The Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940-1945

Description

Following the defeat of France in 1940, the Ecole Nationale des Cadres was set up at the Chateaud'Uriage, in the Alps above Grenoble, to train an elite drawn from the young intelligentsia as part of a larger effort to transform the nation. Some of the most imaginative and original guidelines for a French National Revolution under the Vichy government were formulated here. Uriage soon became not only an avant-garde community, living in what it described as "the style of the 20th century", but also an innovative and prestigious think-tank of the National Revolution, embodying many of the strengths and weaknesses of the ascendant French anti-liberal conservative revolutionaries. This work describes the founding, operation, transformation, and demise of the school, details the institution's ideological and political struggles with other segments of French society, and deals with the remarkable rise of Uriage ideas and alumni in postwar France.