CANR
WORK TITLE: SUDDEN COURAGE
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CITY: Amherst
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COUNTRY: United States
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https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/rcrosbottom
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 15, 1942, in New Orleans, LA; son of Albert Carlisle (a sales manager) and Marjorie Rosbottom; married Betty Griffin (a museum aide), September 5, 1964; children: Michael Keith.
EDUCATION:Attended Sorbonne, University of Paris, 1962-63; Tulane University, B.A., 1964; Princeton University, M.A., 1966, Ph.D., 1969; Amherst College, MA, dean of faculty, Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities, professor.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, instructor, 1967-69, assistant professor of French, 1969-73; Ohio State University, Columbus, associate professor of French literature and criticism, 1973—.
MEMBER:Modern Language Association of America, American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, American Association of Teachers of French, Societe Francaise d’Etude du 18e Siecle.
AWARDS:Woodrow Wilson fellow, 1966-67; grant-in-aid from American Council of Learned Societies, summer, 1972; American Philosophical Society grant, summer, 1973; Chevalier de l’Académie des Palmes Académiques.
WRITINGS
Contributor to journals. Editorial advisor to Studies in Burke and His Time, beginning 1971.
SIDELIGHTS
Ronald C. Rosbottom is a writer and educator. He has taught at educational institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University, and Amherst college. He is the author and editor of books of nonfiction and has also contributed to academic journals.
In 2014, Rosbottom released When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occupation, 1940-1944. In this volume, he examines the daily lives of the German conquerors of Paris and the French people who lived under their rule. He analyzes personal documents and other texts to determine how they lived, did business, and interacted with the creative community and with each other.
Critics offered mixed assessments of When Paris Went Dark. Ben Shephard, contributor to the London Observer website, commented: “Excellent passages on everyday realities, youth culture and the Jewish community propel a generally weak look at Nazi occupation.” Referring to Rosbottom, Shephard added: “He certainly shirks the historian’s responsibility to give a real sense of the social, economic and cultural context within which events occurred. … Instead, the professor devotes much space to notions such as ‘spatial anxiety’ and ‘our engagement with the urban landscape’ and presents cultural-studies cliches with great solemnity.” Caroline Moorehead, reviewer on the Wall Street Journal website, suggested: “Much of what When Paris Went Dark contains is familiar to historians of the period. What Mr. Rosbottom provides is a well rounded overview of the many subtle forms that accommodation took, as well as a vivid sense of what the French to this day call ‘les années noires,’ the four long years in which their country was not their own.” Writing in Choice, G.P. Cox asserted: “No book in English better captures the terror, boredom, deprivation, and humiliation that was occupied Paris.” A Kirkus Reviews critic described the book as “a profound historical portrait of Paris for anyone who loves the city.”
In Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945, Rosbottom again looks at France during the Nazi occupation. He profiles groups of young French people, who fought back in both subtle and overt ways against their German invaders. The consequences of their actions are also discussed.
Library Journal online reviewer, Jacob Sherman, described the book as “an exceptional account about the French Resistance” that is “highly recommended for Francophiles and those interested in World War II.” A Publishers Weekly critic called it a “captivating history” and asserted: “This is a moving chronicle of youthful courage and sacrifice.” Michael S. Roth, contributor to the Wall Street Journal website, suggested: “Mr. Rosbottom is committed to staying on the sunny side of the street where heroic young people defy the odds and attempt great things. That may not be history, but theirs are lives worth remembering—especially if, like the author, we still look to young people for idealism and inspiration.” “Rosbottom uses impressive character studies to drive his narrative,” noted a Kirkus Reviews writer. The same writer called the book “a fine history that brings back to light the contributions of the younger, often forgotten resistance fighters.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, February, 2015, G.P. Cox, review of When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light under German Occupation, 1940-1944, p. 1049.
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2014, review of When Paris Went Dark; July 1, 2019, review of Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945.
Publishers Weekly, June 17, 2019, review of Sudden Courage, p. 60.
ONLINE
Amherst College, https://www.amherst.edu/ (August 19, 2019), author faculty profile.
