The Embrace of Unreason

by Frederick Brown

  December: Italy quits the League of Nations.

  ___________________________

  Malraux, who fought with the republicans in Spain, publishes his novel about the Spanish Civil War, L’Espoir (Man’s Hope).

  Jean Renoir makes a powerful case against war with his film La Grande Illusion.

  Louis Aragon, a founder of the Surrealist movement and the author of novels that dramatize his conversion to Marxist-Leninism, becomes the effective director of Commune, a journal committed to mobilizing intellectuals in the war against Spanish Fascism.

  Céline writes the first of several virulently anti-Semitic tracts, Bagatelles pour un Massacre (Trifles for a Massacre).

  1938

  January–April: Political instability is the rule, with Chautemps and Blum each briefly revisiting the Hôtel Matignon before Daladier establishes residence there for the third time, supported by a large majority of conservatives. For the third time, as well, the franc is devalued.

  March: Hitler absorbs Austria in the Anschluss.

  September: At the Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg, Hitler announces his intention to “rescue” Germans living in Czechoslovakia’s westernmost province, the Sudetenland. France (Daladier) and England (Chamberlain) sanction the annexation at a conference in Munich, to which no Czech representative is invited.

  October: Daladier’s minister of finance, Paul Reynaud, prepares executive decrees the effect of which will be the annulment of several key Popular Front reforms. The decrees also provide for the arrest of foreigners.

  November 9–10: Kristallnacht in Germany and Austria. After the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a young Jew whose family had been evicted from their house in Hanover, Jews are killed and Jewish shops and synagogues burned and vandalized in a series of coordinated attacks which leave streets littered with broken glass, giving the event its name—Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On November 11, the twentieth anniversary of the Armistice, Le Figaro reports, “A kind of madness seized the German population and hatred of the Jewish race reached its peak today, convulsively. Jews of every age, men and women alike, have been set upon, in their houses as well as on the street. Only two have been killed, but in Vienna a wave of deep despair has led to twenty suicides.” Far from commenting on the event, Charles Maurras’s daily column is a rant against the Jewish minister of education, Jean Zay.

  In an official communiqué, Mussolini laments the hospitality France offers Jews and other “parasites.” In France a wave of refugees, mainly from Germany and Spain, provokes xenophobic outcries.

  December: Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German minister of foreign affairs, arrives in Paris to sign an agreement of “mutual understanding” with the Daladier government, only a month after Kristallnacht.

  ___________________________

  The French Communist Party launches an evening daily, Ce Soir, and appoints Louis Aragon its editor in chief.

  George Orwell publishes Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

  Jean-Paul Sartre publishes his first novel, La Nausée.

  1939

  January: The first internment camp for refugees opens in the mountainous region of central France.

  February: France officially recognizes Franco Spain, although nationalist troops will not occupy Madrid until late March. Franco thereupon subscribes to the Anti-Comintern Pact.

  March: Germany annexes Bohemia and Moravia.

  April–May: Germany renounces the nonaggression treaty signed with Poland in January 1934. Italy and Germany form a military alliance dubbed the “Pact of Steel.”

  Countries are scrambling to make preparations for war. A Franco-British mission visits Moscow to discuss military aid but fails to read Stalin’s ulterior design. On August 23, to the shock and dismay of European Conmmunists, he signs a nonaggression pact with Hitler, which includes a secret protocol mapping the division of spoils in Eastern Europe. L’Humanité declares in a front-page headline that the pact serves the cause to which the USSR has always devoted itself: world peace. The paper is suppressed after August 26. In September, Communists will be banished from France’s confederation of trade unions, the CGT.

  September 1: Germany invades Poland. France mobilizes and declares its intention to honor its commitments to Poland but conducts no serious military operation at its frontier with Germany.

  September 26: The French Communist Party is dissolved. Communist deputies who have defended the Hitler-Stalin pact will soon be arrested and brought to trial.

  November 30: The USSR invades Finland, where fighting will continue until March. The Finns have the better of it in every respect but numbers, which finally prevail.

