Seminar questions:

• What constituted resistance?

• What motivated individual and collective acts of resistance?

• What were the political aspirations of resisters?

• How successfully did the French republic restore its authority and legitimacy during the Liberation?

• What explains "les femmes tondues" [shaven women]?

 

CORE TEXTS:

• Conseil national de la résistance programme in P. Novick, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (1968) 198-201 [digitized book extract]

• R Kedward, 'French Resistance: A Few Home Truths,' in W Lamont (ed), Historical Controversies and Historians (1998) [ebook]

• A Knapp, 'Introduction: France's Long Liberation, 1944-47,' in A Knapp (ed) The Uncertain Foundation (2007), 1-23 [ebook]

• C Duchen, ‘Crime and Punishment in Liberated France. The Case of les femmes tondues’ in C. Duchen and I. Bandhauer-Schöffmann (eds.) When the War was Over: Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940-1956 (2000) [digitized book extract]

• Background: Popkin, History of Modern France, chps. 28-29.

 

Further reading:

Primary sources:

• Documents on resistance complied by Warwick's Modern Records Centre http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/modules/docs/france

• Explore the documents on resistance and liberation in France at the 'Conditions and Politics in Occupied Europe, 1940-1945' website: www.tlemea.com/conditionsandpolitics/index.htm

• Charles de Gaulle, ‘The flame of French resistance’ speech (June 1940) www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/apr/29/greatspeeches1

• C. de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs, Volumes 1 and 2 (1984)

• Vercors, The Silence of the Sea (1942)

• A Humbert, Resistance: A Women's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France (2009)

• ‘Oral Memories’ inR. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France 1942-1944 (1993, 2003), 233-79

• Instructions for American servicemen in France during World War II (2008)

 

General

• J Jackson, France: The Dark Years 1940-1944 (2001)

• R. Kedward, La Vie en Bleu (2005), chapter 12

• R. Kedward, Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance 1940-1944 (1985)

 

Resistance

• D Veillon, ‘The Resistance and Vichy,’ in S. Fishman et al (eds.), France at War: Vichy and the Historians (2000), 161-77

• C Lloyd, Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France: Representing Treason and Sacrifice (2003)

• J Sweets, ‘Hold that Pendulum: Redefining Fascism, Collaborationism and Resistance in France,’ French Historical Studies 15/4 (Autumn 1988)

• M Atack, Literature and the French Resistance: Cultural Politics and Narrative forms, 1940-1950 (1989)

• A Cady, ‘Discourses of Resistance,’ in M. Scriven and P. Wagstaff, War and Society in 20^th Century France (1991)

• R Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern zone 1940-1942 (1978)

• R Kedward and R. Austin, Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (1985)

• R Kedward, ‘The Maquis and the Culture of the Outlaw’ in R. Kedward and R. Austin (eds.), Vichy France and the Resistance: Culture and Ideology (1985)

• R Kedward, ‘The Maquis: Whose History?,’ in M. Scriven and P. Wagstaff (eds.), War and Society in 20^th Century France (1991), 65-80

• R Kedward, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France 1942-1944 (1993, 2003)

• C Pearson, Scarred Landsapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (2008), chaps 2 and 4

• J F Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France: A History of the Mouvements unis de la Resistance (1976)

• L Taylor, ‘Collective Action in Northern France, 1940-1944,’ French History 11/2 (June 1997), 190-214

Women and the resistance

• M Collins Weitz, Sisters in Resistance: How Women Fought to freeFrance, 1940-1945 (1995)

• M Collins Weitz, ‘French Women in the Resistance: Rescuing Jews,’ in R. Rohrlich, Ruby (ed.) Resisting the Holocaust (1998), 179-93

• C Gorrara, ‘Reviewing Gender and the Resistance: the case of Lucie Aubrac’ in R. Kedward and N. Wood (eds.) The Liberation of France: Image and Event (1995), 143-53

• S Reynolds, ‘Pacifists into Resisters? A Biographical Approach to Women in Wartime France: The Peace Petitioners of 1938’ in H. Diamond and S. Kitson, Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on WartimeFrance (2005)

• P Schwartz, ‘Redefining Resistance: Women’s Activism in Wartime France’ in M. Randolph Higonnet et al (eds.) Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987), 141-53

• P Schwartz, ‘“Partisanes” and Gender Politics in Vichy France,' French Historical Studies 16:1 (1989), 126-51

Liberation

• K Adler, ‘“Un Mythe Nécessaire et Sacré”? Responses to the 50^th Anniversary of Liberation,’ Modern and Contemporary France 3/1 (1995): 119-26

• K Adler, Jews and Gender in Liberation France (2003)

• K. Adler, ‘Demography at Liberation: Using History to Forget the Past’ in H. Diamond and S. Kitson, Vichy, Resistance, Liberation: New Perspectives on Wartime France (2005)

• H Chapman, ‘The Liberation of France as a Moment in State-Making,’ in K. Mouré and M. S. Alexander, Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962 (2002)

• R. Kedward and N. Wood (eds.), The Liberation of France: Image and Event (1995)

• C Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France (1994), chapter 1

• S Fishman, We Will Wait: Wives of French Prisoners of War, 1940-1945 (1991), chapter 8

• H Footitt and J Simmonds, France 1943-1945 (1988)

• H Footitt, War and Liberation in France: Living with the Liberators (2004)

• R Gildea, Marianne in Chains (2002) Chapters 15 and 16

• W I Hitchcock and P Boisson, ‘French West Africa, and the Postwar Epuration: A Case from the Aix Files,’ French Historical Studies, 24/2 (Spring 2001)

• J Jenson, ‘The Liberation and New Rights for French Women,’ in M. Randolph Higonnet et al (eds.) Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (1987), 272-84

• A Kaplan, 'Liberation: The View from France,' Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 8:3 (2004), 239–252

• S Kitson, ‘Rehabilitation and Frustration: The Experience of Marseille Police Officers after the Liberation,’ Journal of Contemporary History 33/4 (October 1998): 621-38

• M. Koreman, ‘A Hero’s Homecoming: The Return of the Deportees to France, 1945,’ Journal of Contemporary History 32/1 (January 1997): 9-23

• M Koreman, ‘The Collaborator’s Penance: The Local Purge of Collaborators, 1944-1945,’ Contemporary European History 6 (1997): 177-92

• M Koreman, The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-46 (1999)
  

• P Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe 1945-1965 (2000), chapter 6

• P Novick, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (1968)

• D. Rubenstein, ‘Publish and Perish: The épuration of French Intellectuals,’ Journal of European Studies 23 nos. 89-90 (1993), 71-99

 

Les femmes tondues

• H. Diamond, Women and the Second World War in France 1939-1948. Choices and Constraints (1999) Chapter 6 – ‘Women and the purges’

• C. Laurens, ‘“La Femme au Turban”: les femmes tondues’ in R. Kedward and N. Wood (eds.) The Liberation of France: Image and Event (1995), 155-79

• F. Virigli, Shorn Women: Gender and Punishment in LiberationFrance (2002)