Britain and France in two world wars : truth, myth and memory

233 Pages·2013·0.909 MB·English

by  Tombs, Robert, Chabal, Emile

Britain and
France in Two
World Wars
ii
Britain and
France in Two
World Wars
Truth, Myth and Memory
EditEd by RobERt tombs
and EmilE Chabal
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal, 2013;
Individual chapters © the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal have asserted their rights under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the Editors.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-6933-4
PB: 978-1-4411-3039-6
ePDF: 978-1-4411-0635-3
ePUB: 978-1-4411-6619-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
ContEnts
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors viii
Editors x
‘Two Great Peoples’ Robert Tombs 1
PaRt onE The First World War
17
Introduction Gary Sheffield 19
1 Crossed wires, 1904–14 John Keiger 29
2 Unequal Sacrifice? Two Armies, Two Wars?
William Philpott 47
3 1918: The Push to Victory Elizabeth Greenhalgh 63
PaRt two The Second World War
81
Introduction Akhila Yechury and Emile Chabal 83
4 Dunkirk in military operations, myths and
memories Martin S. Alexander 93
5 The British, the Free French and the
Resistance Sébastien Albertelli 119
6 The British and the liberation of
France Olivier Wieviorka 137
vi ContEnts
PaRt thREE Remembering and Forgetting
153
Introduction P.M.H. Bell 155
7 Cultural divergences in patterns of
remembering the Great War in Britain
and France Jay Winter 161
8 The Second World War through French
and British eyes Robert Frank 179
9 France, Britain and the narrative of
two world wars David Reynolds 193
Index 211
aCknowlEdgEmEnts
This book is the outcome of a conference held at St John’s College, Cambridge,
in September 2011. The conference was made possible by generous financial
support from the Fellows’ Research Fund of St John’s, from the French
Embassy in London and from the Prince Consort and Trevelyan Fund of the
Cambridge History Faculty; and by an advance on royalties provided by the
publisher. The editors would like to express their thanks to all of them.
ContRibutoRs
Sébastien Albertelli, is an agrégé and teaches history and georgraphy at the
Lycée Voltaire, Paris. He is the author of Les services secrets du général de
Gaulle: Le B.C.R.A. 1940–1944 (Éditions Perrin, 2009).
Martin S. Alexander, Professor of International Relations, Aberystwyth
University, is the author of The Republic in Danger. General Maurice
Gamelin and the politics of French defence, 1933–39 (Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
Philip Bell is the author of France and Britain, 1900–1940 (2 vols, Longman,
1996).
Robert Frank, Professor at Université de Paris I Panthéon, is the author of
La hantise du decline: le rang de la France en Europe, 1920–1960 (Belin,
1994).
Elizabeth Greenhalgh, research fellow at the School of Humanities and
Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence
Academy, author of Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during
the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
John Keiger is Director of Research in the Department of Politics and
International Studies, University of Cambridge, and author of France and the
Origins of the First World War (Macmillan, 1983) and Raymond Poincaré
(Cambridge University Press, 1997).
William Philpott, Professor of the History of Warfare, Department of War
Studies, King’s College, London, author of Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on
the Somme and the Making of the Twentieth Century (Little Brown, 2009).
David Reynolds, Professor of International History, Cambridge, is the author
of In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second
World War (Penguin, 2004) and of The Long Shadow: The Great War and
the 20th Century (Simon and Schuster, 2013).
ContRibutoRs ix
Gary Sheffield, Professor of War Studies, University of Birmingham, is the
author of Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities
(Headline, 2001), and The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army
(Aurum, 2011).
Olivier Wieviorka, Professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, is
the author of Normandy: The Landings to the Liberation of Paris (Harvard
University Press, 2010) and of Divided Memories: French Recollections of
World War II from the Liberation to the Present (Stanford University Press,
2012).
Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University, is the
author of Remembering War: The Great War between Historical Memory
and History in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2006).
Akhila Yechury, Lecturer in Asian History, University of Edinburgh, has
published articles on the French territories in India.