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Wine and War: The French, the Nazis and France's Greatest Treasure
 
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Wine and War: The French, the Nazis and France's Greatest Treasure (Paperback)

by Donald & Petie Kladstrup (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.97 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times by Don Kladstrup

Wine and War: The French, the Nazis and France's Greatest Treasure + Champagne: How the World's Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed Over War and Hard Times
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Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Coronet; New Ed edition (4 April 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340766786
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340766781
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 31,651 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #3 in  Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Countries > France
    #11 in  Books > Science & Nature > Food & Farming > Horticulture
    #13 in  Books > History > Europe > France

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

According to Don and Petie Kladstrup in Wine & War: the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure, it was a well-known fact that Adolf Hitler did not like wine. Still, their leader's teetotalism notwithstanding, the Germans showed no distaste for French wine when they invaded France in 1940. Indeed, one of the first acts of the occupying army was to seize great stores of wine, sending tens of thousands of barrels to the Third Reich and ordering the conversion of thousands of hectares of vineyards into war production. Some French vintners, the Kladstrups write in this enjoyable study, went along with orders. Many others, however, including the heads of distinguished houses like Moe¨t et Chandon, engaged in daring and dangerous acts of resistance wherever they could. Some lied about their yields; others built false walls to hide precious vintages; and still others concocted elaborate ruses, such as sprinkling carpet dust into inferior grades of new wine to give it a musty, distinguished flavour. Not every German was fooled, and some partisans of the grape died for their troubles. But some Germans, at considerable risk to themselves, also looked the other way. The Kladstrups fill their pages with memories of the wine war from both sides of the struggle, stories sometimes sombre, sometimes amusing, that commemorate those "whose love of the grape and devotion to a way of life helped them survive and triumph over one of the darkest and most difficult chapters in French history". --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Sunday Telegraph

'Entertaining and informative'
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Judged the book by the cover and loved it, 2 Oct 2002
By A Customer
I really enjoyed this book - great day-in-the-life and historical perspectives of the French and France during wartime. Particularly amusing to read about French forces determining which soldiers should attack through excellent vineyards (themselves) and which would attack through lesser ones (everyone else)...
Highly enjoyable.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Vive Les Vins Francais, 8 May 2005
I enjoyed this book immensely. It was factual and informative and despite being set in depressing times, an underlying humour and deviance is never far from the surface. The book is perfect for amateur wine buffs (like me) and amateur historians (like me) who are interested in daily life during World War Two. The ingenuity of the French was amazing but, after all, they were protecting their greatest asset. By the end of this book Vichy france does not come out too well but at least france lived to fight another day with her vineyards pretty much intact. Vive La France.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Revealing review of a small part of French resistance, 5 Jul 2008
By John Holland (Surrey, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Fascinating read about the desperate position the French vineyard owners found themselves in during the Second World War. With Nazis determined to pillage the vineyards, the owners resorted to every trick possible to protect their assets. With experience of defeating phylloxera in the 19th century and the preceding world war, the vineyard owners had developed a knack of finding ways to survive. The book describes an eclectic collection of motives and actions that helped the wine industry survive occupation.

A slight downside is the purely factual account of events. This creates a book that is somewhat disjointed in places, with little attempt to create a story that holds the piece together. Fascinating historical journalism, but more rhetoric may have added to the book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A highly enjoyable account the French wine industry in WW2
This is an amusing, but poignant account of how the French wine industry coped with the Nazi occupation (the telegrams from the French station master to his German superior had me... Read more
Published on 5 Sep 2001 by djgasper@yahoo.co.uk

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