French Social Party
Encyclopedia
The French Social Party was a French
nationalist
political party founded in 1936 by François de La Rocque
, following the dissolution of his Croix-de-Feu
league
by the Popular Front
government. France's first right-wing
mass party, prefiguring the rise of Gaullism
after the Second World War , it experienced considerable initial success but disappeared in the wake of the fall of France
in 1940.
, the World War I
veterans' organization founded in 1927, which had by the early 1930s emerged as the largest and one of the most influential of interwar France's numerous far-right leagues. Though the Croix-de-Feu had adopted as its slogan "Social d'abord" ("Social First") as a counter to the "Politique d'abord" ("Politics First") of Action Française
, it espoused the political goals elaborated by La Rocque in his tract Service Public — including social-Catholic corporatism
, the institution of a minimum wage and paid vacations (congés payés), women's suffrage, and the reform of parliamentary procedure . The programme of the Social Party would further develop these same themes, advocating "the association of capital and labour", a traditional platitude of French conservatism, and the reform of France's political institutions along presidential
lines, in order to bolster the stability and authority of the state .
Though the Croix-de-Feu participated in the demonstrations of 6 February 1934
, La Rocque forbade its members from involving themselves in the subsequent riot, demonstrating a respect for republican legality that the PSF would also uphold as one of its essential political principles. Thus La Rocque, who had previously maintained a certain mystique with regard to his attitude towards the Republic
, explicitly rallied to it, denouncing, in a speech on 23 May 1936, totalitarianism
(both Nazi
and Soviet
) along with racism (with regard to which he explicitly rejected antisemitism) and class struggle, as the principal obstacles to "national reconciliation" .
Nevertheless, critics of the left and centre denounced the Croix-de-Feu, together with the other leagues, as fascist organizations. A desire to defend the republic was not their sole motivation: politicians of the centre-right and left alike opposed La Rocque due to the perceived threat of his success in mobilizing a mass base within their traditional, and particularly working-class, constituencies .
Due to the disruptive nature of the leagues' activities, the Laval
government outlawed paramilitary groups on 6 December 1935, and although this decision was succeeded by the law of 10 January 1936 regulating militias and combat organizations, the law was only partially implemented: of all the leagues, only Action Française was dissolved, and the Croix-de-Feu was allowed to continue its activities essentially unimpeded. Following the victory of the Popular Front
, which had included in its electoral programme a promise to dissolve the right-wing leagues, in the parliamentary elections
of May 1936, the government issued a decree banning the Croix-de-Feu, along with the Mouvement social français, on 18 June. Within weeks, on 7 July, La Rocque founded the French Social Party to succeed the defunct league.
Unlike established right-wing parties such as the Republican Federation
and Democratic Alliance, which had traditionally lacked a formal membership structure and relied instead on the support of notables, the PSF aggressively courted an extensive membership among the middle and lower classes. By 1940, the PSF had become not only France's first right-wing mass party, but the nation's largest party in terms of membership: with over 700,000 members (and more than a million according to some historians ), it eclipsed even the traditionally mass-based Socialist (SFIO) and Communist
parties (202,000 and 288,000 members, respectively, in December 1936 ).
The party's central committee included its president, La Rocque, vice-presidents Jean Mermoz
and Noël Ottavi, Edmond Barrachin, Charles Vallin, Jean Ybarnegaray
, Jean Borotra
, and Georges Riché. The party had two newspapers: Le Flambeau and Le Petit Journal.
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, to which three were added in by-election
s between 1936 and 1939 and two more by desertions from other right-wing parliamentary groups. The true measure of the party's electoral potential, however, came with the municipal elections of 1938-39, in which it won 15% of votes nationally . As a result of the proportional representation
law passed by the Chamber in June 1939, this promised to translate into approximately one hundred deputies in the legislative elections planned for 1940. By 1939, the party's elected officials, its eleven deputies aside, included nearly three thousand mayors, 541 general councilors
and thousands of municipal councilors .
— that generated the most fear from the left. This demographic was historically one of the primary bastions of the Radical-Socialist Party, and its falling under the influence of the "fascist" right was viewed by Popular Front leaders as a serious threat to the stability of the republic. The PSF, for its part, actively courted the classes moyennes, arguing that their traditional Radical defenders had abandoned them by supporting the Popular Front .
