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De Gaulle and Churchill examines the tense and complicated relationship between General de Gaulle as leader of the Free French on the one hand and Winston Churchill and the British Government on the other. Evan McGilvray shows that De Gaulle was a career soldier, not a politician by any means, prior to 1940 but stepped into the leadership vacuum after the fall of France to provide a vital figurehead and rallying point for the Free French movement. His experiences in WW1, where he had served with distinction and was decorated but then was captured and so missed the nadir of despair expressed in the mutiny of 1917, meant he did not share the general defeatism of his peers in 1940. De Gaulle ha...
Prize-winning and bestselling historian Jean Edward Smith tells the “rousing” (Jay Winik, author of 1944) story of the liberation of Paris during World War II—a triumph achieved only through the remarkable efforts of Americans, French, and Germans, racing to save the city from destruction. Following their breakout from Normandy in late June 1944, the Allies swept across northern France in pursuit of the German army. The Allies intended to bypass Paris and cross the Rhine into Germany, ending the war before winter set in. But as they advanced, local forces in Paris began their own liberation, defying the occupying German troops. Charles de Gaulle, the leading figure of the Free French g...
New history of la France libre, Vichy collaboration, and the resistance from the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation.
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“A fine biography of Leclerc, who played almost as important a part as de Gaulle himself in restoring French pride in the Second World War” (Antony Beevor, international bestselling author of D-Day). From the fall of France until 1943, Philippe Leclerc dovetailed his operations with the British effort in North Africa, establishing himself as a dynamic combat leader in the battles against Rommel. But once the conflict shifted to European soil, he became even more prominent as the commander of the 2nd French Armored Division—the famous 2e DB). For the next two years, he was under the operational control of either Patton’s Third Army, as in the Normandy breakout, Hodges’ First Army, a...
A moving, dramatic social history of the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the most inspiring and momentous events of the twentieth century. The fall of Paris to the Nazis on June 14th, 1940, was one of the darkest days of World War II. And the liberation of the city on August 25th, 1944, felt like the brightest. The liberation was also the biggest party of the century: champagne flowed freely, total strangers embraced—it was a celebration of life renewed against the backdrop of the world's favorite city, as experienced by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Capa. But there was nothing preordained about this happy ending. Had things transpired differently, Paris might have gone down as a ghastly monument to Nazi nihilism. Paris 1944—timed for the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris—tells the story of those iridescent days in a startling new way. Cutting through decades of myth-making, the reader watches the city’s fate hanging in the balance against the drama, heroism, joy, and suspense of one of the most explosive moments of the twentieth century.
Shocked by the fall of France in 1940, panicked US leaders rushed to back the Vichy governmentÑa fateful decision that nearly destroyed the AngloÐAmerican alliance. According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the Òmost shocking single eventÓ of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American responseÑa policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American plannersÕ strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge incre...
“A fine, racy account of the Occupation and Liberation of Paris—a rattlingly good read” (Giles MacDonogh, author of After the Reich). During the fall of 1944, once the Western Allies had gained military advantage over the Nazis, the crown jewel of Allied strategy became the liberation of Paris—the capital of France so long held in captivity. This event, however, was steeped in more complexity when the Allies returned than in 1940 when Hitler’s legions first marched in. In 1944, the city was beset by cross-currents about who was to reclaim it—the French Resistance, the long-suffering Parisians themselves, or the Anglo-American armies which had indeed won the victory. This book pun...