  ___________________________

  Gallimard publishes Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s pro-Fascist novel Gilles.

  1940

  March: Daladier is unseated and replaced by Paul Reynaud, vice president of the center-right Democratic Republican Alliance. Reynaud is one of the few French politicians who will later endorse Winston Churchill’s proposal that France and the United Kingdom combine their governments in the war against the Axis powers.

  May 10: The eight-month “phony war” of German and French troops stalling one another at the border ends when Germany attacks the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Immense numbers of civilians flee south, toward the Loire and beyond. A French counteroffensive fails.

  June 13: Pétain calls for an armistice, opposing Reynaud, who has brought him into the government as vice premier. Three days later Reynaud resigns and Pétain is appointed premier by the president of the Republic.

  June 17: Pétain requests an armistice, which is signed four days later at Rethondes, where the same enemies signed an armistice on November 11, 1918. In the meanwhile, General Charles de Gaulle has broadcast a message of resistance on the BBC from London.

  July 10: Deputies and senators who had fled from Paris to Bordeaux and then to Vichy confer upon Pétain (now entitled chief of state) full power to revise the constitution. Only 80 in an assembly of 667 vote against the measure. It marks the death of the Third Republic.

  Index

  Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

  Abetz, Otto, epi.1, epi.2

  Académie Française, 3.1, 8.1

  Ackermann, Louise

  Action Française, L’ (movement), 1.1, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 10.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1

  Action Française, L’ (publication), 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1, 6.2, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 10.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3

  Agadir, 5.1, 5.2

  “Agent Double, L’ ” (Drieu La Rochelle)

  Alexander I, King of Serbia, 1.1, 1.2

  Alfonso XIII, King of Spain

  Allied powers, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, epi.1

  Almanach des Lettres Françaises et Étrangères

  Almereyda, Miguel, see Vigo, Eugène

  À l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs (Proust),

  Alsace, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 5.1, 10.1

  Ami du Peuple, L’, 9.1n

  Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne

  anticlericalists, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 7.1

  anti-Fascism, 10.1, 10.2

  anti-Semitism, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, epi.1

  Apollinaire, Guillaume, 6.1, 7.1, 10.1

  Appel au Soldat, L’ (Barrès),

  Aragon, Louis, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.1, 8.2, 10.1, 10.2, 11.1, epi.1

  Dada movement and, 7.1, 7.2

  Surrealism and, 8.1, 10.1, 10.2

  arbres de la liberté (liberty trees), ix–x

  armistice agreements, 4.1, 6.1

  Arp, Hans

  art, 5.1, 7.1, 8.1, 10.1, 10.2

  “Art Poétique” (Verlaine)

  assassinations, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 6.1, 6.2, 9.1

  Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists, 10.1, 10.2

  Assommoir, L�
�� (Zola), 2.1n

  Athens

  Auriol, Vincent

  Aurore, L’

  Au Sans Pareil bookstore, 7.1

  Auschwitz

  Austria, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 11.1

  annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by

  declaration of war on Serbia by, 1.1, 1.2

  automatic writing, 7.1, 7.2

  Avenir Familial, L’

  Babel, Isaac, 10.1, 10.2, 11.1

  Bainville, Jacques, 6.1, 10.1

  Balkan Wars, 1.1, 1.2

  Ball, Benjamin, 2.1, 2.2

  Banque de France, 11.1, 12.1

  Barbarians and Romans (Maurras),

  Barbusse, Henri, 7.1, 10.1, 11.1

  Barnard, George Grey, n

  Barrès, Anne-Marie

  Barrès, Claire Luxer, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 3.1

  Barrès, Jean-Auguste, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1

  Barrès, Jean-Baptiste

  Barrès, Maurice, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1, 7.1, 8.1

  Charles Maurras and, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3

  childhood of, 2.1, 3.1

  depression of, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3

  early education of, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4

  early writing career of, 2.1, 2.2

  as editor of La Cocarde, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3

  family of, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5

  Franco-Prussian War and

  isolation of, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1

  law school and

  at lycée

  marriage of

  monument in Vaudémont and, n

  politics and, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1

  religious instruction of, 2.1, 2.2

  Taches d’Encre, Les

  in Vigo affair

  writings of, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 4.1; see also specific works

