About book Paris: After The Liberation 1944-1949 (2004)
Seventy years after Paris was liberated and the subsequent end of World War II, it's easy to forget the bitter divisions that existed in France. France's surrender at the beginning of the war led to the Vichy government under Petain which collaborated with the German occupiers,, but there was a burgeoning resistance movement which was itself divided into factions On one side were the communists, strong in France from before the war, and on the other, the government-in-exile led by Charles de Gaulle, absolutely opposed to the Communists who nearly won a plurality of the vote in l946. Within these groups were more factions.At the end of the war, there were recriminations and executions for "traitors". After that came attempts to set up a stable government which would try, ineffectively, to combat desperate fuel (two unusually cold winters in a row) and food shortages with resulting strikes and chaotic conditions.At the bottom of most of this turmoil could be found DeGaule who many suspected of wanting to establish a dictatorship to lead France out of its troubles. DeGaulle had little patience for the intricacies of parliamentary government, and he reflected France's divisions. During the war the Americans and British had found him very difficult to work so he was always somewhat isolated. He was furious about post-war efforts to strengthen Germany, wanting instead a permanently divided Germany with France confiscating its industrial heartland in the Ruhr. He distrusted Britain and even more distrusted the Americans. He opposed the Marshall Plan of aid to Europe as an American plot to economically subjugate France. He saw enemies on all sides, including Russia, a contradiction as a weakened Germany would not act as as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, a strategy that the Americans and British pursued as the Cold War began to develop. All of this, of course, only deals with the political sturggles of the time. The book also discusses the profound changes that would come to France in the late 40's. Contributing to thee changes were the music of the Americans, the GI's who had money to spend in impoverished Paris, the tourists who began to flood Europe, the army of bureaucrats who swept over France. And there were the intellectual disputes of the time between such men as Sartre and Camus. All together it was a incredibly complicated period, and despite DeGaulle's opposition, what really allowed France to economically rebuild itself, including its war-damaged infrastructure was the help provided by the Marshall Plan. Without it, France would not be what it is today.
I will start by saying I did not know much about the politics of France (and still don't know much), must of the reading I have done on France has been regarding the battles fought on French soil during the two world wars.This book as the title suggests talks about what happened after the battles when the city of Paris was liberated and the effects that the liberation had on the people and city and France in general.This book was interesting for the most part, there were sections that I lost interest in, mainly talking about various artists and how the war affected them and how they did post-war. This was not the fault of the writing, I just have little interest in that sort of stuff.The one major complaint I have in this book is that the author would sometimes put french expressions or quotes down and not put the english translation, some off them I could figure out but the majority I could not. It did not really make that big a deal to the telling of a story but just was I found a major annoyance.
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Escrito en la línea de “Berlín, La Caída”, en esta obra Beevor nos cuenta los últimos días de Paris bajo el dominio nazis así como los meses posteriores al final de la guerra.Tiene el mérito de desmitificar los hechos, tanto la importancia de la resistencia francesa como de la euforia posterior a la liberación, que pronto fue engullida por el hambre y el frío provocado por la catastrófica situación de Francia en la inmediata post-guerra.También los golpes bajos y el clima casi de guerra civil que se creó entre el influyente Partido Comunista y el nuevo poder Americano, con el egocéntrico General De Gaulle en medio. No se puede descartar como teoría que lo que ocurrió en la Francia de finales de los 40 fue un verdadero golpe de estado, dado eso sís con a “mejor de las intenciones”, es decir un triunfo del Partido Comunista en las urnas que pusiera a Francia en la órbita soviética..El libro, aunque bien documentado se pierde en muchas ocasiones en detalles intrascendentes y sobre todo en el enaltecimiento de la “intelectualidad”, con demasiadas referencias a lo que dijeron o hicieron personajes influyentes de la época.Buen libro para el que le interese el tema. No por nada Antony Beevor es uno de los más famosos historiadores de la 2º Guerra Mundial, pero para el no iniciado puede ser un libro muy espeso, algo inferior a otros del mismo autor.
—Xfi
In some ways, reading this book feels like cramming for a test from my notes--occasionally names come up that I don't quite remember, and the order of events is often unclear to me. But in the end, I don't mind. Even subjects that I would normally skip over have been addressed in such a way, and with enough brevity, that I enjoy knowing about them, particularly because they are generously peppered with pithy excerpts from the letters and journals of key players. I feel I'm acquiring a good general knowledge of the era, with a breadth unusual in history books. Beevor and Cooper set out to be comprehensive, and I think they do quite a good job. Plus, a bonus--the other night I had dinner with a friend and her father, a former diplomat from Australia. To make a point, he brought up the military actions of the Vichy government in Northern Africa, and thanks to this book, I was able to hold my own in the conversation, and had a good working knowledge of the topics. Yay, reading!
—Megan
An utterly interesting and compelling book. Well-researched and highly illuminating, full of interesting facts as well as juicy titbits from the life and intrigues of contemporary French (and emigré) writers, thinkers and artists living in Paris, from Sartre and Beauvoir to Mauriac and Camus, from Picasso to Derain and from Arletty to Yves Montand, "collabos" (or suspects) and "résistants" ,aristocrats and Comummunsts, everything and everybody else in-between, while also faithfully chronicling the political and social history of those fateful years. Also immensely readable. Indeed, it reads like a novel. I enjoyed it very much.
—Janos
