France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939 (59 page)

       
1.
    
The traditional left-wing pacifists

This was a trend we have often encountered. It included a few rare intellectuals such as Roussy, a university president, Professor Rivet of the Museum,
*
Montel of the
Faculté des sciences
, historians Jules Isaac—even though he was a Jew—and L’Héritier, and the philosopher Gustave Monod.
¹⁷⁷
This viewpoint was strong among independent socialists such as Marcel Déat and Adrien Marquet, the mayor of Bordeaux, and in some radical circles. Besides Georges Bonnet, one of its most vocal supporters was the minister of public works, Anatole de Monzie, who hated Beneš and Czechoslovakia; as well as Pomaret, the minister of labor, Mistler,
¹⁷⁸
Gaston Bergery,
¹⁷⁹
the leader of the small “frontist” group that opposed Franco, was at first favorable to Czechoslovakia and then switched to a staunch pro-Munich position; Chautemps, Queuille, and Marchandeau, all of the radical-socialists.
¹⁸⁰
Bertrand de Jouvenel even set up a meeting on September 29 between de Monzie and Otto Abetz, “a friend of Mr. Ribbentrop.”
¹⁸¹
However, Bertrand de Jouvenel did not belong to that group. On October 16 he wrote in the London
Times
, “The Führer will
only be impressed if the British and French nations recover from their current lax attitude… The only logical consequence to Munich is a 52-hour week in France and establishing conscription in Great Britain. Then and only then can we speak as great nations.”
¹⁸²

The socialist SFIO Party was hesitating between pacifism and active anti-fascism. The party’s drift increased during the months following Munich. At the national council meeting of November 6 and 7, a moderate resolution introduced by Léon Blum was approved by 6,755 votes against 1,241 in favor of a violently anti-Munich resolution introduced by Jean Zyromski.
¹⁸³
This was not significant, however. On December 24 a special national congress opened in Montrouge. The resolution introduced by Léon Blum stated that the party favored peace but was ready to participate in national defense “totally and without reservations.” Paul Faure, who had just won a special election in the Saône-et-Loire, opposed him and was introducing a resolution against armaments and the Franco-Soviet Pact. “The victory of peace is possible only if one does not believe in the inevitability of war.” Blum’s resolution won with 4,322 votes. Faure’s received 2,837 votes; there were 1,014 abstentions. It meant that one-third of the socialist rank and file included moderate pacifists, like Jean Allemane (who had written: “Better to have an agreement, even though unsatisfactory than war.”).
¹⁸⁴
as well as Spinasse and L’Héveder.
¹⁸⁵

The CGT, reunified in 1936, was also split along the same lines. The old “unitarians” of the CGTU, the communists and their organ
La Vie Ouvrière
were
anti
-Munich. The former “confederate” reformists, often opposed to the communists, had created the weekly
Syndicats
. Secretary General Léon Jouhaux hesitated between the two. At the Thirty-first Congress of the CGT held at Nantes from November 13 to 17 there were a few violent debates. The important event was the division of the “Syndicats” group. Jouhaux and a minority allied themselves with the pro-communists—Benoît-Frachon and his friends—to vote for an
anti-
Munich resolution introduced by René Belin, the future Vichy minister, Georges Dumoulin, André Delmas, and Jean Mathé, reaffirming the pacifist tradition of the workers’ movement. The
anti
-Munich group (5,797 “Syndicats” plus 16,784 mainly iron workers and railroad employees) prevailed over the pacifists (2,289 “Syndicats” and 6,419 school teachers, postal workers and miners).

Significantly, the pacifist resolution was introduced by André Delmas,
¹⁸⁶
one of the leaders of the National Teachers Union, which showed the strongest commitment to pacifist trends. Let us not forget
that in 1914–1918 the bulk of the infantry’s reserve officers—the group that suffered the heaviest losses—was recruited from two social groups, the “good bourgeoisie” and the school teachers. The SNI (teacher’s union), influenced no doubt by the slaughter of its own membership took extreme positions. It opposed the Franco-Soviet Pact “inasmuch as it could become a smokescreen for an alliance,” and supported non-intervention in Spain. Many came to feel “Better slavery than war.” It doesn’t appear that there were more than 15% communists in the SNI membership.
¹⁸⁷
The majority was indignant that the Communist Party was accepting the tricolor flag and the
Marseillaise
. They were all very much against the “Union Sacrée.” As Delmas wrote in
L’École Liberatrice
of March 26, 1938, “Union Sacrée, suicide of the popular forces.”

