Acquire Wine And War: The French, The Nazis, And The Battle For Frances Greatest Treasure Depicted By Don Kladstrup Contained In Version

this book was much like drinking a nice glass of wine, there is a lot that I enjoyed and there's a lot that I didn't understand, wine names and place names but nothing that interfered with the pleasure of the book.

I always admired wine geeks, seem like something that
every adult should be aware of, Unfortunately it has always escaped me, but a friend of mine at my bookclub is one and I can see that kind of enjoyment it gives him,
By a kind of weird twist of fate of whoever watches over these things, Bacchus I guess, or is it Jim Backus, I started to become a bit of a whiskey geek.
This is also due to my book club where, after the main body of the meeting our host pulled out some whisky, I've been hooked ever since,
I have to say I enjoyed this book much more then the whiskey book I read over the summer, and felt that a lot of the sensibility of wine drinkers can easily translate to whiskey drinkers.

Maybe it was the combination of the personal stories along with the very deep French love of wine that touched me in this book, I can't think of anything in my adopted country of Japan or even in my home country of America that equates with the French feeling for their wine, Maybe guns in America
I posted a quote from this book and an old college friend, a selfconfessed wine geek said he has thoroughly enjoyed this book,
And I have to say the same for myself if only I had a glass or two of wine with me as I was reading it, My favorite WWhistory! This is my third time reading! Great research amp Story, Well written. You dont need to know anything about wine to enjoy I'm not much for nonfiction, but this goes down easily,

Informative, by turns lighthearted and moving that ending line, though!, and may have inspired me to drink a bit more than I ought this week, Vive la France! An interesting look at the French wine industry during WWII, Provides some insight into how people cope with an occupation, what it means to resist and collaborate and the attitudes of an occupier when the combatants are neighbors,

However, it is a bit light on history when the authors drift from the main topic, making some rather odd assertions like the impact of mistresses on foreign and defense policy with no analysis.
I would guess this is more a defect of the type of history this is: easily accessible, pophistory as opposed to a scholarly work, Disappointing book, especially as I had been looking forward to reading it for awhile it does, after all, combine two things I love wine and war, . . I mean wine and France, The book does include some truly interesting anecdotes about wine and winemakers in France during the Second World War, Otherwise I found the writing style annoying especially the bland declarative sentences which serve as an opening to each chapter, and the cheesy madeup/dramatized dialogue, which didn't ring true although I suppose it may have been yikes.
Also ended up skimming the lastpages something I rarely do, Overall, more anecdotal than historic fact not necessarily a bad thing, just don't expect anything too rigorous, and don't look too closely at the map of Occupied France on the inside cover if historic/geographic errors bother you.
. . Fascinating history of how WWII affected the wineries of France, and vice versa, Helpful to understand some of the names of wineries that were popular back in the's and's too,

I hadn't fully appreciated that while the US and Allies were landing in Normandy, there was a parallel invasion at Nice that went north up the Rhone valley.
The French that were part of that invasion made sure to direct all battles to be on "vineyards of inferior quality" and not on the high quality vineyards, which are largely west of the Rhone.


sitelinkGreat news, mon colonel, we have found the weak point in the German defenses, Every one is on a vineyard of inferior quality, "

Apparently when the Allies finally cracked open Hitler's private house, his wine cellar hadK wines from all over France, including many of the best wines from the best years.
The national treasure of France, . .

sitelink"But the peasants who worked the vines believed there was a special relationship between war and grapes, They had always said that the Good Lord sends a poor wine crop when war starts and a fine, festive one to mark its end, And they were right., the year World War II began, was a horrendous vintage, whereas, lannée de la victoire the year of the victory, was one of the best ever recorded, "
A diverting, anecdoterich account of wine protecting and selling and swilling, and squirreling away, and replacing cleverly with plonk during the Second World War, It's hard to understand how important the wine is to the French perhaps the best analogy would be how important sport is to us Americans, With too few male sluggers to form a baseball league while liberating the French, we pinchhit the ladies, This book covers how the winemakers of France covered their cherished fields during far greater deprivations,

The challenge for amateur historians and husband and wife team Don and Petie Kladstrup is how to balance the routine horror of Vichy France, with its deportations shallow graves shattered families and, inevitably, its defaced chateaus and incinerated vineyards with what is essentially details and trivia of a national pastime.
While they do a good job culling from their interviews, much of text is clearly secondary source, their emotional tone often off cue, and the language flat even describing the wine itself.


Still, just as poetry became indispensable to resistance Poles, the French drew more than mere moral support from some of their most powerful luxurygoods producers, Wine caves became great places to hide guns and fugitives, Allies could drop supplies into vast vine fields, And best of all, Nazis could be softened, and even somewhat civilized, by the prestige of great wine and the distinction of being able to say one recognizes and appreciates it.