Despite this demographic threat, however, the PSF generated the most fervent hostility within the parties of the established parliamentary right, most notably the conservative Republican Federation
. The tensions between the Federation and the PSF were demonstrated, as early as 1937, by a Normandy
by-election
in which the Federation candidate, after having placed behind the PSF candidate in the first round, initially refused to stand down and support the latter in the runoff round. The rancor of the feuding parties, despite the Federation candidate's eventual endorsement of the PSF, resulted in the seat falling to the centre — demonstrating to Federation and PSF leaders alike the undesirability of coexistence. Thus, although the two parties were in fact in agreement on many questions of ideology, notably their defense of the far-right leagues, the PSF was viewed by the long-established Federation as a rival "to its own electoral fortunes" .
A second victim of the PSF's popularity was Jacques Doriot
's far-right Parti Populaire Français
(PPF), which incorporated nationalist as well as virulently anti-communist and openly fascist tendencies. Founded, like the PSF, in June 1936, the PPF enjoyed initial success, attracting a membership of 295,000, according to the party's own statistics, by the beginning of 1938 . With the continued growth of the PSF, however, the PPF fell into decline, paralleling the demise of the Popular Front to which it had largely been a reaction .
In March 1937, Doriot proposed the formation of a Front de la Liberté ("Front of Liberty") with the objective of unifying the right in opposition to the Popular Front. Although the Republican Federation, followed by several small right-wing parties which stood to lose little from allying themselves to the more extremist PPF, quickly accepted Doriot's proposal, it was rejected both by the moderate Democratic Alliance and by La Rocque, who identified the Front as an attempt to "annex" the popularity of his party . Due to his insistence on the PSF's independence, La Rocque was attacked violently by other figures on the right — including former Croix-de-Feu members who had abandoned the more moderate Social Party .
Popular Democratic Party
(PDP) were reluctant to criticize the government lest this sabotage their efforts to lure the Radical Party into a center-right coalition .
Thus the Independent Radicals
, gathering right-wing Radical parliamentarians, constituted the most effective opposition to the Popular Front, particularly in the Senate. With the prospect of a PSF breakthrough in the 1940 elections in mind, the Independent Radicals sought to cooperate with this new force; for their part, the PSF deputies voted confidence in Édouard Daladier
's Radical government in April 1938 . With the collapse of the Popular Front the PSF-Radical alliance seemed inevitable to many on the left, with the Socialist newspaper Le Populaire writing, in 1938, that "the PSF-Radical bloc has become a reality of political life", although this observation appeared premature to most contemporary observers .
of 1939 deprived the PSF of the chance to make serious inroads in parliament: on 30 July, prime minister
Daladier
, fearing that the imminent electoral campaign would distract the Chamber of Deputies from the business of national defense, used the decree powers granted him by the Chamber to extend its term until May 1942 .
Following the fall of France
and the establishment of the Vichy regime
, which La Rocque denounced as defeatist and antisemitic — while still proclaiming his personal loyalty to Marshal Pétain
— the PSF was renamed Progrès Social Français (French Social Progress) and took on the form of a social aid organization due to the occupation authorities' prohibition of organized political activities. La Rocque's attitude towards the Vichy government was initially ambiguous. As stated, he continued to affirm his loyalty to Pétain and was amenable to certain of the more moderate aspects of Vichy's reactionary program, the Révolution Nationale
, notably its corporatism and social policies. The PSF further refused to recognize De Gaulle
's Free French
, along with the National Council of the Resistance, as the legitimate French authorities in opposition to Vichy, which also claimed constitutional legitimacy (although some members of the PSF, among them Charles Vallin, did join the Free French). However, La Rocque was hostile to Vichy's enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazi
occupiers, and forbid PSF members from participating in Vichy-sponsored organizations such as the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire
, the Milice
, and the Legion of French Volunteers
.
In August 1940 La Rocque began actively to participate in the Resistance
, transmitting information to the British Secret Intelligence Service
via Georges Charaudeau's Réseau Alibi ("Alibi Network"), and forming the Réseau Klan ("Klan Network") in 1942 as a means of coordinating intelligence-gathering activities among PSF members. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that he could convince Pétain to abandon his collaborationist line, to which end he requested, and was granted, three meetings with the Marshal in early 1943. Two days after their last meeting, on 9 March, La Rocque was arrested by the Gestapo
during a nationwide roundup of over one hundred PSF leaders . Deported first to Czechoslovakia
and later to Austria
, he returned to France only in May 1945.
As with nearly all political parties that had existed under the Third Republic, the PSF produced both collaborators with and resisters of the Vichy regime. In most cases, individual circumstances dictated more ambiguous loyalties and actions: although former PSF deputy Jean Ybarnegaray
, for instance, served in the first Vichy government under Pétain as Minister for Veterans and the Family; he resigned his post in 1940 and was in 1943 arrested and deported due to his efforts in helping Resistance members to cross the Pyrenees into Spain .
