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 Teenage Resistance Fighter written by Hubert Verneret and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A history book that reads like a novel, this testimony comes from one of the last living eyewitnesses” of the Nazi occupation of France (Christiane Amanpour, CNN Chief International Correspondent). September 5, 1944 The Americans are approaching; we follow their progress impatiently on the radio, by intercepting messages reserved for the commandos. They cannot be beaten now. But it is up to us to do the impossible to speed up the progression of the bulk of their troops, to facilitate the advance of their spearhead, and, above all, to prevent the Germans from withdrawing to the Rhine in good order, with all their equipment. How many human lives will we manage to save? Hubert Verneret was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy in Burgundy when the Nazis invaded Poland and fifteen when France fell. A Boy Scout, he helped refugees and the gendarmerie, moved wounded soldiers, and dug out bodies after air raids. Throughout, he kept a diary recording his actions, thoughts, and feelings as French troops retreated and Germans arrived. In 1944, at nineteen, he decided to join the local maquis resistance fighters, operating from a hidden base in the forest. Though constantly in danger, he found himself frustrated, as he felt fated never to fight the Germans directly, never to take a prisoner. As the Allies approached, the maquisards worked to upset and weaken the retreating Germans to aid the Allied advance. Hubert details the joy with which the maquisards were welcomed in local villages when the fighting ended. Only as he listened to the speech given as the maquisards disbanded did he understand that his part in the war, while perhaps not heroic as that played by others, was still important in gaining the victory. Years later, Hubert interviewed local maquisards to understand more about maquis history; their words and excerpts from the diary of a local civilian during the German retreat provide context to Hubert’s youthful testimony. This first English edition of Hubert’s diary retains the original prefaces by Col. Buckmaster, chief of the French section of the SOE, and Col. d’Escrienne, aide de camp to Gen. de Gaulle.
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 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 Malou written by Michele Huppert and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Kneppel was pregnant with her daughter Michele when war broke out in Europe in 1939. As the German army and French police closed in on Ruth and her family, they hid in various homes throughout Paris before fleeing south to France's free zone. A woman of incredible courage and defiance, Ruth joined the Resistance and engaged in perilous undercover operations, posing as an Algerian Christian with the nom de guerre 'Malou'. In Malou: French Resistance Fighter, Michele Huppert details the role her mother played in the liberation of France, including transporting coded messages to operatives hiding in the forest, smuggling revolvers to Resistance assassins, and preparing political prisoners for jailbreak. At just three years of age, Michele accompanied her mother during many secret operations, providing the perfect ruse for SS officers and enemy collaborators searching for Resistance fighters. In the years following liberation, the family returned to Paris where Ruth assisted in the care of orphaned Jewish children through her work with the humanitarian organisation OSE. Eventually, Ruth and Michele made their way to Australia where they built a new life in a peaceful country.
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 Sudden Courage written by Ronald C. Rosbottom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of When Paris Went Dark returns to World War II to tell the remarkable story of the youngest members of the French Resistance and their war against the German occupiers and their collaborators On June 14, 1940, German tanks entered a nearly deserted Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Many adapted to the situation—even allied themselves with their new overlords. Yet amid increasing Nazi ruthlessness, shortages and arbitrary curfews, a resistance arose—a shadow army of workers, intellectuals, shop owners, police officers, Jews, immigrants, and communists. Among this army were a remarkable number of adolescents and young men and women; it was estimated by one underground leader that “four-fifths of the members of the resistance were under the age of thirty.” Months earlier, they would have been spending their evenings studying for exams, sneaking out to dates, and finding their footing at first jobs. Now they learned the art of sabotage, the ways of disguise and deception, how to stealthily avoid patrols, steal secrets, and eliminate the enemy—sometimes violently. Nevertheless, in most histories of the French Resistance, the substantial contributions of the young have been minimized or, at worst, ignored. Sudden Courage remedies that amnesia. Amid heart-stopping accounts of subterfuge, narrow escapes, and deadly consequences, we meet blind Jacques Lusseyran, who created one of the most influential underground networks in Paris; Guy Môquet, whose execution at the hands of Germans became a cornerstone of rebellion; Maroussia Naïtchenko, a young communist uncannily adept at escaping Gestapo traps; André Kirschen, who at fifteen had to become an assassin; Anise Postel-Vinay, captured and sent to a concentration camp; and bands of other young rebels who chose to risk their lives for a better tomorrow. But Sudden Courage is more than an inspiring account of youthful daring and determination. It is also a riveting investigation of what it means to come of age under the threat of rising nativism and authoritarianism—one with a deep bearing on our own time.
