ABSTRACT
The interwar period in France was indelibly marked by internal conflict. From the armistice of November 1918, which ended the Great War, until the renewal of hostilities in the fall of 1939, various factions within government, industry, and society debated every facet of national policy. Proponents of hawkish militarism clashed with cautious appeasers over the terms of the Versailles settlement, the wisdom of the Ruhr action in 1923, and the methods for containing both Hitler and Stalin a decade later. Domestic politics were no less volatile, from the battles between the Bloc National and the Cartel des Gauches in the 1920s, to the conflicts in the Chamber of Deputies and the streets a decade later, as the Popular Front government and exponents of the communist, socialist, and syndicalist left clashed with supporters of the moderate and extreme-right. These stormy debates left no stone unturned. A seemingly harmless subject, such as educational reform, became a partisan issue, less a discussion of the future of French youth than a stream of accusations.
