Croix de Feu

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Symbol of the croix de feu

The Croix de Feu (CdF; French; "Feuerkreuz"), also called Feuerkreuzler (in the plural) in German , was a right-wing extremist organization, also known as the "League", in France that existed between 1927 and 1936. After it was banned by the Popular Front government of Léon Blum in June 1936, its followers founded the Parti Social Français (PSF, "French Social Party") as a successor organization the following month . In July 1940, after France's defeat in World War II , the party was renamed Progrès Social Français (PSF, "French Social Progress"), but was dissolved in early 1943. After the liberation of France in 1944, some remaining supporters tried to re-establish the Parti Républicain Social de la Réconciliation Nationale ("Republican Social Party of National Reconciliation"), or Réconciliation Nationale (RN; "National Reconciliation"), but this party soon lost itself among conservatives and Gaullist tendencies of the Fourth Republic .

The President of the CdF was initially Maurice d'Hartoy , followed in 1930 by Maurice Genay . Since 1931 Colonel François de La Rocque was at the head of the organization, which under him experienced a significant boom and changed from a pure veterans' association to a paramilitary mass movement with a branched network of subsidiary organizations. La Rocque also converted into a political party ( Parti social français , PSF) in 1936 and remained its leading figure until he was arrested by the German occupation authorities in 1943. The founding of the Réconciliation Nationale in 1945 was also due to La Rocque's initiative, but he died in early 1946, which helped to cause the party to disintegrate.

Rally in La Rochelle on November 11, 1935

history

Founding and establishment from 1927 to 1934

The CdF was founded nine years after the end of the First World War , a point in time that at first glance seems unusual, but on closer inspection reveals the political motivation of the organization from the start. Non-political veterans' organizations formed immediately after the end of the First World War, such as the Union Nationale des Combattants (UNC; German: 'National Fighters Union'); the prevailing nationalist orientation of the governments until 1924 was largely in line with the demands of the veterans, so that there was no need for politicization outside the institutional framework.

With the victory of the left-wing Cartel des Gauches coalition in 1924, the domestic political climate changed. Nationalist-minded veterans rallied as a reaction in the leagues Le Faisceau - openly based on the Italian model of early fascism - and the Jeunesses patriotes (Patriotic Youth) to make their protest visible on the streets.

Still, in the late 1920s, the situation became less favorable for many veterans; the rapprochement between France and Germany and the revision of the Versailles Treaty , as well as an increasing tendency towards corruption in government and parliamentary circles, made the achievements of the sacrificial struggle of the war veterans appear to be endangered. This gave rise to the idea of ​​gathering the bravest among them, the bearers of the Croix de guerre (War Cross) award, to form a moral counter-elite to the political class of the Third Republic in order to publicly oppose this alleged moral and political decline.

On November 26, 1927, the former officer Maurice d'Hartoy took this initiative, supported by the perfumer and industrialist François Coty , who had previously financed the fascist party Le Faisceau and openly propagated his sympathies for Benito Mussolini and the Italian fascists. Initially around 500 veterans joined the Association des combattants de l'avant et des blessés de guerre cités pour action d'éclat (Association of Frontline Fighters and War invalids, awarded for bravura), which was soon called Croix de Feu .

The further development of the membership numbers is controversial among historians in detail, but there is agreement about the general tendency of a continuous increase up to the beginning of 1934. Sean Kennedy, who relies on various sources, gives the number of 8,922 members for January 1930, mostly in space Greater Paris organized. Membership was expanded beyond the circle of Croix de Guerre supporters in 1929 with the establishment of the subsidiary organization Briscards , in which all those who had at least six months of service at the front could become members, even without receiving the Croix de Guerre to have. By January 1931, membership grew to 16,240 and a year later it was 22,644 (according to Kennedy), making the Croix de Feu already the league with the largest number of members at that time, although these received little support overall. In November 1937 the number of "allegedly 700,000 members" was circulating in Germany.

At the end of 1929, the Croix de Feu - who, thanks to Coty's support , were able to use the premises of Le Figaro as an operations office - had their own press organ, Le Flambeau ; the newspaper initially appeared monthly, later weekly, and served as an internal propaganda and communication tool. Meetings, marches, sometimes as nocturnal torchlight procession, information about the actions of the political opponent, especially the communists, as well as elements of their own program were communicated to the members on the Flambeau website.

