Seventy-six years ago, France was conquered by Nazi forces. It was then divided, occupied and controlled by the German and Italian Axis. Six weeks previous, the Germans had been in Poland and the French were waiting passively behind their fortifications. How did the nation that had held out during the four years of World War i collapse after just six weeks in World War ii? The answer is complex, but its exploration reveals a folly of man: the amazing ability to ignore danger and a willingness to follow the intellectuals of the day.

Many studies of the French and German armies concluded that there was little difference in their strength on paper. The overwhelming disparity in performance came from a difference, not in firepower, but in mind-set.

Countries that had first gone off enthusiastically to fight in the Great War were left devastated by the horrific catastrophes of trench warfare. Within this atmosphere, a sweeping intellectual change occurred.

With the Christian worldview thoroughly cast off by many of the intellectuals of the day, elites would look to their own reasoning to explain the events to come. They no longer applied the warning of the Prophet Jeremiah: “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” With this change of view, humans were incapable of being the enemy; war itself was the enemy.

The French suffered greatest among the Western democracies in World War I, as much of the fighting occurred on their territory. A population of around 40 million saw 8.4 million men go off to war and nearly 1.4 million never come back. Half of those who survived had been injured, and over 1 million of those had been gassed, disfigured, mangled, amputated and left permanent invalids. In France, more than any other democracy, the enticing, but ultimately deceiving, philosophy of pacifism was planted deepest.

Teaching Pacifism

The war of ideas began in the classrooms. As many countries have done since, authorities altered student textbooks to promote the antiwar mood. Prior to World War i, schools and textbooks had been used to improve national morale.

“I hope,” wrote France’s minister of public instruction as teachers prepared for the 1914 academic year, “that on the day schools reopen, in every town and every class, the teacher’s first words to his students will raise their hearts to the fatherland and that his first lesson will honor the sacred battle in which our armies are engaged.”

“For a long time still there will be querulous nations,” one textbook stated, “let us remain strong to respond to brutal foreign aggression with force but also work to help spread the ideas of justice, peace and humanity among all citizens and all peoples.”

But the attitude did not last long. History professor Mona Siegel tracked the changes in her book The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism and Patriotism. Even as World War i was raging, protests from teachers labeled as “defeatists” became more common:

The government moved rapidly to silence teachers who protested too loudly or publicly, removing them from their jobs, fining them and, in a few cases, imprisoning them. Ironically, government repression of “defeatist” teachers drew attention to their cause and evoked sympathy from many of their war-weary colleagues. By the mid-1920s, the pacifist beliefs articulated by this small minority from 1914 to 1918 would become the reigning ideology among teachers nationwide.

War not only had taken France’s sons, it had wrecked its infrastructure and economy. Rebuilding the devastated areas was a cost that drained government finances. International trade was disorganized because of the war, debts piled up, and inflation ran rampant. Political groups that were pushed aside during the war began to aggressively reappear: The wealthy classes and conservative peasants were pitted against the socialists and bureaucrats. In short, France’s landscape was ripe for new intellectual solutions.

In just a few years after the war, textbooks that portrayed the war as “heroic French soldiers” triumphing over the tyranny of “brutal German ‘Huns’” were labeled as “bellicose” and had to be replaced. Gaston Clémendot, a school teacher and author of history books, was one of the major figures who decried the 1919–1924 French textbooks as having “a warlike spirit and a patriotic, nationalistic and accusing tone toward Germany.”

Clémendot feared that the history lessons given to the children of France “inspired hatred of foreigners, glorified the experience of battle, and laid the moral groundwork for future wars.” He called upon fellow teachers around the country to abolish the discipline of history in primary schools. “What we need,” Clémendot insisted to his colleagues, “is to forget, and history is the opposite of forgetting.”

Thus, the children, who 15 years later were to be conquered by the Nazis in a short six weeks, were told not to dwell on their history.

At the same time, antiwar novels flourished. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929 and was hugely successful in France. Within 10 days, the French had purchased 72,000 copies and nearly 450,000 by the year’s end. All Quiet on the Western Front was hailed by pacifists because it portrayed the brutality of war rather than romanticizing it as honorable and patriotic. In contrast, Germany banned the book and its sequel.

Economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell noted that “being a pacifist in the 1920s and 1930s was a badge of honor” and repeating the ideas and slogans of the day “facilitated admission to the circles of the self-congratulatory elites.”

Outlawing War and the Merchants of Death

After World War i ended, the paramount objective was to stop such an event from ever occurring again. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 was the novel idea of France, and the United States; it was designed to simply outlaw war. Most historians treat the pact with contempt because of its failure, but many intellectuals of the time put their faith in it.

Two years prior to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, prominent intellectuals had been calling for “some definite step toward complete disarmament and the demilitarizing of the mind of civilized nations.” Two French intellectuals, Romain Rolland and Georges Duhamel, published a petition in the New York Times that called for a ban on military conscription, in part, “to rid the world of the spirit of militarism.”

Influential American philosopher John Dewey lambasted those who critiqued the call for the “outlawry of war” in the Kellogg-Briand Pact. They were, to him, part of the “Old World diplomacy.” He wrote of the “stupidity of habit-bound minds,” which belonged to those who were trying to be fashionably “realistic.”

In Europe, antiwar activist Bertrand Russell advocated that if one simply disarmed, “no one would have any motive to make war” on them:

When disarmament is suggested, it is natural to imagine that foreign conquest would inevitably follow and would be accompanied by all the horrors that characterize warlike invasions. This is a mistake, as the example of Denmark shows. Probably, if we had neither armaments nor empire, foreign states would let us alone. If they did not, we should have to yield without fighting, and we should therefore not arouse their ferocity.

Intellectuals consequently turned on those manufacturing weapons, believing them to be the cause of past wars and possible future wars. Frenchman Romain Rolland even in the midst of World War i, wrote that the “intellectuals, the press, the politicians, the very members of the cabinets (preposterous puppets!), have, whether they like it or not, become tools in the hands of the profiteers and act as screens to hide them from the public eye.” His title for them, the “profiteers of massacre,” was to become popular in the 1930s, as was the title of a popular book, Merchants of Death.

During these decades between the world wars, the French Army adopted a defensive military budget, abiding by the numerous arms control conferences it agreed to; meanwhile the Germans pressed ahead and remilitarized. It was only in 1936, after civilians began to call for a more offensive orientation, that the government increased the Army’s budget. But it was not enough to secure an advantage over the Germans in 1940.

Blind to Germany

In retrospect, it’s easy to see the red flags that preceded World War ii. Germany was able to rearm, take back the Rhineland next to France (and remilitarize it), and occupy Czechoslovakia without retaliation from the surrounding Western democracies. What is less clear is how the surrounding countries were able to rationalize these aggressive German actions away.

The prevailing ideology at the time was that war was the enemy—not countries. This kept many of the intellectuals from assigning blame to Germany for its actions; instead, intellectuals heaped scorn on those who would dare to suggest a military answer to any of the not-yet-violent pushes of Germany. An influential body of intellectuals had tried to shift the blame to the United States, and French anti-Americanism reached its greatest point ever during the inter-war decades.

Historian Seth Armus explained the effect of the anti-American manifestos in his book French Anti-Americanism (1930–1948):

In order to emerge as the “anti-France,” America had to also replace France’s traditional enemies. For the authors of these manifestos this was an easy task. Everything wrong in France and Europe, even the resurgent militarism of Germany, could be blamed on America. Germany, destroyed by its debt to America, enslaved by American banks, was too “simplistic” a society to see America as its true enemy, and so foolishly lashed out against France. Thus the traditional anti-German stance of the right was moderated by this approach

Perhaps the most crucial step in the path to World War ii, and France’s quick defeat, was Hitler’s decision in 1936 to march into the Rhineland—a zone which was supposed to be off-limits for German troops. “The 48 hours after the march into the Rhineland,” Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter, heard him later say, “were the most nerve-wracking in my life.” Had the French marched into the Rhineland, the Germans would have had to embarrassingly fall back—Germany’s military resources were wholly inadequate for even a “moderate resistance.”

But the French did not resist.

