This book deals with an unusually turbulent chapter in the history of the French Socialist Party, the period from the beginning of 1938 until the summer and autumn of 1946. During the late 1930s, the party was still tolerating the activities of two dissident groups within its ranks, the Gauche Révolutionnaire and the Bataille Socialiste, both of which wished to see the organization take a new direction. The intense competition between them as each tried to gather support for its own views on strategy produced a series of major crises within the party during the first six months of 1938 and threatened to undermine the leadership group, which had some difficulty in maintaining its position at the party's Royan Congress in June that year. No sooner had order been restored than the party found itself divided again, this time over foreign policy and the question of whether it should favour conciliation as a means of avoiding war or should come out in support of a firm policy towards Germany and Italy. The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to normal political activity in France but throughout the period of German occupation and the Vichy regime, a new generation of Socialists played a prominent part in the Resistance movement and looked forward to the re-emergence of the party, freed from disagreements and structural weaknesses, when hostilities ended.