history here

There's no dry history here

Few people, who were post adolescents in Britain in the dark days of 1940 when the “phony war” ex ploded into the real thing and the French Republic, in its shameful col lapse, was revealed as a corrupt institution, riddled with treachery and intrigue, will forget that tense, worried look, almost fear, which most people wore on their faces.

What went on in France at that time? Why should the Third Republic, with a seemingly impregnable Maginot Line and months in which to com plete its defence plans, have collapsed like a pack of cards? The answers lie in the history of the republic from 1871 onwards as told by American author and historian William L.

Shirer, who needs no introduction other than that he was the author of Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

The Collapse of the Third Republic, a fat Pan paperback ($2.30), is no dry-as-dust history. He puts drama into his facts, and he writes of many incidents —the rape of Czechoslo vakia, the Nazi-Communist pact which left the way open for Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway and the fall of France — through the eyes of many witnesses, the famous and the unknown, those who recorded events before they too were overtaken by them and perished, and those who lived to tell the tale.

The whole is immensely readable; an index and an extensive biblio graphy add to the book’s value.— JC.