october 1936 French Fascism Alexander Werth Volume 15 • Number 1 The contents of Foreign Affairs are copyrighted.©1936 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this material is permitted only with the express written consent of Foreign Affairs. Visit www.foreignaffairs.com/permissions for more information. FRENCH FASCISM By Alexander Werth a and NEARLY million people marched with their red on tricolor banners through the Paris streets the F?te to commemorate of Nationale of July 14, the capture to the Bastille and celebrate the victory of the Front Populaire in the last General Election. The Colonne de Juillet, marking the was with place where the old prison had stood, decorated flags were of and streamers, and round it large panels with pictures Rousseau and Voltaire and Diderot and Henri Barbusse and the obscure Lille workman who composed the Internationale. Julien torrent a win Benda, who had surveyed the vast human from a dow, wrote few days later in the Depeche de Toulouse: never seen was This giant procession, the like of which had yet been in Paris, the direct outcome of the events of February 6. So also were the formation of the Front Populaire and the last General Election. The Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet was the outcome of the anti-Dreyfus agitation; the 1877 election, with its Left victory, was the outcome of the MacMahon coup. In the last sixty a years sharp offensive from the reactionaries in France has been followed, a with mathematical accuracy, by sharp, inevitable reaction from the Left. sure But The men who organized the February 6 riots could have been of it. as their stupidity, M. Herriot has said, is even greater than their wickedness. In the meantime, until they understand, let them contemplate their work from their balconies. ? "Le grand vaincu" as the French say, the "great defeated" ? was of the May election Colonel de La Rocque, the leader of a the Croix de Feu. In two years the Croix de Feu had grown from war small, select body of distinguished veterans into the greatest a "fascist" force in the country. In April 1936 they claimed a membership of nearly million; and the rival fascist forces, the Jeunesses Patriotes, the Solidarit? Fran?aise, as well as the Royal a ists of the Action Fran?aise (who, it must be said, had played far more active in the street of part rioting January-February 1934 than the Croix de Feu) had, in comparison, shrunk into insignificance. "French Fascism" came to mean the Croix de Feu. They denied being fascists, and their fascism was, indeed, of a as we in peculiar kind, shall see; but they had certainly become, two years, the greatest anti-democratic force in the country. The Croix de Feu did not run candidates in the General Elec Council on Foreign Relations is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Foreign Affairs ® www.jstor.org 1^2 FOREIGN AFFAIRS to an tion; they pretended be above such things. But they nounced far and wide that they would be the great "arbiters" of the election; and would, wherever possible, keep the Reds out by actively supporting the non-socialist and non-communist candi In even a date. certain cases, they said, they would support a was no "pink" against "red" if there other choice. In fact it was at was alleged the time (though this strongly denied by La Rocque himself) that in certain constituencies instructions had been given to the local Croix de Feu to support the com munists in the first ballot, with the result that he would be the only Left candidate in the second ballot, and in the expectation vote that many Radicals would, in the second ballot, for the Right candidate rather than for the communist. But even if this ma noeuvre was not resorted to, it did yield the desired result, any more than did any other of the Croix de Feu "arbitration" manoeuvres: for the communists, with 72 seats in the new Cham ber, instead of 10 in the old, were the great electoral winners. ac Curiously enough, wherever the Croix de Feu showed any at were not as a tivity all they regarded by anyone "super were party" but simply identified with the Right. During the election campaign I visited constituencies in various parts of France; and whenever I asked what election meetings were on, I was "A a almost invariably told: communist meeting, socialist and a Croix de Feu reaction meeting, meeting." Conservatives, Croix de come to mean same aries, Feu, had practically the thing. mean or Did it that the Right had gone fascist, that the Croix de an Feu had simply gone conservative? Actually, there was ele ment of truth in both. For, especially since December 6, 1935, the Croix de Feu were no what had once been. longer they ? The heroic days of the Croix de Feu were in 1934 between on the February riots