Featured Title
Prière de communiquer avec Mme Anne Confuron, 70, bd de Picpus, Paris 12e, (01) 43 40 02 10 anneconfuron@hotmail.com
Mme Confuron qui représente Montréal-Contacts/The Rights Agency se fera un plaisir de répondre à vos questions
et de vous faire parvenir un exemplaire du livre pour examen.
FDR'S 12 APOSTLES
The Spies Who Paved the Way for the Invasion of North Africa
by HAL VAUGHAN
Éditeur:  The Lyons Press
Format: 23x15cm (cousu)
Nombre de pages: 336
Prix détail :  24,95US$
Le Livre Présentation L'auteur

Cliquer sur l'image de la couverture pour l'agrandir

Cliquer sur l'image de la couverture arrière pour lire les commentaires

FDR'S 12 APOSTLES de Hal Vaughan publié chez Lyons Press offre un grand potentiel en France. Il s'agit de l'histoire de douze Américains dépêchés par Roosevelt pour préparer le débarquement des Alliés en Afrique du Nord en tant qu'espions sous couverture diplomatique durant la Seconde Grande Guerre.

 

Ce qui frappe particulièrement en lisant ce livre et rend une édition française plus que plausible :

  • L'action se passe en Afrique du Nord française alors sous contrôle de Vichy
  • Elle met en scène les représentants de Vichy au plus haut niveau, collabos ou non, ainsi que leurs opposants et des supporteurs de De Gaulle
  • Les "Douze Apôtres", tous Américains, sont cependant tous francophones et francophiles ayant pour la plupart vécu à Paris ou en France avant l'arrivée des Allemands.
  • Toute l'action est politique autant que militaire et implique les plus hauts dirigeants de Vichy comme ceux des pays alliés.
  • L'auteur, Hal Vaughan, réside à Paris et est parfaitement francophone.

 

Monsieur Vaughan fait remarquer que le livre a été écrit avec un public américain en tête.  Il a volontairement atténué le côté politique français qui avait moins d'attrait pour les Américains.  Il est prêt à collaborer avec un éditeur français pour étoffer cet aspect. Il serait en fait prêt à revoir le livre pour bien l'adapter pour la France. Il a préparé les notes qui suivent au sujet d’une telle adaptation. Il n'y a aussi aucun doute que l'auteur pourrait collaborer très efficacement à la promotion du livre.  

 

Hal W. Vaughan is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, a documentary film producer, and a journalist who has worked for ABC News, the New York Daily News, and Voice of America. As a diplomat and newsman, he has lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

 

He lives with his physician wife in Paris. He is also a consultant to l'Hôpital Américain de Paris.

Hal Vaughan est aussi l'auteur de Doctor to the Resistance dont les droits francophones sont aussi disponibles. Pour plus de détails cliquez ici.

Sommaire Notes de l'auteur

     Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt sent twelve "vice consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a classified assignment. Their objective? To prepare the groundwork for what eventually became Operation TORCH - the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy.

      The twelve Americans included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant from a patrician family; a madcap Harvard anthropologist; a Coca-Cola salesman and Paris playboy who ran with Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation crowd; a rather Elizabethan adventurer-cum-interpreter; a construction expert; a distinguished lawyer; some American ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers; and an Annapolis graduate and hero of WWI. These vice consuls were soon caught up in a web of espionage and treachery that included double-dealing mistresses, Gaullist and Vichy agents, and a homicidal French monk.

      Based on recently declassified foreign records, as well as the memoirs of Ridgeway Brewster Knight (one of the twelve “apostles”), FDR'S 12 Apostles is a fascinating account of international intrigue.

      Set in exotic locales from Paris to Casablanca to Tangier, the story takes us through the pivotal TORCH invasion and the eventual assassination of Vichy French leader Francois Darlan. Hal Vaughan's fast-paced narrative is a potent cocktail of heroic acts and bizarre twists and turns - involving Christians, Muslims, and Jews - in an arena of conspiracy and backstabbing. Hal Vaughan provides the first true look at the intricate and covert planning that planted the seeds of victory in the Mediterranean Theater.
  1. Market opportunities in France 

   Obviously there is a market and much interest in France on all matters pertaining to North Africa and particularly on how the U.S. and Britain (Murphy and his 12 vice consuls) secretly prepared the invasion that brought a part of France back into the war against Germany--and made Admiral Darlan turn against Petain and move to the side of the Allies before his assassination.
    Perhaps a French edition might delve more into the Darlan assassination plot and execution. Certainly, in a French edition one would want to develop the Roosevelt vs Charles de Gaulle conflict; Murphy's manipulation by French right wing elements led by Lemaigre-Dubreuil et cie. and other angles interesting to a French audience.

 

    2. Necessary adaptations.

    For a French version of FDR'S 12 Apostles I believe the book in its present form should be adapted for a French reading audience in its format, style, and content.
       I would develop in separate chapters the relationship that existed between Robert Murphy, President Roosevelt's Special Representative in North Africa, and Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil, the key man in having General Giraud initially selected to run North Africa for General Eisenhower.
    Another chapter would deal with the complex and friendly relations between Murphy and Admiral Darlan up to his assassination in December 1942 and Murphy's actions thereafter on behalf of Roosevelt and Eisenhower.
    A chapter would deal with General Charles de Gaulle's troubled business with both Churchill and Roosevelt before and during the invasion by U.S. and British forces of North Africa with a look at how de Gaulle's staff in London and his agents in Algiers planned the assassination of Darlan.
    I would also develop how the Polish underground in North Africa actually supplied most of the intelligence and clandestine information that Murphy sent to Washington and London to prepare the invasion.

    Concerning the Murphy-Jacques Lemaigre-Dubreuil relationship--Lemaigre-Dubreuil was a strange mixture of French patriot and pseudo-fascist. He and a clique of rightists and monarchists in Algeria had an enormous and detrimental influence on Murphy. (One was La Princesse de Ligne, Murphy's mistress in Algeria.)
    In the end Murphy was led astray and this caused grave misunderstanding in Allied circles, the assassination of Darlan and the arrest of America's allies who were Jews and de Gaulle's best people in Algeria and Morocco.
     
These matters could be elaborated after consultations with a French publisher.