France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 First Edition

by Julian Jackson (Author)

72 ratings

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Editorial Reviews

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"Jackson has synthesized a wealth of secondary works in an account that is thorough, thoughtful, lucid, and awesomely commodious."--Eugen Weber, The Atlantic Monthly

"This book is an exhaustive synthesis of scholarly research, memoirs and diaries...What makes Jackson's account particularly useful is that it traces both the prewar roots of wartime developments and the postwar reverberations--the trials, purges, films and novels. Vichy and the resistance thus
emerge clearly as part of the longer run of French history...This book bears impressive testimony to the depth of France's postwar conversation with itself about what it endured during the war,"--The New York Times Book Review

"This insightful, thoroughly researched book will be of interest to scholars and general readers, who will come away with a profound understanding of a crucial time in French history"--Publishers Weekly

"In the most complete and careful history to date of occupied France, Jackson unflinchingly explores the complexities and moral ambiguities of his subject."--The Atlantic Monthly

About the Author

Julian Jackson is a Professor of History at the University of Wales, Swansea.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; First Edition (March 27, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 690 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0199254575
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199254576
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 6.24 x 1.47 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #120,230 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #96 in Military History (Books)
- #168 in European History (Books)
- #237 in French History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
72 ratings

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Michael Herndon

Very dissapointed!

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2017

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I must admit up front, I didn't even get past the first 100 pages! This book was not at all what I was expecting. I thought at long last someone had written a good modern history of the occupation of France in WWII. Instead this book was, ...well...uh...it's really kind of hard to put in words,
it's more like a previous reviewer stated"a college thesis" on the psychology of the French people in the late 19th & early 20th century. It could just never get to the "meat" of the subject at least for me, even when I skipped ahead to try to get interested. This book just plain rambles on about everything but the GERMAN OCCUPATION OF FRANCE. Having said all of this, this book is very well researched.It may "work" for others, but I just couldn't get interested. Who knows? Maybe i'll finish it someday!

15 people found this helpful

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Xtalfu

a detailed account of France's history, from the late thirties to the Liberation in 1944 - obviously the work of an historian

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2014

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For people who love a rational approach to history, with facts, causes, consequences and figures.

Relating France's history in the late thirties-early forties has always been a challenge for French historians - and very often English authors are much more successful at this difficult exercice. Julian Jackson wrote a detailed account of France's worst years. It's articulate, well documented and still easy to read.

If you want to understand where the Vichy regime came from, how it failed to protect France from the Nazi system but at the same time planted some of the seeds of modern France, that's a book to read.

9 people found this helpful

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Hunterthejaeger

Excellant Source

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2011

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This book is an excellant source for any scholar or amateur historian interested in the European theater of World War II. Although it did not adequately address the concerns that the Americans had for supporting the French resistance early in the war, it still provided emensely important information. The book begins by explaining the deep social rifts in French society between the socialist-elements and the conservatives prior to the war, and how this dynamic played a role in the fall of France and the establishment of Vichy France. It also very clearly identifies the complex sentiments the french people had for Vichy France, including the early feelings of legitimacy and mild support in the founding months of the regime, and how this feeling of support gradually crumbled under the shadow of National Socialism. It also goes into deep detail about the various overlooked actors of the french resistance, including the roles that Jews, women, and even foreign volunteers (even ethnic anti-nazi Germans!) played in the story of the resistance. It describes how different resistance grops formed under different circumstances, with an emphasis on the differences in resistance group formation in the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. It continues by describing how the roles that De Gaulle and Moulin played in orchastrating the various groups and how the concept of the resistance played into French culture and identity in the formation of the fourth republic.

7 people found this helpful

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jay frederick

Interesting history of a time , not much talked about.

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2021

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Great service. Thank you.

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2021

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Interesting historical book

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Patrick Yeung

Embracing Contradictions and Complexity to Construct a Usable Memory for the Future

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2010

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`The history of France in this period cannot be understood in separate compartments like `the Vichy regime,' `the Resistance', or `collaboration': these existed in dynamic relation to each other, and the history of France in this period must be conceived as a whole. These are strands but they make up one history.' `Vichy contained modernizers as well as conservatives... reinserted Vichy into a longer historical context, drawing out continuities with France's past and future. The future of the history of the Resistance needs to embrace its full diversity - Gaullist and non-Gaullist, Communist and non-Communist, North and South, men and women, French and immigrants - but also to reconnect the history of the Resistance to the society around it, to the French past, and to the Vichy regime.'