and the fall of Doumergue November 8. It was then a romantic movement. After 6 February thousands of with the young men, sincerely disgusted Parliament, joined" Croix de Feu and its affiliated organizations in search of a better and cleaner" France. In January the Stavisky Affair had been to colossal in the magnified proportions press campaign? against the Chamber, and particularly against the Left for the Sta Affair was as an visky represented being eminently "Left" scandal. The of 6 were riots February largely organized by the leaders of various fascist and semi-fascist organizations, and with the men help of like Chiappe, the Paris police chief who had been FRENCH FASCISM 143 a dismissed by Daladier few days earlier. But these riots would not have been so effective had not thousands of young men, in censed by weeks of newspaper propaganda, and feeling genu inely revolted by the Chamber, joined in the riots. The primary as was object of this press campaign, supported it by "Big a Business," had been to bring National Government into power to men and disrupt the Left majority. The young who had their heads broken in the Place de la Concorde that had ? ? night " fought most of them spontaneously and thoughtlessly against the was out deputies"; and when the Daladier Government forced of was two a office by "the Street," but replaced days later by gov ernment over an man must presided by old of 72, many of them ? not have felt disappointed that they knew exactly what they would have preferred instead. But Colonel de La Rocque tried to console them. When the Daladier Government resigned he wired to the local Croix de on Feu committees: "First objective attained. Keep your guard." as And later he treated the Doumergue Government "a poultice on a ? a gangrenous leg" as temporary solution to be followed, a more came to before long, by better and complete solution. He as a be regarded by many the torchbearer of "better and cleaner as France." In his speeches in 1934 he treated politicians the as profiteers of the r?gime, and the socialists and communists the The Croix de Feu movement, he said, with its arch-enemy. ? ? spirit of the trenches l'esprit ancien combattant stood for disin terested service to France. The men who had risked their lives for France, he said, must at last have a say in the matter. La was not Rocque's "16 years of profiteering" unlike Hitler's "14 years of shame." He had no clear program, but said that there was no need for A was more than a any. mystique important pro a gram; and mystique he had undoubtedly created. And there were some men to young in the movement who scarcely hesitated call themselves openly fascists. Only the contempt that La Rocque professed for Doumergue in more than and when towards was, reality, apparent real; September 1934 Doumergue abandoned his grandfatherly airs a and launched campaign, full of senile rage, against the socialists to in and communists, proposing reform the Constitution by ac creasing enormously the powers of the Prime Minister (who, to the could henceforth dissolve the cording Doumergue plan, Chamber on his own initiative), competent observers began to 144 FOREIGN AFFAIRS realize that there was a closer contact between the old Premier and the Croix de Feu than either would admit. The French con stitutional conflict of September-November 1934 has been largely misunderstood abroad, where there are still many who to believe that Doumergue "wished improve the French demo cratic and there were even some at system"; " English journalists the time who proclaimed Doumergue the last defender of French man a democracy!" In reality, the old had by this time attained of and was dangerous degree megalomania working hand-in-glove with an innate anti-democrat like Tardieu (whose ideas had been in constitutional and with incorporated ? Doumergue's proposals),? the "Street" that is, the Fascist Leagues against the Chamber and the Senate, which was the first to rebel against him. a Doumergue felt in strong position. He believed that the deputies (whose memories of February 6, when the rioters nearly were broke into the Chamber, still fresh) would be too frightened of "the Street" to resist his demands. When Herriot and the a Radicals, whom the prospect of government crisis still made rather nervous, proposed compromise solutions, Doumergue on rejected them disdainfully. And when November 6, exasper to ated by his attitude, the Radicals threatened resign from the Government, one observed in the lobbies of the Chamber various unknown people who whispered ominously that if Doumergue were forced to resign there would be trouble, and that "our come ? fellows are simply itching to out" the "fellows" being the members of the Croix de Feu and of the other Fascist Leagues.