Download or read book French Africa in World War II written by Eric T. Jennings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only months after France's defeat in 1940, a new army was raised in Africa to fight the Nazis. Eric T. Jennings tells the story of an improbable French military and institutional rebirth through Central Africa and gives a unique look at the role Free French Africa played during World War II.
Download or read book Africa and World War II written by Judith Ann-Marie Byfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-20 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a fresh perspective on Africa's central role in the Allied victory in World War II. Its detailed case studies, from all parts of Africa, enable us to understand how African communities sustained the Allied war effort and how they were transformed in the process. Together, the chapters provide a continent-wide perspective.
Download or read book France During World War II written by Thomas Rodney Christofferson and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides an introduction to almost every aspect of the French experience during World War II by integrating political, diplomatic, military, social, cultural and economic history. It chronicles the battles and campaigns that stained French soil with blood.
Download or read book French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II written by Raffael Scheck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the experience of French colonial prisoners of war captured by Nazi Germany during World War II. It illustrates that the colonial prisoners' contradictory experiences with French authorities, French civilians, and German guards led to clashes with a colonial administration eager to return to a discriminatory routine following the war.
Download or read book Fighters in the Shadows written by Robert Gildea and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Africa and the First World War written by Melvin E Page and published by Springer. This book was released on 1987-09-22 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Free French Africa in World War II written by Eric T. Jennings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only in recent years have historians rediscovered the critical role that French colonial troops played in the twentieth century's two world wars. What is perhaps still deeply under-appreciated is how much General de Gaulle's Free France drew its strength from 1940 to the middle of 1943 from fighting men, resources, and operations in French Equatorial Africa rather than London. Territorially, Free France spanned from the Libyan border with Chad down to the Congo River, and to the scattered tiny French territories of the South Pacific and India. Eric T. Jennings tells the story of an improbable French military and institutional rebirth through Central Africa and gives a unique, deep look at the key role Free French Africa played during World War II to help the Allied cause.
Download or read book Tricolor Over the Sahara written by Edward L. Bimberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-03-30 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the early struggles of an ill-equipped ragtag French force, among the first to pledge its loyalty to General de Gaulle. It fought a lonely, almost secret war against the numerically superior Italian troops deep in the wildest parts of the Sahara, hundreds of miles from the main campaigns along the African coast. These daring Free French raids with their long thirsty treks and small-scale oasis battles have been nearly forgotten, although their path is marked by the graves of many hundreds of French, Italian, and native soldiers. Bimberg details the exotic units that participated in this struggle, including the Tirailleurs Sénégalaise du T'chad (African Infantry), the Compagnies Sahariennes (Saharan Camel Companies), and the Groupe Nomade du Tibesti (a tribal militia recruited in the Tibesti Mountain region of the great desert). Despite antiquated equipment and some of the world's worst terrain, the Free French were among the most dedicated soldiers in the Allied camp. The backdrop to their fierce fighting includes the barely surveyed Tibesti Mountains with their 10,000 foot volcanic peaks, interspersed with treacherous shifting sands—terrain which would prove to be an enormous challenge to the worn out, patched-together motor vehicles of the Free French. Much of the action takes place in the most remote areas of Italian Libya, the desert province of Fezzan with its fortified oases of Mourzouk and Koufra, each strongly defended by the Italians. While these skirmishes were a sideshow to the epic battles of North Africa, they were immortalized by heroic acts by the French and African troops alike, efforts that ultimately led to success in this far corner of the world.
Download or read book Destination Casablanca written by Meredith Hindley and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rollicking and panoramic history of Casablanca during the Second World War sheds light on the city as a key hub for European and American powers, and a place where spies, soldiers, and political agents exchanged secrets and vied for control. In November 1942, as a part of Operation Torch, 33,000 American soldiers sailed undetected across the Atlantic and stormed the beaches of French Morocco. Seventy-four hours later, the Americans controlled the country and one of the most valuable wartime ports: Casablanca. In the years preceding, Casablanca had evolved from an exotic travel destination to a key military target after France's surrender to Germany. Jewish refugees from Europe poured in, hoping to obtain visas and passage to the United States and beyond. Nazi agents and collaborators infiltrated the city in search of power and loyalty. The resistance was not far behind, as shopkeepers, celebrities, former French Foreign Legionnaires, and disgruntled bureaucrats formed a network of Allied spies. But once in American hands, Casablanca became a crucial logistical hub in the fight against Germany -- and the site of Roosevelt and Churchill's demand for "unconditional surrender." Rife with rogue soldiers, power grabs, and diplomatic intrigue, Destination Casablanca is the riveting and untold story of this glamorous city--memorialized in the classic film that was rush-released in 1942 to capitalize on the drama that was unfolding in North Africa at the heart of World War II.
Download or read book The French Army and Its African Soldiers written by Ruth Ginio and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 7 Adjusting to a New Reality: The Army and the Imminent Independence -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Download or read book French Colonialism Unmasked written by Ruth Ginio and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-12-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Vichy regime, there was ostensibly only one France and one form of colonialism for French West Africa (FWA). World War II and the division of France into two ideological camps, each asking for legitimacy from the colonized, opened for Africans numerous unprecedented options. French Colonialism Unmasked analyzes three dramatic years in the history of FWA, from 1940 to 1943, in which the Vichy regime tried to impose the ideology of the National Revolution in the region. Ruth Ginio shows how this was a watershed period in the history of the region by providing an in-depth examination of the Vichy colonial visions and practices in fwa. She describes the intriguing encounters between the colonial regime and African society along with the responses of different sectors in the African population to the Vichy policy. Although French Colonialism Unmasked focuses on one region within the French Empire, it has relevance to French colonial history in general by providing one of the missing pieces in research on Vichy colonialism. Ruth Ginio is a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of articles in International Journal of African Historical Studies, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Cahiers d'etudes africaines, and several other journals.
