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Unfree French: Life Under The Occupation
In the summer of 1940 the French army was one of the largest and best in the world, confident of victory. In the space of a few nightmarish weeks that all changed as the French and their British allies were crushed and eight million people fled their homes. Richard Vinen's new book describes the consequences of that defeat. It does so not by looking at political leaders in Vichy or Paris or London but rather at those who were caught up in daily horrors of war. It describes the fate of a French prisoner of war who was punished because he wrote a love letter to a German woman, and the fate of a French woman who gave birth to a German-fathered child as the Americans landed in Normandy. It describes the 'false policemen' who proliferated in occupied Paris as desperate men on the run seeking to feed themselves by blackmailing those who were even more vulnerable than themselves. It asks why some gentile French people chose to risk imprisonment by wearing yellow stars. It recounts the fate of a couple of estranged middle-aged Jews, separated by the mobilisation of 1939, who found themselves (in July 1942) on the same train to Auschwitz. Extremely moving and brilliantly readable, The Unfree French is a remarkable addition to the literature of the Second World War.
477 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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263 people want to read
About the author
Richard Vinen
15 books10 followersRichard 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 Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe and the Nation.
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 Times Literary Supplement, the Boston Globe and the Nation.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 24, 2024
Decent book about the German occupation of France using diaries and journals of everyday people
July 9, 2017
I came across this book by accident. I was looking for something else but Amazon decided to tell me about it - this is something that usually annoys the hell out of me. However, on this occasion, I am so glad the book giant did bring this tome to my attention.
Richard Vinen, according to the acknowledgements at the front of the book, took a 'disgracefully long time' to create this treatise on France during the 39/45 war. I'm very glad that he did. Rather than rehashing and re-examining well known military history and strategies, he searched archives, scrutinised reports and read memoirs both published and unpublished. As a result the source notes and bibliography are extensive.
This is not exactly a history book, in the usually accepted sense of the word, but it is a fascinating document that showcases how ordinary people lived and worked during the occupation of the northern half of France and the period of the Vichy government in the south. The narrative voice is gentle and flows well and the detail keeps you turning the page.
Beginning with the defeat of France in 1940 and the subsequent partition into occupied territory and Vichy, Vinen presents some startling statistics - startling to me anyway! Two million French soldiers were taken prisoner and 6 million civilians left their homes and joined convoys of people and refugees trying to escape their own homeland.
Set against the enormity of that, the author brings to life the agonising choices ordinary people had to make. He explores what it was like to live in towns and villages that had been emptied of young men who were either Prisoners of War or who had been conscripted to work for the Reich in Germany. He then zeros in on individuals. For example, Louis Althusser, POW, who claimed that after 'altering his papers' he was able to make himself available for repatriation. Léo Malet used his experiences as a POW to create a fictional detective who began his career in a camp that closely resembled the Stalag where the author had been incarcerated. And then there are the stories of the women left behind and in particular, the actions of some Parisian gentiles who wore yellow stars.
What I found especially interesting was the way Vinen was able to chart the changes in attitude and opinion of the ordinary people of France during an especially difficult time in their history along with the detail of lives lived, judgements that were constantly questioned and decisions that were agonised over. The introduction I found a little tedious but the opportunity to look at, almost spy upon, that period of French history far outweighed my initial and very short-lived discomfort. A fascinating read that I feel sure I will come back to again and again.
Richard Vinen, according to the acknowledgements at the front of the book, took a 'disgracefully long time' to create this treatise on France during the 39/45 war. I'm very glad that he did. Rather than rehashing and re-examining well known military history and strategies, he searched archives, scrutinised reports and read memoirs both published and unpublished. As a result the source notes and bibliography are extensive.
This is not exactly a history book, in the usually accepted sense of the word, but it is a fascinating document that showcases how ordinary people lived and worked during the occupation of the northern half of France and the period of the Vichy government in the south. The narrative voice is gentle and flows well and the detail keeps you turning the page.
Beginning with the defeat of France in 1940 and the subsequent partition into occupied territory and Vichy, Vinen presents some startling statistics - startling to me anyway! Two million French soldiers were taken prisoner and 6 million civilians left their homes and joined convoys of people and refugees trying to escape their own homeland.
Set against the enormity of that, the author brings to life the agonising choices ordinary people had to make. He explores what it was like to live in towns and villages that had been emptied of young men who were either Prisoners of War or who had been conscripted to work for the Reich in Germany. He then zeros in on individuals. For example, Louis Althusser, POW, who claimed that after 'altering his papers' he was able to make himself available for repatriation. Léo Malet used his experiences as a POW to create a fictional detective who began his career in a camp that closely resembled the Stalag where the author had been incarcerated. And then there are the stories of the women left behind and in particular, the actions of some Parisian gentiles who wore yellow stars.
What I found especially interesting was the way Vinen was able to chart the changes in attitude and opinion of the ordinary people of France during an especially difficult time in their history along with the detail of lives lived, judgements that were constantly questioned and decisions that were agonised over. The introduction I found a little tedious but the opportunity to look at, almost spy upon, that period of French history far outweighed my initial and very short-lived discomfort. A fascinating read that I feel sure I will come back to again and again.
January 4, 2021
This non-narrative history of France under the German Occupation of 1940 to 1944, whilst interesting and informative, is seriously undermined by Richard Vinen's methodology and by his reliance upon Marxist, class-based structures for his explanatory framework (not only does he rely on the inexact term bourgeois for a wide range of non-manual and rural lifestyles and occupations, but he also resorts to the amorphous and ideological classification lumpenproletariat on several occasions). The problem lies in the approach outlined in the introduction, in which Vinen makes it clear that this work is to be a social history, one very much in tune with Marxist historiography, and not a political one, however this means that his historical sociology not only makes only fleeting references to political events, but fails to accommodate understandings that historical developments in wartime France were not primarily driven by social factors, but by military and political ones that flowed from 'La Débacle' of 1940. France's history until the Liberation was determined by the twin political systems of German military occupation and Vichy's civil government, both of which were fractures with the preceding politics of the Third Republic (and indeed the succeeding Fourth Republic, which had more in common with 1871 to 1940 than 1940 to 1944 or 1946). Occupied France was a political construct, and, thus, must be understood principally politically. Social developments were not organic or the product of pre-existing social structures, but responses to the altered political paradigm of 1940-44 France, and this book would have benefited from a narrative account of political developments and a coherent analysis of the political structures formed during the Occupation at its outset.
Unfortunately, because of the author's intention, while there is much interesting information on social life during the Occupation, there is little explanation of the political events which determined much of it. There is a section on the establishment of the Vichy regime in summer 1940 and brief portraits of Petain, Laval, Darlan, and so forth, but no analysis of how Vichy France acted as a political entity, so that the government is viewed virtually solely in administrative terms not political ones. It is as though Vichy and public responses to it were somehow ordained by social structures, and the French people, whether prisoners, civilians, resistants, or collaborators, were passive actors in the story of wartime France. Events are made to happen to the French, while individual reactions are interpreted solely in terms of socio-economic status. And, at the same time, the elephant in the room of the German military is almost entirely ignored. Yes, the relations of individual Germans with French people, predominantly in this book female and often sexual, are recorded, but the decisions and actions of the German high command that determined much of these are not. Vichy France is not only seen as passive, but its demise is noted almost as a natural passing away with little regard to the military campaigns of 1944 that brought that about. Vichy did not collapse because of endogenous factors or socio-economic ones, but because the Germans were defeated militarily by the Allies, who decided to install the Free French government of De Gaulle in its stead. Occupied France was a product entirely of political and military developments.
What Vinen, by focusing only upon social explanations, fails to recognise is how far individuals' choices were determined not just by their social position, but by political and personal beliefs and attributes. A person's place in society did not determine his or her choice, whether she collaborated or resisted, whether he volunteered to work in Germany or complied with the Service Travail Obligatoire, or whether he fled to the hills or joined the Milice, although it certainly delineated their practical options. In the end, how a person responded to the political situation still depended primarily upon individual beliefs, prejudices, opinions, and political and philosophical principles. Two people from the same background would often make different choices, and when presented with the same dilemma could react in differing ways, one young man from the same village joining the Resistance, while a similar other man found employment with the Milice or the Germans. Such choices, whatever the underlying socio-economic structures, were primarily political and ethical.
