The Collapse of the Third Republic – An Inquiry into the
fall of France in 1940 – by William Shirer
Let me start this review by saying that, although this book
was excellent, it was way too long. Good
Lord was this thing long. With the word
“inquiry” in the subtitle, one wonders if the author forgot that it’s sometimes
helpful to be a bit concise when telling a narrative, and it isn’t necessary to
cover every single point and every single detail of every single event that is
relevant to the subject matter. Being
that I read this on a Kindle (and the Kindle version didn’t have page numbers),
the actual page length was never made known to me. I have a feeling that if I had seen how many
pages this thing actually was, or if I would have seen a hardback version in a
bookstore, I probably would have freaked out and passed.
Now – onto the subject matter. The subject matter is outstanding, and the
history that is taught in this book is necessary. The author’s most famous work was “The Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich”. In many
ways, this book is a companion to that book.
This book is told from the view of the French.
When we think of World War II, what comes to mind when we
think of French people, or French leaders?
Really, not that much. How
come? Weren’t they allies of the United
States and Great Britain? Weren’t they
much more in the forefront of the first World War? How come we never see French soldiers
whenever we see movies about World War II?
And what exactly was “Vichy France”?
Was this France part of the allies?
Or the axis?
To understand such questions, as well as the main question
as to why the Third Republic (i.e. the government of France) collapsed, the
author realizes that one needs to start at the beginning. The “beginning” in this case is France right
after the Prussian-Franco war of 1870.
It’s important that we understand people within a country, and all that
they’ve been through before we can access why they elect to proceed in a
certain manner. Shirer gives us a lot of
history and psyche of the French people since 1870. By the time we get to World
War I, it almost seems a fluke that France prevails and wins the war against
Germany. The “win” though, came at a
very heavy price, and the country of France found themselves decimated with so
many young men killed or maimed.
Germany, being the loser, actually has it worse, though, and
when a Bavarian ex-water colorist plots his rise in Germany to rebuild the
Reich, most want to just close their eyes and hope he goes away. No one wants to fight another war. So we read about the French constantly
looking the other direction every time Hitler makes another conquest. In hindsight, it seems a bit silly that a
country would let this madman walk all over Europe, but the pains from the
Great war were just too hideous. (In all fairness, England and the U.S.
probably could have stopped Hitler as well, but they didn’t want to step into
the conflict for similar reasons).
About half of this book takes place from April to July of
1940. About three months. It will probably take you twice that long just
to read about it here. This is where the
book really drags. Not only do we read
about some of the battles of the war in meticulous detail, but we also have to
hear about the ongoing lengthy day-to-day battles within the French
government. It’s all really too
much. One point that illustrates just as
how protracted this narrative is, occurs when the author is describing the
withdrawal of the English and French at Dunkirk. He tells his readers that the Germans could
have easily defeated France and England and could have prevented them from
escaping across the English Channel, but they made some mistakes that are “too
long to go into detail here”. Well,
instead of going into “too long of a detail” he, instead, gives us a summary. The summary lasts about two pages. After reading this summary, you come to the
conclusion that his “summary” is really all he needs, and he simply doesn’t
need to go into all the detail that he was wanting to go into. One wishes he would have applied this same
process to many other areas of the book.
It's so sad to look at many parts of history in hindsight
when glaring mistakes are in abundance.
We watch the government of France make blunder after blunder with almost
no competent leaders, neither in government nor the military (History tells us
Charles De Gaulle was the exception).
The memories of the first World War were so fresh, that excuse after
excuse is made when the German army butchers country after country and no one
does anything. When France does get
invaded, it almost seems as though the bulk of the citizens simply don’t
care. They’d rather be (peacefully)
overtaken by an enemy army than make any effort to fight.
This book finally ends at the surrender and capitulation of
France in 1940 (with a brief afterward).
The story, however, goes on much longer, but by then, the Third Republic
is gone. As much as I would have liked
to have read about the years following, I was definitely relieved to finally be
done with this thing. I would only
recommend this book for those who have an abundance of patience. A good solid book, but “The Rise and Fall of
the Third Reich” was a much better, more interesting, and more concise narrative
than what we have here.
