REVIEWS 439 Maxime Weygand and Civil-Military Relations in Modem France. By PHUIP CHARLES FAKWEIX BANKWITZ. (Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. LXXXI). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. 1968. xiii+445 pp. 95*.

The Fifth French Republic has been haunted by the issues of civil-military relations largely because Gaullism, born of an act of military disobedience, has since been repeatedly obliged to crush imitators. Yet before 1940 the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/XXIII/4/439/587576 by guest on 01 October 2021 Third Republic had established, often at considerable cost, a clear set of principles governing these relations. Designed to prevent both political dissensions within the Army, and the danger of Caesarism in the State, they postulated political neutrality and passivity on the part of the officers, and implicit obedience to commands of the civil authority. During the 1930s these principles were increasingly eroded by such crises as February 1934 and March 1936: and, as Professor Bankwitz emphasizes in this admirable study, General de Gaulle's famous defiance of 18 June 1940 was, in fact, preceded by General Weygand's no less significant defiance of Paul Reynaud earlier that month. 'With these three moves—refusal to leave France, refusal to surrender the Army if allowed to remain, and certain, though unspoken refusal to resign—Weygand had completed his part in the over- throw of the Reynaud cabinet' (p. 312). The special contribution of the book to our knowledge and appreciation of this whole development lies in its detailed examination of the effects of the crises of the 1930s on the attitude of the high command toward the civil authority, and the Army's association, sometimes unwitting or reluctant, with forces of the anti-republican political Right. The events of 1940 in France have too often, oddly enough, been presented as a bolt from the blue rather than as a direct historical consequence of the previous decade. Pro- fessor Bankwitz has now filled an important part of that gap. In the process, he has thrown much light on the enigmatic character of Maxime Weygand which contemporary legend undoubtedly distorted. The 'plot theory' of the fall of France, dating the genesis of Vichy's 'National Revolution' from 1934 and involving both P6tain and Weygand, is here effectively and sensibly demolished. It is the more disappointing to find the author exaggerating the importance of 1934 in other respects, as marking 'the end of die era of civilian saviors—the Clemenceaus, the Poincare's, the Doumergues', and inaugurating 'the age of the military despots, the modern Catsars—the Petains and the de Gaulles' (p. 203). Neither Pe'tain nor de Gaulle seems to be very adequately described as a 'modern Caesar', and the whole process of transition was more gradual than such remarks imply. The book suffers, at times, from a laboriousness of style and of method, but it has the corresponding merits. It is scholarly and cautious, painstaking and very thorough. It builds up its case convincingly and offers many new insights. It will continue to have relevance for L'aprts-gaullisme, for the latter-day Fifth (or possibly Sixth) Republic must come, eventually, to 44O REVIEWS settle the same issues of civil-military relations which, for a decade past, have been overlaid by the single personality of de Gaulle. DAVID THOMSON CAMBRIDGE

The Americans and the French. By CRANE BEINTON. (The American Foreign Policy Library). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1968. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/XXIII/4/439/587576 by guest on 01 October 2021 vii+305 pp. 64s. This well-known series of popularly written studies of countries with which the United States has both historic and current relations included one on The United States and France by the late Donald McKay, written in 1950. Its conclusions were dominated by the recent alignments of the cold war, anxieties lest the Korean war denoted a new phase of confrontation, and emergence of a more unified Western Europe. Not only Franco-American relations, but the world scene as a whole, have been so greatly transformed since then that the editor, Professor Crane Brinton, wisely decided that, rather than revise the former volume, he would write a new one himself. The new volume, like the old, devotes about a quarter of its pages to the geographical and historical 'background', before it explores the component elements in the present condition of France and of its relationships with the United States. Now the 'background' extends not merely to 1939, but to 1958, and the foreground is filled by the enigmatic figure of President de Gaulle, appearing massively obstructive of many of those developments which, in 1950, had seemed so probable and acceptable. The book is sadly disappointing in its failure to overcome instinctive American resentments against de Gaulle, and to grasp or explain some essen- tial features of Gaullism, It is presented as 'basically and conventionally conservative', a deplorably inadequate description. The book contains too much that savours of traveller's gossip (absurd significance is attached to the ill-fated chkques-sourire of 1965), and too little rigorous analysis with a sharp edge to it. It is discouraging to find, from so eminent a scholar, the waffly assertion that all free societies have 'two great parties, Right and Left'. He is highly optimistic about the success of the Common Market ('unlikely to run into difficulties worse than those over agricultural tariffi already sur- mounted"). There is no presentiment whatever of an impending crisis in 1968. Despite its merits, the book is mainly a lost opportunity. DAVID THOMSON CAMBRIDGE