For the moment this post just logs my collection of books about Military History, including both armed conflicts and their consequences.
This is not Michaud’s full multi-volume Histoire des Croisades. It is Histoire des croisades, abrégée à l’usage de la jeunesse, Tours, published in 1853.
It is a single-volume, 388-page abridgement, published by the Bibliothèque de la Jeunesse Chrétienne.
This a condensed version of Michaud’s multi-volume history specifically for younger readers. It is a rather nice physical example of what an educated Catholic French child might have been given to read about the Crusades under Napoleon III.
Histoire Générale de La Guerre Franco-Allemande (1870-1871)
The author lieutenant-colonel Léonce Rousset (1850–1938) was a French army officer, military historian and later politician. His history was written sufficiently close to 1870 that the war was still a living national trauma, but sufficiently late for him to attempt a systematic military reconstruction. The six volumes takes the reader through the whole conflict rather than treating Sedan as its conclusion.
Rousset was interested in where armies actually were, how they moved, what commanders knew, why orders failed, and how individual battles developed.
There is an especially interesting Luxembourg/Lorraine angle. Much of the decisive campaigning took place surprisingly close to Luxembourg, where Metz is only about 60 km from Luxembourg City, and the great battles around Metz transformed the political geography immediately to Luxembourg’s south. After the war, Metz and most of Moselle became part of the German Empire. When Rousset wrote, therefore, he was describing French battles fought on territory which was no longer French.
Second World War (1939-1945)
This is a historical account by Irish-American journalist Cornelius Ryan, written in 1959. It was Erwin Rommel who wrote during his inspection of the Atlantic Wall on April 22, 1944, “The war will be won or lost on these beaches. Believe me, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive… For the Allies, as for Germany, this will be the longest day”.
A multi-volume historical work by Colonel Rémy which was the Resistance name of Gilbert Renault (1904–1984), one of the important agents of the Free French intelligence network. His La Ligne de démarcation began appearing in the 1960s and became a multi-volume collection of accounts of clandestine activity around the boundary separating occupied and initially unoccupied France after the armistice of June 1940.
The line itself is the key to understanding the books. From 25 June 1940, it twisted for roughly 1,200 km through French departments and communities from the Swiss frontier to the Spanish border. Crossing from the German-occupied zone into the zone libre required authorisation. Roads, bridges and railway routes were controlled, and families, businesses and administrative systems could suddenly find themselves divided. The line remained a major obstacle until the Germans occupied the southern zone in November 1942.
Rémy concentrates on the people who learnt to defeat it, including passeurs, Resistance agents, railway workers, farmers, priests, hoteliers and ordinary inhabitants who smuggled people, documents and intelligence across. Among those being moved were escaped prisoners of war, Allied servicemen, Resistance personnel and Jews attempting to escape persecution.
I have various examples of the different volumes published either in 1966 or 1970.
Paroles de l’Ombre – Lettres et carnets des Français sous l’Occupation (1939-1945)
Published in 2009, it is a collection of 100 unpublished documents on the life of the French during the occupation.
La Vie parisienne sous l’Occupation (1940-1944) : Paris bei Nacht
Originally a two-volume historical work written by Hervé Le Boterf and published in 1974, this version was re-edited by Éditions Famot in 1978 as a luxury hardcover 4-volume set. This specific edition is highly sought after by collectors because it includes numerous period photographs integrated directly alongside the text.
It details the contrast between severe daily shortages, rationing, and the looming threat of the Gestapo versus the glittering cabarets, theatres, and black-market restaurants frequented by some residents and German occupiers.
