Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War appears in the memoir as a historical precedent for French defeat, but chiefly as a contrast: the narrator knows France has lost a war before, yet insists that the earlier loss belongs to a different time and cannot predict the outcome of 1940.

A Defeat Before the Narrator’s Lifetime

The narrator notes that France had already lost a war in 1870. He places that defeat beyond his own experience: he had not yet been born, and neither, he says, had his mother. The reference establishes a generational distance between the earlier national calamity and the war unfolding around him.

Contrast with the Crisis of 1940

As France’s front collapses in June 1940, the memory of 1870 does not make the narrator expect another defeat. He treats the circumstances as fundamentally different and remains convinced that France can recover at the last moment. The Franco-Prussian War therefore functions less as a developed historical episode than as the limit of his awareness of an earlier defeat—and as a foil to the certainty with which he initially believes in France’s destiny.