) coalition in the elections of June 1946
, November 1946
, 1951
, and 1956. The death of La Rocque in 1946 deprived the party of unifying leadership, however, and the pre-war popularity that it had hoped to exploit never materialized. Though the PRSRF had effectively disappeared by 1956, with the schism that year of the RGR into center-left and center-right groups, certain of its members would later continue their political careers within the conservative CNIP
party.
Popular Republican Movement
(MRP); and, for others (notably François Mitterrand
), the conservative Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance
(UDSR).
PSF ideology, particularly its corporatist emphasis on the association of capital and labour, and its advocacy of a strong, stable presidential regime
to replace the parliamentary republic, would also contribute to the development of Gaullism
, culminating in the establishment of the presidential Fifth Republic in 1958 . The postwar Gaullist party, the Rally of the French People
(RPF), like the MRP, enthusiastically adopted the mass-based model of organization and mobilization that had been pioneered by the PSF — a sharp and permanent break from the cadre-based parties of the prewar classical right.
". Most contemporary French historians, notably René Rémond
, Michel Winock
, Jean Lacouture
, and Pierre Milza
, have rejected this assertion. Rémond, in his La Droite en France, identifies the PSF instead as an offshoot of the Bonapartist
tradition in French right-wing politics — populist and anti-parliamentarian, but hardly fascist ; Milza, in La France des années 30, writes that, "the PSF was more anti-parliamentarian than anti-republican" . More recently, Lacouture has written that "La Rocque's movement was neither fascist nor extremist" . Furthermore, Rémond has identified the PSF, at least in part, as a populist and social-Catholic "antidote" to French fascism; thus: "Far from representing a French form of fascism in the face of the Popular Front, La Rocque helped to safeguard France from fascism", by diverting the support of the middle classes away from more extremist alternatives . Jacques Nobécourt has made similar assertions: "La Rocque spared France from a pre-war experiment with totalitarianism" .
The lasting confusion over the "fascist" tendencies of the PSF can be ascribed, in part, to two factors. First, the PSF's predecessor, the Croix-de-Feu, did aspire to a paramilitary aesthetic (described by Julian Jackson
as a "fascist frisson" and dismissed by Rémond as "political boy scouting for adults") outwardly similar to that employed by the more overtly fascist of the right-wing leagues; furthermore, La Rocque continued to defend the leagues' activities even in the face of their condemnation by the parties of the established moderate right (though not the Republican Federation
) . Second, the PSF's condemnation of parliamentarism
, considered synonymous with French republicanism by most politicians of the left and centre, marked it as inherently anti-republican — and thus "fascist" in the political discourse of the period — in the opinions of the latter.
A number of foreign historians, however, have questioned these defenses of La Rocque and the PSF: Zeev Sternhell
, criticizing Rémond's classification of the PSF as Bonapartist in Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, associates the party and its leader with a "revolutionary right" tradition that owes its political heritage to Boulangism and the revolutionary syndicalism of Georges Sorel
. This minority view is partially shared by Robert Soucy
, William D. Irvine
, and Michel Dobry
, who argue that the Croix-de-Feu and the PSF were partially-realized manifestations of a distinctively French fascism, their political potential (though not their tactics of organization and mobilization) destroyed by the German invasion and thus permanently discredited. Sternhell, pointing to the democratic path to power followed by the Nazi Party, has also made the argument that La Rocque's apparent respect for republican legality is not sufficient ground to disqualify his movement as fascist.
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
political party founded in 1936 by François de La Rocque
François de la Rocque
François de La Rocque was leader of the French right-wing league named the Croix de Feu from 1930–1936, before forming the more moderate Parti Social Français , seen as a precursor of Gaullism.- Early life :François de La Rocque was born on 6 October 1885 in Lorient, Brittany, the third son to a...
, following the dissolution of his Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...
league
Far right leagues
The Far right leagues were several French far right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties...
by the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
government. France's first right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
mass party, prefiguring the rise of Gaullism
Gaullism
Gaullism is a French political ideology based on the thought and action of Resistance leader then president Charles de Gaulle.-Foreign policy:...
after the Second World War , it experienced considerable initial success but disappeared in the wake of the fall of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
in 1940.
Background and origins (1927–36)
La Rocque envisioned the PSF as the more explicitly political successor of the Croix-de-FeuCroix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...
