The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun―but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

History

Wieviorka, Olivier

Europe

Columbia University Press

In just three months in 1940, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France fell to the Nazis. The German occupation of Western Europe had begun--but a brave few rose up in defiance. National resistance has long been celebrated in remembrances of World War II, depicted as making significant contributions to the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the so-called army of shadows drew heavily on the support of London and Washington, a fact often forgotten in postwar Europe. The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940-1945 is a sweeping analytical history of the underground anti-Nazi forces during World War II. Examining clandestine organizations in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy, Olivier Wieviorka sheds new light on the factors that shaped the resistance and its place in the grand scheme of Anglo-American military strategy. While national actors played a leading role in fomenting resistance, British and American intelligence services and propaganda as well as financial, material, and logistical support were crucial to its activities and growth. Wieviorka illuminates the policies of governments in exile and resistance actors regarding cooperation with the British and Americans, pointing to the persistence of national self-interest and long-standing historical tensions. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources and bringing together the political, diplomatic, and military dimensions of the conflict, this book is the first account of the resistance on a continental scale and from a trans-European perspective.

The Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, have assumed legendary status in the annals of World War II. But in overly romanticizing D-day, Olivier Wieviorka argues, we have lost sight of the full picture. Normandy offers a balanced, complete account that reveals the successes and weaknesses of the titanic enterprise. 
 In addition to describing the landings with precision and drama, Wieviorka covers the planning and diplomatic background, Allied relationships, German defensive preparations, morale of the armies, economics and logistics, political and military leaders, and civilians’ and soldiers’ experience of the fighting. Surprisingly, the landing itself was not the slaughter the general staff expected. The greater battle for Normandy—waged on farmland whose infamous hedgerows, the bocage, created formidable obstacles—took a severe toll not only in lives lost, but on the survivors who experienced this grueling ordeal. 
 D-day, Wieviorka notes, was a striking accomplishment, but it was war, violent and cruel. Errors, desertions, rivalries, psychological trauma, self-serving motives, thefts, and rapes were all part of the story. Rather than diminishing the Allied achievement, this candid book underscores the price of victory and acknowledges the British, American, and Canadian soldiers who dashed onto the Normandy beaches not as demigods, but as young men.

Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris

Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

On July 10, 1940, by a 570 to 80 margin, the representatives in the French parliament voted full powers to Philippe Pétain, ending the Third Republic and paving the way for the collaborationist Vichy regime. Olivier Wieviorka offers a nuanced portrait of the individuals who determined the fate of France at this critical moment.
Pétain claimed to be saving France from ruin. The day of the vote has been described as a journée des dupes, the legislators so ignorant or fearful that they voted without a thought to the consequences. But Wieviorka shows that most of the deputies made a considered decision to vote for Pétain. He analyzes the factors, such as political culture and regional origins, that motivated the voting on both sides, and traces the men’s fates through the war.
Recreating the tense atmosphere of summer 1940, Wieviorka shows how pressures brought on by defeat could affect even the most hardened republicans. He illuminates the complex moral issues inherent in accommodation and collaboration in a time of crisis.

Orphans of the Republic: The Nation’s Legislators in Vichy France (Harvard Historical Studies)

Harvard University Press

The Allied landings on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, have assumed legendary status in the annals of World War II. But in overly romanticizing D-day, Olivier Wieviorka argues, we have lost sight of the full picture. Normandy offers a balanced, complete account that reveals the successes and weaknesses of the titanic enterprise.
In addition to describing the landings with precision and drama, Wieviorka covers the planning and diplomatic background, Allied relationships, German defensive preparations, morale of the armies, economics and logistics, political and military leaders, and civilians’ and soldiers’ experience of the fighting. Surprisingly, the landing itself was not the slaughter the general staff expected. The greater battle for Normandy―waged on farmland whose infamous hedgerows, the bocage, created formidable obstacles―took a severe toll not only in lives lost, but on the survivors who experienced this grueling ordeal.
D-day, Wieviorka notes, was a striking accomplishment, but it was war, violent and cruel. Errors, desertions, rivalries, psychological trauma, self-serving motives, thefts, and rapes were all part of the story. Rather than diminishing the Allied achievement, this candid book underscores the price of victory and acknowledges the British, American, and Canadian soldiers who dashed onto the Normandy beaches not as demigods, but as young men.

