Hanna Diamond presents varied testimony to reveal the realities of women's daily lives and the role they played in both collaboration and resistance. She considers the political choices they had to make and the constraints they were under.

This is the first book (in either English or French) to offer readers an overview of women's experience of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath in France. It examines objectively the part that women played in both collaboration and resistance, synthesising much recent scholarship on the subject in French and English, and drawing on the author's own extensive research (including oral testimony) in Toulouse, Paris, and West Brittany. The findings are complex, and the immensely varied testimony challenges easy generalisation. This will be relevant for courses on French studies, French and European history and Women's studies.

At the end of World War II, France’s greatest challenge was to repair a civil society torn asunder by Nazi occupation and total war. Recovery required the nation’s complete economic and social transformation. But just what form this “new France” should take remained the burning question at the heart of French political combat until the Algerian War ended, over a decade later. Herrick Chapman charts the course of France’s long reconstruction from 1944 to 1962, offering fresh insights into the ways the expansion of state power, intended to spearhead recovery, produced fierce controversies at home and unintended consequences abroad in France’s crumbling empire. Abetted after Liberation by a new elite of technocratic experts, the burgeoning French state infiltrated areas of economic and social life traditionally free from government intervention. Politicians and intellectuals wrestled with how to reconcile state-directed modernization with the need to renew democratic participation and bolster civil society after years spent under the Nazi and Vichy yokes. But rather than resolving the tension, the conflict between top-down technocrats and grassroots democrats became institutionalized as a way of framing the problems facing Charles de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic. Uniquely among European countries, France pursued domestic recovery while simultaneously fighting full-scale colonial wars. France’s Long Reconstruction shows how the Algerian War led to the further consolidation of state authority and cemented repressive immigration policies that now appear shortsighted and counterproductive.

This indispensable reference work provides readers with the tools to reimagine world history through the lens of women's lived experiences. Learning how women changed the world will change the ways the world looks at the past. Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History features 200 biographies of notable women and offers readers an opportunity to explore the global past from a gendered perspective. The women featured in this four-volume set cover the full sweep of history, from our ancestral forbearer "Lucy" to today's tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams. Every walk of life is represented in these pages, from powerful monarchs and politicians to talented artists and writers, from inquisitive scientists to outspoken activists. Each biography follows a standardized format, recounting the woman's life and accomplishments, discussing the challenges she faced within her particular time and place in history, and exploring the lasting legacy she left. A chronological listing of biographies makes it easy for readers to zero in on particular time periods, while a further reading list at the end of each essay serves as a gateway to further exploration and study. High-interest sidebars accompany many of the biographies, offering more nuanced glimpses into the lives of these fascinating women.

The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 is a landmark publication that provides the most coherent overview of woman’s role and place in western Europe, spanning the era from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the twentieth century. In this collection of essays, leading women's historians counter the notion of ‘national’ histories and provide the insight and perspective of a European approach. Important intellectual, political and economic developments have not respected national boundaries, nor has the story of women’s past, or the interplay of gender and culture. The interaction between women, ideology and female agency, the way women engaged with patriarchal and gendered structures and systems, and the way women carved out their identities and spaces within these, informs the writing in this book. For any student of women’s studies or European history, The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 will prove an informative addition to their studies.

The early twentieth-century advent of aerial bombing made successful evacuations essential to any war effort, but ordinary people resented them deeply. Based on extensive archival research in Germany and France, this is the first broad, comparative study of civilian evacuations in Germany and France during World War II. The evidence uncovered exposes the complexities of an assumed monolithic and all-powerful Nazi state by showing that citizens' objections to evacuations, which were rooted in family concerns, forced changes in policy. Drawing attention to the interaction between the Germans and French throughout World War II, this book shows how policies in each country were shaped by events in the other. A truly cross-national comparison in a field dominated by accounts of one country or the other, this book provides a unique historical context for addressing current concerns about the impact of air raids and military occupations on civilians.

The early twentieth-century advent of aerial bombing made successful evacuations essential to any war effort, but ordinary people resented them deeply. Based on extensive archival research in Germany and France, this is the first broad, comparative study of civilian evacuations in Germany and France during World War II. The evidence uncovered exposes the complexities of an assumed monolithic and all-powerful Nazi state by showing that citizens' objections to evacuations, which were rooted in family concerns, forced changes in policy. Drawing attention to the interaction between the Germans and French throughout World War II, this book shows how policies in each country were shaped by events in the other. A truly cross-national comparison in a field dominated by accounts of one country or the other, this book provides a unique historical context for addressing current concerns about the impact of air raids and military occupations on civilians.

This wide-ranging volume brings together a blend of experienced and emerging scholars to examine the texture of everyday life for different parts of the wartime French population. It explores systems of coping, means of helping one another, confrontations with people or events and the challenges posed to and by Vichy's National Revolution during this difficult period in French and European history. The book focuses on human interactions at the micro level, highlighting lived experience within the complex social networks of this era, as French civilians negotiated the violence of war, the restrictions of Occupation, the shortages of daily necessities and the fear of persecution in their everyday lives. Using approaches drawn mostly from history, but also including oral history, film, gender studies and sociology, the text peers into the lives of ordinary men, women and children and opens new perspectives on questions of resistance, collaboration, war and memory; it tells some of the stories of the anonymous millions who suffered, coped, laughed, played and worked, either together at home or far apart in towns and villages across Occupied and Vichy France. Vichy France and Everyday Life is a crucial study for anyone interested in the social history of the Second World War or the history of France during the twentieth century.

The Encyclopedia of Women in World History captures the experiences of women throughout world history in a comprehensive, 4-volume work. Although there has been extensive research on women in history by region, no text or reference work has comprehensively covered the role women have played throughout world history. The past thirty years have seen an explosion of research and effort to present the experiences and contributions of women not only in the Western world but across the globe. Historians have investigated womens daily lives in virtually every region and have researched the leadership roles women have filled across time and region. They have found and demonstrated that there is virtually no historical, social, or demographic change in which women have not been involved and by which their lives have not been affected. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History benefits greatly from these efforts and experiences, and illuminates how women worldwide have influenced and been influenced by these historical, social, and demographic changes. The Encyclopedia contains over 1,250 signed articles arranged in an A-Z format for ease of use. The entries cover six main areas: biographies; geography and history; comparative culture and society, including adoption, abortion, performing arts; organizations and movements, such as the Egyptian Uprising, and the Paris Commune; womens and gender studies; and topics in world history that include slave trade, globalization, and disease. With its rich and insightful entries by leading scholars and experts, this reference work is sure to be a valued, go-to resource for scholars, college and high school students, and general readers alike.

France's liberation was expected to trigger a decisive break both with the Vichy régime and with the pre-war Third Republic. What happened was an untidy patchwork of unplanned continuities and false starts. This volume analyses the complex process of regime change, economic renewal, social transformation, and adjustment to a fast-evolving world.