, the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veterans' organization founded in 1927, which had by the early 1930s emerged as the largest and one of the most influential of interwar France's numerous far-right leagues. Though the Croix-de-Feu had adopted as its slogan "Social d'abord" ("Social First") as a counter to the "Politique d'abord" ("Politics First") of Action Française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
, it espoused the political goals elaborated by La Rocque in his tract Service Public — including social-Catholic corporatism
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
, the institution of a minimum wage and paid vacations (congés payés), women's suffrage, and the reform of parliamentary procedure . The programme of the Social Party would further develop these same themes, advocating "the association of capital and labour", a traditional platitude of French conservatism, and the reform of France's political institutions along presidential
Presidential system
A presidential system is a system of government where an executive branch exists and presides separately from the legislature, to which it is not responsible and which cannot, in normal circumstances, dismiss it....
lines, in order to bolster the stability and authority of the state .
Though the Croix-de-Feu participated in the demonstrations of 6 February 1934
6 February 1934 crisis
The 6 February 1934 crisis refers to an anti-parliamentarist street demonstration in Paris organized by far-right leagues that culminated in a riot on the Place de la Concorde, near the seat of the French National Assembly...
, La Rocque forbade its members from involving themselves in the subsequent riot, demonstrating a respect for republican legality that the PSF would also uphold as one of its essential political principles. Thus La Rocque, who had previously maintained a certain mystique with regard to his attitude towards the Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
, explicitly rallied to it, denouncing, in a speech on 23 May 1936, totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
(both Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
) along with racism (with regard to which he explicitly rejected antisemitism) and class struggle, as the principal obstacles to "national reconciliation" .
Nevertheless, critics of the left and centre denounced the Croix-de-Feu, together with the other leagues, as fascist organizations. A desire to defend the republic was not their sole motivation: politicians of the centre-right and left alike opposed La Rocque due to the perceived threat of his success in mobilizing a mass base within their traditional, and particularly working-class, constituencies .
Due to the disruptive nature of the leagues' activities, the Laval
Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval was a French politician. He was four times President of the council of ministers of the Third Republic, twice consecutively. Following France's Armistice with Germany in 1940, he served twice in the Vichy Regime as head of government, signing orders permitting the deportation of...
government outlawed paramilitary groups on 6 December 1935, and although this decision was succeeded by the law of 10 January 1936 regulating militias and combat organizations, the law was only partially implemented: of all the leagues, only Action Française was dissolved, and the Croix-de-Feu was allowed to continue its activities essentially unimpeded. Following the victory of the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
, which had included in its electoral programme a promise to dissolve the right-wing leagues, in the parliamentary elections
French legislative election, 1936
French legislative elections to elect the 16th legislature of the French Third Republic were held on 26 April and 3 May 1936. This was the last legislature of the Third Republic and the last election before the Second World War. The number of candidates set a record, with 4,807 people vying for 618...
of May 1936, the government issued a decree banning the Croix-de-Feu, along with the Mouvement social français, on 18 June. Within weeks, on 7 July, La Rocque founded the French Social Party to succeed the defunct league.
Organization and mass mobilization
The PSF inherited the large popular base of the Croix-de-Feu — 450,000 members in June 1936, with the majority of them having joined since 1934 — and, mirroring the Popular Front movement of the same period, achieved considerable success in mobilizing it through a variety of associated organizations: sporting societies, labour organizations, and leisure and vacation camps. PSF members also orchestrated the development of "professional unions" (syndicats professionels), envisioned as a means of organizing management against labour militancy, which espoused class collaboration and claimed one million members by 1938 .Unlike established right-wing parties such as the Republican Federation
Republican Federation
The Republican Federation was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the liberal Orleanists rallied to the Republic. Founded in November 1903, it rivalized with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique...
and Democratic Alliance, which had traditionally lacked a formal membership structure and relied instead on the support of notables, the PSF aggressively courted an extensive membership among the middle and lower classes. By 1940, the PSF had become not only France's first right-wing mass party, but the nation's largest party in terms of membership: with over 700,000 members (and more than a million according to some historians ), it eclipsed even the traditionally mass-based Socialist (SFIO) and Communist
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
parties (202,000 and 288,000 members, respectively, in December 1936 ).
The party's central committee included its president, La Rocque, vice-presidents Jean Mermoz
Jean Mermoz
Jean Mermoz was a French aviator, viewed as a hero by many in both Argentina and his native France, where many schools bear his name...
and Noël Ottavi, Edmond Barrachin, Charles Vallin, Jean Ybarnegaray
Jean Ybarnegaray
Michel Albert Jean Joseph Ybarnegaray was a French politician and founder of the International Association for Basque Pelota....
, Jean Borotra
Jean Borotra
Jean Robert Borotra was a French champion tennis player. He was one of the famous "Four Musketeers" from his country who dominated tennis in the late 1920s and early 1930s.-Career:...
