ABSTRACT
The defiance of death, the imprint of one's passage through history by the recording of lofty deeds—these were not the only manifestations of the heroic ideal in the years of war, occupation, and Resistance. The Resistance ranked along with the Dreyfus Case and the First World War as the third great spiritual revolution which the French had traversed in a half century. The pride of the Resistance can only be understood in terms of the humiliation that had gone before. The collapse of 1940 was without precedent: not even in 1870 had the national self-esteem been so cruelly wounded. It was only gradually, however, that the militants of the Resistance began to think of themselves as an alternative elite. Initially the mood was one of elegy and meditation, of reserving one's energies for an uncertain future.
