The Fall of Paris: June 1940

by Herbert R. Lottman

A dramatic chronicle of the fall of one of the world's great cities covers the five weeks leading up to the German capture of Paris in 1940

Genres: History

430 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Herbert Lottman was an American journalist and author who spend most of his life in France.
He majored in English and biology at the University of New York, graduating in 1948 and earned a master’s in English from Columbia in 1951.
In 1956 he moved to Paris and became the manager of the Paris branch of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He also was writing for Publishers Weekly for four decades and wrote a novel, Detours From the Grand Tour.
But he is most reknowned for his biographies on French personalities and his writings on French intellectual life.

Reviews

[Laia Bujer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A ver, le daría muchas más estrellas a este libro si en cada capítulo no me hablase de gente diferente que no tiene nada de relación con la caída de París. Entiendo que el autor haya querido crear un sentimiento de cercanía presentando personas que existieron y enseñando su situación, pero hubiera logrado ese efecto si se hubiera mantenido esas familias desde el inicio hasta el final, ver su evolución.
Al no hacerlo se crea un sentimiento de desconexión porque no para de presentar a diferentes familias y personas de un capítulo a otro y por el resto del libro no vuelve a mencionarlas.

[Alvaro Garcia Monge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo más interesante es que es un relato del día a día, desde el “imposible que invadan Paris” hasta la invasion que termino 4 años después.

Ustedes son muy jóvenes pero hace un tiempo cosas inesperadas pero a la larga previsibles pasaban y las autoridades y la sociedad decían “no lo vimos venir”

[Diego Chia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inecesariamente largo.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 1 out of 5]

For some reason gets two listings on Goodreads (like so many it reads like an entry from a booksellers catalogue) I have already reviewed the book but reproduce the review below:

I started reading this book with great enjoyment, it was old fashioned narrative history but done with great sweep and style by an author who, while not really a professional historian, was a professional writer on historical subjects and someone utterly at home in the French language. Unfortunately I was quickly disillusioned. On one page he says of how successful General George von Kuchler May 1940 offensive against the Netherlands was:

"...it was as if the Dutch had never fought the war..."

Yet a page, in fact not half-a-dozen paragraphs later we are told:

"...The Dutch continued to resist valiantly. There were combats in village streets, defense of the countryside canal by canal..."

The two remarks can not be reconciled, and while poor editing can be blamed it the truth is this is sloppy writing by the author and once noticed you start seeing it again and again.

Although very readable this account of the events in 1940 is woefully inadequate it is based largely on memoirs and reproduces their biases, errors and mistakes without comment or analysis. He reports on, for example, the influence of Helen de Portes on premier Paul Reynard but doesn't make clear whether it was a good or bad thing or whether it was simply the belief in her influence that was malign. For a history published in 1992 this just won't do.

I come down hard on this, and any mediocre history books, not because I only believe in academic history but because they are bad in the sense of being mediocre and detract readers from far finer and equally readable authors. In 1992 there was no reason to read this trash rather than Alaistair Horne's excellent (and still worth reading) 1969 'To Loose a Battle: France 1940' and in 2023 you would be far better off reading Julian Jackson's 2004 'The Fall of France: The German Invasion of 1940'.

There is no reason to read such inadequate trash as this book.