Rise to the mass movement 1934 to 1936

February 6, 1934 marked the crucial turning point in the history of the Croix de Feu : During serious unrest between right - wing extremist anti - parliamentary groups and the police, the Palais Bourbon , the seat of the Chamber of Deputies , which was just in session, was almost stormed . That this did not succeed is attributed to the restraint of the Croix de Feu ordered by De La Rocque . The decisive action by the police left 15 dead and around 2,000 injured.

Fears of a fascist coup helped to overcome the split on the left and led to the reunification of the two trade unions CGT and CGTU (which split in 1921 ) in March 1936 .

After the victory of the Front Populaire made up of socialists and communists in the elections in May 1936, one of the first official acts of the new Léon Blum government was to ban all right-wing extremist leagues. This also forced the Croix de Feu to disband, although they had hoped to avoid it through the organizational restructuring towards the Mouvement Social Français ( French social movement). However, the movement seemed well prepared in the event of a ban; Plans for a quick re-establishment in the form of a political party were already in place and have now been put into practice in a very short time. Since July 1936, the Parti Social Français (PSF) was the successor organization to the Croix de Feu .

literature

  • Serge Berstein: La France des années trente allergique au fascisme. In: Vingtième Siècle. 2: 83-94 (1984).
  • Jean Boissonat: Mon père était Croix-de-Feu. In: Vingtième Siècle. 90 (2006), pp. 29-31.
  • Drew Flanagan: Resistance from the Right. Francois de La Rocque and the Reseau Klan. BA thesis, Wesleyan University, 2010.
  • William D. Irvine: Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix-de-Feu. In: Journal of Modern History. 63-2 (1991), pp. 271-295.
  • Sean Kennedy: Reconciling France against Democracy. The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927-1945. McGill Queens University Press, 2007.
  • Sean Kennedy: Accompanying the Marshal: LaRocque and the Progrès Social Francais under Vichy. In: French History. 15-2 (2001), pp. 186-213.
  • Philippe Machefer: Les Croix de Feu devant l'Allemagne. In: La France et l'Allemagne 1932-1936. Communications présentées au Colloque franco-allemand tenu à Paris du 10 au 12 mars 1977. 1980, pp. 109–129.
  • Philippe Machefer: Tardieu et LaRocque. In: Bulletin de la Societé d'Histoire Moderne. 15, pp. 11-21 (1973).
  • Philippe Machefer: L'Union des Droites. Le PSF et le Front de la Liberté, 1936-37. In: Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine. 1970, 17, pp. 112-126.
  • Philippe Machefer: Sur quelques aspects de l'activité du Colonel de La Rocque et du “Progrès Social Français” pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. In: Revue d'Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. 15 (1965), n.58, pp. 35-55.
  • Richard Millman: Les croix-de-feu et l'antisémitisme. In: Vingtième Siècle. 38: 47-61 (1993).
  • Kevin Passmore: Planting the Tricolor in the Citadels of Communism: Women's Social Action in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Francais. In: Journal of Modern History. 71-4 (1999), pp. 814-851.
  • Kevin Passmore: The Croix de Feu: Bonapartism, National Populism or Fascism? In: French History, 9-1 (1995), pp. 67-92.
  • Kevin Passmore: Boy Scouting for Grown-Ups? Paramilitarism in the Croix-de-Feu and the Part Social Francais. In: French Historical Studies , 19-2 (1995), pp. 527-557.
  • Robert J. Soucy: French Fascism and the Croix de Feu: A Dissenting Interpretation. In: Journal of Contemporary History , 26-1 (1991), pp. 159-188.
  • Jean-Paul Thomas: Les éffectifs du parti social français. In: Vingtième Siècle , 62 (1990), pp. 61-83.
  • Michel Winock: Retour sur le fascisme français. La Rocque et les Croix-de-Feu. In: Vingtième Siècle , 90 (2006), pp. 3–27.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ December 1937 edition ( Memento of the original from April 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.9 MB) der Weißen Blätter , p. 265, in Der November brought: on 19. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.monarchieforum.org
  2. ↑ Dominique Borne and Henri Dubief: La crise des années 30 1929-1938. (= Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine, vol. 13). Editions du Seuil, Paris 1989, p. 111 f.