Caroline Moorehead

A war of words

Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, by Agnès Humbert<br /> <br type="_moz" />

issue 20 September 2008

Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, by Agnès Humbert

Paradoxically, wrote Jean Paul Sartre, never had French intellectuals been so free as they were under the German occupation, for having lost all normal rights to speak out, each was forced to question every thought and ask himself: ‘Rather than death…?’ In practice, most of the writers and academics who remained in France after 1940 simply kept their heads down and went on with their own work.

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