M. R. D. Foot on the new, English translation of Simon Kitson’s book
This short, telling book — it has barely 160 pages of actual text — first came out two years ago in French. It takes a fresh look at Pétain’s French state, which tried to govern defeated France from Vichy from 1940 to 1944; the unfamiliar angle of sight reveals several surprises. Those of us who do not live under authoritarian regimes are always curious about what life in them is like; here is fresh fuel for our curiosity, neatly set out by an expert.
The French intelligence services had a visceral dislike both of Great Britain (which they usually called ‘Angleterre’) and of Germany. German spying on the two-fifths of defeated France that were not yet occupied was even more widespread than it had been before the military collapse of May and June 1940.
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