Croix-de-Feu

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Not to be confused with Cross burning.
For the Belgian military medal, see Fire Cross 1914–1918. For the 1989 American television miniseries, see Cross of Fire.
Cross of Fire
Roman Catholicism
Colours  Black

The Croix-de-Feu (French:

Parti social français
(PSF) to replace it.

Beginnings (1927–1930)

The Croix-de-Feu (CF) were primarily a group of veterans of the

Croix de guerre 1914-1918. The group was founded on 26 November 1927 by Maurice d'Hartoy, who led it until 1929. The honorary presidency was awarded to writer Jacques Péricard. Also in 1929, the movement acquired its newspaper, Le Flambeau. At its creation, the movement was subsidized by the wealthy perfumer François Coty and was hosted in the building of Le Figaro.[citation needed
]

It benefited from the

conservative Catholics became members of the Croix-de-feu instead, including Jean Mermoz and the young François Mitterrand.[1]

Unlike the

xenophobic. Believing that Algerian Europeans were a new race, they saw themselves as "youthful, virile and brutal" and Metropolitan France as "degenerate, effeminate and weak". They often resorted to the use of force against Muslim and Jewish Algerians.[2]

The Croix-de-feu had a massive propaganda campaign that won thousands of members in Constantine and Algiers. It proposed an alliance with local Muslims and attacked the left. Scholars see that as a tactic to funnel extreme and separatist frustrations caused by an economic disparity between European settlers and the local Algerian people. It used different propaganda in Oran, more similar to Jules Molle and the Union's latines, because Oran had fewer Muslims and was more anti-Semitic.[3]

Under La Rocque (1930–1936)

Under

counterrevolutionary
.

Under la Rocque, the movement advocated a military effort against the "German danger" and supported

Action française and its slogan Politique d'abord! "Politics First!"), de la Rocque invented the motto Social d'abord! ("Social First!"). In his book, Le Service Public ("Public Service)", which was published in November 1934, he argued in favour of a reform of parliamentary procedures, cooperation between industries according to their branches of activities; a minimum wage and paid holidays; women's suffrage (also upheld by the monarchist Action française, which considered that women, often devout, would be more favourable to their conservative thesis) etc.[citation needed
]

The Croix de Feu was one of the right-wing groups that pushed anti-Semitic politics in 1935. Along with

Action française and Parti Populaire français. Membership in Croix de Feu grew from 2,500 in 1933 to 8,440 in 1935 and 15,000 in 1936.[4]

The Croix-de-Feu did not participate in the 1932 demonstrations organised by the Action française and the far-right leagues

Cartel des gauches (Left-Wing Coalition). Still, La Rocque refused to riot, although parts of the Croix-de-Feu disagreed with him. It had circled the Palais Bourbon and remained grouped several hundred metres away from the others rioting leagues. As one of the most essential paramilitary associations and because of its anti-Semitic position, the Croix-de-Feu and La Rocque were considered by the political left to be among the most dangerous imitators of Mussolini and Hitler.[citation needed] However, as a result of La Rocque's actions during the riots, it subsequently lost prestige among the far-right before it was dissolved by the Popular Front
government on 18 June 1936.

Parti Social Français (1936–1940)

Main article: French Social Party

La Rocque then formed the

Fall of France without having had the opportunity to profit from its immense popularity.[citation needed
]

Second World War

Further information: Vichy France and Révolution nationale

During the

occupation of France, La Rocque joined the French Resistance but was the subject of considerable controversy immediately after the war.[citation needed
]

Political heritage

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The Parti Social Français was France's first major conservative party (1936–1940). He advocated a presidential regime to end the instability of the parliamentary regime, an economic system founded upon "organised professions" (

Social Christianity
.

