michael mann, fascists (2004)

Chapters 1 and 2

(1): study of rise of fascist movement, and not the regimes in power [obviously a place to push back, with paxton point about stages of development]

(1-4): seven reasons to take it seriously

1. a major political doctrine of 20th century
2. embraced nation-state
3. ideology must be taken seriously
4. 'core fascist constituencies' is a live problem
5. take seriously the movements behind them
6. seek to understand the evil in which they culminated
7. take seriously the chance that they might return--"some of the substance lives on"

(4): here Mann caricatures, as is his wont, the materialism-idealism "traditional polemic".

(5): four forms of social power [push back majorly, here]

1. ideological
   
2. economic
3. military
4. political

(13-17): a definition--"fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism", five key terms.

1. nationalism
2. statism--goal and organizational form
3. transcendence of class conflict (here he pushes back against Paxton)
4. cleansing
5. paramilitarism--key value and key organizational form

(18): key--here, again, Mann caricatures 'class'-based theories of fascism (which he thinks are limited to middle-class interest, and capitalist interest). he cannot acknolwedge that, in fact, these are much more complicated--and that, importantly, they don't rise and fall with the question of movement 'composition'. they are also, at the very least, meant to say something about the ideology/motivation that impelled these movements. [his argument, here, speaks also to his gross misunderstanding of the role of 'class' as structuring social life]

(21-22): classically bad!!!--because fascists weren't materialists, you can't use materialism to explain them (this is his argument at the bottom of this page, more or less--"fascists focused elsewhere")

(22): again, an impoverished understanding of materialism ('material interests') [plus, here, there's also the problem of foresight--people can pursue their material interests without the pursuit being in their long-term interest]

(25): the overreaction of the old regime [does this have to do with his understating the threat?]

(26-27): three core constituencies

1. favoring paramilitarism
2. favoring transcendence
3. favoring nation-statism

(32): state size 'explosion' in the 1700s

(34): organic vs. liberal conceptions of the nation-state (indivisible people, etc)

(36): complete excision of colonialism from his narrative of State expansion! (didn't Arendt say that Europe built fasicsm in the colonies before it built it at home?)

(38): 1920-1945 retreat of liberal democracy on the continent

(44): distinction between modern authoritarianism and those past--the former had to deal with the "organized political pressure from masses"

(45-47): four ascending degrees of authoritarianism

1. semi-authoritarian--"dual" state, but in mildest form
   
2. semi-reactionary authoritarian
3. corporatist regimes--integrated, hierarhchical
   
4. fascist regimes--corporatism plus paramilitarism

(48): here he starts his discussion of the four forms of power/crisis

(48-64): economic power, economic crisis

(49): first candidate--late-development theory (he will say this explains authoritarianism, partly)

(51): rise of authoritarianism mainly happened in the less developed countries (see his table on page 50)

(52): his critique of the Rueschemeyer et al. -- but why is it banal to state that the majority has an inherent interest in extending the franchise? it's critical.

(56-57): second candidate--the slump (but what about NW europe, he's saying?)

(58): third candidate--class conflict (see below)

(59): strength of left does not map onto the strength of reaction, either--their was an overreaction, from the right (he's stressing the weakness of the left, after 1920)

(62): important--claim that he will repeat, later, about capitalist interest in property vs. capitalist interest in profit. we ought to push back here, because he's neglecting their interdependence under capitalism. moreover, his counterfactual (that something less would have been in capitalists' long-term interests) is simply ahistorical, and not how 'capitalist interests' are typically calculated. though perhaps his formulation does let us say something interesting about 'old regime' interests.

(64): here is a key place where ideology takes on a life of its own, in his argument (the right in one-half of europe was more attracted to certain values). push back time.

(64): in sum, economic explanation is only partial.

(64-70): military power, military crisis

(67): importance of war dislocation--acquiring new territories, debts, etc., which was unique to the South, East, Center of Europe

(68): key--WWI made possible civic paramilitarism. this will be one of his key pegs.