Download or read book Normandy written by Olivier Wieviorka and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Allied landings on the coast of "Normandy" have assumed legendary status. But overly romanticizing D-day, Wieviorka argues, losses sight of the full picture. "Normandy" offers a balanced, complete account that reveals the successes and weaknesses of the titanic enterprise.
Download or read book Free France s Lion written by William Moore and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2011-11-19 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: But for his early death, many Frenchmen believe Leclerc would have been their greatest figure to emerge from World War II. De Gaulle himself admitted to his son-in-law that he gave up smoking when Leclerc died, in order to retain his health in case France needed him, because Leclerc was no longer there. From the fall of France until 1943, Leclerc dovetailed his operations with the British effort in North Africa, establishing himself as a dynamic combat leader in the battles against Rommel. But once the conflict shifted to European soil he became even more prominent as the commander of the 2nd French Armored Division (the famous 2e DB). For the next two years he was under the operational control of either Patton's Third Army, as in the Normandy breakout, Hodges' First Army, at the Westwall, or Patch's Seventh Army in the south. His career not only includes the liberation of Paris, for which he is most famous, but the retaking of Strasbourg and the reduction of the Colmar Pocket. Helping to spearhead the advance into Germany itself, Leclercs armor comprised a rock upon which American units could rely, and its waving the tricolor during the Allied counter-invasion went far toward retrieving French prestige in the war. By the German surrender in May 1945, Leclerc is one of very few Frenchmen of whom it can be said that he never stopped fighting to regain France's freedom, from the debacle of 1940 right through to the end. After VE-Day Leclerc was dispatched to reassert French authority in Indo-China, an uphill task given the atrophy suffered by the French colonial government due to its isolation from its homeland and local Japanese superiority. While being partly successful in the south and Cambodia, Leclerc soon discovered that the Viet Minh were harder to dislodge in the North, and that Ho Chi Minh was more than a match for frequently changing postwar French governments. Recognizing that France had neither the means nor the will to recover control, Leclerc advised his government to "negotiate at all costs." This didn't happen, leading to Dien Bien Phu eight years later and thence to US involvement. Surprisingly, Leclerc has never yet been the subject of a thorough biography in English. Nevertheless many Americans and Englishmen will inevitably have noticed the plethora of monuments to Leclerc in any moderately sized French town. With a fast-paced narrative covering combat at all levels of command and a foreword by Martin Windrow, author of The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam, Free France's Lion will make fascinating reading for any serious student of the full scope of World War II.
Download or read book What Soldiers Do written by Mary Louise Roberts and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-05-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.
Download or read book First to the Rhine written by Mark Stout, Harry Yeide and published by . This book was released on with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the Allied forces--the U.S. 6th Army Group and French 1st Army--that landed in southern France on August 15th, 1944. The book follows the action from the French beaches to the Vosges Mountains, where the first Allied penetration along the entire Western front reached the Rhine River. First to the Rhine covers the vicious fighting during the German Nordwind counteroffensive in January 1945 and the French-American offensive to clear the Colmar Pocket. It then pursues the forces of the Third Reich across the Rhine to their ultimate destruction. Unlike the forces landing in Normandy, these American divisions were hard-bitten veterans of the war in Italy, and, in the case of the 3d Infantry Division, North Africa. The French units included many veterans of the Italian campaign and comprised Frenchmen and Africans in almost equal numbers. As the campaign went on, the French ranks were swelled by tens of thousands of Free French Forces of the Interior, the famous maquis. The German forces arrayed against the Allies included the famed 11th Panzer Division, an Eastern front veteran known as the "Ghost Division," which would hit the Allied advance time and again only to slip away before it could be pinned and destroyed. This is the harrowing story First to the Rhine tells, from the strategic plane-down through the corps, division, and regimental levels to the personal experience of the men in combat, including the likes of Audie Murphy, Americas most decorated infantryman of the war. The book features little-known battles, including one at Montelimar, when an ad hoc American armored command and the 36th Infantry Division came within a hairs breadth and several days of hard fighting of cutting off the entire German 19th Army. This is the first popular work in English to explore the French role in the fighting and the relationship between the U.S. Army and the French forces fighting under American command.
Download or read book Division Leclerc written by Merlin Robinson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-27 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'General Leclerc' was the nom de guerre adopted by the Gaullist officer Philippe de Hautcloque, to protect his family in occupied France. He became France's foremost fighting commander, and his armored division (the '2e DB') its most famous formation. Starting as a small scratch force of mostly African troops organised and led by Leclerc in French Equatorial Africa, it achieved early success raiding Italian and German positions in co-operation with Britain's Long Range Desert Group. Following the Allied victory in North Africa it was expanded and reorganised as a US Army-style armoured division, with American tanks and other armoured vehicles. Shipped to the UK, in spring 1944, it was assigned to Patton's US Third Army, landing in time for the Normandy breakout and being given the honour of liberating Paris in August 1944. Combining a thorough analysis of their combat and organisation with detailed colour plates of their uniforms and equipment, this is the fascinating story of Free France's most effective fighting force.