  Barrès, Paule Couche, 3.1, 3.2

  Barrès, Philippe, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 9.1

  Bastille Day, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 10.1, 10.2, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3

  Bavaria, 3.1, 3.2

  Bayreuth Festival

  beatification, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4

  Becquart, Henri

  Belgium, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 10.1

  Belgrade, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4

  Benda, Julien, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3

  Benedict XV, Pope, 1.1, 4.1

  Berchtold, Leopold

  Bergery, Gaston, 8.1, 8.2

  Berl, Emmanuel

  Berlin, 1.1, 2.1, 8.1

  Berlin, Treaty of (1878)

  Bernhardi, Friedrich von, n

  Berry, Georges

  Berton, Germaine, 6.1, 6.2

  Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von

  Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche),

  Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

  Binet, Alfred

  Bismarck, Otto von, 2.1, 2.2, 4.1n, 4.2

  Black Hand

  Blanche, Jacques-Émile

  Bloch, Lazare

  Bloc National

  Blomberg, Werner von

  Blum, Léon, 2.1, 3.1, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4n

  Bolsheviks, 6.1, 6.2, 11.1, 12.1

  Bolshevo labor colony

  Bonaparte, Jérôme

  Bonapartists, 2.1, 2.2

  Bonnard, Abel, n

  Bonnemains, Marguerite de, 2.1, 2.2

  Bonnet, Georges

  Bonnet Rouge, Le

  Bontoux, Eugène

  Bordeaux, Henry

  Borges, Jorge Luis, 8.1, 8.2

  Bosnia-Herzegovina

  Boulanger, Georges, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1, 12.1, 12.2

  Boulangists, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1

  Bourdet, Édouard

  Bourget, Paul

  Brasillach, Robert, epi.1n, epi.2

  Brecht, Bertolt

  Brémond, Henri, n

  Breton, André, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 8.2, 10.1, 10.2

  Dada movement and, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3

  in mock trial of Maurice Barrès, 7.1, 7.2

  Surrealism and, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 10.1, 10.2

  Breton, Simone, 8.1

  Briand, Aristide, 1.1, 6.1, 6.2, 8.1, 9.1

  Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928), n

  Brod, Max

  Brogan, Denis

  Brooke, Rupert

  Browning, Robert

  Brussels, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2

  Buchanan, George

  Buchenwald, 7.1n, 12.1n

  Buenos Aires

  Bulletin de L’Action Française, Le, see Action Française, L’ (publication)

  Bulletin de l’Instruction Publique

  Burdeau, Auguste, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1

  Bureau of Criminal Investigation

  Butler, Samuel

  Butte Montmartre

  Cabani, Jean, 2.1, 2.2

  Cachin, Marcel, 1.1n, 6.1

  Cadavre, Un, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3

  Caetani, Cora

  Caetani, Michelangelo, n

  Cagoule, La (“the Hood”), 12.1, 12.2

  Caillaux, Henriette, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 6.1

  Caillaux, Joseph, 1.1, 6.1, 8.1

  Calmette, Gaston, 1.1, 3.1

  Cambodia

  Camelots du Roi, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 10.1

  Campagne Nationaliste (Soury),

  Cannes film festival, n

  canonical texts

  Carnot, Sadi, 2.1, 3.1

  Cartel des Gauches, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.1

  cartographers

  Castelnau, Noël de

  casus foederis

  Catholicism, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 5.1, 9.1

  Cauchon, Pierre

  Cavaignac, Godefroy

  Céline, Louis-Ferdinand

  censorship, 7.1, 9.1

  CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail), 1.1, 1.2, 6.1

  Chamber of Deputies, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1, 6.1, 6.2, 10.1, 11.1

