Benjamin F. Martin: France in 1938

I already returned this book to the Lycoming College library (what a wonderful place) - but I am trying to post on the books I read, so I'll go ahead with a few remarks:

This book is easy to read, goes into just enough detail about the past to make 1938 intelligible, and parallels the commentary on the political machinations of that year with descriptions of the trials that mesmerized the public, movies and fashion, and descriptions of the two books Sartre wrote in response to the events of 1938. Unfortunately, I cannot remember what the titles of these works are. But the main character in each of them, who could represent France or Sartre, respectively, is a man paralyzed by indecision because each responsible decision he could make would be a loss of freedom. He is a man consumed by longing and terrified by responsibility and so he refuses to act.

As for the politicians, it seems that:

a) the fear of Communism and a worker's revolution both hamstrung French efforts to implement a war economy (i.e. repealing the forty-hour work week to increase production) and threw enough support to Germany as a counter-weight to the Soviet Union to swing minds away from confrontation with Germany;

b) the defensive mentality of Generals Gamelin and Petain, to name two, meant that the French did not believe that they could win a war with Germany and thus never had a plan to win once that war came. It was a key factor in France not marching in 1936 nor to come to the aid of Austria or Czechoslovakia in 1938. The French relied on alliance with the British and the Maginot Line. Because Britain (led by Chamberlain and Halifax) did not want to fight either, France took the easy way of believing that Hitler could be appeased.

c) Finally, the anti-semitism still pervasive in the right wing meant that any move against Germany could be seen as overly supporting the Jews. The Germans and rightly so bear guilt for the Holocaust, however, it should not be denied that anti-Jewish feelings in the rest of Europe aided and abetted the Nazi attitude, if not the methodology.