Description
For more than fifty years, the German Occupation of France has been regarded as a period characterized by four things: cold, hunger, the absence of freedom and, above all, fear. Focusing on the Loire valley and drawing on recently released wartime archives, extensive interviews with those who lived through it, and a deep understanding of French provincial society, Gildea shows us a country in a state of shock yet whose people, far from being cowed, contrived to form new relationships, new networks and discovered new forms of solidarity.