The <i>Drôle de Guerre</i> on the Maginot Line

Abstract In September 1939 half the population of Alsace-Lorraine was evacuated or mobilized outside the province and replaced by one million troops from the “interior.” The 1939–40 campaign therefore provides an ideal way to explore Alsace-Lorraine's position in France. While some historians argue that Alsace-Lorrainers’ experience of the Phoney War caused a “crisis of national sentiment,” revisionist military historians present convincing evidence that relations between “interior French” and Alsace-Lorrainers were good. This article uses dialogical methods to reconcile these interpretations and argues that national loyalty was never unconditional or unreflecting. Interior French and Alsace-Lorrainers’ stereotypes concerning each other were contradictory and mediated by mixed views of Germany. Practical interactions between interior French and Alsace-Lorrainers were entangled with gender, class, and religious divides and depended on what was at stake in different contexts. The article shows how relations varied in the pillaged evacuated zone, between soldiers and civilians in nonevacuated villages, and in military units. Even in the extreme situation of combat, protagonists continued to calculate. If anyone experienced a crisis of national sentiment, it was the interior French.