An Uncertain Hour

French-born American writer, Ted Morgan, explores France's darkest years - the five years of German domination during World War II. His focus is the city of Lyon, where Klaus Barbie ruled with such exceptional cruelty, but his narrative encompasses more; the cowardice that brought German victory and led into Vichy, the nature of the occupation and its atrocities, the heroism of the Resistance, the tragedy of the Jews, and the psychological debris left behind after 1945. Drawing upon the experiences of his own family, on thousands of pages of hitherto secret documents prepared for the Barbie trial, on dozens of interviews, and other extensive material, Morgan has created a work about the way defeat can bring forth the best and worst in a people. Here are heroes like Resistance leader, Jean Moulin, (whose capture is definitively described), collaborators like Marshal Petain and the French fascist ,Xavier Vallat, events like the brutal seizure of the Jewish children's home at Izieu and the long bitter journey of French Jews in the last train to Auschwitz - where for many death won the race against Allied victory.