France
by Julian Jackson
One of the interesting things about this book is the way it sheds light on how the French have dealt with the events of the war. Julian Jackson explains to the British what actually happened, what the French have done since about the terrible things their government was responsible for. It’s a great book, a great work of history.
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“Julian Jackson is today’s most important and prominent British historian of France. The way that the war is seen by historians changed completely with the publication of a book in the 60s by an American, Robert Paxton, called Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. It was the bible for people who wanted to understand what happened in France during the Second World War. He showed for the first time that Vichy was a government of oppression in its own right; it didn’t require the German occupation to do the things it did. Today, the book which I think has replaced or rather expanded upon Paxton’s is France: The Dark Years.” Read more...
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Carmen Callil, Literary Scholar
