Paris 1944
Occupation, Resistance, Liberation: A Social History
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3.8 • 9 Ratings
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
A moving, dramatic social history of the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the most inspiring and momentous events of the twentieth century.
The Sunday Times (London) bestseller
The fall of Paris to the Nazis on June 14th, 1940, was one of the darkest days of World War II. And the liberation of the city on August 25th, 1944, felt like the brightest.
The liberation was also the biggest party of the century: champagne flowed freely, total strangers embraced—it was a celebration of life renewed against the backdrop of the world's favorite city, as experienced by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, Pablo Picasso, and Robert Capa.
But there was nothing preordained about this happy ending. Had things transpired differently, Paris might have gone down as a ghastly monument to Nazi nihilism.
Paris 1944—timed for the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris—tells the story of those iridescent days in a startling new way. Cutting through decades of myth-making, the reader watches the city’s fate hanging in the balance against the drama, heroism, joy, and suspense of one of the most explosive moments of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Bishop (Operation Jubilee) contends in this splendid chronicle that the 1940 Nazi occupation and 1944 Allied liberation (which he calls "the party of the century") of Paris carried heavy symbolic weight. He uses the City of Light's "mythic" status as the backbone for a fine-grained narrative of life before and during the war, showing how a sense of exceptionalism permeated the thinking of Nazi occupiers, fascist sympathizers, and resistance fighters alike. Leaders on both sides of the conflict treated the city with kid gloves: the Nazi regime permitted the city's vibrant arts and cuisine to flourish, while the Allies were careful to organize a resistance that wouldn't tip into outright rebellion and anarchy. Bishop tracks how this exceptionalism was a pitfall as much as an inspiration—for instance, Nazi leniency toward artists drew many into complicity with the regime. This theme is adhered to with a light touch, as Bishop's portraits of major and minor figures develop into arresting subplots freighted with their own symbolism (the last performance that literary critic and outspoken fascist sympathizer Robert Brasillach attended before he went into hiding in 1944 was Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit). This is a revelation.
