Text : Fr

Format : 33 x 24 x 2,7

Through the magazines and newspapers of the time, Pascal Roblin revisits the key moments of this second world conflict, from the distant beginnings of the war to the moment of reckoning. The book begins with the important stages of Hitler's rise to power and his conquest of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and ends with the convictions of the Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. Most of the key moments of this war, and particularly the key events in France, are presented: the "phoney war", the debacle, the armistice, the Occupation, the collaboration, Vichy, the status of the Jews, the roundups, the Freemasons, the STO, the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, the Resistance, the Liberation and the return of the Republic, as well as various themes such as the SNCF (French national railway company), sport, fashion, cultural life, etc. Hundreds of characters, famous or not, are brought together: actors and witnesses of this period, committed to one side or the other, politicians, soldiers, journalists, artists, intellectuals who shaped these years, each in their own way, such as Philippe Pétain, Charles de Gaulle, Pierre Laval, Admiral Darlan, Jean Moulin, Otto Abetz, Jean Luchaire, Charles Trenet, Jean Prouvost or Albert Camus... And always under the gaze of the press.

 Pascal Roblin has selected more than 120 well-known and lesser-known periodicals, national and regional, authorised or clandestine, for the big and the small, mainly from the rich collections of the association Le Centre de la Presse (Le Matin, Gringoire, Paris-Soir, Le Canard enchaîné, L'Action française, Au Pilori, L'Auto, Le Petit Écho de la Mode, Pierrot, Téméraire, Le Figaro, Le Parisien, L'Humanité, Les Lettres françaises, etc). This important research work makes it possible to bring this paper memory, all these mostly forgotten periodicals, formidable witnesses of this dark period of our history, into the light of today.

 A richly illustrated and documented book, to (re) discover and (better) understand.