PLUS ÇA CHANGE

Seventy years ago, the Nazis conquered France. Since then, the country has changed less than you might think.


Of France's 62 million people, fewer than 5 million are old enough to have any memory of the horrifying weeks in May and June 1940, when the Nazi war machine crushed the country's armed forces, forced them to sign a humiliating surrender, and marched triumphantly into Paris. The blitzkrieg, and the traumatic occupation that began 70 years ago Monday, are rapidly sliding below the horizon of living memory.

That makes it easy to see the France of 1940—which was poor, rural, homogenous, and overall quite religious—as a wholly different place from the wealthy, urbanized, multicultural, and deeply secular France of 2010. They appear, prima facie, to be radically different places. But look closer, and it's easy to see that, 70 years later, France is still very much, well, France.

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