France War

A white-knuckle account of the First Infantry Division’s harrowing D-Day assault on the eastern sector of Omaha Beach - acclaimed historian John C. McManus has written a gripping history that will stand as the last word on this titanic battle. Nicknamed the Big Red One, First Division had fought from North Africa to Sicily, earning a reputation as stalwart warriors on the front lines and rabble-rousers in the rear. Yet on D-Day, these jaded combat veterans melded with fresh-faced replacements to accomplish one of the most challenging and deadly missions ever.

In a burnished, driving prose, incorporating a myriad of fresh sources, John Keegan tells the story of the Allies' greatest military achievement as he chronicles the 1944 invasion of Normandy, from D-Day to the liberation of Paris.

In June 1940, Paris did not fall with a roar. It fell with a whisper. German troops marched into the city, and life changed overnight. Cafés stayed open, schools held classes, and the streets looked the same—but behind closed doors, everything had shifted. Conversations lowered. Neighbors watched one another. Silence became survival. The Years of Silence is a gripping, human account of France under the Vichy regime—where collaboration, resistance, fear, and quiet heroism lived side by side. Moving from the fall of Paris to the rise of the Resistance, from the persecution of Jews to the...

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict, and as many European settlers were driven into exile. From the perspective of half a century, it looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one.

Before the trenches of 1914 or the battles of the 1940s, there was a war that set the entire globe ablaze. This conflict, fought from 1754 to 1763, was the true first world war, a brutal contest for imperial domination that stretched from the wilderness of Pennsylvania to the palaces of India. It was here that the modern world was forged in a crucible of ambition, finance, and gunpowder. This single, sprawling conflict saw French and British regulars clash on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, while Robert Clive's corporate mercenaries engineered a coup in Bengal. It was a war for the sugar-...

There are many eye-witness accounts of the military disaster that led to the fall of France, 1940, from the Allied point of view. For a look at the experiences of the common German soldier, there is no better source than Tanks Break Through! written by Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, a journalist and close associate of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. When the 1940 attack was in the offing, Berndt joined the Wehrmacht and afterward published his recollections. Berndt's memoir is a tale of German military prowess, valor and violent death, a Teutonic Iliad. His gruesome descriptions of battle are ...

Before the American conflict that defined a generation, there was the forgotten war that set the stage for it all. This book chronicles the First Indochina War, a brutal nine-year struggle that began in 1946 to resurrect France's colonial empire from the ashes of World War II. It details the rise of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, who harnessed a century of nationalist resentment to fight for a unified, independent Vietnam. Explore the deep origins of the conflict, from the 19th-century civilizing mission that established French Indochina to the Japanese occupation that shattered the myth of...

The engrossing memoir of a spirited and glamorous young fashion designer who survived World War ll, with an afterword by her daughter, Helen Epstein. In the summer of 1942, twenty-two year-old Franci Rabinek--designated a Jew by the Nazi racial laws--arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and...

From 1337 to 1453 England repeatedly invaded France on the pretext that her kings had a right to the French throne. Though it was a small, poor country, England for most of those "100 years" won the battles, sacked the towns and castles, and dominated the war. Desmond Seward's critically acclaimed account of the Hundred Years War brings to life all of the intrigue, beauty, and royal to-the-death-fighting of that legendary century-long conflict.

Livingston argues that the English lens through which the war has been viewed has led historians to define it in terms of English interests (most famously, the claim of the English Plantagenet king Edward III to be the rightful king of France), and that the events collectively labelled the ‘Hundred Years War’ are best seen as a sequence of steps in France’s struggle to define itself as a nation. For much of the period, France’s primary rival was indeed England. But it was by no means the only combatant. Burgundy stood in its way, too, as did Brittany, Flanders, Navarre and other rival powers.

This masterful audiobook is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the Vichy France regime for over 20 years. France was occupied by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944, and the exact nature of France's role in the Vichy years is only now beginning to come to light. One of the main reasons that the Vichy history is difficult to tell is that some of France's most prominent politicians, including President Mitterand, have been implicated in the regime. This has meant that public access to key documents has been denied and it is only now that an objective analysis is possible.

In 1871, the Franco-Prussian War was raging. The workers of Paris, fed up with a government that had begun the hated war, and the exploitation, repression, and abuse of "their" government, took matters into their own hands. They instituted the Paris Commune - of, by, and for the workers. Observing these events through news reports of the time, one of the foremost thinkers of the 19th century, Karl Marx, made three speeches to the International Workmen's Association.

She gave away her child to save his life. Another woman took him in, at risk to herself. Viviane Renaud is a young mother living on the French Riviera in the Second World War. Times are hard but she is not the sort to be dismayed by circumstances. One day her life changes forever. A young Jewish woman, fleeing from the authorities, begs her to take care of her four year old boy, David. Almost without thinking, Viviane agrees. Viviane’s life is never the same again. She fabricates a story to explain how David came to be with her and must tip-toe around the suspicions of her neighbours, her...

Written with great energy and authority - and using the newly available personal archives of Napoleon himself - the first volume of a majestic two-part biography of the great French emperor and conqueror.

Raymond Poincaré was President of the Third French Republic at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. These memoirs deal with the political, diplomatic and military events of the war between its outbreak and the end of the year. This translation is the first ever to be made of Poincaré's war memoirs - from the edition published in Paris in 1928 by Librarie Plon - and offers a unique perspective on the war, not just from the French point of view - too often ignored in British and other histories - but from that of the head of state of one of the world's major powers in a global war. ...

'Chilling, tragic, and utterly immersive.' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This book. Wow, Just, wow! A beautifully written and unforgettable story. I can't stop thinking about it' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Occupied France, 1944 In the shadow of the ravaged battlefields of Verdun, where the scars of the First World War...

From the cassoulet that won a war to the crêpe that doomed Napoleon, from the rebellions sparked by bread and salt to the new cuisines forged by empire, the history of France is intimately entwined with its gastronomic pursuits. A witty exploration of the facts and legends surrounding some of the most popular French foods and wines by a French cheesemonger and an American academic, A Bite-Sized History of France tells the compelling and often surprising story of France from the Roman era to modern times.

Blood & Soil: The Fall of Poland and the Battle of France is the second installment in The Protocols series, a chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism in the modern era—from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to the cataclysmic end of the Second World War. This volume focuses on the first nine months of the global conflict, from the Nazi-Soviet invasion and partition of Poland to the final, desperate moments of the Battle of France. Like all the books in the series, Blood & Soil is not merely a history of events, but a record of lives entangled in them. It is composed of carefully ...

This fascinating third volume in the Britannia's Fist series will have you pondering how easily history could have been swayed differently. What if other countries had become involved in America's Civil War? Historian Peter G. Tsouras presents the third installment in his Britannia's Fist alternate history series.

1810 – Brittany, France Sensible Phebe Hetherington never wanted adventure, but her quiet life in Kingston, Canada is interrupted when an unprincipled and persistent suitor forces her to flee to France in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. In France, she encounters her brother, Thomas, who cajoles her into helping him outwit his friends by dressing in his clothes. At first, it seems like a simple prank, but the deception turns dangerous when she becomes entangled with a handsome and mysterious British spy and his assignment. Major Huw Griffiths, hiding a past filled with heartbreak, is ...