Fighters in the Shadows

The story of the French Resistance is central to French identity, but it is a story built on myths. 'La Résistance française' was not simply a national effort to free the country from German occupation, but a wider struggle, filled with conflicts and division. It included Spanish republicans, Italian and even German anti-Nazis. The defence against the Holocaust brought in Jewish resisters and Christian rescuers. It involved a civil war for the French Empire in Africa and the Near East. The movement itself was split between those on the far right and the far left, fighting for very different visions of the world. Robert Gildea returns to the testimonies of the resisters themselves, asking who they were, what they believed in and what compelled them to take the terrible risks they did. He brings to the fore the woman resisters, who history neglected. By looking again at the constructions and interplay of the myths surrounding the resistance, Gildea builds a vivid, gripping and entirely new account of one of the most compelling narratives of the Second World War.

Robert Gildea is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. He specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and European History, with a particular focus on the Second World War. His previous work on France under the German Occupation, Marianne in Chains (2002) won the Wolfson History Prize. The Past in French History (1994) explored French collective memory and political culture since the Revolution. Most recently he directed an international oral history project, published as Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt (2013). He is married with four children and lives in Oxford.