Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French Politics

230 Pages·2018·2.338 MB·English

by  Chris Millington

Title Pages
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
Title Pages
Chris Millington
(p.i) Fighting for France
(p.iii) Fighting for France
(p.iv) Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
© The British Academy 2018
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Title Pages
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Title Pages
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
Title Pages
Chris Millington
(p.ii) A British Academy Monograph
British Academy Monographs showcase work arising from:
British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships
British Academy Newton International Fellowships
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Dedication
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
Dedication
Chris Millington
(p.v) For Alexandra and Madeleine (p.vi)
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Acknowledgements
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
(p.viii) Acknowledgements
Chris Millington
It was a privilege to be afforded the time and money to write this book. I thank the British
Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme and the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research
Grant scheme for the generous funding that made this book possible. I thank the Society for the
Study of French History, the Society for French Studies and the German Historical Institute for
additional funding.
The staff at Cardiff University, where this project began, and Swansea University, where it was
completed, provided a friendly and stimulating environment in which to work. I have enjoyed
discussing the history of France with the students that I have taught at both institutions and I
thank them for their insights. In France, the staff of the Archives Nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-
Seine, the Archives de la Préfecture de Police and the Bibliothèque Nationale François
Mitterand all gave valuable assistance with my research. I thank Hugues de La Rocque for
granting me access to his grandfather’s archive.
I thank Oxford University Press for permission to reprint portions of ‘Street-Fighting Men:
Political Violence in Interwar France’, English Historical Review, 129.538 (2014), 606–38. I
thank Palgrave Macmillan for permission to reprint portions of ‘Duelling with Words and Fists:
Meeting Hall Violence in Interwar France’, in Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore (eds),
Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), pp. 112–26 and ‘The Shooting at Chartres: A Case Study in French Political
Violence’, in Ludivine Broch and Alison Carrol, France in an Era of Global War, 1914–1945:
Occupation, Politics, Empire and Entanglements (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp.
73–92. I thank Taylor and Francis for permission to reprint excerpts from ‘Communist Veterans
and Paramilitarism in 1920s France: The Association (p.ix) Républicaine des Anciens
Combattants’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 8(4) (2016), 300–14.
Kevin Passmore helped me to develop the idea for the project and has offered advice and
support throughout its undertaking. His work continues to serve as an inspiration and the book
has benefited greatly from his input. I am grateful to him, too, for introducing me to running. I
thank Caroline Campbell for the many discussions that we have had about interwar France. I
thank her above all for her friendship and I hope to be back with her again soon in the archives
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Acknowledgements
and libraries of Paris. David Uhrig and Marguerite Momesso have offered their hospitality and
accommodation on numerous occasions and I am very grateful to them for this. A word of thanks
is due to the following people who have offered advice and feedback at various stages of the
project: Ludivine Broch, Alison Carrol, John Horne, Brian Jenkins, Samuel Kalman, Sean
Kennedy, Matteo Millan, Geoff Read, Martin Simpson and Jessica Wardhaugh. I am especially
grateful to Julian Jackson, who read and commented upon the entire manuscript.
For their continued love and support, I thank my family: Jean and Ron Millington, Rich and Liz
Millington, Jim and Dorothy Millington, Anne and Neil McWilliam, and Dave and Diane Owens.
While researching and writing this book, I thought often of my grandparents, Clarence and
Martha ‘Doll’ Millington, and Walter and Sarah Robinson. They grew up in the world between
the wars, enduring its political and social conflicts. I am sorry that my interest in the period
developed only after they passed away.
Alexandra, I thank you for being there for me throughout the lifetime of the project and for
tolerating without a word of complaint the long periods spent apart as I chased down documents
in Parisian archives. Your understanding of what an academic career involves and your
acceptance of the sacrifices that it has entailed for both of us have never wavered. You continue
to inspire me every day. Madeleine, you arrived as I was putting the finishing touches to the
manuscript. You bring us so much happiness each day and we love you dearly. Alexandra and
Madeleine, this book is for you.
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List of Abbreviations
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
(p.x) List of Abbreviations
Chris Millington
AF
Action Française
ARAC
Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants
CF
Croix de Feu
CGT
Confédération Générale du Travail
CGTU
Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire
EVP
Equipes Volantes de Propagande
FNC
Fédération Nationale Catholique
FST
Fédération Sportive du Travail
GDA
Groupes de Défense Antifascistes
JGA
Jeunes Gardes Antifascistes
JP
Jeunesses Patriotes
MSR
Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire
PPF
Parti Populaire Français
PSF
Parti Social Français
SA
Sturmabteilung
SF
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List of Abbreviations
Solidarité Française
SOL
Service d’Ordre Légionnaire
TPPS
Toujours Prêt Pour Servir
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Introduction: Violence and Democracy in Interwar France
Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French
Politics
Chris Millington
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780197266274
Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: September 2018
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197266274.001.0001
(p.xi) Introduction: Violence and Democracy in Interwar France
Chris Millington
The central concern of this book is to examine the place of violence in the politics of late Third
Republican France. In doing so, it poses a number of questions about the role of violence in a