Library Journal, https://www.libraryjournal.com/ (July 31, 2019), Jacob Sherman, review of Sudden Courage.
London Observer, https://www.theguardian.com/ (August 3, 2014), Ben Shephard, review of When Paris Went Dark.
Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com (August 28, 2014), Caroline Moorehead, review of When Paris Went Dark; (August 9, 2019), Michael S. Roth, review of Sudden Courage.
Ronald C. Rosbottom
Architectural Studies, European Studies, French
Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and Professor of French and European Studies (On Leave 1/1/2020 - 6/30/2020)
413-542-4050 @amherst.edu 210 Converse Hall
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Pariscape: Imagining Paris in the Twentieth Century
World War II in European Literature and Film
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Rosbottom, Ronald C.
About Ron Rosbottom
Submitted by Ronald C. Rosbottom on Thursday, 3/24/2016, at 1:41 PM
At Amherst, Ron is the holder of the Winifred Arms Professorship in the Arts and Humanities and professor of French and European studies. He has also been an academic administrator and planner and former dean of the faculty. His classes have included the 18th-century British and French novel, the history of ideas, literary criticism, art history of the early modern and modern periods, the history of the European city, especially of Paris, fictional and documentary film, Napoleon and his legends, the literature of World War I, and, most recently World War II and the European imagination. Ron has published well over a hundred articles and book reviews, has edited three essay collections and has written two monographs on French novelists.
Ronald C. Rosbottom is a Professor at at Amherst College. He has edited three essay collections and has written two monographs on French novelists.
At Amherst, Ron is the holder of the Winifred Arms Professorship in the Arts and Humanities and professor of French and European studies. He has also been an academic administrator and planner and former dean of the faculty. His classes have included the 18th-century British and French novel, the history of ideas, literary criticism, art history of the early modern and modern periods, the history of the European city, especially of Paris, fictional and documentary film, Napoleon and his legends, the literature of World War I, and, most recently World War II and the European imagination. Ron has published well over a hundred articles and book reviews, has edited three essay collections and has written two monographs on French novelists.
Ronald C. Rosbottom is the Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and a professor of French, European Studies, and Architectural Studies at Amherst College. Previously he was Dean of the Faculty at Amherst; he is a Chevalier de l’Académie des Palmes Académiques. His previous book, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He divides his time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and Paris.
QUOTED: "Rosbottom uses impressive character studies to drive his narrative."
"a fine history that brings back to light the contributions of the younger, often forgotten resistance fighters."
Rosbottom, Ronald C. SUDDEN COURAGE Custom House/Morrow (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 8, 13 ISBN: 978-0-06-247002-7
An exploration of the reasons so many young French citizens stepped up to work against Nazi occupiers and the "traitorous" Vichy government.
As Rosbottom (French and European Studies/Amherst Coll.; When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944, 2014) shows, World War II interrupted their developmental time frame, forcing them into an adulthood for which they were little prepared. There are many common threads in the memoirs the author was able to source--e.g., patriotic pride and hatred of the occupiers; strong Jewish identity--but a moral certainty of right and wrong was the dominant characteristic in all of them. Many practiced soft resistance, including art, propaganda, false documents, and minor but persistent sabotage. Others used hard resistance: intelligence-gathering, assassinations, derailments, etc. By far the most organized were the young communists, who had funding from Russia and accepted and encouraged girls to join. Under Stalin's orders not to attack their occupiers after the 1939 treaty with Hitler, the youth concentrated on undermining the German-backed Vichy government and the French police who worked directly with the Germans. Hitler's invasion of Russia ended that ban. The cultural and social phenomena affecting students before the war--film, jazz, dancing, and a new taste of freedom--guided them. They were not driven by politics and didn't think of the dangers to themselves or their families. At first, their youth, especially for girls, protected them. When the SS and Gestapo took over in 1942, everyone was suspect, and security tightened considerably. Rosbottom uses impressive character studies to drive his narrative--e.g., a 17-year-old who was executed as a reprisal; a blind young man who became a natural leader both in the Resistance and during the many months he spent in prison. Early resisters were disorganized, confused, and incompetent, but they learned quickly.
