Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by WilliamL. Shirer

Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940
by WilliamL. Shirer

Why did the French Third Republic collapse in 1940?  This book tries to give an answer to that. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite get there. It is 1000 pages of mistakes, disasters, lost opportunities and conflicts, but never quite gets at the central issue.  Oh, there were many reasons why the French state came apart, everything from the conflict between right and left in the 30s, the unwillingness of the upper classes to pay their fair share to, at its end, strategic and tactical failures in the campaign of 1940.  But there never is a central reason given.

The book is based on a parliamentary report done after the war as well as interviews with those who were alive in the 1960s.  The author, a journalist, does tend to wander into hyperbole on occasion. There are many ominous statements about how this will be key in the collapse of 1940. The problem is: many of them really aren’t, or only partial.  If the French military had had better command and control as well as deployment of tanks, all of the left right debates of the 1930s would have been irrelevant.

I did like that the book dealt with the interwar period from Paris as opposed to most books on this topic which come at it from Berlin, London or Moscow. There are also some interesting character sketches of the major figures.

Mildly recommended, interesting if it never actually answers its own question.