Free France

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Free France

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Author : Charles River Editors
language : en
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Release Date : 2017-10-13

Free France written by Charles River Editors and has been published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-10-13 with categories.

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "Whatever happens, the flame of French Resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished." - General Charles de Gaulle, radio broadcast from London, June 18, 1940 "A great man? Why, he's selfish, he's arrogant, he thinks he's the center of the universe...you're right, he's a great man!" - Winston Churchill on General Charles de Gaulle The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Nazi Germany's confident Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure mobile French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, Heinz Guderian's panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk. French morale collapsed very quickly in the face of the Third Reich's onslaught. The French population had not yet recovered from World War I's immense bloodshed, and many French preferred surrender to a second decimation of their young men. Accordingly, the Germans seized the northern French territories directly, while permitting Marshal Petain, an elderly war hero and right-wing fanatic, to found a rump state centered on Vichy. History dubbed the quasi-independent client state's government the Vichy Regime. Not all French people proved willing to surrender to the Nazi invaders, however. While large numbers "collaborated" - working for German or Vichy companies to provide for themselves or their families - and some wholeheartedly backed the new regime out of opportunism, fascist conviction, or other motivations, many courageous French resisted the Nazis and the quisling Vichy state. "De Gaulle described them as being bound together by a taste for risk and adventure [...] national pride sharpened by the suffering of their nation and 'an overwhelming confidence in the strength and cunning of their own plot'. [...] 'With him, it is [...] serving the Resistance and national honour, uncompromisingly demanding, ' wrote one. 'With him, we would have to get used to breathing the rarefied air of the summits.'" (Fenby, 2012, 109). While all Free French forces shared the same goal - opposition to the Germans their Vichy pawns - they viewed each other with some suspicion and sometimes cooperated only grudgingly. One of the biggest divides ran between the Gaullists (and those who favored de Gaulle simply as a convenient, but temporary, "banner" to provide a unifying influence) and the communists of the PCF (Partie Communiste Francais). De Gaulle and his followers viewed the communists with profound suspicion, believing they harbored a wish for violent revolution and a totalitarian Soviet-aligned state, yet they also needed their paramilitary skills and extraordinarily large cache of weaponry. While de Gaulle's suspicions proved overblown, the communists also tended to overstate their own role. They asserted, for example, that 75,000 communist Resistance members died in the struggle. During the war years, however, the Free French kept the spirit of an independent and defiant France alive, waiting for the opportunity to emerge again, regardless of the precise political beliefs of its members. Free France: The History and Legacy of the Exiled Free French Government during World War II examines the creation of Free France over the course of World War II. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Free French like never before.

Rock Of Contention

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Author : Kim Munholland
language : en
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Release Date : 2007-02

Rock Of Contention written by Kim Munholland and has been published by Berghahn Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2007-02 with History categories.

What went wrong in Free French relations with Americans during World War Two? Two peoples, presumably sharing a common cause in a war to defeat the axis powers, often found themselves locked in bitter disputes that exposed fundamental differences in outlook and intentions, creating a profound misunderstanding or mésentente that was a major source of Franco-American conflict during the war and has persisted since then. The site for this dispute was the South Pacific colony of New Caledonia. By documenting carefully French policy toward the American presence in New Caledonia during the war, the author demonstrates the existence of a deep-seated suspicion, fear, even paranoia about the Americans that colored almost every phase of Free French policy. Revising traditional views, the author lays bare the roots of the antagonism, which stem from perceptions and biases.

Free France

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Author :
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1944

Free France written by and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1944 with World War, 1939-1945 categories.

France

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Author : Julian Jackson
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
Release Date : 2001

France written by Julian Jackson and has been published by Oxford University Press on Demand this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2001 with History categories.

In this monumental new account of the Vichy years, Julian Jackson examines French experiences of Occupation during the 'Black Years' of 1940-4. Pulling together previously separate 'histories' of occupation, resistance, and collaboration he presents a definitive history of the period. This isa more complex history than the traditional dichotomy between 'collaboration' and 'resistance', one in which the ideological frontiers between Vichy and the Resistance were often blurred. This study ranges from the politics of Marshal Petain's regime to the experiences of the ordinary Frenchpeople, from surrender in 1940 to the purges of liberation. The author restores the organized Resistance to a more central role than has been customary in recent years and presents a new social history of the resistance which takes in the roles of foreigners, women, Jews, and peasants. He uncoversthe long term roots of the Vichy regime in political and social conflict and cultural crisis stretching back to the Great War and concludes by tracing the lasting legacy and memory of Occupation since 1945.

Pledge To Destiny Charles De Gaulle And The Rise Of The Free French

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Author : Robert Smith Thompson
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1974

Pledge To Destiny Charles De Gaulle And The Rise Of The Free French written by Robert Smith Thompson and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1974 with Biography & Autobiography categories.

Free France S Lion

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Author : William Moore
language : en
Publisher: Casemate
Release Date : 2011-11-19

Free France S Lion written by William Moore and has been published by Casemate this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-11-19 with History categories.

