This book contributes in important ways to three distinct historical arguments. First and foremost, it is a significant addition to a still small, but growing, literature on the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), an organization founded in 1898 at the height of the Dreyfus Affair which lay at the very centre of French Republican politics in the era of the two world wars. It posits that the Ligue was half-dead by its own hand by 1937—well before the Nazi invasion of May 1940—because of its inability to resolve the question of war guilt from the Great War. The issue of war origins and war guilt ... More

This book contributes in important ways to three distinct historical arguments. First and foremost, it is a significant addition to a still small, but growing, literature on the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), an organization founded in 1898 at the height of the Dreyfus Affair which lay at the very centre of French Republican politics in the era of the two world wars. It posits that the Ligue was half-dead by its own hand by 1937—well before the Nazi invasion of May 1940—because of its inability to resolve the question of war guilt from the Great War. The issue of war origins and war guilt transfixed it from 1914 down to the Second World War. Secondly, this book expands our understanding of the aetiology of French pacifism, thereby allowing for a deeper awareness of the differences between French and Anglo-American pacifism. It argues that from 1916 onwards one can see a principled dissent from the Union sacrée war effort that occurred within mainstream French Republicanism and not on the syndicalist or anarchist fringes. Finally, the book proposes a new explanatory model to help us understand some of the choices made in Vichy France, moving beyond the usual triptych of collaboration, resistance, or accommodation. This study is based on substantial research in a large number of French archives, primarily in the papers of the LDH which were repatriated to France from the former Soviet Union in late 2001, but also on considerable research in German archives—something other historians of the Ligue have not done. There is thus an exciting primacy of discovery here.