Book excerpt: "Richard Vinen's book shows how the Occupation seeped into everyone's lives. He brings to life the fear and the moral nightmares of this world - a world emptied of young men (festering in POW camps or working in the Reich), of chronic shortages, desperate compromises, racism and violence. He tries to see the Occupation through the eyes of the least privileged French people, as well as capturing the oddities of the period. Why, for example, did certain young gentile French people choose to wear the yellow star in 1942? Why did so many Parisian criminals impersonate policemen? Why did some French prisoners of war return from Germany with Polish lovers?"--BOOK JACKET.