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The Unfree French: Life Under The Occupation
The swift and unexpected defeat of the French Army in 1940 shocked the nation. Two million soldiers were taken prisoner, six million civilians fled from the German army’s advance to join convoys of confused and terrified refugees, and only a few managed to escape the country. The vast majority of French people were condemned to years of subjugation under Nazi and Vichy rul...more
Paperback, 496 pages
Published
December 18th 2007
by Yale University Press
(first published 2006)
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This is how history should be written, rich, deeply analyzed in a tone that is both sensitive but with a little irony of a story teller. The book has the rigor of a professional work, while also having enough anecdotes and facts to appeal to the general reader. Vinen's great success with this work is highlight how varied an experiences like occupation, collaboration and resistance could be. From a theoretical point of view, he ticks all the right boxes, looking at how the German occupation diff...more
Margaret Sankey
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Vinen does a remarkable job untangling all the political, social and military threads involved in the spring of 1940 and the subsequent years of occupation, with special attention to using difficult sources (the intro is a very useful piece of methodology explanation history students should note) and reminding readers safe in their 2009 homes that choices were not black and white and good and evil, but gray and wrenching and complicated
What a disappointment -- totally uncontexualised! It assumes too much of the reader (I'm no historian and was interested in learning about this period in its context). Some interesting perspectives to be had, but would have been much more interesting if it had been set in some sort of historical narrative. As it is, it leaves you dry. There's no context to the invasion, nor political context to the division between occupied and "free France" -- I wanted more!
Still, some...more
Still, some...more
Great insights about life under the Nazis
Very dense but overall enjoyable and extremely informational. A great look at Occupation life. Just don't read it when you're sleepy.
An outstanding history, unsentimental, but with a permeating sadness. Judicious but not righteous
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Richard Vinen is a Professor in Modern European History at King's College, London. Prior to joining the department in 1991, he was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and also lectured at Queen Mary (Westfield) College.
Richard Vinen is the author of the widely praised "A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century". He writes regularly for The Independent, The Ti...more
More about Richard Vinen...
Richard Vinen is the author of the widely praised "A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century". He writes regularly for The Independent, The Ti...more
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