“A comprehensive, nuanced but morally uncompromising look at France’s darkest hour” (Publishers Weekly).
This masterful book is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the Vichy France regime for over twenty years. France was occupied by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944, and the exact nature of France’s role in the Vichy years is only now beginning to come to light. A main reason its history has been difficult to uncover is due to some of France’s most prominent politicians, including longtime president François Mitterrand, who were implicated in the regime. This means that public access to key documents has been repeatedly denied, and only now an objective analysis is possible.
The fate of France as an occupied country could easily have been shared by Britain, and it is this background element that enhances our fascination with Vichy France. How would we have acted under similar circumstances? The divisions and repercussions of the Vichy years still resonate in the country today, and whether you view the regime as a fascist dictatorship, an authoritarian offshoot of the Third Reich or an embodiment of heightened French nationalism, Michael Curtis’s rounded, incisive book will be seen as the standard work on its subject for many years.
“An outstanding . . . unavoidably controversial book.” —The Daily Telegraph
