Abstract

This essay aims at discussing the new literature on Franco-German relations during the period 1918-1930. It highlights how many works now question the idea that the Treaty of Versailles and the European order that ensued inevitably wore within themselves the seeds of a new war. On the contrary, by examining in particular the détente efforts of the Twenties, the most recent historiography often emphasizes how the inevitability of the authoritarian turn of Twenties and Thirties, which led to the Second World War, has often been exaggerated by historians and that different paths could have been undertaken.