Print Price: $32.95

Format:
Paperback
684 pp.
2 Maps, 156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199254576

Publication date:
March 2003

Imprint: OUP UK

France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944

Julian Jackson

The French call them 'the Dark Years'...

This definitive new history of Occupied France explores the myths and realities of four of the most divisive years in French history.

Taking in ordinary people's experiences of defeat, collaboration, resistance, and liberation, it uncovers the conflicting memories of occupation which ensure that even today France continues to debate the legacy of the Vichy years.

Readership : Scholars and students of modern France, the Second World War, and French cultural life; readers interested in Occupied France..

Reviews

• `Review from previous edition wide-ranging ... The story is regularly enriched by nuggets of unexpected information.'
  Patrick Marnham, Spectator, 7 July 2001
• `a powerful contribution to the historiography...it also a pleasurable read: judicious, well crafted, always with an eye for the telling quotation or anecdote.'
  Robert Gildea, Reviews in History
• `Jackson does this with his usual good judgement, framing the book with the debates of historians at the beginning and the construction of collective memories at the end. His conclusion, wisely if tentatively, is that 'the French past must be faced in all its contradictions and complexity.'
  Robert Gildea, Reviews in History
• `In a sense it is all in this book, which will become the standard manual for students and teachers alike.'
  Robert Gildea, Reviews in History
• `a valuable addition to the continuing debate over France's collapse in 1940 and the Vichy government's subsequent cooperation with the Nazis'
  Contemporary Review
• `there will probably never be a more thorough and detailed account of what happened to France and the French during the Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1944 ... By its end ... the reader has the clearest possible picture not just of those dark years, but of the forces at work in French society and politics in the years leading up to them, and of the aftermath once liberation was achieved ... This is a brilliant book, but for anyone cherishing ideals of French heroism, it will prove a painful one.'
  Simon Heffer, Country Life, 12 July 2001
• `this analysis reads very fresh, as though what happened might have turned out differently'
  The Guardian
• `an eye-opening account which turns the spotlight on an aspect of the Second World War that is often forgotten'
  Hartlepool Mail
• `an extremely comprehensive and substantial survey'
  Good Book Guide
• `Julian Jackson ... has managed to tease the complexities of the occupation into a story that is both ingenious and convincing ... This book consciously eschews the shock tactics so often adopted by Anglo-Saxon historians who write about Vichy ... He is particularly good at evoking the dangerous glamour of that small group who dominated artistic and intellectual life in occupied Paris.'
  Economist (UK), 13 July 2001
• `The story of France in 1940-44 has been told countless times, but never before in English in such full and fascinating detail ... lucid and lively.'
  John Ardagh, Yorkshire Post, 14 June 2001
• `the definitive study of the Occupation years and should be in every French history collection'
  Library Journal (USA)
• `Jackson thoroughly dissects the multilayed complexities of a nation at war with itself and shows how, in the final analysis, it was the persevering spirit of the average French citizen that prevailed during those 'dark years.' Jackson's reputation for meticulous scholarship is quite evident in this latest work, which supplants JP Azema's From Munich to Liberation (Cambridge UP) as the definitive study on the occupation'
  Library Journal (USA)
• `cause for celebration: the best, most balanced, and comprehensive synthesis of Occupied France so far'
  Dedi Felman, Foreign Affairs (USA)
• `easy to read ... the supporting details and quotations are well chosen and interesting.'
  David Pryce-Jones, Literary Review