A fine history that brings back to light the contributions of the younger, often forgotten resistance fighters.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rosbottom, Ronald C.: SUDDEN COURAGE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A591279104/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ab838810. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A591279104
QUOTED: "captivating history."
"This is a moving chronicle of youthful courage and sacrifice."
Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945
Ronald C. Rosbottom. Custom House, $27.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-247002-7
In this captivating history, historian Robinson (When Paris Went Dark) unearths the large and small acts of political resistance to the Nazi occupation carried out by hundreds of French people under the age of 21. As he recounts, German armies marched into France on June 14, 1940, and eight days later, France signed an agreement accepting a Nazi occupation that would last almost five years. Many French citizens returned to their everyday lives as best they could. But some young people, whether in resistance organization or preexisting groups like the Jewish boy scouts, worked against the Vichy government. Drawing on letters, diaries, and recorded interviews of survivors, Robinson details how these youth went from classes and homework to forging documents and stealing Nazi secrets. For their acts, many were sent to prison camps, shot, or executed by beheading. In recounting their stories, Robinson ponders the question of "what constitutes resistance in a police state," concluding that it could mean everything from yelling "Vive la France" in a crowded movie theater during a German propaganda film to riding a bicycle for miles through the countryside to deliver secret messages. This is a moving chronicle of youthful courage and sacrifice. Agent: Geri Thoma, Writers House. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945." Publishers Weekly, 17 June 2019, p. 60. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A590762617/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=73a89521. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A590762617
QUOTED: "a profound historical portrait of Paris for anyone who loves the city."
Rosbottom, Ronald C. WHEN PARIS WENT DARK Little, Brown (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 8, 5 ISBN: 978-0-316-21744-6
An exploration of "what it would have been like to be [in Paris] under the German Occupation during the Second World War."The City of Light passed the war years in a period of sustained urban anxiety, when lives were constantly disrupted and fear reigned. France"s army, "the uninspired being led by the incompetent," surrendered to the Nazis in June 1940. Rosbottom (Arts and Humanities, French and European Studies/Amherst Coll.) explains the interactions of the French and their occupiers in a way that illuminates their separate miseries. He makes us see that we can never judge those who lived during the occupation just because we know the outcome. If you think you might live the rest of your life under Nazi control, you do everything you can just to survive, feed your family and not get arrested. Who can judge what is accommodation, appeasement, acceptance, collaboration or treason? When they moved in, the Germans requisitionedall automobiles, rationed food, established curfews and cut back on power. The French police were merely German puppets, responsible for nearly 90 percent of the Jewish arrests. The members of the Vichy government were equally reviled. The author attentively includes German and French letters and journals that explain the loneliness, desperation and the very French way of getting by. Both during and after the war, the French seemed to be highly prone to denouncing their fellow resistors, neighbors, friends and family, but the Resistance was nothing like we"re shown in many popular portrayals. Instead, there was mostly quiet defiance, such as whistling when Nazis trooped by or printing anti-German and anti-Vichy tracts. The Resistance was only truly effective the few days before and after D-Day. Otherwise, the foolhardy deeds of a few young, disorganized men brought brutal reprisals and misery.A profound historical portrait of Paris for anyone who loves the city.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Rosbottom, Ronald C.: WHEN PARIS WENT DARK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2014. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A373030405/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4dd54580. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A373030405
QUOTED: "No book in English better captures the terror, boredom, deprivation, and humiliation that was occupied Paris."