, and Georges Riché. The party had two newspapers: Le Flambeau and Le Petit Journal.
Electoral success
The nascent PSF elected six members to the Chamber of Deputies in 1936French legislative election, 1936
French legislative elections to elect the 16th legislature of the French Third Republic were held on 26 April and 3 May 1936. This was the last legislature of the Third Republic and the last election before the Second World War. The number of candidates set a record, with 4,807 people vying for 618...
, to which three were added in by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
s between 1936 and 1939 and two more by desertions from other right-wing parliamentary groups. The true measure of the party's electoral potential, however, came with the municipal elections of 1938-39, in which it won 15% of votes nationally . As a result of the proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...
law passed by the Chamber in June 1939, this promised to translate into approximately one hundred deputies in the legislative elections planned for 1940. By 1939, the party's elected officials, its eleven deputies aside, included nearly three thousand mayors, 541 general councilors
General councils (France)
The General councils are assemblies of the French departments. They are elected by universal suffrage.-List of the Presidents of the General councils:-External links:*...
and thousands of municipal councilors .
Competition with established right-wing parties
Of all the PSF's successes, it was the party's popularity among the classes moyennes — the peasants, shopkeepers, and clerical workers who had been hardest hit by the Great DepressionGreat Depression in France
The Great Depression affected France from about 1931 through the remainder of the decade. The depression had drastic effects on the local economy, which can partly explain the 6 February 1934 crisis and even more the formation of the Popular Front, led by SFIO socialist leader Léon Blum, who won...
— that generated the most fear from the left. This demographic was historically one of the primary bastions of the Radical-Socialist Party, and its falling under the influence of the "fascist" right was viewed by Popular Front leaders as a serious threat to the stability of the republic. The PSF, for its part, actively courted the classes moyennes, arguing that their traditional Radical defenders had abandoned them by supporting the Popular Front .
Despite this demographic threat, however, the PSF generated the most fervent hostility within the parties of the established parliamentary right, most notably the conservative Republican Federation
Republican Federation
The Republican Federation was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the liberal Orleanists rallied to the Republic. Founded in November 1903, it rivalized with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique...
. The tensions between the Federation and the PSF were demonstrated, as early as 1937, by a Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
in which the Federation candidate, after having placed behind the PSF candidate in the first round, initially refused to stand down and support the latter in the runoff round. The rancor of the feuding parties, despite the Federation candidate's eventual endorsement of the PSF, resulted in the seat falling to the centre — demonstrating to Federation and PSF leaders alike the undesirability of coexistence. Thus, although the two parties were in fact in agreement on many questions of ideology, notably their defense of the far-right leagues, the PSF was viewed by the long-established Federation as a rival "to its own electoral fortunes" .
A second victim of the PSF's popularity was Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot
Jacques Doriot was a French politician prior to and during World War II. He began as a Communist but then turned Fascist.-Early life and politics:...
's far-right Parti Populaire Français
Parti Populaire Français
The Parti Populaire Français was a fascist political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II...
(PPF), which incorporated nationalist as well as virulently anti-communist and openly fascist tendencies. Founded, like the PSF, in June 1936, the PPF enjoyed initial success, attracting a membership of 295,000, according to the party's own statistics, by the beginning of 1938 . With the continued growth of the PSF, however, the PPF fell into decline, paralleling the demise of the Popular Front to which it had largely been a reaction .
In March 1937, Doriot proposed the formation of a Front de la Liberté ("Front of Liberty") with the objective of unifying the right in opposition to the Popular Front. Although the Republican Federation, followed by several small right-wing parties which stood to lose little from allying themselves to the more extremist PPF, quickly accepted Doriot's proposal, it was rejected both by the moderate Democratic Alliance and by La Rocque, who identified the Front as an attempt to "annex" the popularity of his party . Due to his insistence on the PSF's independence, La Rocque was attacked violently by other figures on the right — including former Croix-de-Feu members who had abandoned the more moderate Social Party .
Rapprochement with the Radical Party
The major parties of the right fell in disarray after their electoral defeat and the strike movement of June 1936: although the Republican Federation, at least, was consistent in its opposition to Popular Front policies, the Democratic Alliance and the small, Christian democraticChristian Democracy
Christian democracy is a political ideology that seeks to apply Christian principles to public policy. It emerged in nineteenth-century Europe under the influence of conservatism and Catholic social teaching...
Popular Democratic Party
Popular Democratic Party (France)
The Popular Democratic Party was a non-confessional Christian democratic party in France during the Third Republic. Founded in 1924, it represented the trend of advanced French social Catholicism, while remaining a party embodying the ideology of centrism....
