France World War

The French painter Jean Hélion’s unique and deeply moving account of his experiences in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps prefigures the even darker stories that would emerge from the concentration camps. This serious adventure tale begins with Hélion’s infantry platoon fleeing from the German army and warplanes as they advanced through France in the early days of the war. The soldiers chant as they march and run, “They shall not have me!” but are quickly captured and sent to hard labor.

That France and Germany were enemies in 1940 was not news to anyone. That Germany was bitter at the terms of its surrender at the end of World War I was hardly a surprise. That another war would follow all too soon was apparent to many. Yet no one could have expected that Germany’s rise to military power under the leadership of Adolf Hitler would have given birth to such an evil regime. The churning resentment that Hitler and many other Germans felt against its enemies, particularly France, was destined to sow the seeds for vengeance.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. World War Two was one of the most devastating conflicts the world has ever seen. Between 1939 and 1945 almost every country in the world was affected by the war in some way. World War Two: History in an Hour neatly covers all the major facts...

Jeff Shaara, America’s premier author of military historical fiction, brings us the centerpiece of his epic trilogy of the Second World War. General Dwight Eisenhower once again commands a diverse army that must find its single purpose in the destruction of Hitler’s European fortress. His...

Of course,Paris was not destroyed before the Allies liberated it, but it would take more than four years for them to wrest control of France from Nazi Germany after they took the country by storm in about a month in 1940. That said, it's widely overlooked today given how history played out that as the power of Nazi Germany grew alarmingly during the 1930s, the French sought means to defend their territory against the rising menace of the Thousand-Year Reich.

A wartime legacy. A lost love. A friendship to last a lifetime . . . 'An extraordinary book' Marie Claire A decades old secret . . . When Kat Jourdan discovers a priceless collection of Dior gowns hidden in her grandmother's remote cottage, she delves into the mystery of their origin, determined...

A USA TODAY bestselling novel! As Paris rebuilds in the aftermath of World War II, Kat Fontaine never expected the skills she learned in a French chateau kitchen to be the key that unlocks the secrets swirling in her new post-war life. "Balancing action-packed scenes with entertaining...

The French and Indian War was the world's first truly global conflict. When the French lost to the British in 1763, they lost their North American empire along with most of their colonies in the Caribbean, India, and West Africa. In The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France, the only comprehensive account from the French perspective, William R. Nester explains how and why the French were defeated.

New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor has joined with Heather Webb to create this unforgettably romantic novel of the Great War. August 1914. England is at war. As Evie Elliott watches her brother, Will, and his best friend, Thomas Harding, depart for the front, she believes—as...

Emerging from France's catastrophic 1940 defeat like a bedraggled and rather sinister phoenix, the French State – better known to history as Vichy France or the Vichy Regime after its spa-town capital, stands in history as a unique and bizarre creation of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's European conquests. A patchwork of paradoxes and contradictions, the Vichy Regime maintained a quasi-independent French nation for some time after the Third Reich invasion.

Few images more shocked the French population during the Occupation than the photograph of Marshal Philippe Pétain - the great French hero of the First World War - shaking the hand of Hitler on 20 October 1940. In the radio speech after this meeting, Pétain said 'It is I alone who will be judged by History.' Five years later, in July 1945, the hour of judegment - if not yet the judgement of History - arrived.

'This is the history we so badly needed' ANTONY BEEVOR 'Essential reading for understanding Asia's present' RICHARD OVERY A momentous new history of World War II in Asia. In the early twentieth century, from India to China, Western imperial powers dominated Asia. Then, in the 1930s, Japan began...

The French Army crumbled swiftly under the powerful blows delivered to it in 1940 by Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht. Launching a massive feint into Belgium to lure French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) away from the actual point of attack, the weakly protected Ardennes Forest, the Germans struck past the Maginot Line. In a lightning campaign, panzers punched through to the coast, dividing Allied forces with a steel cordon across France and forcing the evacuation of the BEF from the port of Dunkirk.

Listen to the epic saga of the ordinary British civilians who sailed across the English Channel to the embattled port of Dunkirk to rescue their trapped soldiers, while the German military launched its might to prevent the evacuation.

Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization's F section sent more than 400 agents into France, 39 of whom were women. But while some are widely known - Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan - others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all 39 female agents. 

A SPECTATOR and PROSPECT Book of the Year 'Ceaselessly interesting, knowledgeable and evocative' Spectator 'A fresh way to write history' Alan Johnson 'A quirky, amused, erudite homage to France . . . ambitious and original' The Times _____ France: An Adventure History is a profoundly original...

Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War, and yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history. In January 2006, PBS will air The War That Made America, a four-part documentary about this epic conflict. Fred Anderson, the award-winning and critically acclaimed historian, has written the official tie-in to this exciting television event.

Europe’s attempts to appease Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, most notably at Munich in 1938, failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia by 1939. Italy was on the march as well, invading Albania in April of 1939.

In 1939 Britain and her allies were completely unprepared for total war. In the spring of 1940, after months of inactivity, the powerful and highly trained German army smashed it's way through neutral Holland and Belgium and into northern France. The Allies had no choice but to retreat to the costal areas, where the 'Miracle of Dunkirk' took place. Half a million men were finally evacuated to England.

Spring 1941: Britain is losing the war, but the fighters of the French Resistance are determined not to give up. These courageous men and women - young and old, aristocrats and nightclub owners, teachers and military heroes - run an escape line for British airmen down to Spain. In Rouen and...