Focusing on the political commitmentsof three Frenchwriters who collaborated withthe Vichy Regime and NaziGermany during World War II,and three leading French intellectualsof the 1990s whosemisplaced political idealismled them to support xenophobic,authoritarian regimes anddangerous historical revisionisms,Richard J. Golsan reexaminesthe notion of politicalcommitment or engagementin two diff icult periods inmodern French history.Considered together, these six intellectuals serve as soberingreminders that political commitments are never assimple or straightforward as they seem, and that admirablemotives for political involvement can have dangerous anddestructive consequences in historical practice.