Finally, the Kladstrups' Germans seem unable to decide whether to raid and plunder, confirming the French view of them as brutes, or maintain a a kind of museum of taste where they could convince their subjects that the Aryans came equipped not only with big muscles, but uber noses, too.
A very interesting and compelling series of stories about the characters involved in the French wine industry during the time of the German occupation of France during World War II.
The roles of each of the regional Nazi Weinfuhrers are profiles, as are significant leaders in France who participated in the movement of wine during that time, I found myself so inspired, I went out and bought bottles of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace and the Loire Valley after reading this! Wine and War is a very easy read book in a fairly informal way that was for this reviewer is a little too less than academic in presentation, a style that I prefer when reading history.
There is a great book out there on this subject in my opinion and someone such as Lizzie Collingham who wrote an exceptional book called The taste of War would have been ideal.
The authors were of a journalistic background and it showed, The coverage was based mainly on the reminiscing of events of various and famous wine families, that unfortunately lacked a seamlessness in delivery that had me scurrying to look up the index as to where these people had been previously mentioned.
This is not usually a problem for me, but the authors seemed to chop the stories told around a little too haphazardly,

Be that as it may, there is a lot to learn, That the Nazis placed expert bureaucrats called Weinführers into the various appellations to supervise the purchasing of France's great wines for transport back to Germany was a new one for me.
Some were very good in their dealings with the French wine industry, others less so, That the US and British Intelligence tracked the enemy troop strength via shipment of wine back to Germany I had not previously known, Dietrich Von Choltitzs decision to not lay waste to Paris was made after a conversation with Pierre Taittinger I had no previous memory of reading,

Being a breezy anecdotal book it also had some moments of humour, The authors quote Wynford VaughnThomas from a book called How I Liberated Burgundy, The French Military gave an unnamed US Colonel through VaughnThomas a gift of fine wines from aboutvineyards,
VaughanThomas was quoted from his book as follows


These are the greatest wines of France, Guard them with care rest them then make sure they are room temperature before they are served,
“Dont worry, replied the American, The doc knows all about this Frog liquor, and well invite the French over to drink it,
The Americans held a lavish reception trumpets were sounded and a column of waiters entered, bearing the precious burgundy on silver trays, But to his horror, VaughanThomas saw that the wines were gently bubbling in the bottles, Were in luck, whispered an American colonel, the docs hotted up the stuff with medicinal alcohol,
“The French were aghast, All eyes turned to General de Monsabert, he had led them, through North Africa and Italy, but this was the moment of crisis, He stood up, fixed his eyes on his staff and ordered them to take up their glasses,
To our comrades in arms, les braves Americans, he declared, before draining his glass to the last drop, Then in a low voice that only his close neighbours could hear, he murmured: Liberation, liberation, what crimes have been committed in thy name!” Indeed!

Maybe not my type of presentation, but I do recommend this to anyone that has an interest in the subject.
This was an interesting enough book but it really never had me where I couldn't put it down, Since the story never really pulled me in I felt lost sometimes among the many people discussed in the book, Going back to the invasion of Napoleonic France when the Widow Cliquot shamed Russians into buying champagne rather than looting itand created an international brand in the process, the French government and people involved in the wine industry knew that the materials, land and stores of French wine were significant cultural and economic treasures requiring protectionfor morale, as well as the potential survival of the expertise and means to restart production after the war.
The Kladstrups follow the activities of five families as they mocked up ancient looking false walls and all those tunnels and caves worked well to hide people and get downed pilots to safety, sent plonk to Nazis who mistook it for the good stuff, engaged in elaborate bureaucratic exercises in obsfucation and enlisted the Vichy government to help them lie and evade.
This is very much a true and French version of the Secret of Santa Vittoria, This is the epitome of a modern, awesome history book: it takes on an unusual angle, the role of wine and winemakers in World War II, and tells a tale of resistance and endurance in an engaging, enlightening manner.
Wine is France. The Germans knew it. Claiming French wine was part of the overall subjugation and brutalization of the French people,

I was awed at the ways that winemakers fought back, from smuggling people in wine barrels no easy lid removals, eitherbarrels had to be completely deconstructed, to hiding Jewish friends and downed American pilots in rooms next door to German soldiers, to trying to engineer copper sulfate for wine production with Germans all aroundand dogfights overhead.
Wow. This book is a fast, easy read, but one with a lot of depth, When I first read reviews of this, there was an awful lot of gushing about how magnificent it was that the French had doggedly withheld much of their best wines from the Germans during the occupation, often by hiding it in cellars and secret rooms, and as much as I like wine, I couldn't help but note that perhaps people who had the wherewithal to hide stuff from the Germans might have focused their energies on hiding other things as well.
My interest was caught enough, though, that I picked this up when I had the chance, I realized even at the time that I was being a bit unfair and snarky, and now I think the reviews were a bit unfair to this book by focusing so much on the wine.
This is a collection of personal stories about the French wine makers and their experiences during Vichy, and many of them are simply remarkable, such as Jean Huet's Clos du Bourg time as a POW, Bernard de Nonancourt LaurentPerrier joining the Resistance, and the Miailhe family PichonLalande indeed harboring Jewish families in a hidden annex.
And for winelovers, there are still plenty of anecdotes about French wine culture, It's a very patriotic book, from reading it one would get the impression that every man, woman and child in France was actively and cheerfully involved in sabotaging the Reich it's a little light on the complexity and ambiguity of the occupied France.


Grade: B
Recommended: This is really a tribute book, it's not too heavy on the social analysis, but even so, it's a frisky read, People who like wine, have visited French wine country, or are interested in WWII or French history would most likely enjoy this as light, inspirational reading, You'll certainly be inspired to seek out some good wine,
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