ABSTRACT

This is the first book (in either English or French) to offer readers an overview of women's experience of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath in France. It examines objectively the part that women played in both collaboration and resistance, synthesising much recent scholarship on the subject in French and English, and drawing on the author's own extensive research (including oral testimony) in Toulouse, Paris, and West Brittany. The findings are complex, and the immensely varied testimony challenges easy generalisation. This will be relevant for courses on French studies, French and European history and Women's studies.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

part |111 pages

Women's Lives during the War and the Occupation, 1939–44

chapter |22 pages

Physical Survival

chapter |27 pages

Collaborations

chapter |27 pages

Resistances

chapter |3 pages

Conclusion to Part One

part |79 pages

Women's Lives after the Occupation, 1944–48: A Liberation?