The social ideology of the governing elite after the fall of France owed its pedigree to the crisis of confidence in parliamentary Republic during the 1930s. `Maurras's movement, Action francaise synthesized royalism, nationalism, and Catholicism into a single doctrine which he called "integral nationalism".' `Nonconformists of the 1930s' whose disillusion with the Republic went deeper,' and their `Order Nouveau' repudiated liberal capitalism as `incapable of developing a rationally organized society.' The political paralysis after the Great Depression (the 1932 elections and their seventeen ministries in eighteen months; radical governments and their efforts to rally conservative support for socialist policies.) opened the way for `direct action by social groups,' where the `illustration of political polarization was less the violence of the extremes than the blurring of the boundaries between the parliamentary right, and the extreme right.' The massive majority that empowered Daladier to revise the constitution `revealed an erosion of faith in the institutions of the Republic across the entire political spectrum.'

Vichy was `a testimony to the long-term corrosive effect of Action francaise on French liberalism: all strands of French conservatism were present at Vichy.' Its National Revolution `defined itself first and foremost in opposition to liberal individualism which uprooted people from the `natural' communities of family, workplace, and region.' In its measures against foreigners, like the repeal of the 1939 Marchandeau decree prohibiting the publication of material inciting racial hatred, `Vichy was only extending legislation which had been started under the Republic.' Nonetheless, the National Revolution took a back seat to economic realities (e.g. married women became liable for labor service in Germany, regional constitution reinforcing state control rather than returning to `natural communities.') `The regime, or organizations which developed with its benediction, had up to a point, enjoyed many intellectuals' support, is testimony to the crisis of traditional republican values in France at the end of the 1930s. All these people had shared a certain number of preoccupations: a sense of living through a profound crisis of civilization which required a remaking of mankind; a belief that liberal individualism was incapable of embracing humanity in all its wholeness; and a conviction that the void which had opened up in France in 1940 offered vast possibilities.'

On collaboration, Vichy `realpolitik was wishful thinking based on a complete misreading of Germany': the regime `believed that it had trump cards - the fleet, the Empire, the Free Zone - but paradoxically the very existence of these prevented a more robust policy. Precisely because it did have something to lose, the Vichy government was always terrified to push its case too far for fear of provoking the Germans. Vichy only won paltry concession.' In the abortive Protocols of Paris May 1941, Darlan `had taken France to the brink of military collaboration and that he drew back for want of German political concession.' In 1940, `Laval's policy of collaboration had had little chance of success because the Germans hardly wanted anything France had to offer; in 1942, it had no chance of success because the Germans wanted so much that nothing the French offered would be enough.' With the German occupation of the rest of France in November 1942, `everything Vichy had salvaged from the catastrophe of 1940 was irremediably lost: the fleet, the Armistice Army , the Free Zone, and the Empire.'

In spite of the higher Jewish survival rate in France than in much of Western Europe, Jackson inculpated Vichy's role in Jewish persecution for its active co-operation with the Germans. According to Jackson, `the fate of the Jews depended on a variety of factors: the presence of an independent government able to interpose itself between the Jews and the Germans; the willingness of such government to do so; the numbers of German occupation troops; the timing of German anti-Jewish policies; the reactions of public opinion and the organizations which expressed it; the effectiveness of rescue networks; the geography and topography of the country; the size and distribution of the Jewish population. None of these factors was decisive in itself, and what mattered was how they combined.' `Without French police cooperation, it would have been difficult for the Germans to arrest the foreign Jews. About ¾ of all Jews were arrested by French police.' Furthermore, `Vichy's desire always to keep up with the Germans meant that anti-Semitism spiraled continuously in a more radical direction; Vichy continued to implement its own separate policy of persecution. (e.g. the French government imposed the Jewish Statutes, not the Germans). `The truth is that without Vichy's co-operation, it would have been impossible for the Germans to arrest as many Jews as they did.'

Demonstrating the dynamic relationship between Vichy and the Resistance, `being directly confronted with Vichy, the Southern movements evolved in response to it, while the Northern ones did not. In the North, those starting hostile to Vichy remained so; other were slow to rethink their position. In the South, however, ideology became central to the self definition of the Resistance, which started to develop a common rhetoric, drawing on the traditions of French republicanism.' `Given the reputation of the Republic by the end of the 1930s, this reassertion of republican values was not self-evident. It was a situation which Vichy itself created by becoming so identifiably a right-wing regime. It was Vichy which ensured that the Resistance would be Republican.' Jackson assailed the de Gaulle's Resistance myth - despite a few traitors, the French nation, united behind de Gaulle, had liberated itself and what occurred between 1939 and 1944 was represented not as a French civil war, but as an episode in a longer struggle against Germany - was problematic because `it imposed a unitary vision on what had been highly fragmented experience.'

Jackson concluded that `clearly any attempt to build an identity around the idea that Vichy was not France will be doomed to failure: de Gaulle's assertion that Vichy was null and void no longer serves any purpose in contemporary France. On the other hand, it is no less misleading to repudiate the existence of a Resistance which also represented `France'... the French past must be faced in all its contradictions and complexity. Only then can it be critically evaluated, and instead of serving to salve the conscience of the present, it can become a usable memory for the future.'