       
2.
    
The new right-wing pacifism
.

This did not by any stretch include the entire right as many have thought. Due to the fear of communism, the USSR and its “helpers”—Beneš being one of them—many moderates and most right-wing extremists were slowly discovering that they tended toward pacifism, all the more noteworthy since they had been until recently the most enthusiastic chauvinists.

There were a few rare admirers of the Hitler regime. The small group around Fernand de Brinon was not a political party. There was no real pro-Nazi party in France; even the tiny Parti Franciste, led by Marcel Bucard, was more attuned to Italian fascism. French anti-Semites like
L’Action Française
and Darquier de Pellepoix admired German anti-Semitism but not Hitlerism generally.

L’Action Française
, seriously waning at the time and being led by a few somewhat incoherent elderly men no longer attracting many youths, was elated by the election of Charles Maurras to the
Académie Française
on June 9, 1938.
¹⁸⁸
Those who voted in his favor were Pétain, Weygand, Franchet d’Esperey and Léon Bérard—who was to reestablish relations with Franco—Louis Bertrand of the de Brinon group and Abel Bonnard, who would become a cabinet minister at Vichy.

L’Action Française
congratulated Darquier de Pellepoix for denouncing any kind of collusion with Hitler.
¹⁸⁹
Charles Maurras had spent his entire life castigating the Germans and was still going at it. But he had become ardently
pro
-Munich. On October 4 he withdrew his yearly candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize in favor of Neville Chamberlain.
¹⁹⁰

Even though he would admit that Munich was a defeat for France, he still preferred that to a Soviet victory. His disciple, Thierry Maulnier, clearly said so: “A German defeat would mean the collapse of the totalitarian systems that provide the main barrier against communist revolution.”
¹⁹¹
On September 27 the headline “Down with war!” filled the entire front page of the paper, clearly showing “the movement’s inability to choose between its various hatreds.”
¹⁹²
The weekly
Je suis partout
basically followed the same line.

Colonel de La Rocque’s French Social Party (PSF) was pro-Munich but not that favorable toward racism. “France disapproves of racism and its excesses,” said La Rocque in a speech in November 1938.
¹⁹³
La Rocque viewed the November 30 strike as a joint action by Berlin and Moscow.
¹⁹⁴
He firmly opposed the gesture made by Flandin in sending Hitler a telegram. The army veteran’s comment was “Defeatism gone AWOL.”

Jacques Doriot’s
Parti Populaire Français
took a more ambiguous position.
¹⁹⁵
Doriot had not yet become the pro-Hitler man he was to be following the defeat. Before Munich he was saying that France would fight if necessary.
¹⁹⁶
He did not believe in Soviet help and despised Czechoslovakia, “a creation of Philippe Berthelot.” With his collaborators Claude Jeantet, Alfred Fabre-Luce and Drieu La Rochelle, he condemned war to such an extent that his newspaper
La Liberté
was banned on September 29. “We came close”—wrote
L’Emancipation Nationale
on September 30—“we must banish the war party from the nation.”
¹⁹⁷
The Communist Party was the “war party,” “the foreign army camping on our land.” The PPF viewed Munich as a defeat but applauded the Franco-German declaration of December 6, 1938.

There were many pacifists among the right-wing moderates. Ageron noted in regard to the poll indicating that 70% of the French wanted to resist any new demands coming from Hitler, that the total dropped to 50% among professionals and public service employees.
¹⁹⁸
This showed the pacifism of the socialist voters but a right wing pacifism as well. Flandin was a good example. Paradoxically, Pierre Laval hated Daladier too much to really be pro-Munich. In any case, he remained silent,
¹⁹⁹
closing his door to Otto Abetz and refusing to attend the reception on December 6th honoring Ribbentrop.
²⁰⁰

Most Catholic circles held a negative view of the Hitler regime, although the “relief” associated with Munich did make a very brief appearance.
²⁰¹
“The sky is blue again,” wrote
La France Catholique
of October
10. But the thought of the humiliation, of the “slap across the face,” as
France Réelle
stated on October 1, was also present. In those circles anti-communism and pacifism also went hand in hand.

