Collaboration and Resistance

Through hundreds of photographs and documents never before or rarely seen, Collaboration and Resistance offers an unprecedented view of life in France during the German occupation in World War II. Plumbing an archival source that only recently has begun to yield its secrets, the authors have gathered an astonishing collection of photographs, posters, newspaper pages, and leaflets-most from the Vichy government's Office of Propaganda-covering every aspect of life under Vichy rule.

Commentaries by eight distinguished French historians squarely confront an uncomfortable time in their nation's past: the oppressive German presence, the Vichy government's uneasy alliance with both Germany and domestic ultraright-wing groups, and the heroic defiance of the Resistance. With its stunning graphic images, Collaboration and Resistance presents an incomparably vivid portrait of this important slice of history.

300 black-and-white photographs, 9 1/2 x 11"

JEAN-PIERRE AZMA, YVES DURAND, ROBERT FRANK, and PASCAL ORY teach at various universities in France; JACQUELINE EICHART created the photo archive of the French government's Documentation Franaise; DENIS MARCHAL is historic adviser to the Mmorial museum in Caen; DENIS PESCHANSKI and DOMINIQUE VEILLON are members of the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Prsent of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Despite a recent upsurge of revisionist works that detail the extent of French collaboration with the Nazis under the Vichy regime, the myth of a proud, defiant French people struggling to resist tyranny still has compelling power within France. Thus, this collection of photographs and the accompanying commentaries by eight prominent French historians is bound to reopen old wounds and shatter comfortable illusions on both sides of the left-right schism. The photographs, many of them previously unseen, hit with stunning impact. The casual, often comfortable relations between the French and their occupiers is unsettling, and the images of the quick resort to brutality by both the collaborationists and the resistance are shocking to view. The essays, each treating a specific aspect of life under the regime, are generally objective and they avoid sweeping generalizations about either side. This is a brilliant, powerful, and painful combination of visual images and the written word, which will cause many to rethink their assumptions about the period. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved