Sudden Courage

About Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945

Rosbottom tells the riveting story of how a group of brave and untested youth waged a hidden war against the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators. Sudden Courage brings to light the inspiring, heart-pounding exploits of a wide range of young French men, women, boys, and girls in a time of extreme stress and dire peril, as they were forced to make decisions that they had never dreamed of having to make. Drawing on their poignant and perceptive memoirs, letters, diaries, interviews with those who knew them, oral histories, and documentary evidence, the distinguished author and historian Ronald Rosbottom weaves a spellbinding story of the often-underestimated influence of youth on the Occupation of France.

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About Ronald C. Rosbottom

Ronald C. Rosbottom is the Winifred L. Arms professor in the Arts and Humanities and a professor of French, European Studies, and Architectural Studies at Amherst College. Formerly he was the dean of faculty at Amherst. His previous book, When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 was long listed for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and was acclaimed as a landmark study, “an intimate, sweeping narrative” (Stacy Schiff) that reshaped our conception of the period. He divides his time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and Paris.

Ron Rosbottom brings his demonstrated mastery of the German occupation of France, plus decades as a college professor, to vividly revise our understanding of the French resistance, and how dependent it was upon the energy and moral courage of very young women and men.

– Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

In Sudden Courage, Ronald Rosbottom masterfully explores the crucial role played by the young people of France, many still in their teens, resisting the Nazis during World War II. The book’s many indomitable heroes and heroines- who include the most popular child actor in France and a blind Paris schoolboy who led a major underground student group- displayed a passion, energy, and moral courage that helped energize the French Resistance and save their country’s soul and honor.

- Lynne Olson, author of Madame Fourcade’s Secret War