Occupied France during WW II
Library Books | Magazines | Web Sites
Library Books
First, you may want to look in the Encyclopedia Britannica for some solid background information.
We have pulled a small number of books from Uni's own collection that may be of help. There are more books on campus that cover occupied France, especially in the History Library. Browse our stacks in the Holocaust section (940.5) and in the history of France section (944).
Possible subject terms to use when searching the Online Catalog are shown below. You can just cut and paste these into the search box. Be sure to select SUBJECT search.
If you find a book in the catalog that sounds promising, remember to click its hyperlinked subject headings to find more related books. If you find books in the catalog that you want, you can either request them through the catalog and have them sent across campus (this takes 4-5 business days), or find out which departmental library they're in and go get them yourself!
Sample Terms:
World War, 1939-1945--France
World War, 1939-1945--France--Paris
World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--France
World War, 1939-1945--Collaborationists--France
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--France--Influence
World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Rescue--France
Vichy (France)--Politics and government
Anti-Nazi movement
Anti-Nazi movement France
Paris (France)--History--1940-1944
France--History--German occupation, 1940-1945
World War, 1939-1945--France--Chronology
Maginot Line (France)
Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970
Magazines
We have access to several databases of magazine and journal articles that you might find relevant. You will need your username and password to access these from home.
A good place to look for more details may be an article database called JSTOR. If you enter JSTOR and use the checkboxes at the bottom to select their history journals, you can search the full text of thousands of articles. A search using the term “Vichy France,” for example, yields over 3,400 articles!
Infotrac's Expanded Academic Index ASAP, Ebsco's Academic Search Premier, and Academic OneFile are general purpose databases that contain newspaper and magazine articles on the Vichy regime and related topics. These databases focus on current events, but some articles cover historical issues as well.
For very narrow topics, a database called Historical Abstracts may be necessary. HA has a lot of great articles in it, but is not very user-friendly (many articles are also not full-text). Talk to library staff if you need help with HA.
Web Sites
If you find that, when using the Internet search engines you all know and love, you are coming up with too many personal homepages or sites with no authors or sketchy references, you may want to try some of the sites below. The first two provide indexed links to credible sites that have been evaluated and annotated. There's not a lot specifically about France.
The Internet Public Library Reference Resource Page: History
The Internet Public Library, run by the School of Information at the University of Michigan, has an excellent list of headings for online resources. The
History section provides numerous links to history-themed informational sites on the Web.
Librarian's Internet Index
The LII contains thousands of annotated sources with links to the actual sites. The History section (under Humanities) may come in handy if you explore some of the different subject areas, as many of the links for World War II focus on American involvement.
Timelines of History
Timelines on the site include: “a universal history timeline by period with an outside search engine for ancient history...timelines for countries
with relative links listed for each country at the top of every country page...timelines of the US states and each state has internal links to
relative information...and timelines by subject, including an extensive film archive.” Most timeline entries have a reference citation listed
as to the source from which the information was obtained and a reference legend/bibliography is provided for these sources.