566Chapter 28
Stavisky’s death in a reported suicide and the dubious
nature of investigations created a volatile antiparliamen-
tary mood in France. Several far right-wing leagues—
such as Colonel de la Rocque’s Croix de feu(The Fiery
Cross) and Pierre Taittinger’s Jeunesses Patriotes(Young
Patriots)—had flourished during the depression, and
their members seized upon the Stavisky scandal as the
excuse for anti-parliamentary riots in the central Paris in
February 1934. Thousands of right-wing demonstrators
battled with police in an attempt to attack the Chamber
of Deputies. The republic survived the Stavisky riots,
but fifteen people were killed and more than one
thousand injured.
Léon Blum and the Popular Front in France
The depression, the Stavisky affair, and the February
1934 riots led, paradoxically, to a strengthening of the
Third Republic, because they frightened political lead-
ers into creating a powerful coalition called the Popular
Front (1936–38). The parties of the French left had long
fought each other, but fears of a fascist Putschunited
them. Moderate democrats (called the Radical Party) led
by Edouard Daladier, democratic socialists, trade union-
ists, and even Communists (frightened by the spread of
fascism, which was strongly anti-Communist) supported
the Popular Front under the leadership of Léon Blum,
the head of the Socialist Party. Blum, a Jewish intellec-
tual and a distinguished jurist, had entered politics at the
time of the Dreyfus affair. He fought against both Poin-
caré’s conservatism and French Communism while re-
building the democratic socialist (SFIO) party during
the 1920s. When the 1934 riots alarmed France about
the strength of fascism there, Blum took the lead in cre-
ating the Popular Front and brought it to victory in the
1936 parliamentary elections, becoming the first Jewish
prime minister in French history.
Léon Blum held office for only one year before the
Popular Front began to crumble, but he achieved Eu-
rope’s most profound response to the depression: a
workweek of forty hours, paid annual vacations of four
weeks, a 12 percent raise for workers and civil servants,
and acceptance of collective bargaining. Under Blum’s
direction, France also abandoned some aspects of capi-
talist economics: he nationalized the Bank of France
and parts of the armaments industry, and undertook
government regulation of basic food prices. The Blum
government also restored a degree of order in France
and calmed the worst fears of industrialists by ending
the wave of sit-down strikes and factory occupations
that had swept the country and by agreeing not to na-
tionalize most industries. When Blum proposed further
financial reforms in 1937, however, the Radical Party
deserted the Popular Front, and Blum was obliged to re-
sign, to the cheers of many conservatives who felt “Bet-
ter Hitler than Blum.”The Spanish Second Republic and the
Spanish Civil War
Spain entered the twentieth century in an age of gov-
ernmental instability under a constitutional monarchy
(1874–1923) that lasted until General Primo de Rivera
created a military dictatorship (1923–30). The Spanish
Second Republic was created in 1931 after Primo de
Rivera allowed local elections, which produced an out-
pouring of support for a republic.
The Spanish republic of 1931 was among the
frailest of Europe’s parliamentary democracies, and it
faced many threats. A regional revolt broke out in 1934
when Catalonia proclaimed itself independent. The re-
public was also internally divided between groups of
moderate, Catholic republicans led by Prime Minister
Alcalá Zamora and groups of more radical, anticlerical
republicans led by Manuel Azaña. Its radical constitu-
tion alarmed landowners, who feared nationalization of
property; the leaders of the church, who resisted its
program of secularization; and the army, whose officer
corps was greatly reduced by forced retirements at half-
pensions. These groups formed the nucleus of a resur-
gent right-wing in Spanish politics. Primo de Rivera’s
son launched a Spanish fascist movement known as the
Falange in 1933; it later stopped using the word fascist,
but it remained emphatically antidemocratic. The pro-
gram of the Falange was clear: “Our State will be a to-
talitarian instrument.... We shall immediately abolish
the system of political parties.”
The crisis of Spanish democracy culminated in the
Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. War began with the re-
volt of army units stationed in Spanish Morocco and
spread to garrison towns in Spain. The Falange joined
General Francisco Franco in forming a coalition of Na-
tionalists seeking to abolish the Second Republic and
restore traditional order to Spain. A similar coalition of
Loyalists, including Catalan rebels, defended the repub-
lic. The Loyalists held most of the great cities of Spain,
such as Madrid and Barcelona, but the Nationalists held
most of the military strength. Franco was the son of a
naval paymaster, educated in a military academy, and
made his reputation in colonial wars in the 1920s; his
reckless bravery in combat (perhaps a compensation for
his insecurity at standing only 5′ 3 ′′) made him the