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France and the Origins of the Second World War. By Robert J. Young. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. ISBN 0-312-16186-7. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 191. $16.95.
As the century ends and memory of the long-ago Second World War ebbs just a little in the Western consciousness, it is apparent that the vulgar anglophone version of the war's origins as lying principally in an Anglo-German struggle has not much relaxed its hold. Hitler and Chamberlain-we all know the story. And of course that clown Mussolini, too. And then that little Frenchman also, what was his name? Daladier or something... Wonder whatever became of him? Or, for that matter, of the French themselves after their great upset? Sort of still in the war-De Gaulle and all that tiresome business-but not really doing much of anything. Anyway, not important. The European war is, after all, about Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt.
Robert Young (like others, of course) has laboured to recall for us AngloAmericans that France, a great wounded world power between the...