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.
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 Fighters in the Shadows written by Robert Gildea and published by . This book was released on 2016-07-07 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the French Resistance is central to French identity, but it is a story built on myths. Not simply an effort to free the country from German occupation, it was part of a Europe-wide anti-fascist struggle, which included Spanish republicans, Italian and German anti-Nazis, communists, Jewish resisters and Christian rescuers. Robert Gildea returns to the testimonies of those involved, asking who they were, and what compelled them to take the terrible risks they did, bringing to the fore stories of the women resisters, whom history has neglected. Fighters in the Shadows is a vivid, gripping and entirely new account of one of the most compelling narratives of the Second World War.
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 Resistance and Betrayal written by Patrick Marnham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Enthralling and intelligent, a masterly exploration of the sinister labyrinth that was wartime France . . . It is a remarkable book, utterly fascinating.” —Allan Massie Not long after 2:00 p.m. on June 21, 1943, eight men met in secret at a doctor’ s house in Lyon. They represented the warring factions of the French Resistance and had been summoned by General de Gaulle’s new envoy, a man most of them knew simply as “Max.” Minutes after the last man entered the house, the Gestapo broke in, led by Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon.” The fate awaiting Barbie’s prisoners was torture, deportation, and death. “Max” was tortured sadistically but never broke: he took his many secrets to his grave. In that moment, the legend of Jean Moulin was born. Who betrayed Jean Moulin? And who was this enigmatic hero, a man as skilled in deception as he was in acts of heroism? After the war, his ashes were transferred to the Panthéon—France’s highest honor—where his memory is revered alongside that of Voltaire and Victor Hugo. But Moulin’s story is full of unanswered questions: the truth of his life is far more complicated than the legend conveniently manufactured by de Gaulle. Resistance and Betrayal tells for the first time in English the epic story of France’s greatest war hero, a Schindler-like character of ambiguous motivation. A winner of the Marsh Prize for biography, praised by Graham Greene and Julian Barnes, Patrick Marnham is a brilliant storyteller with a keen appreciation for the complex maze of moral compromises navigated in times of war. Told with the drama and suspense of the best espionage fiction, Resistance and Betrayal brings to life the dark and duplicitous world of the French Resistance and offers a startling conclusion to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Second World War. NOTE: This edition does not include photographs.
Download or read book My Stripes Were Earned in Hell written by Jean-Pierre Renouard and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-16 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This remarkable memoir tells the story of Jean-Pierre Renouard, a gentile, in Germany's Nazi prison camps. In this spare, compelling narrative of a year during which he and the world he knew descended into hell, he recounts his battle to survive—physically, emotionally, and morally. In May 1944, just a month before D-Day, Renouard, then a teenaged French underground fighter, was captured and imprisoned by the Gestapo. He vividly depicts the labor camps' brutal daily life and social hierarchies, his personal struggles, the friendships gained and lost, and, of course, his incredible and primary task of survival. When he was finally transferred to the infamous Bergen-Belsen death camp, a typhus epidemic had already spread, and he helplessly watched his last surviving comrades die before Allied troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. Written in a deliberately neutral tone, without hatred or even resentment, Renouard's memoir is a memorial to those murdered and a powerful testimony to the human capacity to commit—and to survive—mass atrocity.
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 Madame Fourcade s Secret War written by Lynne Olson and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book And There Was Light written by Jacques Lusseyran and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that helped inspire Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See An updated edition of this classic World War II memoir, chosen as one of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century, with a new photo insert and restored passages from the original French edition When Jacques Lusseyran was an eight-year-old Parisian schoolboy, he was blinded in an accident. He finished his schooling determined to participate in the world around him. In 1941, when he was seventeen, that world was Nazi-occupied France. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness, or indeed any challenge, ever published.
