France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944

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 is a more complex history than the traditional dichotomy between 'collaboration' and 'resistance', one in which the ideological frontiers between Vichy and the Resistance wereoften blurred. This study ranges from the politics of Marshal Pétain's regime to the experiences of the ordinary French people, 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 anew social history of the resistance which takes in the roles of foreigners, women, Jews, and peasants. He uncovers the 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.

Jackson devotes a significant part of his study to the period before 1940, and he is particularly strong on the importance of the intellectual climate in France in the 1930s; his discussion of the years of occupation is sufficiently detailed to do justice to varieties of both individual and collective experience, and to enhance our understanding of the choices made as a result of that experience. If, as will surely be the case, this book becomes the standard secondary work for undergraduate courses on France during the second world war, then we can look forward confidently to the way the period will be addressed by the historians of the future., Jackson's study is a monumental achievement and anybody who wants to get to grips with the period should start here., Jackson has written an excellent book., Jackson has recounted a national anti-epic, and thereby placed himself in the front rank of historians., This book bears impressive testimony to the depth of France's postwar conversation with itself about what it endured during the war.

Julian Jackson is a Professor of History at the University of Wales, Swansea.