Belknap Press

“Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not and will not go out.” As Charles de Gaulle ended his radio address to the French nation in June 1940, listeners must have felt a surge of patriotism tinged with uncertainty. Who would keep the flame burning through dark years of occupation? At what cost?
Olivier Wieviorka presents a comprehensive history of the French Resistance, synthesizing its social, political, and military aspects to offer fresh insights into its operation. Detailing the Resistance from the inside out, he reveals not one organization but many interlocking groups often at odds over goals, methods, and leadership. He debunks lingering myths, including the idea that the Resistance sprang up in response to the exhortations of de Gaulle’s Free French government-in-exile. The Resistance was homegrown, arising from the soil of French civil society. Resisters had to improvise in the fight against the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime. They had no blueprint to follow, but resisters from all walks of life and across the political spectrum formed networks, organizing activities from printing newspapers to rescuing downed airmen to sabotage. Although the Resistance was never strong enough to fight the Germans openly, it provided the Allies invaluable intelligence, sowed havoc behind enemy lines on D-Day, and played a key role in Paris’s liberation.
Wieviorka shatters the conventional image of a united resistance with no interest in political power. But setting the record straight does not tarnish the legacy of its fighters, who braved Nazism without blinking.

The French Resistance

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

France's experience of World War II was not primarily one of armed conflict, but rather of occupation, collaboration, resistance, and persecution. Since the end of the war, France has struggled with how to understand and remember that experience. In Divided Memory, Olivier Wieviorka recounts the role that the memory of the Occupation and the Resistance has played in shaping the sense of the past held by various segments of French society. He explores the way in which memory can focus political and social conflict. Each administration since the war has taken a different approach to responding to these memories and has attempted to steer public opinion through them. Charles de Gaulle tried to overwrite Vichy's collaboration by promoting the story of a French military victory over Germany. Others focused on memorializing victims or attempted to forget this painful time altogether. Wieviorka shows that, disparate as they are, none of these approaches have worked, and France remains divided by its memories of resistance and collaboration.

Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present

Stanford University Press

Les Orphelins de la République: Destinées des députés et sénateurs français (1940-1945)

SEUIL

Méthode pour le commentaire et la dissertation historiques - 4ed.

Milliot, Vincent

Historical Study & Educational Resources

ARMAND COLIN

La première grande synthèse historique consacrée à la résistance française pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. 
Parce qu'elle repose sur l'engagement et se construit sur le secret, la Résistance reste à la fois un mystère et un enjeu de polémiques partisanes. 
Amorcée dès juin 1940, elle parvint à s'unir à l'ombre de la croix de Lorraine, grâce aux patients efforts de Jean Moulin, tout en affirmant son indiscutable pluralisme. Elle resta néanmoins de bout en bout minoritaire, se préoccupa peu du sort des juifs et joua un rôle limité sur le plan militaire. Son apport politique fut en revanche immense : la Résistance évita à la France les affres de la guerre civile et favorisa, à la Libération, une transition pacifique du pouvoir au profit d'une Résistance regroupée derrière l'altière figure du général de Gaulle. 
Ce livre aborde sans tabous l'ensemble de ses enjeux, de la formation des premiers réseaux au couronnement de 1944. Il ne dissimule ni les conflits, ni les ambitions qui animèrent 
les promoteurs de l'armée des ombres, du rôle de la presse clandestine à l'efficacité des réseaux, de la répression allemande aux motifs de l'engagement, des idées politiques de la Résistance à sa mémoire dans la France contemporaine. Pour la première fois, un ouvrage à la fois complet et accessible, synthétique et vivant, offre une vision globale sur un phénomène majeur qui reste curieusement méconnu malgré le rôle que la Résistance a joué dans l'histoire et la mémoire nationales.\nMembre de l'Institut universitaire de France et professeur des Universités à l'Ecole normale supérieure de Cachan, Olivier Wieviorka est un spécialiste reconnu de la Résistance et de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, auxquelles il a consacré plusieurs livres dont une Histoire du Débarquement qui fait autorité et Une certaine idée de la Résistance. Défense de la France : 1940-1949.

L'histoire de la résistance

Military

PERRIN

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Books by Wieviorka, Olivier

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wieviorka, Olivier. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)

Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris

Orphans of the Republic: The Nation’s Legislators in Vichy France (Harvard Historical Studies)

Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris

The French Resistance

Divided Memory: French Recollections of World War II from the Liberation to the Present

Les Orphelins de la République: Destinées des députés et sénateurs français (1940-1945)

Méthode pour le commentaire et la dissertation historiques - 4ed.

L'histoire de la résistance