Mitch McConnell has failed the Republican Party

World War II began with the Nazi invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Two days later, the governments of Britain and France honored their diplomatic vows to Warsaw by declaring war on Adolf Hitler’s invading armies. As historian Jean Edward Smith noted in “The Liberation of Paris,” the French people were less than impressed by their government’s gallant response. The political right in that country admired Hitler while the left remained unwavering pacifists throughout the war’s early stages. Smith observed that Parisians so willingly “opened the gates of Paris to the German army” that the occupation proved to be “embarrassingly simple.”

Over the next four years, cultural life in the French capital flourished, with classical music, art exhibits and filmmaking thriving to such a degree that philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre would later say of that time, “We put up with it very well.” By 1943, more than 80,000 French women who bore children to German soldiers had claimed benefits from the Third Reich; fashion icon Coco Chanel was a shameless collaborator throughout the war; and the leading French film actress of the day brazenly declared, “My heart is French but my [body] is international.”

It was not until Allied forces invaded Sicily and Soviet troops began surging westward that many Parisians began to grow weary of the occupation. While such cynicism in the face of evil seems unthinkable eight decades later, it is worth remembering that France suffered more than 5 million killed and wounded during World War I. Over half of all Frenchmen mobilized for battle became casualties, and almost 4 of 10 soldiers between 19 and 22 were killed in action. The “war to end all wars” laid waste to an entire generation and fueled the cynicism that Ernest Hemingway described a decade later in “A Farewell to Arms.” Continue reading.