5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very informative, September 13, 2007
This review is from: An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Klaus Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)
I have read a lot about France during W.W. II, but much of it (the politics in particular) had baffled me until I read this book. Morgan takes very dense information and makes it understandable! A very readable and very educational book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book.... but for a Different Title..., January 15, 2011
Lets get the bad bits out of the way first!
Firstly , and sorry that it should be so irritating, the book has been poorly served by it's proof-reader. Typos and misspellings abound - hardly shows the greatest enthusiasm from the publisher.
Secondly you will search in vain for much , if anything, on the trial of Klaus Barbie; where the defence famously twisted the trial and put the whole of war-time France in the dock. But there are plenty of other sources for this.
So why does the book get four and five stars from all it's reviewers? The answer is that Mr Morgan gives us a thrilling and detailed account of France immediately before and through the second world war; a country defeated for the second time in 80 years and invaded for the third time. And without the English channel which gave vital protection to the much derided British.So much is revealed about the 1940 French government which we know as Vichy but which in reality shuttled between capitals (Petain wanted somewhere pleasantly semi-rural without industrial workers) and continued to do much business in occupied Paris where it dealt with the Germans.Petain is charactarised as the man of the hour who just happened to be too old for the role. Petain was 60 at....Verdun! 78 when he became a government minister in...1934! So he came to power at the age of 84 when he was very proud that he "Still pisses like a fountain". Laval comes across as the brains of the outfit, though kept out of power by Petain who disliked him, when Petain still had some vestiges of power.
And (despite the reviews above) both were very successful, within the possible limitations, at delaying and arguing German policies for occupied France. Though the Germans had turned down with derission an offer from Petain to declare war on Britain. Petain was hugely popular throughout France for limiting the bloodshed in 1940, drew massive crowds wherever he went. Indeed British and US actions like the destruction of the French fleet and bombing in preparation for the allied invasions of France, killed far more Frenchmen than the German invasion of 1940.
Everyone thought that the Germans would break the neck of the British chicken within three months. Much later Chruchill made his "Some Chicken, Some Neck" speech. It was the deals Vichy made with Germany that damned them. They turned French lorry factories into making lorries for the Germans (to protect the workers' jobs), they delayed the sending of French workers to Germany as slaves and always tried to get French PoWs in exchange.Indeed getting the PoWs back was a central policy of the Vichy government.Hundreds of thousands ended up as slaves anyway and , as Laval told the Germans, the whole policy was a great recruiting agent for General de Gaulle. They had no power except the power to delay by the need for the correct paper work.I have been to 'Dora' in the Hartz Mountains where 28,000 mainly French and Polish, non Jewish, workers died in awful conditions supervised by Von Braun's henchmen who later got America to the moon...
Unfortunately they tried to protect French Jews (only 40% were slaughtered- much less than in some occupied countries like Holland) by handing over those Jewish refugees who had fled to France and were not citizens or just fairly recent citizens. That latter position not being one of Vichy's finest hours.Including the ancient, women, children, babies ,the prisons to hold them and the trains to carry them. To be fair Laval worked on a policy of delaying and postponing the trains as best he could.But was that the best they could have done? Morgan makes clear throughout the book that Vichy was harried and outflanked throughout the war by French ultra right wing milices who would have taken over the work (and , indeed,later did help the Germans) if the government had dug it's heels in too hard. The reward for handing over Jews was thousands of francs for each jew..and usually plus the property of the family handed over.
However none of this saved the Republic. When French North Africa fell to the allies , the Germans took over the whole country and reduced Vichy to...almost nothing.Petain and Laval ended up under comfortable house arrest as 'guests' of the Germans. Just as in East Europe , SS teams were sent in to what had been Vichy France to catch any resistance and hunt Jews. Barbie was the man for Lyons and he was pretty successful at his job. Employed by the Americans after the war he was then given protection in South America until he was purchased for trial back in France.
Morgan races through 6 or more years of history in a way that makes it hard to put down the book and makes sure that you never sneer at France or the French again.
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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A WW ll must read for History, January 26, 2010
This review is from: An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Klaus Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940-1945 (Hardcover)
Anyone with an interest in WW ll history or the search for Nazis will find Ted Morgan and "An Uncertain Hour" to be the one of the most riveting experiences they'll ever have with a book. The depth of his research is mind boggling and the clarity of his writing and reporting is unequaled among today's authors. He has proven time and again that he is the master of the historical accounting and once you've tasted Morgan's works, you'll have a burning need for more. The Klaus Barbie trial in 1987 was like a flickering bulb on the field of the Nazi dream for world domination. It should have been like a flood light on the twisted ideology of this inhuman mindset which still has waves of demented followers marching about with their swastika arm bands. Morgan brings to light the collaboration of the Vichy government and the real cowardice of the French leaders who knelt before the Germans at the expense of their own people. For a man who called France his home for many years, he doesn't pull any punches when it comes to telling it like it is.
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