Resistance and Liberation
France at War, 1942-1945

New history of la France libre, Vichy collaboration, and the resistance from the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation.

Douglas Porch (Author)

9781009161145, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 January 2024

832 pages
23.5 x 16.4 x 4.8 cm, 1.31 kg

'Porch's work should be read as what contemporary officers would call a shaping operation: an effort to prepare the conditions for a future important event. These works are designed to shape the intensive reassessment of the experience of World War II that will commence as the centenary of the war approaches. When that wave of scholarship comes, the works on France will begin with Porch's two-volume set … Porch's profound historiographical engagement should not obscure the reality that both volumes are deeply rooted in archival and published primary sources. The result is a work that is ideal for both seasoned scholars and graduate students wanting to get a grounding in France's experience with World War II.' Andrew Orr, Journal of Modern History

In Resistance and Liberation, Douglas Porch continues his epic history of France at war. Emerging from the debâcle of 1940, France faced the quandary of how to rebuild military power, protect the empire, and resuscitate its global influence. While Charles de Gaulle rejected the armistice and launched his offshore crusade to reclaim French honor within the Allied camp, defeatists at Vichy embraced cooperation with the victorious Axis. The book charts the emerging dynamics of la France libre and the Alliance, Vichy collaboration, and the swelling resistance to the Axis occupation. From the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation, Douglas Porch traces how de Gaulle sought to forge a French army and prevent civil war. He captures the experiences of ordinary French men and women caught up in war and defeat, the choices they made, the trials they endured, and how this has shaped France's memory of those traumatic years.

Preface
1. Tunisia
2. 'A sort of resurrection of France.'
3. Triumph and dishonor in Italy
4. Resistance on the eve of D-Day
5. The supreme battle
6. Anvil-Dragoon
7. L'Amalgame
8. Les Vosges
9. Rhine and Danube
10. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW]