable France to better resist Hitler Germany. Thereafter, he twice rescued the nation from defeat and decline by extraordinary displays of leadership, political acumen, daring, and bluff, heading off civil war and leaving a heritage adopted by his successors of right and left. Le General, as he became known from 1940 on, appeared as if he was carved from a single monumental block, but was in fact extremely complex, a man with deep personal feelings and recurrent mood swings, devoted to his family and often seeking reassurance from those around him. This is a magisterial, sweeping biography of one of the great leaders of the twentieth century and of the country with which he so identified himself. Written with terrific verve, narrative skill, and rigorous detail, the first major work on de Gaulle in fifteen years brings alive as never before the private man as well as the public leader. -- Publisher description.

This edited volume is a sequel to, and a development of, The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016 (2016). It focuses on the six major European countries and states that remained officially neutral throughout the Second World War, namely Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Vatican. Its transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary approach addresses complex questions pertaining to collective remembrance, national policies and politics, and intellectual as well as cultural responses to neutrality during and after the conflict. The contributions are from a broad range of scholars working across the disciplines of history, literature, film, media, and cultural studies. Their thought-provoking chapters challenge many assumptions about neutrality in the post-war European and global context, thereby filling a gap in the existing scholarship. Common themes that run through the volume include the intertwined and dynamic links between neutrality and moral responsibility during and after the Second World War, the importance of memory politics and popular culture in shaping collective memories, and the impact of the Holocaust in shifting traditional perspectives on neutrality since the 1990s. This volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars interested in the field of memory studies, as well as non-specialist readers.

This book analyses the successive appearances of Adolf Hitler in French fiction between 1945 and 2017. It discusses why, unlike what has been observed in the US and in the UK, it has proven problematic for French novelists to write about Hitler in their numerous fictional explorations of the Second World War. It examines the literary and ethical challenges of including historical characters such as Hitler in fiction, and demonstrates how these challenges evolved over time as memories of the Second World War also evolved in France. jhopok

A WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR The little-known true story of the woman who headed the largest spy network in Vichy France during World War II. In 1941, a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of Alliance, a vast Resistance organisation — the only woman to hold such a role. Brave, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence as Alliance — and as a result, the Gestapo pursued its members relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade’s own lover and many of her key spies. Fourcade herself lived on the run and was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape. Though so many of her agents died defending their country, Fourcade survived the occupation to become active in post-war French politics. Now, in a dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself.

One of the great arguments of World War II took place among Allied military leaders over when and where to launch a second front against Germany in Europe. This realistic, fact-based work posits what would have happened had Churchill been overruled, and that rather than invading North Africa in the fall of 1942, thence Sicily and Italy, the Allies

Aimed firmly at the student reader, this handbook offers an overview of the full range of the history of France, from the origins of the concept of post-Roman "Francia," through the emergence of a consolidated French monarchy and the development of both nation-state and global empire into the modern era, forward to the current complexities of a modern republic integrated into the European Union and struggling with the global legacies of its past. Short, incisive contributions by a wide range of expert scholars offer both a spine of chronological overviews and a diverse spectrum of up-to-date insights into areas of key interest to historians today. From the ravages of the Vikings to the role of gastronomy in the definition of French culture, from Caribbean slavery to the place of Algerians in present-day France, from the role of French queens in medieval diplomacy to the youth-culture explosion of the 1960s and the explosions of France’s nuclear weapons program, this handbook provides accessible summaries and selected further reading to explore any and all of these issues further, in the classroom and beyond.

"A witty, engaging narrative style…[Robb's] approach is particularly engrossing." —New York Times Book Review A narrative of exploration—full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants—that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language. Graham Robb describes that unknown world in arresting narrative detail. He recounts the epic journeys of mapmakers, scientists, soldiers, administrators, and intrepid tourists, of itinerant workers, pilgrims, and herdsmen with their millions of migratory domestic animals. We learn how France was explored, charted, and colonized, and how the imperial influence of Paris was gradually extended throughout a kingdom of isolated towns and villages. The Discovery of France explains how the modern nation came to be and how poorly understood that nation still is today. Above all, it shows how much of France—past and present—remains to be discovered. A New York Times Notable Book, Publishers Weekly Best Book, Slate Best Book, and Booklist Editor's Choice.

Organized chronologically, A History of Modern France presents a survey of the dramatic events that have punctuated French history, including the French Revolution, the upheavals of the 19th century, the world wars of the 20th century, and France's current role in the European Union. Written for today's undergraduate students, the text presents scholarly controversies in an unbiased manner and reflects the best of contemporary scholarship in French history.

Patterns in Twentieth-Century European Thought contains interpretive essays in the history of the century's Marxism, psychoanalysis, quantum physics, logic, language theory, philosophy, art, literature, and theology. A concluding essay argues that the philosophy and social theory - not to mention the physics and theology - constitute a twentieth-century Counter-Enlightenment that has replaced the Cartesian- and Newtonian-based Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.