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French Press Reactions to Hitler's First Two Years in Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Robert J. Soucy
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Why did fascism not succeed in France in the 1930s to the extent that itdid in Germany? Although the appeal of fascism increased dramatically in France between 1936 and 1938 as part of the backlash to the Popular Front, the fact remains that neither of France's two largest fascist movements – Colonel de La Rocque's Croix de feu/Parti social français and Jacques Doriot's Parti populaire française – came to power during this period. In French Fascism: the Second Wave, 1933–1939, one of the reasons (among several) that I gave for the relative failure of French fascism was the negative reaction of many French conservatives and Catholics to Hitler's repression of dissident German conservatives and Catholics in 1933 and 1934 – a reaction which indirectly diminished the potential appeal of homegrown fascism through guilt by association. Although I alluded to this reaction in my study, I did so without providing sufficient documentation. One of the purposes of this review of French press responses to Hitler's first two years in power is to correct that shortcoming.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 21 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 Some historians regard La Rocque's CF/PSF as ‘moderate’(or democratically conservative), not fascist. For considerable evidence to the contrary, see my French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 158–203.Google Scholar La Rocque not only declared in 1934 that an election was an exercise in ‘collective decadence’ (La Rocque, Service public, Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1934, 93), but on 23 March 1935 his newspaper Le flambeau also derided parliamentary conservatives who called themselves ‘moderates’ as standing for ‘compromise the hesitation’. The same article in Le flambeau urged the French people to ‘stand up against revolution and its sordid ally moderation’.

2 Soucy, , French Fascism, 23.Google Scholar For other reasons for the relative failure of French fascism, see pp. 315–18.

3 Rémond, René, La Droite en France de 1815à nos jours (Paris: Aubier, 1954), 12, 211–18Google Scholar; Rémond, René, Les droites en France (Paris: Aubier, 1982), 105, 216Google Scholar;; Sternhell, Zeev, Naissance de l'idéologie fasciste (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 45, 305, 317).Google ScholarSternhell, Zeev, Ni droite ni gauche: L'idéologie fasciste en France (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 34, 311.Google Scholar

4 Rémond, René, Notre siècle, 1918–1988 (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 216, 15.Google Scholar

5 Soucy, , French Fascism, 23, 71–4, 136–203, 217–18, 283‐4.Google Scholar

6 The Catholic philosopher, Yves Simon, has described theinfluence which the newspaper L'action française exerted in the 1930s over many Catholic intellectuals whom he knew personally: ‘An habitual reader of L'action française had an answer for everything, and it never occurred to him to question thevalidity of what he was taught with such dogmatic assurance and literarytalent’ Simon, Yves, The Road to Vichy, 1919–1938 (New York, University Press of America, 1988), 41–1).Google Scholar See also Berenson, Edward, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992),209–11, 220, 227, 234Google Scholar, for the enormous influence which editors like Gaston Calmette exerted over French popular culture and public opinion.

7 For the venality of the French press, see Weber, Eugen, The Hollow Years (New York:W. W. Norton, 1994), 130.Google Scholar

8 Eugen Weber has pointed out the large circulation advantage which right-wing newspapers enjoyed over their left-wing rivals: ‘Twelve publications of the right and extreme right … sold a million and a half [copies], six of the left or extreme left selling about seven hundred thousand, with the many-million strong mass-circulationdailies centrally situated, but most of the time unfriendly to the left.’ Weber, , The Hollow Years, 130.Google Scholar

9 Typical was the 20 January 1934 issue of one of France's most popular weekly magazines, L'illustration, which commented that Germany seemed ‘fatally oriented toward war’ a remark accompanied by photos of German soldiers undergoing military training and the query: ‘Will the new Germany, this emotive and disciplined, regimented and mystical Germany, listen to the voice of reason?’ Even French fascist journals that frankly admired Hitler's repression of Marxists in Germany, such as Je suis partout and L'ami du peuple, worried about the threat of another German invasion of France and, since these journals were highly nationalistic they were, of course, opposed to such an invasion.

