Annie Lacroix-Riz

Her research interests are on the political, economic and social history of the French Third Republic and the Vichy regime,^[2][3][4] the relations between the Vatican and the Reich,^[5][6][7] as well as the "strategies of the French elites" before and after the Second World War.^[8][9][10]

In her early works, examining post-war reconstruction of France, Lacroix-Riz studied labor union tensions, investigating issues within the General Confederation of Labour union (French: Confédération Générale du Travail, CGT),^[11][12] the work of the communist minister of Labor and syndicalist Ambroise Croizat on social labor reforms,^[13] and American trade unionist Irving Brown’s involvement in the labor movement of France. Subsequent works by Lacroix-Riz probe American influence in Europe, as, for example in Sweden,^[14] and in the French colonies of North Africa,^[15][16] questioning the motives of the Marshall Plan.^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

One of her primary theses is that the profit-driven complicity of French industrial and financial institutions in the rise of Nazi Germany contributed to France's 1940 defeat,^{[22][23][24][25][26][27]} paving ultimately the path to U.S ascendancy in Europe.^[24][17]

Lacroix-Riz's writings on the 1930s and WWII, particularly regarding financial and industrial interests, the fascist group La Cagoule, her views on Synarchism and the 1930s famine in Ukrainian^[28] have been met with varying responses. On one hand, she is recognized for the detailed and comprehensive nature of her work, rooted in archival evidence.^[2][26][4] On the other hand, her work sometimes faces criticism for ostensible anti-capitalist bias, a criticism based on her challenges of traditional perspectives and conventional narratives.^[29][4][30]

• Strange Defeat