Disarming hatred' : French Catholics and the legacy of the Great War; Marc Sangnier, 1914-33

Abstract

This study focuses on the cultural legacy of the First World War in France in the period 1914-1933. Specifically, it examines the processes of cultural mobilization and cultural demobilization, key concepts that have emerged in the new cultural history of that conflict. The term 'war culture' is now widely used to identify the system of representations and beliefs that helped to sustain societies at war. However, what happened to this 'war culture' and to the phenomenon of 'cultural mobilization' after the armistice of 1918? Clearly, any 'mobilized' mindset which cast France's enemy - Germany - as a barbaric and dehumanized foe would not disappear as soon as peace terms were concluded. This thesis examines the halting process of overcoming these hatreds in the 1920s from the perspective of French Catholics. Therefore, this is a study of 'cultural demobilization' and of the attempted 'disarmament of hatred,' to paraphrase my title. It was decided that the most fruitful methodological approach would be that of the biographical case-study. While not classic biography, such a case-study has the advantage of allowing the historian to humanize apparently amorphous and impersonal historical processes such as demobilizaton and measure their contemporary impact with reference to individuals and their ideological groups.