The Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s and the violent controversies that surrounded it appeared to pass two very different judgments on the France of the Third Republic. The outcome o the trial -- Captain Dreyfus convicted without guilt and the real traitor acquitted despite guilt -- demonstrated without question the extraordinary hypocrisy of the military justice system. But the furor raised by Dreyfus' conviction and the agitation for his release suggested that the injustice of the courts' verdict was uncharacteristic of French society; that for France as a nation the rendering of justice was...
The Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s and the violent controversies that surrounded it appeared to pass two very different judgments on the France of the...
Although victorious in World War I, the French of the Third Republic soon learned the devastating price of success. The grave loss of life and incredibly harsh conditions during and after the war shook survivors to the core. The extraordinary suffering would eventually bring about the collective failure of national nerve in the 1930s that led to the appeasement at Munich and the collapse before German invasion in June 1940. But during the Apres Guerre - the half decade following World War I - the French held out hope for a return to the ideal conditions of the Belle Epoque, a hope that...
Although victorious in World War I, the French of the Third Republic soon learned the devastating price of success. The grave loss of life and incredi...
"When Benjamin Martin's latest report from the front of French fallibility does not read like a tragedy, whose end is foreordained, it reads like a melodrama: sensational doings punctuated by catchy melodies like 'L'Internationale' and 'La Marseillaise.' In both cases it reads well.... French life in the run-up to World War II was a gangrenous decomposition, to be followed by still worse. The country's leaders found nary a pratfall that they could avoid. They chose a semblance of peace above honor and ended up with neither.... In spite of a masterful prologue, successful synthesis, elegant...
"When Benjamin Martin's latest report from the front of French fallibility does not read like a tragedy, whose end is foreordained, it reads like a...
