This book provides a detailed account of the Third Republic in France between the outbreak and conduct of the First World War and the fall of Leon Blum's 'Front Populaire' soon after Hitler's invasion and annexation of Austria in 1938. Following the trauma of war, France slipped into the 'era of illusions' which, despite the comparative prosperity of the 1920s, led to the slump and the severe social and economic unrest of the 1930S. The short-lived experiment of Blum's 'Front Populaire' gave way to more conservatively based ministries, but by 1938 a new common enemy began to draw together the political opinion of the country.