Rosbottom, Ronald C. When Paris went dark: the City of Light under German occupation, 1940-1944. Little, Brown, 2014. 447p bibl index ISBN 9780316217446 cloth, $28.00; ISBN 9780316217453 ebook, $14.99
52-3309
D762
2014-938425 MARC
This account of the Nazi occupation of Paris tells a familiar story with originality, erudition, and nuance. One of the volume's great strengths is its balance: Rosbottom (Amherst College) seeks to recount the four harrowing years of the city's captivity from the perspective of both the French and their German masters. Informed by archival collections and printed primary sources, the book illustrates the complex and contradictory attitudes that shaped a depressing and at times terrifying mentalite that united Parisians and Germans in unexpected ways. Both felt the burden of captivity: the French, in the shame of their abject defeat; the Germans, in their submission to Paris the seductress. Both veered between savage resistance cum retribution and intimate collaboration. Should Parisians grudgingly do business, fraternize, or avoid all contact with their captors? For their part, Germans went to see Picasso at his studio; they read Camus; they were depressed at the disdain their captives never fully concealed. They also tortured and killed those who dared resist their occupation. No book in English better captures the terror, boredom, deprivation, and humiliation that was occupied Paris. An important addition for modern history collections. Summing Up: **** Essential. All levels/libraries.--G. P. Cox, Gordon State College
Cox, G.P.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cox, G.P. "Rosbottom, Ronald C.: When Paris went dark: the City of Light under German occupation, 1940-1944." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Feb. 2015, p. 1049. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A416401080/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dd4606d6. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A416401080
QUOTED: "Much of what When Paris went Dark contains is familiar to historians of the period. What Mr. Rosbottom provides is a well rounded overview of the many subtle forms that accommodation took, as well as a vivid sense of what the French to this day call 'les années noires,' the four long years in which their country was not their own."
Book Review: 'When Paris Went Dark' by Ronald C. Rosbottom
For most Parisians, occupation was neither collaboration nor resistance, but a struggle to survive, to make do and avoid confrontation.
By Caroline Moorehead
Aug. 28, 2014 7:53 pm ET
Be polite toward the Occupiers, urged Jean Texcier, a young journalist from Normandy, as German troops swept into Paris in May 1940, but don't be over friendly: They are not tourists but invaders. Practice elegant indifference. Light their cigarettes for them but do not volunteer directions. Texcier's "33 Conseils à L'Occupé" ("33 Hints to the Occupied"), copied and recopied and passed around surreptitiously, were not altogether a joke. As Ronald Rosbottom shows in "When Paris Went Dark," the French were very confused about how to behave toward the robust, fair-haired soldiers striding in gleaming boots around the capital. Though Marshal Pétain, signing the terms of the Armistice, had spoken of "collaboration," what precisely did this mean? How the Parisians interpreted it, how they trod the line between accommodation and defiance, is a question that haunts the French to this day.
When the Maginot Line, France's supposedly impregnable barrier of cement and steel, was rapidly outflanked by the Panzers, the German army advanced on Paris, driving before it waves of defeated French recruits. The Parisians initially felt more shock than fear: It had happened so fast. Once the dust settled and Pétain had set up his collaborationist government in Vichy (the Germans having refused to let him stay in Paris), Parisians were surprised to find their conquerors so polite, so correct in their behavior. The 20,000 occupiers and their "gray mice" female auxiliaries, who had commandeered official buildings, were obviously appreciative of the city. They too had their own Texcier, in the shape of the fortnightly guide "Dear Deutsche Wegleiter fûr Paris," which instructed them to avoid seduction, eschew sentimentality and act with the "strength of steel."
Within just a few weeks, most of those who had fled south to escape the German advance had returned, restaurants and cafes had reopened and the sky had cleared of the acrid smoke of burning fuel depots. A semblance of ordinary life resumed. France was placed on German time and occupying soldiers went shopping for silk stockings and scent to send home to their wives. Horse racing and the fashion industry did well.
The strength of Mr. Rosbottom's book lies in the details he has culled from memoirs, letters, papers, films, plays, songs and diaries that illuminate the experience of both the occupiers and the occupied. "I do not claim," he writes, "the mantle of historian but rather of storyteller and guide." For the vast majority of Parisians, occupation meant neither collaboration nor resistance, but rather myriad strategies designed to survive, to make do, to avoid confrontation; it was about endurance, not heroism. "Like a minuet," Mr. Rosbottom writes, "a dance with precise moves but little touching, the Occupation involved two parties—the Parisians and the German—trying to avoid stepping on each other's toes."
