France 1940: Defending the Republic by Philip Nord (review)

Reviews 249 of menstruation, sex, procreation and pregnancy, and (rare) cases of menstruating men and bleeding hermaphrodites, demonstrates that early modern French attitudes were much more complex,nuanced,and frequently ambivalent than has been previously stated. The ramifications of McClive’s analysis of menstruation are far-reaching and implicate our analyses of a broad range of historical, political, cultural, and biological issues, such as definitions of embodiment, sex, and gender, as well as procreation, patriarchy, and patrilineage. McClive’s stated goal through this work is to expand historical discussions of early modern menstruation and to encourage comparative approaches to this important and currently “emotive” field of study. Her original and fascinating study will be of tremendous interest to students and scholars of early modern history, politics, theology, gender, and culture studies. Northern Arizona University Erika E. Hess Nord, Philip. France 1940: Defending the Republic. New Haven: Yale UP, 2015. ISBN 978-0-300-18987-2. Pp. 189. $27. The early chapters of World War Two were not very glorious for France, but one of the author’s stated goals is to make the case for a more sympathetic understanding of France’s devastating defeat. This is a refreshing perspective in the light of the nottoo -distant French-bashing of the Iraq war period and the use by some of“cheese-eating surrender monkeys”to refer to the French people. This book offers an overview of the events leading up to the Pétain regime: the diplomatic tribulations that preceded the war; the military defeat of May–June 1940; and the ensuing disintegration of the Third Republic. The author also strives to dispel the long-held view that France lost the war in 1940 because of societal decline and disinclination to fight. Instead, he assigns most of the blame to the army command’s mistakes. One of the book’s most thoughtprovoking argumentative strategies is that the author keeps putting French historical developments in perspective with those of its allies, to show that France did not in fact fare that much worse than any of them. For example, whereas the so-called strange defeat of 1940 is often read as a reflection on the French alone, Nord argues that it was neither strange nor unique, as similar outcomes affected not only Belgium and Holland, which have received “a free pass” (87), but also Britain, the United States, and Russia, all of which suffered crushing defeats in the first years of the war. Similarly, Nord points out that France’s long-war strategy (to avoid huge loss of life) of defense and containment to grind down the enemy until industrial might allowed a decisive strike, is the strategy that eventually won the war for the Allies. The author remarks that France’s problem is that the line did not hold, “unlike the Channel, the Atlantic, or the Russian steppes”(102).What is truly strange, in Nord’s mind, is that the French government did not make a concerted effort to relocate to Britain or part of its colonial empire to continue the fight.The author aims to provide an explanation for this unique outcome, which leads to the main point of his book: that a coalition of extreme-right leaders terminated French democracy in the wake of military defeat. Contrary to the widespread belief that the demise of the Third Republic was the whole political class’s doing, Nord argues that the Republic was“cornered into self-destruction”(111) by an alliance of army brass and senior civil servants who were “dead set on democracy’s demise”(152) and on regime change. To better account for this takeover, he underlines that democracy was still a novel concept in the light of recent history, like royalist electoral victories in 1871 and 1873,authoritarian threats like Boulanger and MacMahon, or fascist sympathizers in the 1930s. This book is a great read for a fresh look at the somber turn of events of the late 1930s and a comprehensive understanding of what unfolded. Southwestern University (TX) Francis Mathieu Ramakrishnan, Mahadevi, and R. Scott Smith. Interplay of Cultural Narratives in Martinique: French, African, and Indian Journeys toward a Pluralistic Society. Pompano Beach, FL: Caribbean Studies, 2015...