Latest / New Books in American Studies
Michael S. Neiberg, "When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
According to US Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the "most shocking single event" of World War II was not the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but rather the fall of France in spring 1940. Michael Neiberg offers a dramatic history of the American response--a policy marked by panic and moral ineptitude, which placed the United States in league with fascism and nearly ruined the alliance with Britain. The successful Nazi invasion of France destabilized American planners' strategic assumptions. At home, the result was huge increases in defense spending, the advent of peacetime military…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.