24 October 2012

France between the Wars

Artillery BlockHackenberg Fortifications, Maginot Linenear Thionville, Moselle

History B357-Spang

Modern France: Society, Culture, Politics

November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution: Communistscome to power in Russia and sign peace treaty

spring 1918 German offensive on Western Front

summer 1918 Allied generals predict victory within year

Oct.-Nov. 1918 civilian government formed in Germany; shipyard workers protest; November Revolution in Germany

November 11, 1918 Armistice signed at 11:00 a.m. GMT

Introduction: Revolution and War’s End

Alsace, Gauls, and International Alliances

Myths and Meanings of “Victory”

June 1940—armistice signed in Compiegne

HERE ON THE ELEVENTH OF NOVEMBER 1918 SUCCUMBED THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE... VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLES WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE.

1933

19401922 1939-19401936

1920

1917? 1924? 1928

Authoritarian Regimes in Interwar Europe

The Popular Front (1936-1938)

“We take the oath to remain united to defend democracy, to disarm and dissolvethe Leagues, to put our liberties out of fascism’s reach. We swear on this dayto defend the democratic liberties conquered by the people of France, to givebread to the workers, work to the young, and peace to the humanity of the world.”

July 14, 1935—oath taken at founding of Popular Front (Dreyfus’s funeral).

June 1936, Matignon

Accords40-hour work week12% wage increasearmaments factories nationalized2 weeks paid vacation/year

May-June 1936, workers occupy factoriesstrikes as celebration

CGT (General Confederation of Labor) members1935 785,0001937 4,000,0001939 2,000,000

Anti-Authoritarian Regime in Interwar France

France after World War One“What is France?”—questions about

gender dynamics: women’s changing place in culture and politics; disproportionately aged or very youngmale population; low birth rate

colonized peoples: in theory, could be “French”; in practice, limited access

class: heavy industry emerges during and after war;new working-class employed in large factories

Third Republic’s parliamentary politics and its relationto France’s “revolutionary tradition”

1900-1939 population of France increased by 3%;that of Germany by 36%

France in 1920s-1930s: approx. 600,000 war widows;over 1,000,000 disabled veterans;

France in the Great Depression: 15% unemployment(over 40% in Germany); slump lasted to 1939

Divisions in 1920s-1930s France (blamed for the defeat in 1940 but did not cause it)

Amiens city center, spring 1919France after the Great War: Fantasies of Rebuilding

France in the First World War•population: 40 million•military war dead:1.4 million•military wounded: 4 millionLargest percentage in any combatant country

France after the Great War: Realities of Rebuilding

“Nearly two million men would be missing from the ballot box if an election were held tomorrow. If they were to be replaced by women, it would dangerously upset the balance …

and represent a coup d’état

against national sovereignty.It would be the most formidable leap in the dark the nation has ever made, greater even than 1848”

Representative Alexandre Bérard, Sept. 1919.

French women’s political rally, early 1930s

Gender and Politics between the Wars

Women’s Suffrage

Finland 1907Great Britain 1918; 1928USA 1920France 1940

The “De-natality”

Crisis: familles

nombreuses

as national treasures

French family medal, given by Minister of Public Healthto women who had 5, 8, or 10 living children

1920 all birth control defined as “abortion”

1923 illegal to import contraceptives

1939 “Family Code” established special“anti-abortion” (i.e., anti-contraception) police forces

Gender and Politics between the Wars

Gender and the Crisis of “la France profonde”

Josephine Baker in her “banana dance” costume, 1926

Victor Margueritte, La Garçonne(The Tomboy), 1922

> 300,000 copies

Margueritte stripped of his war medalsfor writing it

Gender and Politics between the Wars: Paris seen from the provinces (and abroad)

Bamako, Mali (“French Soudan”)

Reims, Marne

“Our African Soldiers: a tirailleur sénégalaise”(“Senegalese” sharpshooter; most were actually

from what is today Mali)

“Today, France no longer has 40 million men and women.It has 100 million…”

Minister of War Maginot

speaking in French Soudan, 1924.

Metropole and Colonies between the Wars

We have, and we showed the entire surprised world that we have, the best soldiers and the greatest army. Never has either served, except to defend right. Even Napoleon, despite appearances, only went to war to defend himself, or rather, to defend the revolutionaryideas that a frightened Europe had vowed to extinguish. …As for our colonial conquests, we were obliged and even forced to undertake them, in order to put an end to crimes that revolted humanity. Everywhere, our colonial ventures have resulted in the growth of civilization and an increase in human well being.

Paul Roue, Illustrated Guide to the Colonial Exhibition (1931).

postcard depicting one of French African pavilions at exhibition

The International Colonial Exhibition, Paris 1931

Metropole and Colonies between the Wars

the same people on display at the Colonial Exhibition

Colonized People, Colonial Exhibitions

people from Canala, New Caledonia arriving in Paris

Metropole and Colonies between the Wars

Not a week goes by, without killing in the colonies…The President of the Republic, the Archbishop of Paris, the directors of Citroen and Renault: all are united at the opening of the Exhibition, all complicit in the birth of this especially

intolerable new concept “Greater France.”

