The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944 by Michael Neiberg

Abstract

the prospect of an Allied victory became more obvious, the gap between rhetoric and reality also grew wider. The much-vaunted project of creating a new national community, for example, faltered except in the area of persecuting minorities. By actively promoting a long tradition of anti-Semitism in France, Vichy came under ever-increasing pressure to help implement the final solution. Similarly, corporatism was more illusion than reality because the inevitable centralization and bureaucratization necessary for Vichy to remain in control contradicted the selfgoverning and decentralizing principles of corporatism. Chapters 7 and 8 look at “realism,” another one of those overdetermined portmanteaux with little chance to be realized. On the one hand, “realism” drew on traditional values to inspire a restoration of “real” France; on the other, “realism ” suggests compromise and acceptance of growing powerlessness under occupation . Other reforms, for example, family policy, were hardly original since pro-natalist policies predated the war. However, laws outlawing abortion, making it punishable by death, represented something radically new. Otherwise, Vichy’s view of women was predictably traditional but unrealistic in light of the many hardships of occupation. The National Revolution failed not only because of internal divisions and contradictions but because it depended on German victory in the war for success, forever rendering it unacceptably “un-French.” Lackerstein’s thorough, well-researched, and frequently brilliant analysis of Vichy breaks new ground in understanding the unsuccessful attempt by a French puppet government to carry out a “national revolution” to restore France to its former glory. St. Norbert College (WI) Tom Conner NEIBERG, MICHAEL. The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944. New York: Basic, 2012. ISBN 978-0-465-02399-8. Pp. xxxii + 298. $28.99. This is a well-written, detailed, and readable narrative of the complex events of the liberation of Paris in the last two weeks of August 1944. The advantage of Neiberg’s approach—focusing specifically on the liberation—is that it provides a perspective not often seen. The liberation of Paris is treated in most books as an “endpoint” of sorts in the allied armies’ drive eastward following the Normandy breakout, or simply as a part, albeit a major one, of a wider story of the occupation and resistance through the entirety of 1940–44. The particular framing of Neiberg’s study allows him to explore the detailed interactions between résistants within the city, allied military and political forces without, and the German occupiers , in a way that less-targeted works do not fully allow. Broad issues such as the Normandy operations, the conditions of the occupation, and the evolution of the resistance from its earliest days are treated as integral contextual foundations to the history of the liberation. For example, Neiberg’s introduction provides an overview of the occupation preceding the allied landings in Normandy, including the events that led to the rise of the resistance, as well as an overview of the different powers and factions involved. Additionally, the first four chapters explore events occurring between 6 June and 15 August, and their impact on individuals and groups who would play major roles in the liberation of the city. Neiberg discusses the hopes, anxieties, and increased hardships for Parisians during this timeframe, the leaders in the resistance and French politics, the attitudes of Axis Reviews 1279 and Allied leadership toward the capital, general Choltitz’s reputation as a “smasher of cities,” and his orders to destroy Paris. All of these elements are vital in understanding the mechanics of the city’s liberation. It is in the second half of the book, where the liberation proper is narrated, that Neiberg shows how the previously contextualized elements intertwine to form the tapestry of military and political maneuvers that would bring about Paris’s freedom. Examining these events in periods of two to four days, Neiberg takes the reader from the seizure of the Préfecture de police by the résistants to the entry of Leclerc’s Second Armored Division, Choltitz’s surrender, and de Gaulle’s arrival and establishment of a provisional government. All the while, the reader is immersed in the politics and tactics of truce negotiations and manipulations, the advantages and disadvantages...