 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | William Shirer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | 1969 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 1082 |
| ISBN | 0671203371 |
The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William L. Shirer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969) deals with the collapse of the French Third Republic as a result of Hitler's invasion during World War II. [1]
As a CBS correspondent in Germany during the climactic events under discussion and as a frequent visitor to and correspondent from prewar France, Shirer was left to question how Germany had overrun France within weeks in 1940. Both countries had fought each other for four years in 1914-1918, with France successfully resisting Germany at every turn of battle along the Western Front during World War I.
Shirer, who knew French, did much of his own research for his 1969 book by speaking with surviving politicians and French leaders from the immediate prewar period as well as those who were on duty during the final catastrophe. His conclusion was that France's defeat had been self-inflicted. Unhealed wounds in its civil society, dating back to the 1890s Dreyfus Affair, had left France's political left and right with unassuageable feelings of resentment towards each other.
The 1930s Great Depression further inflamed the feelings of bitterness. The right, in particular, believed that its country's secular leadership was condemning the country to decadence. A badly-divided France tried to avoid war with Adolf Hitler by participating fully in the negotiations at Munich in 1938, but Hitler forced the issue the following year by his invasion of Poland. World War II had begun.
In 1939 and 1940, France faced a united, determined, and technologically-sophisticated enemy. Although it was desperately important for France to match its enemy's traits with determination and unity of its own, French national leaders instead frittered away their final months before the catastrophe in a round of internal hostility, intrigue and backbiting, which led to the restoration of World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain as prime minister.
The French media had become thoroughly corrupt. Newspapers, in particular, were bought and paid for by political factions and served as their mouthpieces.
The German Blitzkrieg defeated the French Army and France's will to fight and resist the invaders. After the Second Armistice at Compiègne, many Frenchmen, especially on the right, believed that their country had deserved to lose the war. Key leaders and politicians, led by the aging Pétain and the corrupt, power-hungry Pierre Laval, stepped in and proclaimed their devotion to the survival of France within a Hitlerian New Order for Europe. Overawing the French Parliament, which had fled occupied Paris and was meeting in exile in the resort town of Vichy, they forced their fellow politicians to grant them full powers to control the remainder of unoccupied France for the remainder of the war.
The Third Republic could not survive that disgrace. After the regime of the Pétainist French State (État français) and the liberation by the Allies, French officials did not restore the former constitution but quickly wrote a new constitution. Its ratification, in October 1946, paved the way for the French Fourth Republic.
Nazi Germany was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe.
The Weimar Republic, officially named the German Reich, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic. The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" not commonly used until the 1930s.
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Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Pétain, commonly known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain, was a French general who attained the position of Marshal of France at the end of World War I, during which he became known as The Lion of Verdun. From 1940 to 1944, during World War II, he served as head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France. Pétain, who was 84 years old when he became Prime Minister, remains the oldest person to become the head of state of France.
The Munich Agreement was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. The agreement provided for the German annexation of land on the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. The pact is also known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal, because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.
Albert François Lebrun was a French politician, President of France from 1932 to 1940. He was the last president of the Third Republic. He was a member of the centre-right Democratic Republican Alliance (ARD).
The French Third Republic was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940, after the Fall of France during World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government.
Paul Reynaud was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Germany.
William Lawrence Shirer was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service, Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what became a CBS radio team of journalists known as "Murrow's Boys". He became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1939–1940). With Murrow, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts.
The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the Third French Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on 25 June.
Fernand de Brinon, Marquis de Brinon was a French lawyer and journalist who was one of the architects of French collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. He claimed to have had five private talks with Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1937.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Georges Mandel was a French journalist, politician, and French Resistance leader.
The Provisional Government of the French Republic was the provisional government of Free France between 3 June 1944 and 27 October 1946, following the liberation of continental France after Operations Overlord and Dragoon, and lasting until the establishment of the French Fourth Republic. Its establishment marked the official restoration and re-establishment of a provisional French Republic, assuring continuity with the defunct French Third Republic.
The Riom Trial was an attempt by the Vichy France regime, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, to prove that the leaders of the French Third Republic (1870–1940) had been responsible for France's defeat by Germany in 1940. The trial was held in the city of Riom in central France, and had mainly political aims – namely to project the responsibility of defeat onto the leaders of the left-wing Popular Front government that had been elected 3 May 1936.
Legislative elections were held in France on 21 October 1945 to elect a Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution for a Fourth French Republic. 79.83% of voters participated. Women and soldiers were allowed to vote. 522 seats were elected through proportional representation.
Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under the harsh terms of the armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted a policy of collaboration. The Occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country, before the Germans and Italians occupied the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Though Paris was ostensibly its capital, the Vichy government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "Free Zone", where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies.
Hélène de Portes, born Hélène Rebuffel,, was a Frenchwoman best remembered for the strong influence she exerted on her lover Paul Reynaud, premier of France under the Third Republic, shortly before and at the time France's June 1940 debacle at the hands of Nazi Germany. A Fascist sympathizer, she was described as '..a middle aged woman, with a shrill voice, and a clamorous, demanding manner, who chatted like a magpie and lost her temper with ease.' Charles de Gaulle called her 'a turkey', while Winston Churchill nicknamed her 'the parrot'.
The Government of Vichy France was the collaborationist ruling regime or government in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Of contested legitimacy, it was headquartered in the town of Vichy in occupied France, but it initially took shape in Paris under Maréchal Philippe Pétain as the successor to the French Third Republic in June 1940. Pétain spent four years in Vichy and after the Allied invasion of France, fled into exile to Germany in September 1944 with the rest of the French cabinet. It operated as a government-in-exile until April 1945, when the Sigmaringen enclave was taken by Free French forces. Pétain was brought back to France, by then under control of the Provisional French Republic, and put on trial for treason.
The French constitutional Law of 2 November 1945 was an interim, transitional constitutional law that set a legal basis for government in France under the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF) for one year until a new constitution was approved.