To implant this lie, they have built the pavilions of the Exhibition, so that the citizens of the metropole will have that feeling of ownership that allows them to hear the far off gunshots without flinching. It is just a matter of annexing some minarets and pagodas to France’s countryside. And don’t forget the fine recruiting poster for the colonial army: an easy life, a negress

with big breasts, the officer lookingvery elegant in his linen suit as he strolls through the dust, followed by a local native. What adventure, what progress!

Don’t Visit the Colonial Exhibition, signed by André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, René Char,

Yves Tanguy, René Crevel …

postcard, “Angkor Wat” at the Colonial Exhibition

Critics of Colonialism: Surrealists and Communists

Metropole and Colonies between the Wars

Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Baked Beans;Premonition of Civil War (1936)

Under the pretence of civilization and progress,we have managed to banish from the mind everything that might be called superstition orfancy or imagination…I have always been amazedat the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and importance to waking events than to dreams.

The fabric of adorable improbabilities must bemade a trifle more subtle as we grow older, butthe faculties do not really change. Fear, the attraction of the unusual, chance, the taste forthings extravagant…

everything tends to make us believe that there isa certain point in the mind where life and death, real and imagined, past and future—all ceaseto be perceived as contradictions.

Breton, Surrealist Manifestoes (1924; 1930).

Metropole and Colony: Who are these people who oppose the Colonial Exhibition?

Surrealism in Art and Literature

Renault factory, Boulogne-Billancourt1900 non-existent1914 4,400 workers1919 14,600 1929 20,000

Growth of the Paris “Red Belt”

1922 Renault towncar

Renault FT-17 tank

. Paris.Boulogne-Billancourt

Class and Politics in Interwar France: Factory-Based Production

Changing Political Spectrum of Third-Republic France

1871 Republicans monarchists who support Orleanists Legitimists a Republic [ralliés] Bonapartists

1885 Radical Republicans Opportunist Republicans ralliés monarchists

1886-1891 Boulangisme attracts both Radicals and monarchists

1894 Workers’ Party Socialists Radicals Opportunists ralliés monarchists(Jules Guesde) (Jean Jaurès) (Clemenceau) (Waldeck-Rousseau)

1894-1906 Dreyfus Affair

1905 Socialists (SFIO) Radical Moderate (Opportunists) “new Right”Republicans Republicans

1930 Communists (PCF) Socialists (SFIO) Radicals Democratic Republican the LeaguesAlliance Federation

LEFT CENTER RIGHT

Class and Politics in Interwar France: Anxiety of Small Differences

The 1930s and the return of “revolutionary tradition”?

1930 Communists (PCF) Socialists (SFIO) Radicals Democratic Republican the Leagues(split in 1920 from Socialists) Alliance Federation

LEFT CENTER RIGHT

Action Française: Catholic monarchists(paramilitary branch “Camelots

du

Roi”)

Croix de Feu: veterans’

organization,expanded to corporatist anti-Communism

Solidarité

Française: founded in 1933 inimitation of Nazis; “France for the French”

The LeaguesPopular Front against Fascism“Radicals”—Edouard

Daladier

Socialists—Léon

Blum

Communists—Maurice Thorez

Politics and Class in Interwar France

1922 Mussolini seizes power in Italy

1928 Stalin ends N.E.P. in USSR

1929 beginning of Great Depression

1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany

Feb. 6, 1934 Stavisky

Riots in ParisFeb. 9, 1934 communist counter protest

May-June 1936 Popular Front against Fascismelected in France

1936-1939 Spanish Civil War

Sept. 1938 Daladier

(“Radical”) signs Munich Accords, confirming Hitler’sright to annex large parts of Czechoslovakia

Sept. 1939 Germany invades Poland; France declares war on Germany

May-June 1940 German troops invade northern France

Interwar Europe, Political Chronology

Mussolini and Hitler

National Politics in an International Context

Croix de feu

Camelots du roi

Stavisky Riots, February 1934

Croix de Feu (Cross of Fire) marchers

Croix de Feu emblem

Neither Left nor Right? “fascism”

in interwar France

“National” Politics in an International Era

“Against Stalin’s servants: Vote National!”

“Against this, vote Communist!”

Popular Front against Fascism(a new enemy for republican France)

1935 “Radicals,”

Socialists and Communistscome together at Dreyfus’s funeral

May 1936 Popular Front victory in elections

June 1936 12,000 strikes;1.8 million people on strike

strike action in the factories, summer 1936

“National” Politics in an International Era

Will they say we imagined the overthrow of the regime? Eh! We have never stopped imagining it! From the beginning, we have said that we form a permanent conspiracy for the destruction of the Republic, which is the fundamental sourceof our ills, and for the restoration of the Monarchy, which alone can cure them.…[but the conditions were wrong on Feb. 6, 1934] …What was missing, let’s admit it, was the intervention of a civil or military “Monk” who would have the strength, from within the legal realm (pays legal), to give orders to the troops and police, extending a hand to the real country’s revolt and aiding it. A Monk powerful enough not only to lead the police, but to make the public services run and stop a general strike.

Maurice Pujo (Action Française), 1938.

The Republic of Monarchists . . . .

www.actionfrancaise.net

“National” Politics in an International Era