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The French Defeat of 1940

Author: Joel Blatt

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 1997-08-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0857457179

Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed.

The French Defeat of 1940

Author: Joel Blatt

Publisher: No Series Linked

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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To Lose a Battle

Author: Alistair Horne

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-06-28

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 0141937726

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In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry. To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).

Why France Fell

Author: Guy Chapman

Publisher:

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13:

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France 1940

Author: Philip Nord

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0300190689

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In this revisionist account of France’s crushing defeat in 1940, a world authority on French history argues that the nation’s downfall has long been misunderstood. Philip Nord assesses France’s diplomatic and military preparations for war with Germany, its conduct of the war once the fighting began, and the political consequences of defeat on the battlefield. He also tracks attitudes among French leaders once defeat seemed a likelihood, identifying who among them took advantage of the nation’s misfortunes to sabotage democratic institutions and plot an authoritarian way forward. Nord finds that the longstanding view that France’s collapse was due to military unpreparedeness and a decadent national character is unsupported by fact. Instead, he reveals that the Third Republic was no worse prepared and its military failings no less dramatic than those of the United States and other Allies in the early years of the war. What was unique in France was the betrayal by military and political elites who abandoned the Republic and supported the reprehensible Vichy takeover. Why then have historians and politicians ever since interpreted the defeat as a judgment on the nation as a whole? Why has the focus been on the failings of the Third Republic and not on elite betrayal? The author examines these questions in a fascinating conclusion.

Strange Victory

Author: Ernest R. May

Publisher: Hill and Wang

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1466894288

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A dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.

The Fall of France

Author: Julian Jackson

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2004-04-22

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 019162232X

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On 16 May 1940 an emergency meeting of the French High Command was called at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. The German army had broken through the French lines on the River Meuse at Sedan and elsewhere, only five days after launching their attack. Churchill, who had been telephoned by Prime Minister Reynaud the previous evening to be told that the French were beaten, rushed to Paris to meet the French leaders. The mood in the meeting was one of panic and despair; there was talk of evacuating Paris. Churchill asked Gamelin, the French Commander in Chief, 'Where is the strategic reserve?' 'There is none,' replied Gamelin. This exciting book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies, and thus to a dramatic new phase of the Second World War. The search for scapegoats for the most humiliating military disaster in French history began almost at once: were miscalculations by military leaders to blame, or was this an indictment of an entire nation? Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries, Julian Jackson recreates, in gripping detail, the intense atmosphere and dramatic events of these six weeks in 1940, unravelling the historical evidence to produce a fresh answer to the perennial question of whether the fall of France was inevitable.

The Battle of France

Author: Philip Warner

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 081170999X

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Provocative look at the battle for France in May and June 1940 Explains how the French were caught off guard, how the Germans swept into the country, and how the British battled the blitzkrieg Recounts the evacuation at Dunkirk Shows how the fall of France changed the course of World War II

France: Summer 1940

Author: John Williams

Publisher: Random House (NY)

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13:

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Frankrigs fald i løbet af kun 6 uger i maj/juni 1940, hvor den ellers så mægtige franske hær måtte opgive overfor tyskernes sejrrige Blitzkrieg-taktik, kapitulationen, våbenstilstanden og Hitlers sejrsindtogsmach i Paris. Bogen er i Ballantines kendte serier, relativ kortfattet og letlæst og en udmærket introduktion til det komplekse forløb helt fra den Fransk-tyske krig i 1870-71, over 1. Verdenskrig og Mellemkrigsårene og hele Frankrigs politiske og militære historie under den 3. Republik, som i høj grad hører med til baggrunden for forståelsen af det totale kollaps og sammenbrud i juni 1940. Bogen er rigt illustreret, sort/hvide fotos.

Art of the Defeat

Author: Laurence Bertrand Dorléac

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780892368914

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"Art of the Defeat offers an unflinching look at the pivotal role art played in France during the German occupation. It begins with Adolf Hitler's staging of the armistice at Rethondes and moves across the dark years - analyzing the official junket by French artists to Germany, the exhibition of Arno Breker's colossi in Paris, the looting of the state museums and Jewish collections, the glorification of Philippe P?tain and a pure national identity, the demonization of modernists and foreigners, and the range of responses by artists and artisans. The sum is a pioneering expos? of the deployment of art and ideology to hold the heart of darkness at bay"--Page 4 of cover.