(70-78): political power, political crisis

(71): important, as a place he's pushing back against RSS--participation vs. contestation (the NW didn't have the former, he agrees, but it did have the latter). it's unclear, though, that this is incompatible with what they were arguing.

(72): and, of course, his deployment of this fact is question-begging, completely, insofar as he's not discussing their causes.

(80): fascism as 'reactionary modernism'

(91): overdetermined outcomes--and total spectre, in this conclusion, of a descriptive analysis

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Chapter 3, Italy

(94): three preconditions, for union between nationalists and Left

1. distinction between nation and state, in Italy
2. Italian labor movement
3. nationalism had leftist elements.
   

(95): this was the "leftist nationalist interventionism" that turned into fascism (from 20,000 in late 1920 to 320,00 in Nov 1921)

(96-97): the class-based interpretation of Italian fascism -- as a 'petty-bourgeois' nationalism, that promised the world but that would likely have to sell out to the capitalists [Salvatorelli]. Mann's rejoinder is classically weak, even barbaric (consists, again, of asserting that materialism cannot take 'ideology' seriously)

(97-100): and Mussolini's own account of what explains fascism (!) -- some kind of transcendent, imperial, nationalist project, valuing action over ideology.

(102-103): extraordinary statistics about military veterans in the fascist movement, attracted by 'paramilitarism'

(105): three bursts of violence (quite tame while in power, until Ethiopia)

(106): this is an important point, that needs to be responded to carefully --in Italy, fascism spread in those places where "civil society" was most dense (both in rural areas with varied relations of production, and in urban areas)

(107-109): beginning to discuss the class composition of Italian fascism--in short, more middle-class than the figures reveal, especially in the cities, but not so much in the rural areas

(110): key point--"fascism could not penetrate the organized working class", but had an easier time (see also 116)

(112): this is his central critique of the 'middle-class' theories, i think -- those that were attracted to fascism, within the middle-class, can't be distinguished on the basis of their social position, but rather perhaps simply on their attachment to 'nation-statist values' and 'paramilitary means' [but then, doesn't this become, simply, a non-explanation?]

(113-115): PNF popularity in rural areas -- split the socialists by offering an attractive program

(116-117): BUT, again--where the working classes were dense and organized in rural areas, they were rarely fascist. he's making quite an important point, here, about "organization" [the 'organized working class' is not the same as the 'working class']

(117): a key point, that's obscured in his presetntation--"rural fascism became increasingly conservative," an alliance between landlords and the middling to lower-middling peasants.

(119): his take-home point, if we're being charitable, is to focus our attention on the important question of 'violence' as means of organization (and, thus, question of why the fascists could become so popular) (see also 122)

(120): key--here, quite clearly, the distinction between 'fascism-as-movement' and 'fascism-as-power'; Mussolini is coming around to appease big capital.

(121): fascism didn't attack the state; attacked those who said they were attacking the state (i.e. Leftists)

(123): 'propertied classes' in Italy were afraid because of biennio rosso (1919-1920)(self-styled soviets, general strike in April in Turin, 500,000 workers occupying their factories at its height, etc.)--but, Mann, is arguing, their fears weren't commensurate to the facts. "fascism as preventative counterrevolution."

(125): and this, really, is the clincher--HE QUOTES MUSSOLINI TO PROVE THAT THE COMMUNISTS WERE DONE FOR.

(119-126): in sum, he has given us three economic reasons for elite support of fascism, all of which he finds useful, but incomplete. we can push back, here.

1. propertied classes' fear of pervasive and growing violence
2. fear of political revolution
3. repression of labor in order to protect profits (what was wrong with gilotti, he is saying?)
   

(127): defection of the state apparatus to the fascists (hollow monopoly of armed force)

(128): speaking of a 'class crisis' intertwined with a 'political crisis' -- but maybe this calls for some theorizing? he seems distinctly uninterested in the possibility.

(131): high recruitment in the Northern border regions.

