The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944: A History of the Mouvements Unis de La Resistance

DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976. Presumed first edition/first printing. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. DJ has some soiling and edge wear.. xii, 260 p. Footnotes. Illustrations. Folding Chart. Map. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. In 1940, an overwhelming majority of Frenchmen accepted collaboration and welcomed Marshal Petain as the savior of France. By 1944, so may thousands answered de Gaulle's call to rise against the Germans that numbers of them h ad to be turned away for lack of arms. In those four years dividing the Franco-German armistice and the allied invasion, autonomous, local groups of resisters created an underground nation. The Politics of Resistance in France is the first account in English of the political evolution within the Resistance that enabled it to overcome internal strife and bring that new nation into being. In northern France, direct exposure to German troops made sabotage of the German war machine a compelling aim. While the south remained occupied, resistance there was expressed through opposition to the Vichy regime. From its inception, the southern movement had a decided political character that became its legacy to the Resistance as a whole. The result was the establishment almost everywhere of clandestine, local administrations loyal to de Gaulle, functioning unddr the Comite Francais de la Liberation Nationale (CFLN). Because of this network of grass roots support, the CFLN was recognized unanimously at the liberation as the legitimate government of France. Professor Sweets focuses on the Mouvements Unis de la Resistance (MUR), a coalition of the three largest resistance organizations in southern France.