World War II, France and Historians (original) (raw)
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France and the Origins of the Second World War
The Journal of Military History, 1997
This senes of specially eommissioned titles Joeuses attention on signifieant and oflen eontroversial euents and thernes of world history in the present eentury. Eaeh book provides szifficient narrative and explanation Jor the newcomer to the subjeet while offering, Jor more advaneed study, detailed souree-riferenees and bibliographies, together with interpretation and reassessment in the light of reeent seholarship.
France and the Origins of the First World War
1983
This series of specially commissioned titles focuses attention on significant and often controversial events and themes of world history in the present century. Each book provides sufficient narrative and explanation for the newcomer to the subject while offering, for more advanced study, detailed source-references and bibliographies, together with interpretation and reassessment in the light of recent scholarship. In the choice of subjects there is a balance between breadth in some spheres and detail in others; between the essentially political and matters economic or social. The series cannot be a comprehensive account of everything that has happened in the twentieth century, but it provides a guide to recent research and explains something of the times of extraordinary change and complexity in which we live. It is directed in the main to students of contemporary history and international relations, but includes titles which are of direct relevance to courses in economics, sociology, politics and geography.
France and Its Empire at War Syllabus (Graduate Readings Seminar, 2011)
This course examines the history of metropolitan France and its colonial empire during the First World War. The infamous trenches of the Western Front are central to any understanding of the Great War in general and of France's role in particular. Most of this front was located, after all, in France, and the war was both won and lost in this most decisive of theaters. Thus, we will pay close attention to the war in the metropole, both on the battlefield and on the home front. Nevertheless, a full accounting of the history of this industrialized and global conflict must extend far beyond the trenches of northeastern France. Waging total war required the mobilization of "La plus grande France" (or "Greater France," as the combined entity of the nation and its overseas possessions was known). Accordingly, we will also examine both the ways the war affected France's colonies-reaching into the lives and spaces of empire in profound ways-and the contributions of the colonies to the war effort-providing men and other resources to help France prosecute the war on the Western Front and beyond. The huge extent of the French colonial empire, then the world's second largest and stretching from North and West Africa, to Madagascar, Indochina, the Pacific, and the Caribbean, helped ensure that the war was truly global. Requirements and Grading Grades will be based upon the satisfactory completion of all of the following requirements: • Attendance and active participation in seminar discussions (40%) • One short class presentation (10%) • One 2-3 page paper proposal (10%) • One 20-25 page final essay (40%)
Introduction: France, 1940-1944: The Ambiguous Legacy
Contemporary French Civilization, 2007
In his last work of non-fiction The Drowned and the Saved, Holocaust survivor and renowned autobiographer Primo Levi devotes an entire chapter to what he refers to as "the gray zone." Drawing a parallel with power structures in Nazi extermination camps-where some detainees were forced to work for their captors-Levi describes the hierarchies inside collaborating governments during World War II, where individuals from defeated countries worked in the service of German aggressors. Levi writes that those collaborating individuals and administrations inhabit that "gray zone," which is "where the two camps of masters and servants both diverge and converge" (42).
France and the Great War, 1914-1918
2003
Mobilizing the nation and the civilians' war Occupation: living with the enemy Propaganda and cultural mobilization Economic and social mobilization Waiting, death, and mourning in wartime 3 The front and the soldiers' war Strategy: from Percée, to Grignotage, to Tenir The face of battle Consent and the national community 4 The crises of 1917 The Chemin des Dames offensive and the mutinies Labor and the troubles of 1917 in the interior The rise of Clemenceau and the brutalization of French politics 5 The ambiguous victory and its aftermath From the Kaiserschlacht to the clearing at Rethondes Commemoration: memory and the struggle for meaning The Monuments aux Morts The bodies of the dead The Treaty of Versailles Conclusion Bibliography Index xi Plates 1 French painting: The Crucified Canadian page 2 Images of the German enemy Exploded shell 4 Crucifix made from munitions 5 Postcard: ("The repeating rifle is good for repopulation") 6 Cartoon from Le Rire Rouge
History Compass, 2006
This article surveys the evolution of the historical literature on France and the origins of the Second World War. It links history writing about French institutions and policy-making to wider trends in French politics and society as well as to various approaches to understanding the history and culture of France. It argues that for many years the historiography was dominated by narratives of decline within France which were rooted in long-standing traditions of interpreting the French past in terms of decline, fall, and renewal. These were exacerbated by wartime and postwar political score-settling and by the increasing political dominance of Gaullism during the 1960s and 1970s. It also identifies a tendency among American and especially British historians to view French history and politics as terminally in a state of crisis as well as a Cold War tendency towards the militarization of historical interpretations of the inter-war period. It then traces the emergence of a fully fledged revisionist view linked, at least in part, to the growing prominence attributed to financial and industrial issues by the international historians of the 1960s and 1970s. It ends with a plea to move towards methodologies that focus on the interrelationship between cultural and material factors as the most promising means of taking the study of this important subject forward.