(PDP) were reluctant to criticize the government lest this sabotage their efforts to lure the Radical Party into a center-right coalition .
Thus the Independent Radicals
Independent Radicals
The Independent Radicals were a center-right French political current during the French Third Republic, which refused the Radical-Socialist Party's alliance to the Left. It was formed after the fall of the first Cartel des gauches, in 1926. Starting in 1928, the group of the Independent Radicals...
, gathering right-wing Radical parliamentarians, constituted the most effective opposition to the Popular Front, particularly in the Senate. With the prospect of a PSF breakthrough in the 1940 elections in mind, the Independent Radicals sought to cooperate with this new force; for their part, the PSF deputies voted confidence in Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier was a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of the Second World War.-Career:Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined...
's Radical government in April 1938 . With the collapse of the Popular Front the PSF-Radical alliance seemed inevitable to many on the left, with the Socialist newspaper Le Populaire writing, in 1938, that "the PSF-Radical bloc has become a reality of political life", although this observation appeared premature to most contemporary observers .
Wartime activities (1940–45)
The Danzig crisisFree City of Danzig
The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and surrounding areas....
of 1939 deprived the PSF of the chance to make serious inroads in parliament: on 30 July, prime minister
Prime Minister of France
The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...
Daladier
Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier was a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of the Second World War.-Career:Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined...
, fearing that the imminent electoral campaign would distract the Chamber of Deputies from the business of national defense, used the decree powers granted him by the Chamber to extend its term until May 1942 .
Following the fall of France
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
and the establishment of the Vichy regime
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
, which La Rocque denounced as defeatist and antisemitic — while still proclaiming his personal loyalty to Marshal Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
— the PSF was renamed Progrès Social Français (French Social Progress) and took on the form of a social aid organization due to the occupation authorities' prohibition of organized political activities. La Rocque's attitude towards the Vichy government was initially ambiguous. As stated, he continued to affirm his loyalty to Pétain and was amenable to certain of the more moderate aspects of Vichy's reactionary program, the Révolution Nationale
Révolution nationale
The Révolution nationale was the official ideological name under which the Vichy regime established by Marshal Philippe Pétain in July 1940 presented its program...
, notably its corporatism and social policies. The PSF further refused to recognize De Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's Free French
Free French Forces
The Free French Forces were French partisans in World War II who decided to continue fighting against the forces of the Axis powers after the surrender of France and subsequent German occupation and, in the case of Vichy France, collaboration with the Germans.-Definition:In many sources, Free...
, along with the National Council of the Resistance, as the legitimate French authorities in opposition to Vichy, which also claimed constitutional legitimacy (although some members of the PSF, among them Charles Vallin, did join the Free French). However, La Rocque was hostile to Vichy's enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
occupiers, and forbid PSF members from participating in Vichy-sponsored organizations such as the Service d'Ordre Légionnaire
Service d'ordre légionnaire
The Service d'ordre légionnaire was a collaborationist militia created by Joseph Darnand, a far right veteran from the First World War...
, the Milice
Milice
The Milice française , generally called simply Milice, was a paramilitary force created on January 30, 1943 by the Vichy Regime, with German aid, to help fight the French Resistance. The Milice's formal leader was Prime Minister Pierre Laval, though its chief of operations, and actual leader, was...
, and the Legion of French Volunteers
Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism
The Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism was a collaborationist French militia founded on July 8, 1941. It gathered various collaborationist parties, including Marcel Bucard's Mouvement Franciste, Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally, Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party, Eugène...
.
In August 1940 La Rocque began actively to participate in the Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
, transmitting information to the British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
via Georges Charaudeau's Réseau Alibi ("Alibi Network"), and forming the Réseau Klan ("Klan Network") in 1942 as a means of coordinating intelligence-gathering activities among PSF members. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that he could convince Pétain to abandon his collaborationist line, to which end he requested, and was granted, three meetings with the Marshal in early 1943. Two days after their last meeting, on 9 March, La Rocque was arrested by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
during a nationwide roundup of over one hundred PSF leaders . Deported first to Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
and later to Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, he returned to France only in May 1945.
As with nearly all political parties that had existed under the Third Republic, the PSF produced both collaborators with and resisters of the Vichy regime. In most cases, individual circumstances dictated more ambiguous loyalties and actions: although former PSF deputy Jean Ybarnegaray
Jean Ybarnegaray
Michel Albert Jean Joseph Ybarnegaray was a French politician and founder of the International Association for Basque Pelota....
, for instance, served in the first Vichy government under Pétain as Minister for Veterans and the Family; he resigned his post in 1940 and was in 1943 arrested and deported due to his efforts in helping Resistance members to cross the Pyrenees into Spain .