10 I have used the same political classifications for thenewspapers and journals referred to in this article as Micaud does, Charles in The French Right and Nazi Gennany, 1933–1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1943):Google Scholar extreme right: Gringoire, Je suis partout, La liberté, L'Ami du peuple, La victoire; ‘moderate’ right: L'écho de paris, Le Figaro, Le journal, Le matin, Le petit journal, La journée industrielle, La Croix, and L'information; right-centre: Le petit parisien, Le temps, Le journal des débats, L'illustration, La jeune république, Revue des deuxmondes, and L'Intransigeant; left-centre: Paris-soir, La république, and L'oeuvre; socialist: Le populaire; communist: L'humanité.

11 According to French police reports, Coty had helped finance previous French fascist movements and in June 1933 launched his own fascist movement, the Solidarité française.

12 According to Charles Micaud, the so-called joumaux d'information (or grande presse) with the five largest circulations in the 1930s were the following (with approximate circulation figures): Le petit parisien (1,000,000), Le journal (700,000), Le matin (400,000); Le petit journal (200,000), andL'écho de paris (190,000). L'ami du peuple had a circulation of about 150,000. Of the ‘political’ press, Paris-soir (1,500,000) had the largest circulation. For a rough idea of the circulations of the other newspapers mentioned in this article, see Micaud, , The French Right and Nazi Germany, 238–42.Google Scholar

13 See Le flambeau (1 February 1936) and Soucy, French Fascism, 139–41.

14 D'Harcourt claimed that the French were superior to the Germans in this respect: 'The German submits to force, but not with resignation but with a kind of secret thrill of admiration. Voluptuousness is mixed with passivity. No doubt in their beer halls, beforetheir steins of beer, many in Munich and Berlin shook their heads in admiration when they heard of Goering's declaration to the press: “The Fuhrer has acted with the rapidity of lightning and has energetically settled things. … Rebellion leads to death. … [We have] acted without mercy.” This telegraphic and military style, the chopped phrases crackling like bullets, arouse the enthusiasm of the German reader. A kind of contagion of heroism reaches him. Something “strong” within him is triggered. These proud feelings raise him in his own esteem as he brushes his moustache. In our country, the man inthe street would raise his fists and, with clenched teeth, would say: “The brutes!” In Germany, he would say: “What manly fellows!” The German has had too brief an education in liberty … to distinguish authority from brutality. And it was quite in vain thatM. von Papen recently tried to warn him, in his speech at Marburg, against confusing “vitality with bestiality”.'

15 This does not mean that there were no conflicting attitudes towards Mussolini, especially among French rightists who normally preferred parliamentary democracy to dictatorship. For other reasons whyMussolini was viewed more favorably than Hitler by the French conservative press, see Blatt, Joel R., French Reaction to Italy, Italian Fascism, and Mussolini, 1919–1925 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1981).Google Scholar For Mussolini's opposition to anti-Semitism before 1938, see Ledeen, Michael, ‘Italian Jews and Fascism’, Judaism: A Quarterly of Jewish Life and Thought, Vol. 18, no. 3 (summer 1981), 281–7.Google Scholar

16 Micaud, The French Right and Nazi Germany. Micaud concludes that many French conservatives after 1935 ‘feared a victory over Germany as much as defeat’ (224). He cites Thierry Maulnier who explained ‘the fundamental reason’ for the right's opposition to war with Germany during the Czech crisis in 1938: ‘AGerman defeat would mean the crumbling of the authoritarian systems, which constitute the main bulwark against the Communist revolution and perhaps the immediate bolshevization of Europe’ (225).

17 See Soucy, , French Fascism: the Second Wave, 136–203.Google Scholar In 1935, La Rocque criticized Hitler's racism but spoke of the ‘genius’ of Mussolini and declared that ‘the admiration which Mussolini merits is beyond dispute’ (La Rocque, Service public, 177).

18 At the opening session of the Radical Party's annual congress held in October 1936 at Biarritz, a large majority of the delegates sang the ‘Marseillaise’ with their arms outstretched in a version of the fascist salute, while left-wing Radicals respondedwith the ‘Internationale’ and the Marxist clenched-fist salute. See Le temps (23 and 24 October 1936).

19 For evidence supporting the proposition that thousandsof French men and women were attracted to home-grown fascism after 1936, see Soucy, , French Fascism: the Second Wave,104–203.Google Scholar