       
3.
    
The left-wing anti-Fascist resisters

This included all the communists. The Communist Party was the only one to avoid any split in 1938—it would change in September 1939—by strenuously opposing the Daladier government against the law decrees, and faithfully following the Soviet line on Munich, since the USSR had not been invited to the conference. The party, whose doctrine, as well as its feelings, was anti-Fascist, was a compact but isolated bloc. This was true, especially following the Radical Party congress at the end of October where the Popular Front was dissolved and at Daladier’s request took an openly anti-communist stance.

As we have noted, two-thirds of the socialists with Léon Blum, Marx Dormoy, and part of the “Syndicats” group within the CGT also rejected pacifism. The struggle against fascism overshadowed the leftist traditions. The most significant case was that of the radicals. To follow Daladier was, in a way, to be pro-Munich. It didn’t mean being a pacifist for all those involved. The best examples were Jean Zay and Edouard Herriot.

Jean Zay, a radical “Young Turk” was one of the rare ministers who opposed Munich.
²⁰²
His friend Cesar Campinchi, minister of marine,
²⁰³
followed him somewhat less strongly, not being too much in favor of Georges Bonnet whom he had defeated in June 1936 and becoming president of the radical group in Chamber. Herriot, on the other hand, was encouraging Jean Zay and other anti-Munich political leaders to not leave the government. After a brief moment of “relief” he once again became a strong believer in resistance. “Force is winning, the law is dead…let us be forceful.”
²⁰⁴
Pierre Cot, another “Young Turk,” was also a determined anti-Munich politician.

At the fringes of radicalism there were other anti-fascists. Paul-Boncour, who like Herriot was a promoter of collective security, refused to accept the Munich surrender and immediately set up a group called “Nation et Liberté.” “It included socialists, radicals, syndicalists, Catholics from Jeune République
²⁰⁵
and the League for Human Rights.” Among them was Léo Lagrange, a former minister in Léon Blum’s cabinet, a socialist close to the communists who would be killed in battle in May 1940 and who was also a friend of Jean Zay, and Jean Zyromski.
²⁰⁶

       
4.
    
The right-wing nationalists

Except for the communists, like every other political group, the right was more seriously divided than was generally thought. For example, when Flandin sent his telegram to Hitler, Paul Reynaud resigned within the hour from their party, the
Alliance Démocratique
. “A deluge of resignations” from others followed,
²⁰⁷
at the same time as those from Paul Reynaud, Senator Taurines, James de Rothschild, Joseph Laniel, who later became a Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic, Louis Jacquinot, Louis Rollin, etc. At the party’s congress Charles Reibel, a deputy from Seine-et-Oise who had resigned from the vice presidency, violently attacked Flandin, who answered, “I prefer exchanging telegrams to artillery shells.”
²⁰⁸

Young writers like Drieu La Rochelle and Bertrand de Jouvenel left Jacques Doriot’s PPF. De Jouvenel also resigned from the
Comité France-Allemagne
. Another group followed, led by Pierre Pucheu, director of the
Comptoir Sidérurgique
(at the start of 1939), and a few other lieutenants of Doriot, Paul Marion, Arrighi, etc. Pucheu was linked to the Schneider group that controlled the Czechoslovak Skoda works, and he condemned the new German-Czech border. But a man of the far right such as he was in taking an anti-Munich position would cancel out the “economic Munich” legend that we shall discuss in the following chapter.

A majority of the popular democrats was anti-Munich, along with Francisque Gay, Georges Bidault, Ernest Pezet, Edmond Michelet, Robert Lecourt,
²⁰⁹
and Champetier de Ribes. The same applied to their daily newspaper
L’Aube
and
Temps Présent
, edited by Stanislas Fumet. In
Esprit
Emmanuel Mounier wrote about “the ignominious peace.” The most anti-Munich writers in his group, like Jacques Madaule and Jean Lacroix offered their point of view in
Le Voltigeur Français
.
²¹⁰