And, France and the French were not just passive after the 1940 Armistice. Instead, individual French people had to actively engage with the new political-military dispensation established under the Occupation, whether they be Vichy politicians, young men subject to labour service, peasants, or prostitutes, and their responses were both multiple and not determined solely, or even primarily, by socio-economic class. The French were still governed by a French government in Vichy, and by national, regional, and local administrations staffed by Frenchmen, who, while needing to accomodate German interests and comply with German military supremacy, still were responsibly for most of the policies and programmes under which the French lived and almost entirely for their administration. Vichy was no aberration. For four years it was recognised by most of the French (if not the British and, after 1942, the Americans), the Germans, and most governments as the legitimate government of a neutral France, and it was driven by its own concerns and riven by its own rivalries, disputes, and internal contradictions. Vichy was France between 1940 and 1944; a corrupt, collaborationist, and politically craven France, but France nonetheless.
Although this book was first published in 2006 and makes reference to works of fiction by Margaret Dumas, Georges Simenon, and others, unaccountably, there is no discussion of Irène Némirovsky's masterpiece, 'Suite Française', published two years earlier. Of this book, conceived originally in five parts, only two of which were completed before the author's arrest and deportation in 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she died, the first deals with the events of summer 1940 and the second with life in a small French village under occupation. This means the novel is a contemporaneous work of fiction and therefore of enormous historical as well as literary value. However, neither the book nor its writer fit into Vinen's sociological categorisation. Némirovsky was a highly sophisticated exiled Russian Jewish woman with strong connections within Parisian literary circles, who had written several well received novels before the War, mostly related to her own cultural milieu and with an emphasis upon Jewish identity and paternal domination, but who turned in 'Suite Française' to painting a realistic picture of the France profonde which she had come to love and in which she sought refuge from German and Vichy persecution. She wrote as both a subjective participant in the events of 1940-2 and as a detached observer, distanced from those about whom she writes, as an immigrant, an intellectual, and a person ostracised (and later murdered) by the authorities because of her race, and what she writes is a deeply humanistic novel about individuals, including Germans, trying to cope with the extraordinary events and new situations produced by French military defeat and consequent foreign subjection. What Némirovsky reveals is how circumstances altered behaviours as individuals confronted dilemmas of which they had no prior knowledge or experience in a world seemingly turned upside down, and how they adapted to these and changed their views over time not through the crude determinism of class or gender, but through individual experiences, rationally and emotionally realised. Irene Némirovsky's genius is ignored by Vinen because her contemporary concern for complex, variable, and multifaceted human beings does not comply with his retrospective categorisation of these as mere social types. In his history, individuals do appear, but not in their own right, only as archetypes and representatives of the social groups with which he concerns himself.
This is the problem with such social history, particularly, as in this case, when it is composed with a Marxist superstructure. Individuals are denied agency and autonomy, and, thus, individuality, and become mere passive memes, whose historical interest lies not in their own being, but in the characterisation and categorisation the historian imposes upon them in support of his arguments, with the result that books such as this become social constructs that lack humanity and tell us more about the author's socio-political beliefs than the actualité of what life was truly like for those who lived under the German occupation of France. It is sociology and not history that emerges from such a decontextualised and patronising reading of events and people in the past. Vinen has marshalled a wide range of sources and reveals a deep knowledge of his subject, but the means by which he seeks to bring Occupied France to life in print is severely compromised by his narrowly structured Marxist approach, and so, compared to Artemis Cooper and Anthony Beevor's superb 'France After the Liberation', this book must be regarded as a missed opportunity and, in large part, as a work of history, a partial failure.
Unfortunately, because of the author's intention, while there is much interesting information on social life during the Occupation, there is little explanation of the political events which determined much of it. There is a section on the establishment of the Vichy regime in summer 1940 and brief portraits of Petain, Laval, Darlan, and so forth, but no analysis of how Vichy France acted as a political entity, so that the government is viewed virtually solely in administrative terms not political ones. It is as though Vichy and public responses to it were somehow ordained by social structures, and the French people, whether prisoners, civilians, resistants, or collaborators, were passive actors in the story of wartime France. Events are made to happen to the French, while individual reactions are interpreted solely in terms of socio-economic status. And, at the same time, the elephant in the room of the German military is almost entirely ignored. Yes, the relations of individual Germans with French people, predominantly in this book female and often sexual, are recorded, but the decisions and actions of the German high command that determined much of these are not. Vichy France is not only seen as passive, but its demise is noted almost as a natural passing away with little regard to the military campaigns of 1944 that brought that about. Vichy did not collapse because of endogenous factors or socio-economic ones, but because the Germans were defeated militarily by the Allies, who decided to install the Free French government of De Gaulle in its stead. Occupied France was a product entirely of political and military developments.
