whether or not the First World War marked a decisive change in the course of European history, the Second certainly marked a change in the way in which Europeans regarded it. It was not merely that they at last came to see what had begun in the years before 1914. It was also that they began to wonder if the past connected to the present at all. They had good reason. Germans saw one part of their past cancel itself in the most appalling way and another reappear in the forced creation of a separate state to the east. Frenchmen saw their evolutionary optimisms turned upside down. Even Englishmen were faced with a decidedly sour outcome to their somewhat complacent gradualism. The result was in each case an erratic and confused but very evident reconsideration of the philosophies of history by which the course of events had previously been made intelligible. And since social theorising in Europe had been intimately linked to these philosophies it too was recast. Some, of course, continued to believe that continuity was still plain; others that it had been broken. Some argued that the future could be created independently of the past; others dismissed this. Some wished simply to ignore both past and future; others hesitated. And some looked to America.

It was however in France, where the influence of American ideas was negligible, that this was most clear. More exactly, it was in France that all the effects which appeared variously elsewhere occurred together.