Vichy France

[glacier1]

It's a taboo subject here, for old and young alike, a government which worked hand in hand with the German occupation forces, including deporting jews to the gas chambers.  I am searching for information about the Rhone Valley under Vichy Rule, summer 1940-1942.  Does anybody know about any sites/books in English which deal with this subject in detail?

I'm also interested about any books that talk about the history of the Drome/Ardeche over the past 1000 years, does anybody know of any good book that covers this era?

Thanks!

[NormanH]

There are quite a lot of references at the end of this article on Wikipedia, but most are in French

It does cite

• Carmen Callil Bad Faith. A Forgotten History Of Family, Fatherland And Vichy France. New York: Knopf. 2006. ISBN 0-375-41131-3. [Biography of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix].
• Robert Gildea. 2002. Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation. Picador. ISBN 0-312-42359-4.
• Julian T. Jackson. France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. ISBN 0-19-820706-9.
• Simon Kitson, The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-226-43893-1.
• Megan Koreman. The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-1946. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1999.
• William Langer, Our Vichy gamble, Alfred Knopf, New York, 1947.
• Isaac Levendel. Not the Germans alone: A son's search for the truth of Vichy. North Western University Press. 2001. ISBN 0-8101-1843-2
• Michael R. Marrus and Robert Paxton. Vichy France and the Jews. Basic Books: New York. 1981. ISBN 0-465-09005-2
• George E. Melton. Darlan: Admiral and Statesman of France, 1881-1942. Westport, CT: Praeger. 1998. ISBN 0-275-95973-2.
• Henri Michel, Vichy, année 40, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1967.
• Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (London, 1972) [new edition, 2000: ISBN 0-231-12469-4]
• Henry Rousso, (preface by Stanley Hoffmann). The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Harvard University Press. 2006. ISBN 0-674-93539-X (Original first ed. 1987)
• John F. Sweets,
  "Choices in Vichy France: The French Under Nazi Occupation" (New York,
  1986), translated into French as, "Clermont-Ferrand à l’heure
  allemande" (Paris, 1996)
• Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War, 1940-45, Manchester University Press, 1998, paperback 2007.
• Richard H. Weisberg. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France. New York University Press. 1998. ISBN 0-8147-9336-3

[glacier1]

thanks a lot for that!  I will look 'em up :)

[Vanman]

Something prevents the four letter abbreviation for "National Socialist" appearing on this site: that is what should appear where the asterisks are in the above reading list.

[Scooby]

to be explicit N_a_z_i

[Anton Redman]

Not all not everywhere.  Late neighbours of ours in Vayres 87 , model Corvette on his mantle piece. did not talk about it, spent six years between 1939 and 1944 in the free French navy,

In 87 you find the odd stones by the side of the road to 64 year old schoolmasters and 14 year old school boys. The resistance was mainly communist and working class so did not get underway till the pact between Hitler and Stalin had broken down  

[NormanH]

Did anybody else watch the film on Arte this evening about the reprisals just after?

It was in hommage to Claude Berri, who has just died, and was called "Uranus".

[andyh4]

If you go to the resistance museum at Vassieux on the Vercor plateau Glacier, you will find a great deal of information about the Vercors groups.  Inevitably most of it centres on the 42-44 period and especially 44, when De Gaulle sold the Communist resistance down the river (my interpretation) and allowed them to become sacrificial lambs in order to tie up significant numbers of German troops.

[Cat]

[quote user="NormanH"]Did anybody else watch the film on Arte this evening about the reprisals just after?
It was in hommage to Claude Berri, who has just died, and was called "Uranus".
[/quote]

I watched it.  It was an interesting and unusual take, very different to other films about France during or just after the war.  Jam packed with loads of great French actors too.

On the subject of Arte, and in the same vein, there is a film tonight at 8.35 on France 2, Plus Tard Tu Compredras .  Based on the book by Jérôme Clément (the chairman of Arte TV) it is the true story of his discovery of the fact that his grandparents were Jews who fled Paris and went into hiding in free France, until their betrayal, deportation to Auschwitz and ultimate death.

I read the book some time ago, and found it very moving.

The film is being shown tonight in advance of a national cinema release tomorrow.