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 The French Resistance written by Olivier Wieviorka and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book The Resistance written by Matthew Cobb and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book An American Heroine in the French Resistance written by Virginia D'Albert-Lake and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account by a woman who fought the Nazis alongside her husband is “an indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character” (The New Yorker). Virginia Roush fell in love with Philippe d’Albert-Lake during a visit to France in 1936; they married soon after. In 1943, they both joined the Resistance, where Virginia put her life in jeopardy as she sheltered downed airmen and later survived a Nazi prison camp. After the war, she stayed in France with Philippe, and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and the Medal of Honor. This book includes two rare documents—Virginia’s diary of wartime France until her capture in 1944, and her prison memoir written immediately after the war. Together they offer “an invaluable record of the workings of the French Resistance by one of the very few American women who participated in it” (Providence Journal). “A sharply etched and moving story of love, companionship, commitment, and sacrifice . . . This beautifully edited diary and memoir throw an original light on the French Resistance.” —Robert Gildea, author of Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940–1945 “At once a stunning self-portrait and dramatic narrative of a valorous young American woman . . . an exciting and gripping story.” —Walter Cronkite
Download or read book Vercors 1944 written by Peter Lieb and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Brave Genius written by Sean B. Carroll and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-before-told account of the intersection of some of the most insightful minds of the 20th century, and a fascinating look at how war, resistance, and friendship can catalyze genius. In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance to help liberate the country from the Nazis and ascended to prominent, dangerous roles. After the war and through twists of circumstance, they became friends, and through their passionate determination and rare talent they emerged as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unpublished and unknown material gathered over several years of research, Brave Genius tells the story of how each man endured the most terrible episode of the twentieth century and then blossomed into extraordinarily creative and engaged individuals. It is a story of the transformation of ordinary lives into exceptional lives by extraordinary events--of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, the flowering of creative genius, deep friendship, and of profound concern for and insight into the human condition.
Download or read book The Resistance in Western Europe 1940 1945 written by Olivier Wieviorka and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun—but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.
Download or read book French Resistance Fighter written by Terry Crowdy and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2007-06-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's study of French Resistance fighters of World War II (1939-1945). Working as an underground force, the French Resistance was initially formed spontaneously from scattered groups of men and women, inspired by the leadership of men like Charles de Gaulle. As the war progressed the Resistance developed into a secret army, terrorizing the forces of occupation and would-be collaborators alike, despite being excluded from the protection of the Geneva Convention, which left them facing torture and execution if captured. Striking photographs, coupled with first-hand accounts of capture and its terrible consequences, depict an engaging and human history of the French Resistance fighter. Terry Crowdy details the military achievements, tactics, backgrounds, and motivations of the men and women of the Resistance, whose actions helped to ensure the success of the D-Day landings and the liberation of France.
Download or read book Soldiers of the Night The Story of the French Resistance written by David Schoenbrun and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The most complete account of the French Resistance in English, and the most sensitive... A masterful rendering of the Resistance...” — Philip Hallie, The New York Times “A celebration and a memorial... Mr. Schoenbrun has had long conversations with a number of the best-known survivors, each one the keeper of a sacred flame... the fullest account of the French Resistance in English.” — Robert O. Paxton, The New York Review of Books “Political history chiefly, not heroics: the most extensive account in English of the two French Resistances — that of the Underground against Vichy and the Nazis, and that of de Gaulle against all other claimants to authority over fallen France... including, prominently, the Allies... A memorable and important book.” — Kirkus Reviews “Former CBS Paris bureau chief David Schoenbrun gives us an excellent, solidly researched account of the struggle waged by that gallant handful who sabotaged railroads and power plants, rescued Allied fliers and Jewish fugitives, assassinated German and Vichy officials, then fought pitched battles against elite Wehrmacht formations... With great objectivity and verve, Schoenbrun chronicles the often muddled, uncoordinated efforts of the Resistance through the four dark years of Nazi occupation. Systematically and factually, he explains the workings on the fragmented organizations that kept on fighting in spite of the Germans’ ruthless attempts to stamp them out.” — Martin Sokolinsky, Christian Science Monitor “[A] marvelous book... stories of heroism and self-sacrifice that challenge belief. [Schoenbrun] has created a prodigious work crowded with compelling stories...” — Richard J. Walton, Saturday Review “Important... richly deserving of acclaim... The first comprehensive account in English of the French Resistance... held together by a fine reporter’s instinct of how to tell a story and how to tell it well.” — Houston Chronicle
Download or read book The French Resistance written by Olivier Wieviorka and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 14. Formez vos Bataillons! -- Chapter 15. Social Components -- Chapter 16. The Repression -- Chapter 17. Incomplete Victory -- Chapter 18. A Divided Memory -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chronology -- Selected Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Download or read book Agents for Escape written by André Rougeyron and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The only merit of this book - and I insist on it - is that it is true, true from beginning to end. And this, you see, is definitely something!" So writes Andre Rougeyron in the Preface of his memoir, displaying a hint of the passion that undoubtedly accounted for his heroism in France and Germany during World War II - and displaying too his own modest self-regard. His chronicle of the years spent rescuing downed Allied airmen in France and consequently enduring German labor camps remains focused throughout on others. A myriad of individuals - both named and unnamed - and their sufferings and triumphs small and large suffuse his story. His portrait of Normandy under occupation and his descriptions of life and death in the labor camps add important new information to current understanding of how French resisters and the camps operated. Equally significant and also fascinating is his evocation of people from diverse backgrounds brought together under unbearably trying circumstances.
