Une minorité religieuse dans la Grande Guerre : les protestants français

Abstract

Despite its ultra-minority status, French protestantism had an influence, even during World War I, that far transcended the number of its adherents. The first French soldier to die on 2 August 1914, Jules-André Peugeot, was a protestant, as was the minister of foreign affairs Gaston Doumergue, and the commander-in-chief of the armies in late 1916, Robert Nivelle. However, the history of France’s protestants during the Great War has long remained in the dark. The aim of this article is to summarise the historiography of French protestantism during the war, which is a far more complex subject that one might imagine a priori.