The lack of political will during Hitler’s march into the Rhineland foreshadowed the political lumbering that would inhibit France during its six-week defeat. France’s press spouted the expected pacifist lines, as historian Ernest May described in his book Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France:

Nowhere in France was there the slightest indication that the public wanted or would even tolerate military action on account of German remilitarization of the Rhineland. The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé expressed a common view when it said: “The Germans have invaded—Germany!” Communist leaders, supposedly in the forefront of opposition to Nazism, called stridently for preventing “the scourge of war from falling anew on us.” They urged the whole nation [to] unite “against those who want to lead us to massacre.” Socialist spokesmen termed “inadmissible any response that risked war,” saying that even reinforcing the Maginot Line would be “provocative.” The right-wing dailies Le Matin and Le Jour declared that conflict with Germany would benefit only Russia.

The future advances were treated in a similar manner, in what Sowell described as “one-day-at-a-time rationalism.” When the Germans annexed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in 1938, parts of the French press asked, “Should the French get themselves killed for Beneš, the Free Mason?” The next year, when Hitler demanded annexation of Poland’s Port of Danzig—the act which precipitated the full attack on Poland—the hallmark of sophistication was the headline “Do We Have to Die for Danzig?”

The Defeat

Yet, although too late, public opinion had begun to move beyond the verbal virtuosity of the elites. A poll in France in 1939 actually showed 76 percent of the public was willing to use force to defend Danzig. Within months, Germany attacked Poland. France and Great Britain, upholding their pledge to defend Poland, declared war on Germany. Thus began what the Americans coined the “phony war,” where little else but preparation and a few small skirmishes were made in eight months by the Western allies.

During the “phony war” period, French intelligence had learned of Germany’s plans for their invasion. While French generals (deliberating on whether or not they were fake or distractions) ultimately failed to change their tactics, Hitler drastically changed his, and decided to move his troops through the Ardennes Forest—a pass the French thought was too dense for tanks to navigate.

Most historians have a hard time creating a complete explanation of why France fell in six weeks. The Germans were able to outflank the French defensive line, but much had to do with the poor quality of French command, both politically and militarily. As historian and diplomat Robin Winks wrote, “[M]uch of Germany and all of her army had for 20 years been focused on one goal—expunging the shame of 1918.” In contrast, France’s political system was fighting itself, pacifism was rampant, and the country had begun rearming too late to maintain its advantage.

Aside from some heroic actions by French soldiers and the impressive patriotism of Gen. Charles de Gaulle who refused to give up the fight, France crumbled. As it lay defeated, the head of the teachers’ unions, which had so ardently worked to instill pacifism in their students was told, “You are partially responsible for the defeat.”

What Did We Learn?

We can learn innumerable lessons from the horrors of World War i and ii. An important one is that the smartest intellects of the day shall not be blindly trusted. This is not to say that all intellectuals argued in favor of pacifism—they did not. But no man should be blindly trusted (Jeremiah 17:5).

World-renowned educator and theologian Herbert W. Armstrong often talked of the pendulum swings of human thought throughout the ages. One dogma is replaced by another as different intellectuals have their period of influence—very few are able to find the safe middle ground. In less than a generation, France swung from patriotism to pacifism and avoided the field of thoughts in between. It also went from four years of resistance to six weeks until defeat.

As British historian Paul Johnson wrote:

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which have been to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

The men who rejected the Bible’s worldview of humanity—a carnal nature prone to despicable acts—and proclaimed a utopian-like view of the way to end world conflicts were not the first to do so. Pacifism was not invented by French intellectuals between the world wars. It was merely repackaged for the events of the day.

French ideas and slogans are once again evident in Western culture. Europe’s “merchants of death” slogan has transformed into the American “military industrial complex.” Evil motives are pushed into the background of discussions—the enemy is once again war and not individuals. American foreign policy is becoming ever more appeasement oriented and non-interventionist.

The schoolteacher Clémendot urged France to forget its history, and the damages were horrific. Yet, as Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in Education With Vision, the intellectuals running American colleges are requiring fewer students to take history courses. The latest studies show less than one in five students is required to even take one survey course of history or government before he or she graduates. If a population doesn’t have a good grasp on history, how can it determine whether an idea that seems novel and plausible has been tested before and found wholly false?

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has asked time and again, “Is History Repeating Itself?” We will continue to ask that question, because humans are so prone to repeat past errors. When men, no matter their intellect, forget their history and reject knowledge from a higher source, their actions will eventually lead to calamity. For France, that meant a dangerous idea led to a quick, catastrophic defeat. The question now is what it will mean for the future.