The Battle for Children links two major areas of historical inquiry: crime and delinquency with war and social change. In a study based on impressive archival research, Sarah Fishman reveals the impact of the Vichy regime on one of history's most silent groups--children--and offers enlightening new information about the Vichy administration.

Fishman examines how French children experienced the events of war and the German occupation, demonstrating that economic deprivation, not family dislocation, sharply drove up juvenile crime rates. Wartime circumstances led authorities to...

This volume about the Vichy years and the German Occupation of 1940-1944 uses as a starting point Robert Paxton's Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, which provided a meticulously documented portrait of a nation consumed by indecision and self-doubt. The essays by the foremost scholars in the field place the Occupation of France in the context of other episodes in French history, and in the context of other occupied countries during World War II. They consider communities of belief during the Vichy years, examine how the experience of war and occupation shaped the everyday lives of...