When Paris Went Dark
By Ronald C. Rosbottom
(Little, Brown, 447 pages, $28)
As he notes, the intellectuals and artists caught in Paris by the rapid advance, or by simply choosing to stay there, each pursued their own way through the labyrinth. Picasso put on just one small, discrete show during the occupation, Sartre opened several plays before German audiences, Colette sat down to write "Gigi," and the school master writer Jean Guéhenno decided that he would write nothing more until liberation, since he was no longer free to write what he wished.
Occupation was not a pretty business. Food supplies rapidly dwindled, a black market flourished and long queues of hungry housewives formed in the eerily deserted streets. Informers, settling old scores or keen to make their fortunes, proliferated. With power supplies cut, and French coal stocks dispatched to aid the German war effort, Parisians grew cold. They also grew increasingly resentful, as warehouses near the Gare d'Austerlitz and off the Champs Elysées filled with loot from Jewish homes, and train loads of machinery, food, pictures and furniture left from stations to the east of Paris.
Once the rafles, the rounding up of Jews, began, it became uglier still. Whether and how to protect the hunted foreign Jewish families, who had been drawn to France from Germany and Poland during the years of the Blum government was a question that taxed the Parisians. Not all that many demonstrated significant courage; those who did so might find themselves on the trains bearing the Jews to Auschwitz. As the publisher Jean Paulhan wrote, the Germans were neither lighthearted nor very cheerful, but rather behaved "as if they were already dead. Except that they are spreading around this death."
Though Albert Camus never explicitly said so, "La Peste," his novel about the city of Oran being cut off after an invasion of rats bearing the bubonic plague, and descending into a terrified and perilous sense of exile and solitude, has long been taken for a metaphor of the German occupation. And when the rats left Paris, the reckoning was as ugly as the occupation itself. Angry, punishing and guilty Parisians turned on one another, summary justice took the lives of perceived collaborators, while women deemed to have slept with the enemy were publicly shaved and humiliated. The young German soldiers who, only a few days before liberation, had been treated with deference were paraded through the streets and spat on.
Much of what "When Paris went Dark" contains is familiar to historians of the period. What Mr. Rosbottom provides is a well rounded overview of the many subtle forms that accommodation took, as well as a vivid sense
of what the French to this day call "les années noires," the four long years in which their country was not their own.
Ms. Moorehead's "Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France" will be published in October.
QUOTED: "Mr. Rosbottom is committed to staying on the sunny side of the street where heroic young people defy the odds and attempt great things. That may not be history, but theirs are lives worth remembering—especially if, like the author, we still look to young people for idealism and inspiration."
‘Sudden Courage’ Review: Youth Who Fought to Be Free
Guy Môquet was only 16 when he was jailed by Vichy France for protesting against the arrest of his father. Held against court orders in a maximum security prison, he was executed within a year.
By Michael S. Roth
Aug. 9, 2019 10:59 am ET
Ronald Rosbottom has been teaching college students for many years now, and his affection for and curiosity about them must be very strong. He has also been studying French literature and history for many years, devoting much of the past decade to understanding how France responded to the Nazi occupation during World War II.
In 2014 he published “When Paris Went Dark,” an account of what it was like to live in the French capital during those awful years. Now he asks what it was like for students at that time. How did some of them, as young as those he teaches at Amherst College, make the leap from adolescent antics to standing up against the German invaders? Mr. Rosbottom touched on this in his earlier book, and he probably had more interesting material than he could fit into that volume.
In “Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945” the author finds many points of light in young people who acted with bravery, passion and savvy in confronting a brutal enemy willing to exact the ultimate punishment on those who got in its way. Mr. Rosbottom’s sources tend to be memoirs, letters, diaries and the occasional historical novel. As in his earlier book, he proves to be a fine story-teller but doesn’t have much to say about the traditional concerns of historians regarding social context or patterns of behavior that might shed light on the actions of individuals. He is convinced that young people (sometimes he means adolescents, sometimes people under 30) were the energetic core of the Resistance, but he provides no real evidence that this was the case. He cites one contemporary claim that 75% of the résistants were under 30, but how do we know this is accurate? Toward the end of the book, Mr. Rosbottom mentions that young people were also engaged in enforcing the cruel laws of Vichy. Were they the energetic core of the Collaboration as well? This, he tells the reader in a rather odd concluding chapter, is not his subject.