(132): useful summary of his claims, thus far

(134): fascism in power as a "loose corporatism" -- conceding power to elites, etc. all this seems critical, but it is distinctly underemphasized (3 pages!) ('fascism as a movement' represented a very small fraction of the time we ought to be concerned with, surely)

(135): wow--only nine political executions, from 1927 to 1940. low level of repression, more generally.

(136-137): summary of his claims, re: Italian fascism. he calls his explanation "multifaceted", but it seems to me, rather, overdetermined and disorganized.

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Chapter 4, Nazis

(129): a 'slower' rise to power

(141): Jews made up 0.76% of the German population (only 2 percent of Germany's bankers/stockbrokers)

(142): early Nazis' socialism, and then the retreat from it in the late 1920s -- primacy of worker over exploiter, livelihood/welfard for citizens, take action against big finance, and radical land reform program (abandoned in 1928) [again, this is something that needs to be foregrounded]

(143): goal, again, was transcendence, and an 'organic community of the people'

(144): 63% of entry essays saw Marxists/socialits as principal enemies.

(146): fascism as regime, fascism as movement--alluding to the sidelining of the SA as the regime calcified, but is not making this systematic, at all. (see also 167)

(151): Nazis and military veterans (84% had served in the war, somewhat overrepresented; but later cohorts would be needed to replenish the movement--see 361)--and the importance of the military as a right/left faultline (German left had been antimilitarist). Two main explanations for why this is: (1) economic, demobilized soldiers, etc.; (2) translation of military into paramilitary values

(157): key--many Nazis were workers; alternatively, workers were slightly underrepresented in the Nazis (this disappears if we include the paramilitaries). but I don't think this is an empirical challenge to the Marxist thesis, at all. (see 160, also--where he says that the Nazis were 'multiclass'. the descriptor 'petty-bourgeois' is an adjective that is meant to describe the leading element, the ideological orientation. it has some claim on membership, certainly, and should be roughly correct--but not at all hard-and-fast.)

(159): the SPD and the KPD really were proletarian parties, he's acknowledging.

(163): key membership from the civil service and professionals, and white-collar workers (civil servants were most overrepresented occupational group--four times as likely)

(165): an 'antimaterialist' explanation of the way in which they were attracted to the Nazis ('blood and soil' nationalism) that is crying out for--in fact--a materialist explanation to save it from its being question-begging.

(167): SA was proletarian

(170): again, here what's critical, again, is a dense "civil society" -- the Nazis were at the heart of it. very important.

(171-172): critical, six points about class and the Nazis (again, this is where we stress that 'petty-bourgeoisie' is not a claim about composition, but about character; nor does this obviate materialism, at all)

1. all classes well represented
2. rural classes moved from under- to over-representation
3. nation-statist, educated bourgeoisie was overrepresented; business bourgeoisie underrepresented
4. difficult penetrating organized working-class communities
5. not marginals and economic losers that joined the fascists (heart of civil society)
6. distant from the main arenas of modern class conflict. indirect observers of the most pronounced class struggle.
   

(175): the nation congeals in violence--they managed to convince elite s that violence was needed to solve the country's anarchy.

Chapter 5, German Sympathizers

(177): three reasons that the Nazis could seize power

1. activism of militants
2. votes of the electorate
3. ambivalence about Weimar/assistance of the elites

(178): "strong nationalism" characterized Nazi propaganda.

(179): claim, here, he's making about how the Nazi program of transcendence mirrored the 'classless' composition of their movement.

(182): EXTRAORDINARY--the Nazis didn't believe in the "laws of the capitalist economy," hence they didn't apply to them!!!

(182): socialists believed the class/nation were opposed; Nazis saw that, for most Germans, they were not [interesting, though not unproblematic (effect or cause?)--does open to the question of revolutionary internationalism]

(183): important--discussion of Strasser, Hitler and the Left--but there's not enough chronology, here. this, if anything, cannot be treated as static across time.

(185): the election figures (from 3% in 1928 to 33 percent in November 1932).

(189): core voting areas were primarily Protestant and secondarily rural.

(190); artisans as workers, not petty-bourgeois?

