Product Description

While many studies of Vichy France have either focused on specific lives or ideas or covered the period in broad and synthetic terms, local studies such as this promise to nuance our understanding of wartime France. By concentrating on the city of Nimes and the department of the Gard, Zaretsky moves beyond generalisations concerning resistance and collaboration to consider issues of historical continuity and changes within a specific local context. In the words and acts of local French men and women, he finds the character of "mentalities" in the heart of our own century. The Gard is well chosen and the focus of this study. From the 16th century onward, the region has been a flash point between warring Catholics and Protestants. By the early 20th century, that tension had eased but not disappeared. Zaretsky examines the dynamics among local Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities, arguing that with the advent of Vichy - a regime that, it not clerical, was deeply deferential to the Catholic Church - tension and conflict resurfaced in the Gard. "Nimes at War" is based on a wealth of archival materials - police and prefectoral reports, official departmental documents, local secular and religious newspapers, and letters intercepted by the regime's security apparatus - much of which has only recently been opened to researchers. Zaretsky's detailed narrative should provoke further reconsideration of the complex and ambiguous world of Vichy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2427170 in Books
• Published on: 1995-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages