Of France's 62 million people, fewer than 5 million are old enough to have any memory of the horrifying weeks in May and June 1940, when the Nazi war machine crushed the country's armed forces, forced them to sign a humiliating surrender, and marched triumphantly into Paris. The blitzkrieg, and the traumatic occupation that began 70 years ago Monday, are rapidly sliding below the horizon of living memory.
That makes it easy to see the France of 1940—which was poor, rural, homogenous, and overall quite religious—as a wholly different place from the wealthy, urbanized, multicultural, and deeply secular France of 2010. They appear, prima facie, to be radically different places. But look closer, and it's easy to see that, 70 years later, France is still very much, well, France.
That's not to say things haven't improved. By today's standards the country in 1940 was almost unrecognizably poor. Half the population still lived in rural areas, with a quarter of the workforce still engaged in traditional forms of agriculture—peasants, by any other name. One third of all French households lacked running water, and less than one 10th had telephones, refrigerators, or washing machines. In the winter, the courtyards of urban apartment buildings bristled with shelves on which the denizens stored their perishables. Hotels advertised hot running water as a luxury item. Today, despite persistent high unemployment, France has a successful, high-tech, postindustrial economy largely fueled by nuclear power and symbolized by the high-speed train system that whisks travelers between Paris and London (via the Channel Tunnel) in just over two hours.
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