The French Resistance: The History of the Opposition Against Nazi Germany's Occupation of France during World War II

Name: The French Resistance: The History of the Opposition Against Nazi Germany's Occupation of France during World War II
Brand: Charles River Editors
SKU: 41370769293482
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock

By: Charles River Editors

ISBN: 9781523951079

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*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the Resistance's activities throughout the war *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents “Whatever happens, the flame of French Resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.” - General Charles de Gaulle, radio broadcast from London, June 18th, 1940 (Argyle, 2014, 81). The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Adolf Hitler's self-confident Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure mobile French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, Guderian's panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk. Not all French people proved willing to surrender to the Nazi invaders, however. While large numbers “collaborated” – working for German or Vichy companies to provide for themselves or their families – and some wholeheartedly backed the new regime out of opportunism, fascist conviction, or other motivations, a courageous minority operated in secret to resist their conquerors and the quisling state at Vichy: “De Gaulle described them as being bound together by a taste for risk and adventure [...] national pride sharpened by the suffering of their nation and ‘an overwhelming confidence in the strength and cunning of their own plot’. [...] ‘With him, it is [...] serving the Resistance and national honour, uncompromisingly demanding,’ wrote one. ‘With him, we would have to get used to breathing the rarefied air of the summits.’” (Fenby, 2012, 109)

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