Douglas Porch

Defeat and Division

France at War, 1939-1942

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Defeat and Division launches a definitive new account of France in the Second World War. In this first volume, Douglas Porch dissects France's 1940 collapse, the dynamics of occupation, and the rise of Charles de Gaulle's Free France crusade, culminating in the November 1942 Allied invasion of French North Africa. He captures the full sweep of France's wartime experience in Europe, Africa, and beyond, from soldiers and POWs to civilians-in-arms, colonial subjects, and foreign refugees. He recounts France's struggles to reconstruct military power within the context of a global conflict, with its armed forces shattered into warring factions and the country under Axis occupation. Disagreements over the causes of the 1940 debacle and the subsequent requirement for the armistice mirrored long-standing fractures in politics, society, and the French military itself, as efforts to reconstitute French military power crumbled into Vichy collaboration, De Gaulle's exile resistance, Alsace-Moselle occupation struggles, and a scuffle for imperial supremacy.

Produktdetails

• Armies of the Second World War
• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 742
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. August 2022
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 162mm x 235mm x 48mm
• Gewicht: 1190g
• ISBN-13: 9781107047464
• ISBN-10: 1107047463
• Artikelnr.: 62887351

Autorenporträt

Douglas Porch is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His previous books include Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (2013), The Path to Victory: The Mediterranean Theater in World War II (2004; published in Britain as Hitler's Mediterranean Gamble), The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (1995), The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force (1991), The Conquest of the Sahara (1984), The Conquest of Morocco (1982), The March to the Marne: The French Army 1871-1914 (1981), The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution (1977), and Army and Revolution: France 1815-1848 (1974).

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction; 1. 'Missed Opportunity Mythology'; 2. From Phoney Peace to Phoney War, 1938-1940; 3. Case Yellow; 4. 'Stand and Fight...'; 5. "The War is Over for Us"; 6. "The Wisdom of a Great Leader."; 7. La France libre; 8. 'Grandi soldati'; 9. France's North African Hinterland; 10. TORCH; Epilogue.

Rezensionen

'A clear-eyed, ambitious and myth-busting account that places the Fall of France in 1940 and De Gaulle's Free French in a wider scenario that sees Vichy France and its colonial empire as a serious military player down to 1942. A tour de force by a historian who is a master of his craft.' Robert Gildea, author of Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance