The Fateful Years

The author, a professional diplomat, was French Ambassador in Berlin from 1931 to the fall of 1938, when he was transferred to Rome. Though his memoirs of those fateful years divulge no startling revelations, they provide a balanced and intelligent perspective on many of the scenes and actors in that drama, for François-Poncet, more clearly than some of his colleagues, understood the nature and objectives of Nazism.