ABSTRACT
In the period between the two wars, Blum was the recognized leader of the French Socialist Party. The authors have Blum's testimony of June 18, 1947, before the Commission of the French Chamber of Deputies appointed to study the causes of the Second World War. Hundreds of telegrams of various peace societies protested against the "war provocation". The Communists and the pacifists jointly organized a feverish compaign against the "war-mongering policy" of the Sarraut cabinet. Stalin's early overtures toward Nazism having failed, he launched, in 1934, the new Communist line of the united front against fascism. As in Germany itself, where Nazism was first considered an incidental phenomenon which could not last long, so in Europe the political leaders tended to view Nazism as a temporary aberration, doomed to disappear soon without serious consequences. The German Charge in the Soviet Union, Tippelskirch, says the Soviet government is skeptical of German sincerity.