What Vinen, by focusing only upon social explanations, fails to recognise is how far individuals' choices were determined not just by their social position, but by political and personal beliefs and attributes. A person's place in society did not determine his or her choice, whether she collaborated or resisted, whether he volunteered to work in Germany or complied with the Service Travail Obligatoire, or whether he fled to the hills or joined the Milice, although it certainly delineated their practical options. In the end, how a person responded to the political situation still depended primarily upon individual beliefs, prejudices, opinions, and political and philosophical principles. Two people from the same background would often make different choices, and when presented with the same dilemma could react in differing ways, one young man from the same village joining the Resistance, while a similar other man found employment with the Milice or the Germans. Such choices, whatever the underlying socio-economic structures, were primarily political and ethical.
And, France and the French were not just passive after the 1940 Armistice. Instead, individual French people had to actively engage with the new political-military dispensation established under the Occupation, whether they be Vichy politicians, young men subject to labour service, peasants, or prostitutes, and their responses were both multiple and not determined solely, or even primarily, by socio-economic class. The French were still governed by a French government in Vichy, and by national, regional, and local administrations staffed by Frenchmen, who, while needing to accomodate German interests and comply with German military supremacy, still were responsibly for most of the policies and programmes under which the French lived and almost entirely for their administration. Vichy was no aberration. For four years it was recognised by most of the French (if not the British and, after 1942, the Americans), the Germans, and most governments as the legitimate government of a neutral France, and it was driven by its own concerns and riven by its own rivalries, disputes, and internal contradictions. Vichy was France between 1940 and 1944; a corrupt, collaborationist, and politically craven France, but France nonetheless.
Although this book was first published in 2006 and makes reference to works of fiction by Margaret Dumas, Georges Simenon, and others, unaccountably, there is no discussion of Irène Némirovsky's masterpiece, 'Suite Française', published two years earlier. Of this book, conceived originally in five parts, only two of which were completed before the author's arrest and deportation in 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she died, the first deals with the events of summer 1940 and the second with life in a small French village under occupation. This means the novel is a contemporaneous work of fiction and therefore of enormous historical as well as literary value. However, neither the book nor its writer fit into Vinen's sociological categorisation. Némirovsky was a highly sophisticated exiled Russian Jewish woman with strong connections within Parisian literary circles, who had written several well received novels before the War, mostly related to her own cultural milieu and with an emphasis upon Jewish identity and paternal domination, but who turned in 'Suite Française' to painting a realistic picture of the France profonde which she had come to love and in which she sought refuge from German and Vichy persecution. She wrote as both a subjective participant in the events of 1940-2 and as a detached observer, distanced from those about whom she writes, as an immigrant, an intellectual, and a person ostracised (and later murdered) by the authorities because of her race, and what she writes is a deeply humanistic novel about individuals, including Germans, trying to cope with the extraordinary events and new situations produced by French military defeat and consequent foreign subjection. What Némirovsky reveals is how circumstances altered behaviours as individuals confronted dilemmas of which they had no prior knowledge or experience in a world seemingly turned upside down, and how they adapted to these and changed their views over time not through the crude determinism of class or gender, but through individual experiences, rationally and emotionally realised. Irene Némirovsky's genius is ignored by Vinen because her contemporary concern for complex, variable, and multifaceted human beings does not comply with his retrospective categorisation of these as mere social types. In his history, individuals do appear, but not in their own right, only as archetypes and representatives of the social groups with which he concerns himself.
This is the problem with such social history, particularly, as in this case, when it is composed with a Marxist superstructure. Individuals are denied agency and autonomy, and, thus, individuality, and become mere passive memes, whose historical interest lies not in their own being, but in the characterisation and categorisation the historian imposes upon them in support of his arguments, with the result that books such as this become social constructs that lack humanity and tell us more about the author's socio-political beliefs than the actualité of what life was truly like for those who lived under the German occupation of France. It is sociology and not history that emerges from such a decontextualised and patronising reading of events and people in the past. Vinen has marshalled a wide range of sources and reveals a deep knowledge of his subject, but the means by which he seeks to bring Occupied France to life in print is severely compromised by his narrowly structured Marxist approach, and so, compared to Artemis Cooper and Anthony Beevor's superb 'France After the Liberation', this book must be regarded as a missed opportunity and, in large part, as a work of history, a partial failure.