Official continuation
In August 1945, following the liberation of France, La Rocque and his remaining followers — principally Pierre de Léotard, André Portier, and Jean de Mierry — established the Parti Républicain Social de la Réconciliation Française (Social Republican Party of French Reconciliation), known generally as Réconciliation Française and intended as the official successor of the PSF . On the initiative of Léotard the PRSRF participated in the right-wing Rally of the Republican Lefts (RGR, see sinistrismeSinistrisme
Sinistrisme is a neologism invented by Albert Thibaudet in Les idées politiques de la France . He referred to the progressive substitution of left wing parties by new, more radical parties, which in turn pushed each party towards the center Sinistrisme is a neologism invented by Albert Thibaudet in...
) coalition in the elections of June 1946
French legislative election, June 1946
Legislative elections were held in France on 2 June 1946 to elect the second post-war National Assembly designated to prepare a new Constitution...
, November 1946
French legislative election, November 1946
Legislative election was held in France on 10 November 1946 to elect the first National Assembly of the Fourth Republic. The electoral system used was proportional representation....
, 1951
French legislative election, 1951
Legislative elections were held in France on 17 June 1951 to elect the second National Assembly of the Fourth Republic.After the Second World War, the three parties which took a major part in the French Resistance to the German occupation dominated the political scene and government: the French...
, and 1956. The death of La Rocque in 1946 deprived the party of unifying leadership, however, and the pre-war popularity that it had hoped to exploit never materialized. Though the PRSRF had effectively disappeared by 1956, with the schism that year of the RGR into center-left and center-right groups, certain of its members would later continue their political careers within the conservative CNIP
National Centre of Independents and Peasants
The National Centre of Independents and Peasants is a liberal-conservative and conservative-liberal political party in France, founded in 1949 by the merger of the National Centre of Independents with the...
party.
Ideological successors
Despite the postwar insignificance of the party itself, elements of the PSF's and La Rocque's ideology strongly influenced the political formations of right and centre during the Fourth Republic. La Rocque had advised his followers to create "a third party, sincerely republican and very bold from a social perspective" — by which he meant Réconciliation Française within the Rally of the Republican Lefts: but for some former PSF loyalists and sympathizers the statement applied more accurately to the newly-formed, Christian democraticChristian Democracy
Christian democracy is a political ideology that seeks to apply Christian principles to public policy. It emerged in nineteenth-century Europe under the influence of conservatism and Catholic social teaching...
Popular Republican Movement
Popular Republican Movement
The Popular Republican Movement was a French Christian democratic party of the Fourth Republic...
(MRP); and, for others (notably François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
), the conservative Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance
Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance
The Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance was a French political party found at the Liberation and in activity during the Fourth Republic...
(UDSR).
PSF ideology, particularly its corporatist emphasis on the association of capital and labour, and its advocacy of a strong, stable presidential regime
Presidential system
A presidential system is a system of government where an executive branch exists and presides separately from the legislature, to which it is not responsible and which cannot, in normal circumstances, dismiss it....
to replace the parliamentary republic, would also contribute to the development of Gaullism
Gaullism
Gaullism is a French political ideology based on the thought and action of Resistance leader then president Charles de Gaulle.-Foreign policy:...
, culminating in the establishment of the presidential Fifth Republic in 1958 . The postwar Gaullist party, the Rally of the French People
Rally of the French People
The Rally of the French People was a French political party, led by Charles de Gaulle.-Foundation:...
(RPF), like the MRP, enthusiastically adopted the mass-based model of organization and mobilization that had been pioneered by the PSF — a sharp and permanent break from the cadre-based parties of the prewar classical right.
Historiography
Historical debate over the PSF, like its predecessor the Croix-de-Feu, has been driven by the question of whether they can be considered, in at least some respects, the manifestations of a "French fascismFascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
". Most contemporary French historians, notably René Rémond
René Rémond
-Biography:Born in Lons-le-Saunier, Rémond was the Secretary General of Jeunesses étudiantes Catholiques and a member of the International YCS Center of Documentation and Information in Paris, presently the International Secretariat of International Young Catholic Students The author of books on...
, Michel Winock
Michel Winock
Michel Winock is a French historian, specializing in the French Republic, intellectual movements, anti-Semitism, nationalism and the far right movements of France. He is a professeur des universités in contemporary history at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and member of L'Histoire...
, Jean Lacouture
Jean Lacouture
Jean Lacouture is a journalist, historian and author. He is particularly famous for his biographies. - Biography :...
