1018 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and DictatorshipThe Popular Front in France against the Far Right
Fascist parties in France had their origins in the anti-republican national
ism of the late nineteenth century. The Great War and the economic and
social frustrations of the post-armistice period, as elsewhere, contributed
to the rise of the far right. War veterans were prominent in the Faisceau
movement, which was founded in 1919 and emulated the newly created
Italian fascist organization, and in the Cross of Fire, established in 1929.
French fascist leaders included two renowned producers of luxury prod
ucts, the perfume magnate Francois Coty and the champagne baron Pierre
Taittinger. The latters Patriotic Youth movement, founded in 1924, counted
more than 100,000 members by the end of the decade.
The rise in immigration to France increased xenophobia and racism.
Beginning in 1935, more people died in France each year than were born
there, and its population grew only because of the arrival of immigrants—
Italians, Poles, Spaniards, and Belgians, as well as Jews from Eastern
Europe. About 7.5 percent of the French population in the late 1930s con
sisted of immigrants—the highest percentage in Europe.
French fascists decried the existence of the Third Republic, which seemed
to them an anomaly in a continent of dictators. Political power in France lay
not with a strong executive authority but with the Chamber of Deputies.
Governments came and went in turn, increasing rightist dissatisfaction. In
1934, a seamy political scandal offered the extreme right an opening for
action. The appearance of government complicity in a fraudulent bond
selling scheme engineered by Serge Stavisky (1886-1934), a Ukrainian
born Jew, led to violent rightist demonstrations against the republic. On
February 6, 1934, right-wing groups rioted, charging across the Seine River
in Paris toward the Chamber of Deputies before being dispersed by troops,
with casualties on both sides. But, unlike the right in Germany, Italy, or
Spain, the French right did not have a dominating figure capable of uniting
opposition to parliamentary rule. On February 12, millions of French men
and women marched in support of the republic.
The formation of the Popular Front in France, an alliance between the
Radical, Socialist, and Communist parties, must be seen in the context of
the threat posed by the right not only in France but throughout Europe.
Socialists and Communists had been at odds since the Congress of Tours in
- The split became policy when the Communist International (Com
intern) of 1927 adopted the tactic of “class against class,” which tolerated
no concessions to “bourgeois” parties, including the Socialist Party. But in
the 1930s, the reality of the threat of the right to France overcame ideology.
Stalin s fear of German rearmament led the Comintern to repudiate the
“class versus class” strategy in June 1934. The French Communist Party was
now free to join forces with the Socialist and Radical parties in a Popular
Front to defend the republic against fascism. The three parties prepared
a compromise program incorporating tax reform, a shorter workweek,