modern democratic political culture. Does democratic competition channel political conflict
away from the street definitively and into the ballot box? Does electioneering render political
opponents content to confront each other with their ideas rather than their fists? Do citizens in
turn accept that democratic institutions such as parliament represent the only legitimate means
by which to resolve political differences? Are deliberation, discussion and debate infinitely
preferable to the rule of the revolver and the truncheon? Is violence perpetrated solely by
hotheads, madmen and fanatics on the margins of the democratic consensus? Are the forces of
order in a democratic state able to keep the peace without recourse to excessive force?
Ultimately, does democracy eliminate political violence?
At first glance, the case of the French Third Republic would appear to offer a ‘yes’ to the
questions posed above. In comparison with the violence perpetrated in the name of political
causes elsewhere in Europe between 1870 and 1940, Third Republican France was remarkable
in its peacefulness. When republicans announced the founding of the Government of National
Defence on 4 September 1870, the Second Empire slipped bloodlessly into history. The terrible
massacres of the Paris Commune soon followed, yet this spasm of violence was extraordinary
and similar scenes of bloodletting were not repeated. Republican governments could certainly
act with brutality to suppress rebellion: in winter 1934 Paris was the site of ferment and
insurrection with twenty-seven people killed during 6–12 February. (p.xii) But these numbers
paled in comparison with the numbers killed in fighting between political groups and in state
repression elsewhere in Europe. When war and defeat brought an end to the Republic in July
1940, the regime died with barely a whimper as the French parliament granted Marshal Philippe
Pétain full powers to write a new constitution.
The relatively pacific nature of France seems further confirmed when one brings the violence of
interwar European politics into focus. Across the border to the south-east, Benito Mussolini
exploited disappointment with the fruits of the 1918 victory and post-war political and social
unrest to repress pitilessly the left with the connivance of the Italian state.1 On the other side of
the Rhine, Germany endured a period of bloody civil war until 1923. The politics of the Weimar
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Introduction: Violence and Democracy in Interwar France
Republic would remain riven by paramilitary combat between the extreme right, the communist
party and republicans until Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in January 1933.2 To the south-
west, the Spanish Republic descended during the 1930s into brutal civil war as General
Francisco Franco’s nationalist rebels sought to supplant the elected democratic government.3
Further afield, in Eastern Europe, the redrawing of borders in the ‘shatter zones’ of the former
empires gave rise to territorial and ethnic tensions that produced a political culture beset with
violence.4 France could offer no parallel to the lethality of political violence (p.xiii) witnessed
in its neighbours, near or far. Approximately 100 people died in violence involving political
groups in France during 1918–1940.5 When one considers that 105 Germans lost their lives as a
result of political violence during June and July 1932 alone, the number of deaths suffered in
France seems extraordinarily small.6 Violence in Italy in the two years between October 1920
and the 1922 March on Rome resulted in as many as nineteen times more killings than were
perpetrated over a twenty-year period in France.7 Similarly, up to 2,000 people died in political
violence in Spain before the outbreak of war in 1936.8
It would therefore seem that it is with good reason that the historiography of interwar France
has marginalised political violence. In his 1985 article on political confrontation during the
1930s Serge Berstein argued that while verbal violence was ubiquitous in newspapers and
propaganda, actual violence was rare. Berstein’s article was one of a series produced by
scholars in the 1980s as the French historical establishment attempted to rebuff Israeli historian
Zeev Sternhell’s controversial claim that fascism could trace its roots to late 19th-century
France. Set within this historiographical context, Berstein sought to show that in French
political culture there was no room for the violence that paved the way to power for European
fascists. He argued that democratic mores ensured that the desire to physically attack the
opponent was sublimated into electoral competition. Violent discourse was ultimately cathartic
for it allowed enemies to give vent to their anger without resorting to aggression. Consequently,
the bitter political conflict of the 1930s, so evident in the press, was in fact a ‘simulated
confrontation’ detached from a much more benign reality.9 Berstein reinforced his position in
2001 in an article on the prevalence of a democratic consensus in France. According to this idea,
the French (p.xiv) Republic expressed, and spoke directly to, the aspirations of large sections
of society. Berstein allowed for the existence of other less democratic and potentially violent
political cultures, yet their very estrangement from contemporary preoccupations doomed them
to oblivion. By the interwar years, only a handful of recusants had not realised (or refused to do
so) that political success was dependent on one’s integration into the democratic republican
consensus—and the rejection of violence.10
Historians have further cited the fact that the country apparently escaped the post-war
‘brutalisation’ of politics experienced abroad as another reason for the relative lack of violence
in French interwar politics. George Mosse’s seminal work on the representations of war in 20th-
century Europe claimed that in the countries left defeated or disappointed in the aftermath of
the Great War violent political groups sought to continue the conflict into peacetime and thus
put right the perceived injustice. Uniformed paramilitary organisations formed from war
veterans and adventurous youths recreated the camaraderie of the front line. They used tropes
heavily invested with a mythologised and romantic memory of wartime courage and heroism to
deploy deadly violence against the demonised and dehumanised political adversary.11 However,
according to Antoine Prost, French veterans, under the influence of a primary education system
that promoted civic and republican values, worked to render politics more peaceful. For the
anciens combattants, rather than a quixotic experience to be relived, war was an absolute evil
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