January 4, 2008
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 interesting anecdotes, alongside a knowledge that you probably don't want to be present when a city is being occupied OR liberated -- but still could have done with a great deal more setting. I'm sure there's something better out there covering this period (outside existentialist diatribes).
Still, some interesting anecdotes, alongside a knowledge that you probably don't want to be present when a city is being occupied OR liberated -- but still could have done with a great deal more setting. I'm sure there's something better out there covering this period (outside existentialist diatribes).
March 26, 2009
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 differed based in terms of gender, ethnicity and race, but he does so in a way that does make them feel like shallow academic categorizations. Rather, these perspectives reinforce the human dimension of the history.
July 10, 2011
Full of fascinating information. One of about a dozen books I read as I was writing The Red Rooster to help me get the flavor and facts of the era correct.
February 23, 2010
Great insights about life under the Nazis
March 1, 2010
An outstanding history, unsentimental, but with a permeating sadness. Judicious but not righteous
July 9, 2023
Adequate, pop history of France during the German occupation in WW II. Best for beginners to get the overall story. Problems? An almost complete lack of footnotes and statistics. Lots of Generalizations with the usual 21st century obessession with Minorities (Jews, Africans, etc). Jews must have been about 1 percent of the French population, but they are 5-10 percent of book. And even though WW II was about 80 years ago, we must always be critical of everything German. Random examples:
1) Author claims French African POWs were treated more harshly than others, then gives as example, Germans keeping the French African POWs in France with French guards!
2) Germans punished French POW's who mistreated animals. Author then can't let this go without snarking that German humanitarian attitude would be surprising to their Polish Farm laborers.
And we get the usual obfuscation of Parti Communiste Français role in (1) Collaboration prior to June 1941 (2) the Resistance and (3) the savage purges and reprisals after liberation.
1) Author claims French African POWs were treated more harshly than others, then gives as example, Germans keeping the French African POWs in France with French guards!
2) Germans punished French POW's who mistreated animals. Author then can't let this go without snarking that German humanitarian attitude would be surprising to their Polish Farm laborers.
And we get the usual obfuscation of Parti Communiste Français role in (1) Collaboration prior to June 1941 (2) the Resistance and (3) the savage purges and reprisals after liberation.
February 20, 2025
The level of research to write this book was amazing. Listening to so many different voices as they described their lives during the time of German occupation on the French made it painful and real. Even having studied and taught history, I did not understand the complexity of Vichy collaboration - it's not that simple and I feel like knowing more, I understand it less? The various groups who enforced German rules, fought German rules, Germans who started out rather kind, turned their heads when people escaped - all new history to me! Thank you!
February 9, 2022
An interesting read but a bit of a slog in places. The book is an eye-opener for anyone, like me, who saw the occupied french as either resistance or collaborator. There were so many nuances to the story that it's often difficult to see who is one or the other (or both, or neither). For me, the book would have been better if the story had leant less on what people did and more on how it made people feel.
September 20, 2022
Heavy! Many interesting bits but for me too political and long winded. That said not an easy topic to tackle, the sources must have been many and also long plus not easy to separate. I lacked the background on Vichy France though I have heard the term for many years I had no idea really what it was.
A tough time for sure and everyone had a different experience, glad I persevered to the end with respect to the time it must have taken to put it together
A tough time for sure and everyone had a different experience, glad I persevered to the end with respect to the time it must have taken to put it together
February 13, 2026
Absorbing and accessible social history of occupied France. The overview of the politics of Vichy is intentionally pretty brisk, the book's main strength lying in its wealth of illustrative anecdotes about individuals both famous and obscure. Nicely written, sometimes moving and often sardonically funny. I imagine those with a lot of prior knowledge of France during the period would find it a bit lightweight, but well worth a look otherwise.
March 21, 2019
you can read the first 3 chapters. the rest is a drag
February 9, 2021
Read for Vichy France seminar at Yale University.