Historians now consider that he paved the way for the French Christian democratic parties: the postwar Popular Republican Movement (MRP) and the Gaullist Rally for France. The historian William D. Irvine stated:

One of the very few things historians of fascism in France can agree upon is that the Croix de Feu and its successor the Parti Social Francais (PSF) are irrelevant to their subject.[5]

Continuing debate

Historians have argued that the Croix-de-Feu were a distinctly-French variant of the European

fascist movement. If the uniformed rightist "Leagues" of the 1930s did not develop into classical Fascism, it was because they represented a shading from conservative right-wing nationalism to extremist fascism, in membership and ideology, distinctive to French inter-war society.[6][7]

Most contemporary

Faisceau, a tiny minority compared with the Croix-de-Feu, whose membership peaked at over a million.[10]
The Israeli historian
corporatist extreme nationalism,[12] points out that groups like the Jeunesses Patriotes, the revived Ligue des Patriotes and the Croix de Feu were derided by French fascists at the time. Fascist leaders in France saw themselves as destroyers of the old order, above politics, and rejecting the corruption of capitalism. To them the Leagues were a bulwark of this corrupt regime. Robert Brasillach called them "old cuckolds of the right, these eternal deceived husbands of politics.." and claimed that "the enemies of national restoration are not only on the left but first and foremost on the right.l".[13]

The American journalist John Gunther in 1940 described La Rocque as a "French Fascist No. 1, the chief potential French March-on-Romer" but added that he was "a rather pallid Fascist", did not attempt to seize power during the 6 February riots and peacefully complied with the government's ban of the Croix de Feu.[14] Other scholars, such as Robert Soucy and William D. Irvine, argue that the La Rocque and the Croix de Feu were in fact fascist and a particularly "French" fascism. La Rocque, however, if tempted by a paramilitary aesthetic and initially advocating collaboration with the Germans during the Second World War, finally came out against the more radical supporters of Nazi Germany.

See also

  • Fascist
    .
  • Parti Populaire Français
    (PPF, "French Popular Party")
  • Rassemblement National Populaire
    (RNP, "National Popular Rally")
  • Rassemblement des gauches républicaines
    (RGR, "Rally of the Left Wing Republicans") A post - 1945 organisation which traces its ideology to the Croix-de-Feu.
  • Nationalist Foreign Volunteers

References

  1. ^ Concerning François Mitterrand, see Pierre Péan, Une jeunesse française, pp. 23 à 35: Mitterrand arrived in Paris in autumn 1934, and the National Volunteers (Volontaires nationaux), a sub-section of the CF, were dissolved in June 1936
  2. ^ Kalman, Samuel (2013). French Colonial Fascism: The Extreme Right in Algeria 1919-1939. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 2.
  3. ^ Kalman, Samuel (2013). French Colonial Fascism: The Extreme Right in Algeria 1919-1939. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 56.
  4. S2CID 154836306
    .
  5. ^ William D. Irvine, "Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu." Journal of Modern History 63.2 (1991): 271-295. online
  6. JSTOR 286787
    . The title takes exception to René Rémond's dismissing of the Leagues as "adults' enthusiastic feeling for reliving their childhood by participating in a kind of boy scout game". Rémond, 1968, p. 290.
  7. S2CID 154884811
    .
  8. ^ 1968, p. 290
  9. ^ first published in 1954 and primarily concerned with the traditions of Bonapartist and royalist "Reaction",
  10. ISBN 0-8122-7490-3
  11. ^ 1983/86, p.103
  12. ^ one restatement of this comes in pp. 101-108
  13. ISBN 0-691-00629-6
  14. ^ Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. Harper & Brothers. pp. 204–206.

Further reading

  • Campbell, Caroline. Political Belief in France, 1927-1945: Gender, Empire, and Fascism in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Francais (2015) excerpt; also online review
  • Campbell, Caroline. "The Colonial Roots of Political Violence in France: The Croix de Feu, the Popular Front and the Riots of 22 March 1936 in Morocco." in Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2015) pp. 127-143.
  • Demiaux, Victor. Croix de Feu, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Irvine, William D. "Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu." Journal of Modern History 63.2 (1991): 271-295. online
  • Jenkins, Brian, and Chris Millington, eds. France and Fascism: February 1934 and the Dynamics of Political Crisis (2015) excerpt
  • Passmore, Kevin (1995). "Boy Scouting for Grown-Ups? Paramilitarism in the Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Francais". French Historical Studies 19#2: 527–557. doi:10.2307/286787.
  • Soucy, Robert J. "French Fascism and the Croix de Feu: A Dissenting Interpretation". Journal of Contemporary History. (1991). 26#1: 159–188. doi:10.1177/002200949102600108.
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