France during World War II: From Defeat to Liberation

Further Reading in English

Further Reading in English General histories of the period include Julian Jackson’s encyclopedic France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Philippe Burrin’s excellent France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York: New Press, 1996). Older, but still useful is Jean-Pierre Azéma, From Munich to Liberation, 1938–1944, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1984). Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972) remains fundamental , especially for state collaboration. Collecting recent scholarship are Sarah Fishman, Laura Lee Downs, and Ioannis Sinanoglou, eds., France at War: Vichy and the Historians (New York: Berg, 2000), a Festschrift for Robert O. Paxton, and Hanna Diamond and Simon Kitson, eds., Vichy, Resistance, and Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France (New York: Berg, 2005), a Festschrift for H. R. Kedward . Collaboration and Resistance: Images of Life in Vichy France, 1940–1944 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000) offers a visual perspective . On the French defeat of 1940 recent general histories include Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Andrew Shennan’s brief The Fall of France (New York: Longman, 2000). Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000) focuses on France’s intelligence failure and looks at both the German and French sides. Recent scholarship is collected in Joel Blatt, ed., The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn Books, 1998). Still important is Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A State- 206 | Further Reading in English ment of Evidence Written in 1940, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York: Norton, 1968). The period may be approached from the top through biographies of key actors such as Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, the Rebel, 1890–1944, trans. Patrick O’Brian (New York: Norton, 1990); Alan Clinton, Jean Moulin, 1899–1943: The French Resistance and the Republic (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Geoffrey Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France 1931–1945 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968); and Nicholas Atkin, Pétain (New York: Longman, 1998), or from below through local studies: Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003); Robert Zaretsky, Nı̂mes at War: Religion, Politics and Public Opinion in the Gard, 1938–1944 (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Paul Jankowski, Communism and Collaboration: Simon Sabinani and Politics in Marseille, 1919–1944 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and John F. Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French under Nazi Occupation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), the most important of the lot. No specific aspect of the French wartime experience is served better by the English language literature than the Holocaust. Among the better works are Susan Zuccotti’s general history, The Holocaust, the French and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993); Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933–1942 (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1999); Michael Robert Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981), which focuses on Vichy policy and its implementation; and Donna F. Ryan, The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille: The Enforcement of Anti-Semitic Policies in Vichy France (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996). Denis Peschanski, La France des camps: l’internement , 1938–1946 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002) is fundamental on the question of exclusion and should be translated into English. Women, family, and gender issues have recently been examined notably by Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy and the Eternal Feminine: A Contribution to a Political Sociology Further Reading in English | 207 of Gender, trans. Kathleen A. Johnson (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001); and Sarah Fishman, We Will Wait: Wives of French Prisoners of War, 1940–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Specific studies of other aspects of wartime France include Bertram Gordon, Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1980) on the Paris collaborationists; Robert O. Paxton, Parades and Politics at Vichy: The French Officer Corps under Marshal Pétain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966) on the army; W. D. Halls, Politics...