Hollow Years : France in the 1930s - 96 edition

Summary: Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve. Brilliantly chronicled here by a master historian, this fateful era could neither solve insoluble problems nor escape from them.

It was not all bad. The First World War had paved the way for millions, men and women alike, out of farm or domestic service into more satisfying employment, and more stores now catered t ...show moreo middling and working folk. There were fewer servants but more labor-saving devices; social legislation, modern conveniences, greater leisure made life a little better. Yet when depression struck a brittle economy, new claimants to jobs outside the home as well as other workers saw meager wages dwindle; some turned to prostitution to make ends meet. The French grumbled, tightened belts, struck, rioted, and when all else failed, turned against foreigners: "unwanted strangers, intruders, parasites, speaking in strange accents and cooking with strange smells." Artists and intellectuals, raging at the bourgeoisie, tore at the hands that fed them. Distractions, such as films, and sports which found new professionals and spectators failed to dispel the sense of imminent catastrophe, exasperated by political unrest. Though living in a house full of children and servants, Edmee Renaudin, one of many people crowding Weber's pages, felt herself "alone, tired, afraid of death, given to sudden wakings and long insomnia. It was fear of war." When the war came in 1939, her country was still unprepared. After nine months of "phony war," Hitler's forces struck defenses once considered impregnable and, in a few weeks, the hollow years gave way to harrowing years of occupation.

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Edition/Copyright: 96
Cover: Print On Demand
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Published: 04/01/1996
International: No

View Author Bio

Weber, Eugen : University of California-Los Angeles

Author and narrator of the PBS program "The Western Tradition," Eugen Weber is the Joan Palevsky Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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"[Told with] learning and verve. . . . A scintillating introduction to this troubled French decade."

--Charles S. Maier, New York Times Book Review

"With the superb mastery of detail that we have come to expect from him, Weber makes the France of the 1920s and 1930s live before our eyes."

--Peter Gay, Yale University

"A brilliant survey of the key aspects of French life in the decade before the debacle . . . rendered in lighthearted, witty, but unfailingly perceptive commentary."

--Fritz Stern, Foreign Affairs

"A deft and delightful book about a disastrous period of French history. . . . Sharp, witty, and wise commentary on French social and political life in the 1930s. . . . Mr. Weber's swift and shrewd narrative provides us with a brilliant panorama."

--Stanley Hoffmann, Wall Street Journal

"[An] arresting and readable portrait of the interwar years."

--Boston Sunday Globe

"Couldn't be more timely. . . . Dazzling scholarship."

--New York Newsday

W.W. Norton & Company Publishers Web Site, April, 2001