Guy Môquet in an undated photograph. Photo: UIG/Getty Images
Sudden Courage
By Ronald C. Rosbottom
Custom House, 320 pages, $27.99
No, Mr. Rosbottom’s subject, one which incites his sympathy and admiration, is the young who risked everything to fight an oppressive regime, to stand up for what’s right, to protect the most vulnerable of their friends and neighbors. Early on in “Sudden Courage,” he gives an account of the legendary Guy Môquet, whose father (a communist deputy to the National Assembly) had been arrested after the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed. Guy worked tirelessly to free him, first protesting against the Third Republic and then against the French police who collaborated with the German Occupation.
Guy Môquet was only 16 when he was jailed. Held against court orders by French police in a maximum security prison, he was executed within a year, in retaliation for the assassination by communists of a German soldier.
The Nazis demanded that prisoners, especially Jews and communists, be considered hostages, and when a German was attacked anywhere in the country, these hostages could be murdered. The idea was to make resistance seem like a cruel act against French prisoners—for they would be the ones to pay the price. It didn’t work: Môquet became a martyr for the Resistance in general and for the communists in particular. His memory is still invoked today as an example of patriotic précocité résistante.
Students made themselves visible in public protests against German authorities and their Vichy allies. On Nov. 11, 1940, many demonstrated in the capital, with communists being the most organized followed closely by the equivalent of the boy scouts. For some, Mr. Rosbottom acknowledges, this sort of activity was “fun with frissons,” but for others it was deadly serious. “Unlike many other résistants,” he emphasizes, “Jewish resisters would have no escape.”
After 1942, things got more serious for all. The Nazis weren’t winning speedy victories in the East anymore, and they drafted young French people to replenish factories in Germany. The danger for young Jews increased, as French police rounded up families to be deported to death camps. Mr. Rosbottom awkwardly writes that “Gentile French were appalled” by this, and certainly there were many who felt the sting of conscience and who spoke out. But the “Gentile” French police continued their dirty work.
“Sudden Courage” looks at the good guys, with a chapter added at the end about the courageous women and girls of the Resistance. It has many inspirational tales to tell, like that of the memoirist Maroussia Naïtchenko, who as a teenager often put her life on the line in friendship and solidarity with other brave young communist French patriots. Mr. Rosbottom avoids engaging in the intense debates that take place among historians as to whether France should be cheered for saving around 75% of its Jews, or condemned for sending a quarter of them to their deaths. Nor does he ask about the role of young people in the épuration, the violent prosecution of collaborators in the aftermath of the Liberation, in which tens of thousands were punished and several thousand executed outright. Were courageous youth on both sides of this purge?
The author does wonder “how many Frenchmen who assisted in the punishment and murder of their own fellow citizens would live long lives of guilt” and if they were ever afraid of being denounced. Sudden courage and lifelong fear are hard to separate in the story of Vichy France and its aftermath, but Mr. Rosbottom is committed to staying on the sunny side of the street where heroic young people defy the odds and attempt great things. That may not be history, but theirs are lives worth remembering—especially if, like the author, we still look to young people for idealism and inspiration.
—Mr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University. Among his books are “Safe Enough Spaces:
A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses.”
QUOTED: "an exceptional account about the French Resistance."
"highly recommended for Francophiles and those interested in World War II."
Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940–1945
by Ronald C Rosbottom
Custom House. Aug. 2019. 336p. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780062470027. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062470058. HIST
COPY ISBN
Rosbottom (Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and Professor of French and European Studies, Amherst Coll.; When Paris Went Dark) has written an exceptional account about the French Resistance. His melding of foreign conquest and adolescence offers a unique perspective of what happened in France during the Occupation. This book starts with how the French underestimated the Germans as an existential threat. French youth were not exposed to this threat until the Wehrmacht rolled into villages and cities, and Rosbottom deftly uses firsthand accounts to describe how they reacted to foreigners. The hardship of occupation altered family structures, with teenagers often becoming caretakers. This role necessitated a choice between becoming fascists or going underground. For Jews and Communists, there was no choice. According to Rosbottom, resistance included not only large acts of opposition, such as hiding Jewish friends or creating weapon caches, but also smaller ones such as mocking German news propaganda or shooting spit wads at German soldiers.
