For the last fifty years, the German Occupation of France has been regarded as a period characterised by four things: cold, hunger, the absence of freedom and above all fear; a time when the indigenous population was cruelly and consistently oppressed by the army of occupation. The people of France were either bold members of the Resistance or craven collaborators. In this riveting and provocative study, Robert Gildea reveals a rather different story, a story which shows that the truth lies - as so often - somewhere in between.
'Excellent... a peculiarly rich book, enlightening about conscription, forced labour, the role of the Catholic Church, sex between German soldiers and French women ('horizontal collaboration') and much else' Frank McLynn, New Statesman
'Gildea's revisionist account is the most convincing and lucid that I have read. Rather as his Oxford colleague Roy Foster did for Irish history (when he rubbished the "400 years of national suffering" version that has had such disastrous consequences), Gildea has succeeded in giving us a startlingly original view of what we thought was a familiar period.' Patrick Marnham, Sunday Telegraph

Robert Gildea is professor of modern French history at the University of Oxford and is the author of several influential books on twentieth-century French history. His 2002 book Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation Gildea won the prestigious Wolfson History Prize. He is currently a fellow of Worcester College and lives in Oxford.