An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Klaus Barbie Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940-1945

Sifts through the ten thousand pages of secret documents prepared for the Klaus Barbie trial

This latest book on Klaus Barbie, the Nazi SS chief in wartime Lyon, is by the French-American journalist who covered Barbie's 1987 trial for the New York Times Magazine . Morgan provides a sweeping chronicle of France's defeat in 1940, the Vichy regime, the Resistance, the treatment of Jews in wartime France, and Barbie's own behavior in Lyon. Morgan had access to the secret documents prepared for the Barbie trial. But he prefers to take a general approach rather than to carefully analyze Barbie's wartime activities. Better coverage of Barbie and the controversies surrounding his trial can be found in Erna Paris's Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair ( LJ 7/86). Morgan's account is filled with anecdotes, some of them from his own family. They make the book readable for general audiences, who followed the trial both in and out of France.
- Frank L. Wilson, Purdue Univ., W. Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.