  Auguste Burdeau and

  Georges Boulanger and, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2

  Jean Jaurès and

  Joan of Arc holiday and

  Léon Blum and, 10.1, 11.1

  Léon Daudet and

  Maurice Barrès and, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 4.1

  Panama Canal Scandal and

  Paul Painlevé and

  Yvon Delbos and

  Champagne, 3.1, 7.1, 8.1

  Champs-Élysées, 8.1, 9.1, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2

  Champs Magnétiques, Les (Breton and Soupault),

  Charcot, Jean, 2.1, 2.2

  Charleroi

  Charmes, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1

  Charpentier, Marcel

  Châteaubriant, Alphonse, 11.1, 11.2

  Château Rouge

  Chaumié, Pierre

  Chautemps, Camille, 9.1, 9.2, 11.1, 12.1

  Chef, Le (Drieu La Salle),

  Chemin des Dames, 3.1, 3.2, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3

  Chiang Kai-shek

  Chiappe, Jean, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1

  Chirico, Giorgio de, 8.1

  chromolithographs

  church and state, separation of, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1

  Churchill, Winston, 1.1, 8.1n, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2

  Church of St. Vincent de Paul, 8.1, 9.1

  cigarettes, 1.1, 2.1

  classical literature

  Claudel, Paul, 8.1, 10.1, epi.1

  Clemenceau, Georges, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4

  Clément, Colette

  Clermont-Ferrand

  coal industry, 6.1, 10.1

  Cocarde, La, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 5.1

  Collège Catholique, 5.1, 5.2

  Collège de France

  Collignon, Albert

  Combes, Émile, 7.1, 8.1n

  Comédie de Charleroi, La (Drieu La Rochelle),

  Comintern, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 11.1

  Comité du Secours National

  Comité National des Écrivains

  Comité Républicain de Protestation Nationale, 2.1
, 2.2, 2.3

  Communists, 4.1, 6.1, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 12.1, 12.2

  see also Parti Communiste Français

  “completed civilization,”

  Comte de Paris, 2.1, 12.1

  Condition Humaine, La (Malraux), 8.1, 9.1, 10.1

  Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), 1.1, 1.2, 6.1

  Confiance, La

  Congo, 5.1, 10.1

  Congress of European Writers

  Constans, Ernest

  Corday, Charlotte

  Correspondant, Le

  Corydon (Gide), 11.1n

  Coty, François

  Couche, Paule, see Barrès, Paule Couche

  Council of Five Hundred

  Courrier de l’Est, Le

  Cousin, Victor, n

  Crémieux, Benjamin, n

  Crevel, René

  Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Le (France),

  Crise du Capitalism Américain, La (Jouvenel), 9.1n

  Croix, La, 4.1, 4.2, 11.1, 12.1

  Croix de Feu, Ligue des, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 11.1, 11.2

  Culte du Moi, Le (Barrès), 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 7.1, 8.1, 10.1

  culture

  see also art; film; theater

  Czechoslovakia, 11.1, 12.1

  Dada movement, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6

  Daladier, Édouard, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4n

  Dalimier, Albert

  Darquier de Pellepoix, Louis

  Darracq de Suresnes

  Darwin, Charles

  Dato, Isabel

  Daudet, Alphonse, 5.1, 6.1

  Daudet, Léon, 3.1, 6.1, 6.2, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 10.1

  Daudet, Philippe, 6.1n, 9.1

  Davies, Joseph E.

  Dawes, Charles G.

  Dawes Commission

  de Gaulle, Charles, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4

  Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Manet),

  De l’Amour (Stendhal), 10.1n

  Delavigne, Casimir

  de Lesseps, Ferdinand, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4

  Deloncle, Eugène

  demonstrations, 1.1, 4.1, 4.2, 6.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 10.1, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4

  Déracinés, Les (Barrès), 2.1, 2.2, 3.1

  Déroulède, Paul, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2

  Descartes, René

  Deslandes, Madeleine, n

  Desnos, Robert, 8.1

  Devil’s Island

  Devoir et l’Inquiétude, Le (Éluard),

  Dictionnaire Philosophique (Voltaire),