German History in France after 1870

To most Frenchmen the defeat of 1870 came as an astounding surprise. If the conflict seemed unavoidable, a national humiliation was not. The initial reaction in France was consequently a fit of self-recrimination. The disgraceful conduct of imperial leadership, the hopelessness of further resistance in the southwest, the civil war in the streets of Paris, the complicity of the provisional government with the conqueror: the events of 1871 continued to flog the nation's pride. It was not until the first jolt had been absorbed after several months of Prussian occupation and the restoration of public discipline that thoughts of retaliation became widespread. Thereafter, in the early years of the Third Republic, revanche was the subject of after-dinner orations, school themes, tombstones, and spirited chansons in the Parisian cafes. Gambetta's admonition notwithstanding, the French constantly spoke and wrote about their loss (how often was the fair damsel Alsace portrayed as a captive virgin ?). And yet revenge was not a passion which finally prevailed in military strategy, in politics, in literature, or in the writing of history. 1 However dubiously one may regard the alleged influence of Madame de Stael, the generalization stands that France had been substantially germanophile before I870.2 The curiosity is that the affinity for things German survived the war and, if anything, was enhanced by it. There was, of course, bitterness and hostility enough. But the French tended to look eastward in a mood more

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• Unfinished Business

  Open Access•Allan Mitchell•Central European History•1969

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