History of Europe

• Winter 54:the call of Abbé Pierre

  Duringthe winter of 1954 , terrible cold waves hit France, causing many victims among the homeless. The opportunity for the abbé Pierre , founder five years earlier of the Emmaüs movement, to launch a vibrant appeal to raise awareness among the population and the public authorities about the plight

• Evian Accords:the end of the Algerian War (1962)

  On March 18, 1962, the agreements were signed in Evian who are going to put an end to this war which does not speak its name, the war in Algeria. The representatives of the GPRA and the French government agree to put in place an immediate ceasefire (taking effect on March 19). The Evian agreements a

• The crisis of May 68 in France

  In France, the crisis of May 68 originates in universities where students worry about their future and reject the selection system. At the same time, they express their aspiration for other forms of human relationships, for a liberal evolution of mores and for the abolition of hierarchies. This stud

• October 17, 1961:Bloody repression in Paris

  October 17, 1961 , in the midst of the Algerian war and at the call of the FLN, thousands of demonstrators marched without violence in a Paris under tension. The reaction of the police, led by a certain Maurice Papon, is very violent:the demonstrators are pursued and beaten up, thrown into the Seine

• Abolition of the death penalty in France (1981)

  The abolition of the death penalty in France on September 18, 1981 is the culmination of a long process that began at the beginning of the 20th century. Until the 1980s, the debate on capital punishment had been periodically revived in France, the last European nation to maintain it. Abolition being

• Klaus Barbie, the executioner of Lyon

  Klaus Barbie is an SS officer of the SD (German Counterintelligence Services) who arrived in France in June 1942. The one who has already stood out in Russia, for his qualities in the fight against insurgency, quickly becomes the head of the Gestapo Lyonnaise (February 1943). Nicknamed the execution

• The escapees from France (1940-1944), the forgotten of the Second World War

  This is an unknown episode in the history of France. During World War II , 19,000 young French people (men and women), crossed the Pyrenees at the risk of their lives. They voluntarily joined the French Forces Combattantes after several months of internment in Spain in sordid jails. 4 to 5,000 of th

• Roundup of Vel d'Hiv (July 16-17, 1942)

  16 and 17 July 1942 , during the Vel dHiv roundup , the French police proceeded to the mass arrest of thousands of Jews, on the orders of the Vichy government. Men, women and children were soon brought back to the Vélodrome dHiver in Paris, place of the beginning. Not the beginning of a life, but ra

• The liberation of Paris (August 25, 1944)

  The liberation of Paris (August 19-25, 1944) was an insurrectionary movement that drove the German occupiers out of the capital at the end of World War II. It was recorded on August 25, 1944 at Montparnasse station by General Dietrich Von Choltitz who signs the act of surrender of the German troops,

• Civilians in World War I

  Civilians in World War I , like the “poilu”, experienced the conflicts both as spectators and actors, but much more often as protagonists, located at the heart of the First World War. The study of civilians was pushed into the background for decades, masked by the heroic acts of the hairy and the ba

• Popular Front in France (1936-1937)

  The Popular Front was a coalition of different left-wing parties that governed France from June 1936 to April 1938. A major event in the memory of the French left, the arrival of the Popular Front in government under the leadership of Léon Blum was motivated in part by the violence of February 6, 19

• Radio London, Radio Paris and Vichy:the war on the airwaves

  After the defeat of June 1940, the radio will become the instrument of a war of the waves opposing the Resistance with Radio London on the one hand, and the German occupation forces and collaboration with Radio Paris and Radio Vichy on the other hand. It was General de Gaulle who opened hostilities

• The Roaring Twenties in France (1920-1929)

  The Roaring Twenties in France refer to the period between the years 1920 and 1929, a decade marked by spectacular economic recovery and great cultural and intellectual effervescence. Thanks to international detente, French industry is establishing itself on European markets and living standards ar

• The Vichy regime (1940-1944)

  The Vichy regime is the nickname given to the French State which succeeded the Third Republic following the defeat of May-June 1940. From July 10, 1940 to August 1944, France, defeated and occupied, was subjected to an authoritarian regime under the leadership of Marshal Petain who agrees to collabo

• Monuments to the dead, places of memory

  After the trauma of WWI , almost all the municipalities of France erect monuments to the dead to commemorate the memory of fallen men. There is an old misunderstanding about the true meaning of these monuments. Integrated into the Republican memory. These places of memory which welcome men adorned w

• The German Campaign (1813)

  The German Campaign of 1813 was fought by Napoleon from April to October 1813 against the armies of the Sixth Coalition . Like the Phoenix rising from its ashes, the Grande Armée , which disappeared in the Russian snows in 1812, suddenly seems to be reborn in the plains of Saxony . The Russians sudd

• August 10, 1792:capture of the Tuileries

  August 10, 1792 is a great insurrectional day of the French Revolution during which Parisians stormed the Tuileries Palace and ended the constitutional monarchy. It originated in a manifesto by the Duke of Brunswick, head of the Prussian army, which promised the revolutionaries terrible reprisals if

• Louis XVII, the Child of the Temple

  Louis XVII (1785-1795), Dauphin of France, is the second son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. After the execution of his father, he is declared king by the noble emigrants under the name of Louis XVII. Nevertheless, his reign is only theoretical. The child remains imprisoned in the Temple, where h

• The Sans-culottes of the French Revolution

  Coming from the lower classes of Paris, the sans-culottes are radical patriots who campaign for greater justice, equal political rights, and equal distribution of property. The Parisian rioters of 1789 are called sans-culottes because they wear trousers:under the Ancien Régime, trousers were reserve

• The guillotine, tear of the Revolution

  With the Revolution appears a new machine for the application of capital punishment:the guillotine . It owes its name to Doctor Guillotin, a member of the Constituent Assembly, who in 1789 proposed to replace by beheading the punishments then in force for those condemned to death. He advocated the u