This concise history of France from the occupation in 1940 to liberation in 1944 focuses on the struggle between those who favoured collaboration with the occupying Germans and those who opted to resist. Roderick Kedward shows how ordinary people experienced the occupation; he examines the politics and ideology of the Victory regime, and he discusses the many different forms of resistance launched from inside and outside France. He particularly emphasizes the changing nature of both collaboration and resistance as the pressure of the occupatoin intensified, and asks whether France was involved in a civil war by 1944.
Author
Harry Roderick Kedward is a British historian. Kedward specialized in the history of Vichy France and of the Resistance. Oral history formed a central part of Kedward's historical approach, as he has interviewed hundreds of ordinary Frenchmen and women about their experience of being in the Resistance. He has also published a general history of 20th century France, under the title La Vie en Bleu.