, and Pierre Milza
Pierre Milza
Pierre Milza is a French historian, well-known as a specialist of fascism.He is a teacher at Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris.He wrote many books about Fascism and History of Italy. Some of his books are:I...
, have rejected this assertion. Rémond, in his La Droite en France, identifies the PSF instead as an offshoot of the Bonapartist
Bonapartism
Bonapartism is often defined as a political expression in the vocabulary of Marxism and Leninism, deriving from the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire...
tradition in French right-wing politics — populist and anti-parliamentarian, but hardly fascist ; Milza, in La France des années 30, writes that, "the PSF was more anti-parliamentarian than anti-republican" . More recently, Lacouture has written that "La Rocque's movement was neither fascist nor extremist" . Furthermore, Rémond has identified the PSF, at least in part, as a populist and social-Catholic "antidote" to French fascism; thus: "Far from representing a French form of fascism in the face of the Popular Front, La Rocque helped to safeguard France from fascism", by diverting the support of the middle classes away from more extremist alternatives . Jacques Nobécourt has made similar assertions: "La Rocque spared France from a pre-war experiment with totalitarianism" .
The lasting confusion over the "fascist" tendencies of the PSF can be ascribed, in part, to two factors. First, the PSF's predecessor, the Croix-de-Feu, did aspire to a paramilitary aesthetic (described by Julian Jackson
Julian T. Jackson
Julian T. Jackson is a prominent British historian. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London Julian Jackson is one of the leading authorities on twentieth-century France.He was educated at the University of...
as a "fascist frisson" and dismissed by Rémond as "political boy scouting for adults") outwardly similar to that employed by the more overtly fascist of the right-wing leagues; furthermore, La Rocque continued to defend the leagues' activities even in the face of their condemnation by the parties of the established moderate right (though not the Republican Federation
Republican Federation
The Republican Federation was the largest conservative party during the French Third Republic, gathering together the liberal Orleanists rallied to the Republic. Founded in November 1903, it rivalized with the more secular and centrist Alliance démocratique...
) . Second, the PSF's condemnation of parliamentarism
Parliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
, considered synonymous with French republicanism by most politicians of the left and centre, marked it as inherently anti-republican — and thus "fascist" in the political discourse of the period — in the opinions of the latter.
A number of foreign historians, however, have questioned these defenses of La Rocque and the PSF: Zeev Sternhell
Zeev Sternhell
Zeev Sternhell is an Israeli historian and one of the world's leading experts on Fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and writes for Haaretz newspaper.-Biography:...
, criticizing Rémond's classification of the PSF as Bonapartist in Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, associates the party and its leader with a "revolutionary right" tradition that owes its political heritage to Boulangism and the revolutionary syndicalism of Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J...
. This minority view is partially shared by Robert Soucy
Robert Soucy
Robert Soucy is an American historian, specializing in French fascist movements between 1924 and 1939, French fascist intellectuals Maurice Barrès and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, European fascism, twentieth century European intellectual history, and Marcel Proust's aesthetics of...
, William D. Irvine
William D. Irvine
William D. Irvine is a Canadian writer, historian and academic. He specializes in French history and has recently published a book on The League of the Rights of Man . He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 from the University of British Columbia and Ph.D. from Princeton University...
, and Michel Dobry
Michel Dobry
Michel Dobry is a French political scientist. He has taught at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne since September 2001.-Political Theory:* Dobry . Sociologie des crises politiques. Paris: Presses de la FNSP...
, who argue that the Croix-de-Feu and the PSF were partially-realized manifestations of a distinctively French fascism, their political potential (though not their tactics of organization and mobilization) destroyed by the German invasion and thus permanently discredited. Sternhell, pointing to the democratic path to power followed by the Nazi Party, has also made the argument that La Rocque's apparent respect for republican legality is not sufficient ground to disqualify his movement as fascist.
See also
- Far right leaguesFar right leaguesThe Far right leagues were several French far right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties...
- History of far right movements in FranceHistory of far right movements in FranceThe far-right tradition in France finds its origins in the Third Republic with the Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair.- The Third Republic from 1871 to 1914 :...
- François de La RocqueFrançois de la RocqueFrançois de La Rocque was leader of the French right-wing league named the Croix de Feu from 1930–1936, before forming the more moderate Parti Social Français , seen as a precursor of Gaullism.- Early life :François de La Rocque was born on 6 October 1885 in Lorient, Brittany, the third son to a...
- Travail, Famille, PatrieTravail, famille, patrieTravail, famille, patrie was the motto of the French State during World War II. It replaced the republican motto, Liberté, égalité, fraternité of the Third French Republic.-Institution:...
, PSF motto appropriated by Vichy