Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution itself. There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated. The French Revolution initially began with attacks on church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Roman Catholic church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism grew more violent than any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the church; abolished the Catholic monarchy; nationalized church property; exiled 30,000 priests and killed hundreds more. In October 1793 the
Hitler's Reign of Terror research, Doherty was not able to locate a single copy of "Hitler's Reign of Terror". Late into his research, however, Doherty received news that the Royal Belgian Film Archive in Brussels had located a copy of the film in their possession. Doherty's theory is that a Belgian film distributor must have ordered a copy of the film from outside the country before the Nazis invaded Belgium. Being a foreign film, the copy had to clear customs. After the Nazis invaded the country, though, the distributor likely did not want to be caught with the film, and never picked it up