But for his early death, many Frenchmen believe Leclerc would have been their greatest figure to emerge from World War II. De Gaulle himself admitted to his son-in-law that he gave up smoking when Leclerc died, in order to retain his health in case France needed him, because Leclerc was no longer there. From the fall of France until 1943, 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, at the Westwall, or Patch's Seventh Army in the south. His career not only includes the liberation of Paris, for which he is most famous, but the retaking of Strasbourg and the reduction of the Colmar Pocket. Helping to spearhead the advance into Germany itself, Leclerc’s armor comprised a rock upon which American units could rely, and its waving the tricolor during the Allied counter-invasion went far toward retrieving French prestige in the war. By the German surrender in May 1945, Leclerc is one of very few Frenchmen of whom it can be said that he never stopped fighting to regain France's freedom, from the debacle of 1940 right through to the end. After VE-Day Leclerc was dispatched to reassert French authority in Indo-China, an uphill task given the atrophy suffered by the French colonial government due to its isolation from its homeland and local Japanese superiority. While being partly successful in the south and Cambodia, Leclerc soon discovered that the Viet Minh were harder to dislodge in the North, and that Ho Chi Minh was more than a match for frequently changing postwar French governments. Recognizing that France had neither the means nor the will to recover control, Leclerc advised his government to "negotiate at all costs." This didn't happen, leading to Dien Bien Phu eight years later and thence to US involvement. Surprisingly, Leclerc has never yet been the subject of a thorough biography in English. Nevertheless many Americans and Englishmen will inevitably have noticed the plethora of monuments to Leclerc in any moderately sized French town. With a fast-paced narrative covering combat at all levels of command and a foreword by Martin Windrow, author of The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam, Free France's Lion will make fascinating reading for any serious student of the full scope of World War II.

The Blood Of Free Men

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Author : Michael Neiberg
language : en
Publisher: Hachette UK
Release Date : 2012-10-02

The Blood Of Free Men written by Michael Neiberg and has been published by Hachette UK this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-10-02 with History categories.

As the Allies struggled inland from Normandy in August of 1944, the fate of Paris hung in the balance. Other jewels of Europe -- sites like Warsaw, Antwerp, and Monte Cassino -- were, or would soon be, reduced to rubble during attempts to liberate them. But Paris endured, thanks to a fractious cast of characters, from Resistance cells to Free French operatives to an unlikely assortment of diplomats, Allied generals, and governmental officials. Their efforts, and those of the German forces fighting to maintain control of the city, would shape the course of the battle for Europe and color popular memory of the conflict for generations to come. In The Blood of Free Men, celebrated historian Michael Neiberg deftly tracks the forces vying for Paris, providing a revealing new look at the city's dramatic and triumphant resistance against the Nazis. The salvation of Paris was not a foregone conclusion, Neiberg shows, and the liberation was a chaotic operation that could have easily ended in the city's ruin. The Allies were intent on bypassing Paris so as to strike the heart of the Third Reich in Germany, and the French themselves were deeply divided; feuding political cells fought for control of the Resistance within Paris, as did Charles de Gaulle and his Free French Forces outside the city. Although many of Paris's citizens initially chose a tenuous stability over outright resistance to the German occupation, they were forced to act when the approaching fighting pushed the city to the brink of starvation. In a desperate bid to save their city, ordinary Parisians took to the streets, and through a combination of valiant fighting, shrewd diplomacy, and last-minute aid from the Allies, managed to save the City of Lights. A groundbreaking, arresting narrative of the liberation, The Blood of Free Men tells the full story of one of the war's defining moments, when a tortured city and its inhabitants narrowly survived the deadliest conflict in human history.

Canada Between Vichy And Free France 1940 1945

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Author : Olivier Courteaux
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 2013

Canada Between Vichy And Free France 1940 1945 written by Olivier Courteaux and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013 with History categories.

The relationship between Canada and France has always been complicated by the Canadian federal government's relations with Quebec. In this first study of Franco-Canadian relations during the Second World War, Olivier Courteaux demonstrates how Canada's wartime foreign policy was shaped by the country's internal divides. As Courteaux shows, Quebec's vocal nationalist minority came to openly support France's fascist Vichy regime and resented Canada's involvement in a 'British' war, while English Canada was largely sympathetic to de Gaulle's Free French movement and accepted its duty to aid embattled Mother Britain. Meanwhile, on the world stage, Canada deftly juggled ties with both French factions to appease Great Britain and the United States before eventually giving full support to the Free French movement. Courteaux concludes this extensively detailed study by illustrating Canada's vital role in helping France reassert its position on the global stage after 1944. Filled with international intrigue and larger-than-life characters, Canada between Vichy and Free France adds greatly to our comprehension of Canada's foreign relations and political history.

The French In Singapore

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Author : Maxime Pilon
language : en
Publisher: Editions Didier Millet
Release Date : 2011

The French In Singapore written by Maxime Pilon and has been published by Editions Didier Millet this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011 with History categories.

In 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore, he was accompanied by two French naturalists. Ever since, French missionaries, merchants, planters and other pioneers have contributed to its economic, educational and cultural development. Discover the colourful stories of personalities, such as J. Casteleyns (who built the first hostelry, the Hotel de l¿Europe, in 1857), Father Jean-Marie Beurel (who constructed the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd) and Alfred Clouët (who started the well-known Ayam Brand canned sardines business). Superbly illustrated with photographs, paintings, sketches, old documents and maps, The French in Singapore is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to discover the little-known history of the French in the Singapore we know today.

Free French Africa In World War Ii

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Author : Eric T. Jennings
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2015-07-08

Free French Africa In World War Ii written by Eric T. Jennings and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-07-08 with History categories.

Only in recent years have historians rediscovered the critical role that French colonial troops played in the twentieth century's two world wars. What is perhaps still deeply under-appreciated is how much General de Gaulle's Free France drew its strength from 1940 to the middle of 1943 from fighting men, resources, and operations in French Equatorial Africa rather than London. Territorially, Free France spanned from the Libyan border with Chad down to the Congo River, and to the scattered tiny French territories of the South Pacific and India. Eric T. Jennings tells the story of an improbable French military and institutional rebirth through Central Africa and gives a unique, deep look at the key role Free French Africa played during World War II to help the Allied cause.