The Great War that engulfed Europe between 1914 and 1918 was a
catastrophe for France. French soil was the site of most of the fighting
on the Western Front. French dead were more than 1.3 million, the
permanently disabled another 1.1 million, overwhelmingly men in their
twenties and thirties. The decade and a half before the war had been
years of plenty, a time of increasing prosperity and confidence
remembered as the Belle Epoque or the good old days. The two decades
that followed its end were years of want, loss, misery, and fear. In
1914, France went to war convinced of victory. In 1939, France went to
war dreading defeat.
To explain the burden of winning the Great War and embracing the
collapse that followed, Benjamin Martin examines the national mood and
daily life of France in July 1914 and August 1939, the months that
preceded the two world wars. He presents two titans: Georges Clemenceau,
defiant and steadfast, who rallied a dejected nation in 1918, and
Edouard Daladier, hesitant and irresolute, who espoused appeasement in
1938 though comprehending its implications. He explores novels by a
constellation of celebrated French writers who treated the Great War and
its social impact, from Colette to Irène Némirovsky, from François
Mauriac to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And he devotes special attention to
Roger Martin du Gard, the1937 Nobel Laureate, whose roman-fleuve The
Thibaults is an unrivaled depiction of social unraveling and
disillusionment.
For many in France, the legacy of the Great War was the vow to avoid any
future war no matter what the cost. They cowered behind the Maginot
Line, the fortifications along the eastern border designed to halt any
future German invasion. Others knew that cost would be too great and
defended the "Descartes Line" liberty and truth, the declared values of
French civilization. In his distinctive and vividly compelling prose,
Martin recounts this struggle for the soul of France.