VERDICT Highly recommended for Francophiles and those interested in World War II; this work adds to World War II and French historiography.
Reviewed by Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio , Jul 31, 2019
QUOTED: "Excellent passages on everyday realities, youth culture and the Jewish community propel a generally weak look at Nazi occupation."
"He certainly shirks the historian's responsibility to give a real sense of the social, economic and cultural context within which events occurred. ... Instead, the professor devotes much space to notions such as 'spatial anxiety' and 'our engagement with the urban landscape' and presents cultural-studies cliches with great solemnity."
When Paris Went Dark review – Ronald Rosbottom's flawed account of life in Vichy Paris
Excellent passages on everyday realities, youth culture and the Jewish community propel a generally weak look at Nazi occupation
Ben Shephard
Sun 3 Aug 2014 09.30 BST
First published on Sun 3 Aug 2014 09.30 BST
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Enemies within: German soldiers shopping in Paris, May 1942. Photograph: Alamy
T
here was a tremendous row in Paris a few years ago when the city's historical library put on an exhibition of photographs entitled Parisians Under the Occupation. The images, mostly in colour, showed elegantly dressed citizens promenading in the streets, shopping, and watching the Longchamps races – and thus contradicted the received idea of the "hard years" as a time of strain and deprivation.
Critics pointed out that André Zucca, who took the pictures, worked for the Germans – and thus had access to Agfa colour film stock. Eventually the show's title was changed from Les Parisiens sous l'occupation to Des Parisiens..., that is, some Parisians, not all of them.
As this episode showed, the process of coming to terms with the French past is still current; indeed, over the past decade every aspect of the Vichy period has been put back into the historian's spotlight.
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The part of the story that appeals most to Anglo-Saxon readers – how many people in the French cultural elite were seduced by the power and aura of the Nazis – has already been well told by Alan Riding and Frederic Spotts, while Charles Glass has examined the American side of the occupation. So Ronald C Rosbottom has been forced to cast his net far beyond the usual suspects, and to draw on a huge range of memoirs, novels and interviews. His book's main strength is the sense it gives of how ordinary Parisians coped, but it is also excellent on youth culture, the divisions that marked the Jewish community's response to persecution, the toxic aftermath of liberation, and the mythologies that quickly arose around the war years.
Most of Rosbottom's insights are not his own, however. The notion that the German male conqueror had an irresistible allure for French women comes from Irène Némirovsky. Similarly, the way in which women accused of collaboration horizontale were stripped naked, shorn and paraded through the streets after the liberation is now generally seen as a sad manifestation of the need of French men to reclaim the honour and virility lost on the battlefield in 1940, by degrading the bodies of women.
Rosbottom, who teaches French at Amherst College, Massachusetts, tells us that he does not claim the mantle of the historian, but rather that of a storyteller and guide. He certainly shirks the historian's responsibility to give a real sense of the social, economic and cultural context within which events occurred. His accounts of the role played by the Communist party and of the forced conscription of young men to work in Germany – which proved to be the main recruiting tool for the resistance – are so sketchy that it is impossible for the reader to grasp the full meaning of several episodes featured in the book.
Nothing is said about the institutions of civil life, such as churches, trade unions, freemasons' lodges, veterans' organisations, or even cafes, through which many Parisians defined their identity. Nor is there anything about food, drink or crime.
Instead, the professor devotes much space to notions such as "spatial anxiety" and "our engagement with the urban landscape" and presents cultural-studies cliches with great solemnity. Thus we are told that concierges of apartment buildings enjoyed great power over their residents – a point obvious from a hundred French films and much more tellingly made in Fallada's Alone in Berlin. He also "brings a mixture of interpretative strategies to bear" – that is, plays fast and loose with his sources, sometimes using modern novels set in the 1940s as historical evidence. There will doubtless be many more books to come on this subject. My advice is: wait for a better one.