In the Shadow of the Swastika: A Woman’s Perspective on Life in Occupied France, 1940

Éliane Brault’s book tells a remarkable tale of betrayal and bravery on an unexpected scale. Its audience includes everyone fascinated by the drama of the German invasion and occupation of France in World War II. But only now, for the first time, is Brault’s moving story available in English translation.

This account of 1940 draws on Brault’s extensive network of fellow journalists and social activists. The exceptionally well-informed author highlights the role played by defeatists and collaborators in the Fall of France and the creation of the Vichy Regime. She also celebrates the unsung courage of the French in the face of national calamity, a disaster worsened by the internal divisions and venality of the Germans during the occupation.

Brault’s vibrant writing is rendered here with sensitivity. This Anglophone edition retains the originality of Brault’s style, a unique hybrid of newspaper reporting, critical commentary, and personal reflection. Her book now joins the classic accounts in English of the same events by the historian Marc Bloch, the novelist Irène Némirovsky, and the literary critic Jean Guéhenno, however different the genres of writing they explored. Simply put, Brault’s work deserves to be as well-known as theirs.

James Smith Allen is Professor Emeritus of History at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. After exploring the social history of the book and the literary lives of women in modern France, he is now working on the acculturation of Americans in twentieth-century Paris.