The Collapse of the Third Republic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since January 2007. |
The Collapse of the Third Republic, An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 by William L. Shirer, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, deals with the collapse of the French Third Republic in 1940 at the outset of Hitler's Western invasion during World War II.
The Collapse of the Third Republic of France, though a result of numerous factors, can be partly explained by the Dreyfus Affair. France has a history of ideological and political fragmentation manifest in political uprisings and turmoil. The passion behind France's multi-faceted ideological wings were perhaps never manifested as clearly as they were in the Dreyfus Affair during the Third Republic. The Dreyfus Affair presented an open opportunity for the various differences in ideology to be publicized and dealt with publicly. The infamous affair brought to surface the reality of an antagonistic rivalry between orthodoxy and secularism—a gateway to all of France's other ideological arenas—in French society, and set-off what would ultimately result in the final chapters of the Third Republic.
The Dreyfus Affair was about anti-Semitism. The collapse of the Third Republic was due to the inept French military and French cowardice in the face of the superior German Blitzkrieg military tactics.