July 19, 2015
I can't imagine a more thorough and engaging treatment of this topic, in all its inglorious detail. If you've ever wondered at the bravery of the «resistants», how seemingly good people could have put their faith in Pétain and his Vichy government, or how the French accommodated themselves (or not) to the daily fact of the Occupation, then you should read this. The armistice of 1940 put French government, such as it was, in the hands of conservatives with little respect for democracy, and for all their delusions of independence they were in most things subservient to the will of the 3rd Reich. In the short term much French blood was spared by the armistice. The memory of the Great War was still too fresh in the public memory for the electorate to support continued hostilities. Many good people were Pétainists in 1940. Without the wisdom of hindsight, it just seemed right.
This book records a wide variety of personal experiences. One's fate depended so much on one's class, gender, occupation, race, and whether one lived in town or country, occupied zone or "free"; Vichy and the Occupation meant such different things to different people. After the invasion life quickly settled down to a new normality: a few German soldiers, absent men (prisoners of war and those sent to work in Germany), shortages and queues, some new regulations, censorship of the press, the black market, official corruption, but also school and business much as usual. Vichy authorities were very quick to coerce anyone who didn't fit their template of a good French person to "volunteer" to work in Germany - foreigners, petty criminals, idlers, communists, the poor: in short, anyone they deemed socially undesirable. Class and connections buffered some from many of the inconveniences of the Occupation; prisoners of war with the right connections were enabled to return to France, and young scions of the bourgeoisie were found part-time jobs in reserved occupations for the purpose of keeping them from being conscripted into service in Germany. It was the «Service du Travail Obligatoire» that did most to take the gloss off Pétain's administration, though many excused the Marshall himself on the grounds that he had been duped by the scheming politician Laval. The Resistance waxed as Pétain's stocks waned, and as it became apparent that the Germans could not win the war. The «resistants» were united only in their determination to oust the Germans, but apart from that they were politically a very disparate class of people - Gaullists, communists and even some who saw themselves as loyal Pétainists.
This book is a masterly survey of French society in the period 1940-1945 (more or less), which draws upon many sources - contemporary records, memoirs, and statistical analyses - to piece together, patchwork fashion, a grand portrait of a society in extraordinary circumstances. Highly recommended!
This book records a wide variety of personal experiences. One's fate depended so much on one's class, gender, occupation, race, and whether one lived in town or country, occupied zone or "free"; Vichy and the Occupation meant such different things to different people. After the invasion life quickly settled down to a new normality: a few German soldiers, absent men (prisoners of war and those sent to work in Germany), shortages and queues, some new regulations, censorship of the press, the black market, official corruption, but also school and business much as usual. Vichy authorities were very quick to coerce anyone who didn't fit their template of a good French person to "volunteer" to work in Germany - foreigners, petty criminals, idlers, communists, the poor: in short, anyone they deemed socially undesirable. Class and connections buffered some from many of the inconveniences of the Occupation; prisoners of war with the right connections were enabled to return to France, and young scions of the bourgeoisie were found part-time jobs in reserved occupations for the purpose of keeping them from being conscripted into service in Germany. It was the «Service du Travail Obligatoire» that did most to take the gloss off Pétain's administration, though many excused the Marshall himself on the grounds that he had been duped by the scheming politician Laval. The Resistance waxed as Pétain's stocks waned, and as it became apparent that the Germans could not win the war. The «resistants» were united only in their determination to oust the Germans, but apart from that they were politically a very disparate class of people - Gaullists, communists and even some who saw themselves as loyal Pétainists.
This book is a masterly survey of French society in the period 1940-1945 (more or less), which draws upon many sources - contemporary records, memoirs, and statistical analyses - to piece together, patchwork fashion, a grand portrait of a society in extraordinary circumstances. Highly recommended!