Download or read book Revisioning French Culture written by Andrew Sobanet and published by Studies in Modern and Contempo. This book was released on 2019 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisioning French Culture brings together a striking group of leading intellectuals and scholars to explore new avenues of research in French and Francophone Studies. Covering the medieval period through the twenty-first century, this volume presents investigations into a vast array of subjects. Revisioning French Culture grapples with topics vital to the contemporary cultural landscape, including universalism, globalization, the idea of Francophonie, and religious and secular identity. This essay collection furthermore transcends and illuminates the contemporary by delving into matters that have long resonated in the humanities and letters, such as death, war, trauma, power and politics, notions of the truth, conceptions of the self, and modes of reading and writing. With contributions by a number of figures known across the humanities and the social sciences, Revisioning French Culture explores the foundations of the French and Francophone world, providing cultural, political, and historical context for the crisis facing democracy and liberalism around the world today. These essays were assembled in honor of Lawrence D. Kritzman, whose writing and editorial work in French studies inspired the wide-ranging themes examined here.
Download or read book Resistance written by Agnes Humbert and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-11-03 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Agnès Humbert bears devastating witness to her time ... An insider's account of the germination of the French Resistance' William Boyd 'Sober and testifying, sardonic and humorous ... A beautiful and powerful work of literature' The Times In the summer of 1940, as the German Occupation tightened its grip on Paris, Agnès Humbert helped to establish one of the first resistance cells. She had no experience in warfare: she was an art historian, as were most of her early comrades, colleagues from the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. All they had was an unquenchable desire to free their country from the horrors of Nazi occupation. Within a year the group was publishing a news bulletin, helping allied airmen escape and passing military information back to London. Then came the catastrophe of betrayal, followed by arrest and interrogation, imprisonment and trial and, for Agnès, deportation to slave labour camp in Germany. Résistance is the secret journal of a woman who never gave up hope, even in the face of impossible odds.
Download or read book Silent Heroes written by Sherri Greene Ottis and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early years of World War II, it was an amazing feat for an Allied airman shot down over occupied Europe to make it back to England. By 1943, however, pilots and crewmembers, supplied with "escape kits," knew they had a 50 percent chance of evading capture and returning home. An estimated 12,000 French civilians helped make this possible. More than 5,000 airmen, many of them American, successfully traveled along escape lines organized much like those of the U.S. Underground Railroad, using secret codes and stopping in safe houses. If caught, they risked internment in a POW camp. But the French, Belgian, and Dutch civilians who aided them risked torture and even death. Sherri Ottis writes candidly about the pilots and crewmen who walked out of occupied Europe, as well as the British intelligence agency in charge of Escape and Evasion. But her main focus is on the helpers, those patriots who have been all but ignored in English-language books and journals. To research their stories, Ottis hiked the Pyrenees and interviewed many of the survivors. She tells of the extreme difficulty they had in avoiding Nazi infiltration by double agents; of their creativity in hiding evaders in their homes, sometimes in the midst of unexpected searches; of their generosity in sharing their meager food supplies during wartime; and of their unflagging spirit and courage in the face of a war fought on a very personal level.
Download or read book Organic Resistance written by Venus Bivar and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: France is often held up as a bastion of gastronomic refinement and as a model of artisanal agriculture and husbandry. But French farming is not at all what it seems. Countering the standard stories of gastronomy, tourism, and leisure associated with the French countryside, Venus Bivar portrays French farmers as hard-nosed businessmen preoccupied with global trade and mass production. With a focus on both the rise of big agriculture and the organic movement, Bivar examines the tumult of postwar rural France, a place fiercely engaged with crucial national and global developments. Delving into the intersecting narratives of economic modernization, the birth of organic farming, the development of a strong agricultural protest movement, and the rise of environmentalism, Bivar reveals a movement as preoccupied with maintaining the purity of the French race as of French food. What emerges is a story of how French farming conquered the world, bringing with it a set of ideas about place and purity with a darker origin story than we might have guessed.
Download or read book Resistance written by Carla Jablonski and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pair of siblings' bucolic French town is almost untouched by the ravages of WWII. When their friend goes into hiding and his Jewish parents disappear, they realize they must take a stand.
Download or read book The Cost of Courage written by Charles Kaiser and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2015-06-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, a bourgeois Catholic family tells their extraordinary story of working for the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris during WW2. “ . . . a mix of history, biography and memoir which reads like a nerve-racking thriller.” —Guardian In the autumn of 1943, André Boulloche became de Gaulle’s military delegate in Paris, coordinating all the Resistance movements in the 9 northern regions of France—only to be betrayed by one of his associates, arrested, wounded by the Gestapo, and taken prisoner. His sisters carried on the fight without him until the end of the war. André survived 3 concentration camps and later became a prominent French politician who devoted the rest of his life to reconciliation of France and Germany. His parents and oldest brother were arrested and shipped off on the last train from Paris to Germany before the liberation, and died in the camps. Since then, silence has been the Boulloches’s answer to dealing with the unbearable. This is the first time the family has cooperated with an author to recount their extraordinary ordeal.
