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L'école française d'Athènes pendant la Grande guerre : une institution universitaire au service de l'EntenteDuring the First World War, the French School of Archaeology in Athens was a strong support for the Entente. Some of the School members helped the French and British forces with their deep knowledge of Greece ; in Athens, the French School itself held lectures and gave French courses in order to win the Greek population over to the cause of the Allies. In its own way, the French School of Archaeology in Athens has thus contributed to the final victory of the Entente.

Princes et nobles d'Allemagne des années 1920 à l'effondrement du IIIe reich
The German defeat in 1918 and the successive downfalls of the monarchies of William II's federal empire, followed by the revolutionnary uprising and the setting up of the Republic, gave the princes and nobles east of the Rhine what a thousand years of the Holy Roman Empire could never have made possible : the status of citizen capable of choosing political and moral solutions adapted to the majority of their former subjects. Alignment or refusal, opposition or collaboration were to characterize their attitudes and decisions during the Third Reich. Although some acted dishonorably, others during several years of authoritarian rule enhanced the prestige of their various Houses. Light and shade, active collaboration or harsh exile, are what these sadly-forgotten men and women experienced.

L'armée française face au problème de la subversion communiste au début des années 1930Around 1930, the hight-command of the French army considered that in case of « a sudden attack » from the Germans, the communist Party would trigger off an insurrection, specially in the Paris area. Counter-insurrection measures which would contain the communist subversion were to be found in several headstaff surveys, to prevent an internal front in case of war.Marshal Pétain in 1932 wished he was given the command of the counter-insurrection forces as early as in peace time. To let the government know this position, he officially approved of the contents of an important survey entitled Memo on the Defense of the Paris area against the interior enemy in wartime. This document shows communism as a threat, essentially a military one and advocates the enforcement of a strategy based on preventive strategy offensive.

Au-delà de l'écran : quelques films français et Vichy (1940-1944)Did cinema under Vichy serve the ideals of the National Revolution ? Twelve sample films show the uneven level of control by a political mythology hostile to the French Revolution, reveal the impact of the return to the land, based on the Anthea myth, and portray the value given to domestic life, grounded in the development by the État français of folklore and regionalism. If it transmits a negative view of « horsain », cinema under Vichy shows itself far less open than the other media to the intrusions of antisemitism and anglophobia. It affirms its autonomy in relation to the regime by promoting a new and emancipated image of feminism, and it is also able to develop metaphors of moral resistance to the invader. Finally, two films, Goupi Mains rouges and especially Le Corbeau, are virtual philippics and calls to resistance.

De Gaulle et Spears. The British general Edward Spears was considered to have an intimate knowledge of France and the French people, and it was generally understood that he loved both. This reputation led him to play a political role in Franco-British relations during the First World War and to come to know the French military leaders, especially Pétain, with whom he maintained relations between the two wars. He won the confidence of Churchill, whom he accompanied to France in 1940 ; he brought General de Gaulle to London, supported the creation of France Libre, and tried to remain on cordial terms with de Gaulle. Later, his sympathies would change. The brief encounter between the two is presented through the use of the publisheds memoirs.

Les phares français pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale
On the eve of the Second World War, all navigational assistance in France was controlled by the Lighthouse Authority, one of the services of the ministry of Civil Engineering. This very autonomous administration was entrusted to a small number of staff. From the administrative records, we can recount the official life of that service. The high-ranking civil servants lived through this period without ever questioning themselves and fully met the expectations of the Vichy government. On the other hand, the workers, the navymen and the local engineers tried, as much as possible, to impede the occupying forces' plans, within a hierarchy quite uninclined to encourage them.

Résistance populaire et maquis en Roumanie (1945-1965)The popular resistance to collectivization in Romania is peculiarly unknown. Nevertheless, in 1945 fierce opposition to the communist regime had been initiated and lasted until 1965. Resistance groups emerged all over the Carpathians, thanks to the complicity of the peasants, who had been harmed by this collectivization policy. New aspects of the history of Communist Romania are brought into the open through this exposé of the resistance groups, their everyday life in the woods, the typology of their members.

Thomas Russell Jones : « j'étais un officier noir dans l'armée américaine pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale » Thomas Russell Jones was a black officer in the American Army during the Second World War. Before the war, he had studied law and then became very much involved in a liberal organisation called « the Youth congress » which was more particularly backing the Spanish Republicans. During the interview, Thomas Russell Jones tells us of the racism that was paramount in the American Army at the time, of the suspicions its left politically involved members aroused, of the obstacles he had to overcome to accede to the grade of lieutenant. He recalls the handicap generated by the segregation as far as military efficiency was concerned, but he acknowledges the fact that it was within the Army that segregation started to recede. He also notes how deeply happy he felt in 1944-1945 when he was welcomed by French families who treated him like « an ordinary human being ».