May 12, 2013
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2077343.html[return][return]This is a terrifically well-researched and fluently written account of occupied France during the second world war. It is a subject where of which my previous knowledge could probably have fitted on the back of a postcard - collapse in 1940, P�tain and Laval, resistance, D-Day, don't take 'Allo! 'Allo! seriously. I had never considered the impact on France of the continuing imprisonment of the two million - two million! - soldiers captured in 1940, plus the hundreds of thousands more subsequently conscripted for forced labour in Germany even as the Nazi regime was collapsing. It was also interesting to learn about the internal ideological manSuvres of the P�tain regime, building a cult of personality as a replacement for actually exercising power and delivering services. And he reports humanely and fairly neutrally on the �puration, the retaliation by both state structures and people taking the law into their own hands, against collaborators after the Liberation.[return][return]Vinen also illustrates well a point that I often consider in my professional work - that people rarely know the full picture of what is going on, and definitely don't know the future; in the summer of 1940, it seemed entirely probable that the war might be over in a few months with a German victory; in 1944, we tend to remember Operation Overlord as the successful sweep from Normandy to Belgium that it became, forgetting that to those on the ground, the winner did not seem at all clear, and in any case pockets of Germans were left behind as the invasion swept past.[return][return]But much the most interesting parts of the book deal with the effect of the occupation on women, looking especially at those on the margins - those who fell in love with Germans, or became prostitutes, or were successful entrepreneurs in the black market, or found some other nonconformist means of survival in miserable circumstances; and they of course were most likely to be targeted in the �puration. He makes the point that we have very few first-person accounts from these sources; the odd iconic photograph which represents only one story of the many. All of it is fascinating, but some of those accounts are heart-breaking.
November 12, 2014
This was a very different type of history book than others I have read. Richard Vinen is a professor of history at King's College. The focus of the book is on the French common people who were affected by the German Occupation from 1941-1945. Instead of rehashing the facts of the period or focusing on leaders like Petain, Laval,etc., Vinen has written a social history based on retrospective testimony. His goal was to determine why the French people made certain decisions after the armistice was signed through the liberation. His conclusion was that many issues were cause by misinformation, social status, and a very divided leadership that led people to question where their loyalties should lay. Vinen assumes a great deal of knowledge regarding French history, which meant I had to do some "Googling" along the way, but the stories are fascinating. I was unaware of the general sense of embarrassment and national "shame" felt by the French over this period in France's history. This was, in part, what motivated Vinen to write the book. He wanted to fill in a gap in the collective memory of the French that heretofore almost completely excluded the marginalized citizens.
February 21, 2015
Simply, the book is very informative. It covers almost all topics that concern anyone who wants to know much about this particular period in the life of French pple and society.
It’s a historical book furnished with many French recalled stories
At the beginning, I was a kind of disappointed. That is because the first chapter was purely political. I thought I’ve been deceived by the title and that the rest would detail the political movement or the conflicts of parties …
But I was mistaken. From the beginning of the second chapter, the writer began to sink deeply into the heart of French pple life and the hardship they had been facing during and after the occupation.
I enjoyed reading it much. The writing style was even interesting and capturing.
It’s a historical book furnished with many French recalled stories
At the beginning, I was a kind of disappointed. That is because the first chapter was purely political. I thought I’ve been deceived by the title and that the rest would detail the political movement or the conflicts of parties …
But I was mistaken. From the beginning of the second chapter, the writer began to sink deeply into the heart of French pple life and the hardship they had been facing during and after the occupation.
I enjoyed reading it much. The writing style was even interesting and capturing.
May 15, 2012
This book was heavy going - a recitation of many incidents with not quite enough of a sense of what the thesis was - although this, on p.78, might sum it up: "Much of what people said and did under Vichy, however, remains inscrutable." It would probably be a good companion to other sources on the German occupation of France during WWII, but I ended up dipping into each chapter rather than reading straight through.
December 4, 2008
I gave up on this book because I found the narrative too disjointed. I'm going to read Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944 by Ian Ousby instead.
February 4, 2012
Very dense but overall enjoyable and extremely informational. A great look at Occupation life. Just don't read it when you're sleepy.
March 27, 2012
A great overview of France during the Second World War, with emphasis on everyday people instead of those who were deported.
August 8, 2012
very interesting account of the occupied years in France - had no idea things were made worse by infighting among the French, and that women took more of the 'blame' ......
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October 18, 2013Interesting book about everyday life in France during WWII. Doesn't focus on battles or the politics (some) but how the French dealt with their daily living with the Germans all around them.
October 26, 2013
Lots of info on the impact of WWII on the French and the way people reacted to the constantly changing dictums of Vichy and the occupying forces.
November 23, 2015
Social history--next to no narrative. Thick going, but well researched and informative.
September 14, 2016
Strangely personal stories about individuals involved in the war. Odd but interesting.
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