8 people found this helpful

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Marian L. Moran

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2016

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A very dense and well-researched book. Anyone interested in this period of French history should read it.

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Pete

Thorough study of the Vichy era

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2013

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Very thorough study. I appreciated the section that summarizes the previous scholarship on Vichy. I would have liked the author to describe a few operations of the Resistance rather than mainly focusing on its organization.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

docread

The best account available for this troubled period

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2013

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This comprehensive account despite its length is an enjoyable read that benefits from the cumulative scholarship of recent years .It gives a balanced indepth view of the workings of the Vichy regime and describes the gradual build up of the home grown Resistance and its fraught relationship with the Gaullist Free French.The author scrutinises the profound dilemmas facing the French intellectuals and the tough choices that divided them.He examines the ambivalent attitudes of the French civil service and formal state agencies in their attempt to promote some autonomy of action and a semblance of legitimacy in the face of German intransigence.He doesn't offer a detailed social history of the occupation period and how it affected the different segments of the population in their daily lives.However in a tangential way by examining the motives of those who threw themselves into either collaboration and denunciation , attentism or joining the " Maquis",the text sheds considerable light on the physical and psychological hardships caused by the ugly daily realities of the German occupation that led to diverse coping mechanisms by individuals or to dramatic shift in attitudes.

It follows the aftermath of the occupation by critically examining the various post war myths propounded by the Gaullists on the one hand and the communists on the other about the reality of the Resistance.The whole period remains as divisive as ever in contemporary France witness the political turmoil resulting from the trials of Klaus Barbie and Maurice Papon.This book offers a great insight into one of the most tragic events in modern French history and goes a long way to explaining not only the left/ right divisions in contemporary France but also the crucial importance for the Franco- German leadership of the European project as the only realistic means to abolish military conflict from the continent,bringing prosperity to its citizens and defending their human rights.One last remark , the reader would have benefited from a "who is who "list of the various historical actors as one becomes overwhelmed with the sheer number of names in the text.

14 people found this helpful

CAMDENJOHN

MAGISTERIAL!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 27, 2011

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I can appreciate some of the uncertain comments about this book. It would be a mistake for anyone who knows little of the background to use this as a base for study of this climactic period. Jackson is a historian's historian! He expects readers to know the basic facts, and hopes that his researches will encourage others to look further - and encourages readers to do so!

I know this period pretty well, and was particularly interested because I have a draft novel set in the Vichy period. Some facts, I thought, and background info, would be great. I only received my copy from you a few days ago - brilliant service, as always - and I've only reached page 60, but already I've learned so much! I cannot see this book being superseded for a generation.

It's hard for us who are not French to understand why the issues which Jackson covers remain so significant - I suppose our own British and Irish parallel would be 1690 and the Battle of the Boyne, 400+ years ago! But then and now the issues in Ireland remain reasonably clear cut, this was never the case in France.

Astonishing to read that in the autumn of 1944 - while there were still German soldiers fighting in France, De Gaulle set up a very high powered Cttee to encourage study of all aspects of the period. That Cttee still meets, and publishes reports - and universities have seminars at which historians and those directly involved (few of them now) can debate the issues.

Yes, it's a big book - but it has a lighter side! He tells of of a University conference not many years ago when two veterans of the resistance almost came to blows over what happened in Toulouse in 1944 - remember they must have been at least in their mid 70s! But they were united when a young female historian called for study of the position of women. "Ah yes," was their dismissive response, "They played their part!"

Following this theme, amazing to know the effect of the Establishment's obsession with France's declining birth rate from the 1870's! A plan in the early 20s to give men with many children - women didn't have the vote! - was narrowly defeated in the Senate, and abortion was outlawed as much because of the wish to push up the birth rate as of Catholic opposition.

For us in the UK and Ireland, France is our nearest neighbour. For anyone to really understand France and the French, this book is essential - but not an easy read for those who don't know the basic historical facts.

14 people found this helpful

M. Lloyd

... into this book because essentially it is very much like and academic textbook

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2018

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I should have done more research into this book because essentially it is very much like and academic textbook. I found it too dry to read through and gave up. But as a dip in and out book on various themes it is important and as a course textbook it will be invaluable.

Miquel

Dense but good to understand the complexities of France's war

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2013

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As someone that grew up watching "Allo, allo" and other movies and series that romanticized life in occupied France, this book was a good eye-opener about the complexities of French society during the war, where several movements struggled for hegemony on both sides while most of the people just tried to survive. In addition to all the political and military action, the author provides also a dense decription of culural life and other aspects of French society during these years. Recommended reading if you are into this topic, but it is not a light book.

One person found this helpful

Oliver J.J. Broderick

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2017

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Totally satisfied

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