For the Soul of France : Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus

Cultural historian Frederick Brown provides a portrait of fin-de-sic̈le France, whose defeat by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 resulted in a virtual civil war, waged without restraint, which toppled Napoléon III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic. In the face of humiliation by Prussia, postwar France dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state, and reactionaries--militant, Catholic, royalist--who felt that France had suffered defeat for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of "science" and "technological advancement" versus "supernatural intervention." The roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900--instead they became the festering point that led to France's surrender to Hitler's armies in 1940.--From publisher description.