Roderick Kedward – författare

This concise history of France from the occupation in 1940 to liberation in 1944 focuses on the struggle between those who favoured collaboration with the occupying Germans and those who opted to resist. Roderick Kedward shows how ordinary people experienced the occupation; he examines the politics and ideology of the Victory regime, and he discusses the many different forms of resistance launched from inside and outside France. He particularly emphasizes the changing nature of both collaboration and resistance as the pressure of the occupatoin intensified, and asks whether France was involved in a civil war by 1944.

This book, first published in 1985, examines various aspects of the intellectual achievements of writers and artists in the Vichy period; a strong emphasis on the ambiguity of much of their work emerges from the research. It goes a long way in answering the question of what it was like living under the fascist Vichy regime, and what the collaborators and resistance thought about their purpose and patriotism.