Columbia University Press Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order revised edition

Paxton (emeritus, social sciences, Columbia U.) provides a new introduction and updated bibliography to his classic study, first published in 1972. It shows that the collaborationist government of Marshal PTtain, in the wake of the Nazi invasion, pursued its own double agenda: internally, an authoritarian and racist "national revolution," and externally, an attempt to persuade Hitler to accept the new France as a partner. Paxton sees the case of the Vichy government as more than a historic accounting; in his introduction he writes, "An American who looks honestly at collaborationist France must judge not only with sorrow and pity, but with fear at what his own countrymen might do under equivalent stress." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Autorid: Robert Paxton