John F. Sweets - The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944

I bought this book years ago, tried to read it, and gave up. I'm not sure why though, because this time around I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sweets traces the evolution of the French Resistance in the southern (Vichy) zone of France during the Second World War, looking at its formation, struggles, and efforts in the Liberation.


I don't have terribly much to say about The Politics of Resistance except that I quite liked his detailed analysis of events that I didn't know terribly much about. One point he made that I found quite interesting was that when the three major resistance movements in the south merged, they did so with very little friction, since most of the members by that time had joined for the sake of resisting, and had not joined a particular group based on its ideology. The conflicts between the unified southern resistance and the communist and socialist movements was also fascinating, especially regarding Sweets' conclusions that the communists actually cooperated better with the Resistance than the socialists because the communists and Resistance were both focused on the matter of driving out the Germans, while the socialists were seemingly more preoccupied with preparing for politics after the Germans were gone.

The problems between the Resistance and the Allies was something that I had not been fully aware of previously. I found it quite interesting that even though the Resistance was fully committed to de Gaulle as their future president, they were also very frustrated with his seeming lack of comprehension of the situation on the ground, as well as his unwillingness to listen. In addition, I had not realized before reading this that the Resistance was also preparing to rebel against the British and Americans if they attempted to control France the way they had Italy, and in order to forestall that they had installed local authorities everywhere they could to prevent the Allies from doing so when they advanced.

I had a few minor criticisms of The Politics of Resistance. First and foremost was Sweets' tendency to incorporate French phrases into the narrative with little or no translation. While I could generally figure out what was being said, it made the reading somewhat more difficult. Second, while Sweets did a good job of examining the relationship of the Resistance with the pre-war left-wing political parties, he almost never mentions the right-wing parties. I would have liked to know if the members of those parties had joined the Resistance as much as the left-wingers had or if they were more predisposed to either remain neutral or collaborate. While the assumption would be that they would likely collaborate at a higher rate it would have been nice to have that confirmed or disproved.

Despite these flaws, it was an excelled book and I would recommend it to those with an interest in the Second World War.