Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance - Brossura

Gildea, Robert

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0571280366 ISBN 13: 9780571280360

Casa editrice: Faber & Faber, 2016

Riassunto

The story of the French Resistance is central to French identity, but it is a story built on myths. Not simply an effort to free the country from German occupation, it was part of a Europe-wide anti-fascist struggle, which included Spanish republicans, Italian and German anti-Nazis, communists, Jewish resisters and Christian rescuers. Robert Gildea returns to the testimonies of those involved, asking who they were, and what compelled them to take the terrible risks they did, bringing to the fore stories of the women resisters, whom history has neglected. Fighters in the Shadows is a vivid, gripping and entirely new account of one of the most compelling narratives of the Second World War.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

A myth-stripping, monumental history. (John Lewis-Stempel Sunday Express)

Fascinating book...vivid and convincing history...often moving and illuminating...perhaps, in this thrilling story of anti-fascist solidarity between Polish Jews, French communists, Spanish republicans and German and Italian (and even Irish) anti-fascists, we can see the seeds of a possible new European identity. (Michael O'Loughlin Irish Times)

The French Resistance remains one of the great moral tests of the 20th century, raising essential and often troubling questions about how ordinary people behave and define themselves in extraordinarily demanding and dangerous circumstances. Read this fine book, and wonder anew where you might have fitted in the kaleidoscope of resistance, defiance, acquiescence and collaboration. (Ben Macintyre The Times)

Comprehensive, thoroughly researched book...this rich and dramatic book is an absolute must for anyone interested in the period. (Hanna Diamond BBC History Magazine)

A serious book that deserves to be taken seriously, both here, and more important, by historians across the channel. (Nicholas Shakespeare Daily Telegraph)

An important new book. (Economist)

Gildea's re-evaluation ignores the partisan postwar French histories, and instead examines the testimony of participants...as authoritative an arbitrator of truth and falsehood as we are likely to get, and his depiction of the heroes and heroines of the resistance commands belief, and sometimes awe...Gildea's principal focus is on the moral and political impact of the resistance. He does more than any French writer has achieved to lift the deadweight of mythology oppressing the era. (Max Hastings Sunday Times)

Gildea, who made a major contribution to this field with his 2002 work Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation of France 1940-45, here considers the "central myth" of the French Resistance, "a story that served the purposes of France as it emerged from the war". The internal Resistance that this valuable, detailed analysis reveals was far from a single united movement, for it varied in its numbers, aims and effectiveness, and from region to region. A strength of what will come to be seen as a definitive study is that it is based on immense research, in French provincial archives as well as national collections, and on oral history emanating from numerous interviews, both with resisters and the many French citizens ... [A] splendid study. (Times Higher Education)

There have been many excellent recent books, both in French and in English...on France during the resistance years. What Gildea has done is to step back and look and the wider picture, thereby providing a context for the individual acts of courage, which he celebrates in moving detail. He gives recognition to the widest range of participants, many of them little known, and to the categories who did not fit well into the postwar myth of heroism, and that is perhaps his most important contribution to the field. (Caroline Moorhead Guardian)

This admirable history goes some way to restoring the more complex truths of the men and women of the resistance whose background and motivation varied more than myth would have you believe. (Jay Elwes Prospect)

Descrizione del libro:

Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, Fighters in the Shadows tells the story of the French Resistance - as it was, rather than how some choose to remember it.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Faber & Faber
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0571280366
• ISBN 13: 9780571280360
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 624