THE SOLDIERS OF 1940. A SACRIFICED GENERATION
THE SOLDIERS OF 1940. A SACRIFICED GENERATION

THE SOLDIERS OF 1940. A SACRIFICED GENERATION

L20200067
Out of stock
€22.75

The history of the « phoney war », which mobilised five million French soldiers from 1939 to the defeat of June 1940, has long been reduced, in our national memory, to the Fernandel of La vache et le prisonnier or the adventures of La Septième compagnie.

Eighty years after that « strange defeat », the heroes of Dunkirk or of the Maginot Line — prisoners manipulated by Vichy and forgotten in Stalags and Oflags — remain marginal figures in official history.


 

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By tracing the paths of some hundred anonymous individuals and public figures, and drawing on the most recent scholarship, Rémi Dalisson seeks to understand the mechanisms behind this denigration, which began as early as 1939. For the Republic and French society preferred to ignore or mock them, despite their numbers and their role in rebuilding the country.

Every instrument of the state — schools, decorations, monuments, street names — as well as popular song, cinema and television long kept them on the margins. Yet, thanks to the initiative of a few specialists in Memorial Studies and passionate historians, the soldiers of 1940 finally seem to be emerging from oblivion. The lessons drawn from the fate of an unrecognised generation, « fallen for France », who are still awaiting their rightful recognition.

Author 1
REMI DALISSON
Publication date
May 2020
Pages
275
Cover
Paperback
Language
French
Publisher
CNRS Editions

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