Resistance and Liberation

New history of la France libre, Vichy collaboration, and the resistance from the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation.

In Resistance and Liberation, Douglas Porch continues his epic history of France at war. Emerging from the debacle of 1940, France faced the quandary of how to rebuild military power, protect the empire, and resuscitate its global influence. While Charles de Gaulle rejected the armistice and launched his offshore crusade to reclaim French honor within the Allied camp, defeatists at Vichy embraced cooperation with the victorious Axis. The book charts the emerging dynamics of la France libre and the Alliance, Vichy collaboration, and the swelling resistance to the Axis occupation. From the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation, Douglas Porch traces how de Gaulle sought to forge a French army and prevent civil war. He captures the experiences of ordinary French men and women caught up in war and defeat, the choices they made, the trials they endured, and how this has shaped France's memory of those traumatic years.

Autorentext
Douglas Porch is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His previous books include Defeat and Division, France at War, 19391942 (2022), Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (2013), The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (published in the UK as Hitler's Mediterranean Gamble, 2004), and The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (1995).

Zusammenfassung
Emerging from the debâcle of 1940, France faced the quandary of how to rebuild military power and resuscitate its global influence. Douglas Porch charts the dynamics of la France libre, Vichy collaboration, and the swelling resistance to the Axis occupation from the campaigns in Tunisia and Italy to Liberation.

Inhalt
Preface; 1. Tunisia; 2. 'A sort of resurrection of France.'; 3. Triumph and dishonor in Italy; 4. Resistance on the eve of D-Day; 5. The supreme battle; 6. Anvil-Dragoon; 7. L'Amalgame; 8. Les Vosges; 9. Rhine and Danube; 10. Conclusion.