(190-191): many fascist workers voted for it, but they weren't at the heart of the class struggle (again, though, there's a real problem about taking a snapshot at their high-point in 1932 and then running with it to disprove theories about the movement and the regime)

(191): Nazis took votes from the bourgeois parties--they radicalized the conservatives, in essence.

(194): elites began to gravitate towards authoritarianism after the gov't started to creak, following the Great Depression. first they had turned to the semi-authoritarians; then they turned to the fascists.

(197): relationship between business and the Nazis (Mann's very confused paragraph, here)--but business had no choice, in a sense.

(199): the complicity of the army and state apparatus in the rise to power, quite critical.

(200): key--Nazi accession to power--no coup, and uneven elite support. but complicity of state apparatus. and Schmitt, in the background (the fear of 'mass politics' diluting integrity of elite debate).

(201): his four objections to empirical theories

1. economic crisis is important, but only partial
2. Nazi constituencies were least affected by economic crisis
3. capitalists did not actively support Nazis (though they didn't support the Weimar republic, either)
4. crisis period was too short to explain a break with democracy

(202): Eley's important re-working of the class thesis, where it is protracted class fonrontation which produces the political stalemate that allows the Nazis in. this seems critical, insofar as the appeal of 'transcendence' needs to be explained. (see also 205 -- what was the Nazis' appeal, why did they emerge in the way they did at the time they did; all this needs to be explained, not wished away)

(203): here, the second of the two claims that seem worth pursuing/tackling

1. paramilitarism
2. the fact that the core support was 'away from the front lines'

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Chapter 10, Conclusion

(353): important--his is a two-part explanation--first, explaining the rise of authoritarianism (353-358); second, the turn to fascist in some of the countries that went authoritarian (358-363)

(353-354): economic crisis--very underdeveloped claims, here

(354): his presentation of the political crisis, that produced authoritarianism and then fascism--the phenomenon of 'dual states', attempting to undercut democracy, find alternative ways of mobilizing masses. [this is compelling, but we need to, in general, account for the 'bedrock' -- what does the explaining, here? i.e., a Barrington Moore or RSS account, which would engage material explanations quite obviously--see also 365]

(355): ideological crisis--"civilization needed rescuing"

(356): five reasons for the elite overreaction

1. revolution seemed a real possiblity, after 1917
2. agrarian landlords were particularly vulnerable, because radical land reform was on cards
3. military officer corps were perturbed
4. churches, too
5. geopolitical disorder, which made some territorial issues particularly prominent
   

(357): key passage, to unpack--claims about instrumental and value-rationality, which seem muddled. better solutions available to elites, etc.

(359-360): another key point--he is arguing that fascists were outside of the class struggle because they sought to transcend it. this is nonsensical, even conceptually. and empirically, as his stuff on the next page, shows, it was too--this posturing served the interests of the status quo.

(363): Franco as authoritarian rightist

(364): only weakened old regimes let in fascism

(365): merger of Enlightenment and Romanticism

(368): the new right mobilizes a different kind of racism

(369): a lot of the supoprt is 'protest voting'

(370): stability of institutionalized liberal democracy

what is fascism?, jim wolfreys

KEY: "To identify fascist ideology as a projection onto another plane of fears and anxieties deriving from social turmoil is not to dismiss its role, but to begin to explain why so many took it so seriously. Studies within the Marxist tradition which have situated ideological, programmatic and organisational features of fascist parties in the context of their relationship to broader social, political and economic questions have been able to provide rich and detailed analyses of the phenomenon, and to distinguish it from other forms of reaction in a way that makes it possible to identify contemporary variants of fascism."

(...) [KEY, this is precisely what Mann fails to do -- temporal aspect to analysis] According to Paxton it is not the themes taken up by fascism that define the phenomenon, but their function. Since fascism is based on a rejection of universal values, it is more disparate than other political movements, and must be understood not ‘as the expression of the same fixed essence’, but within specific historical contexts. He rejects the way some historians have offered separate definitions of fascism and Nazism, arguing that this leads to the study of fascism in isolation from other factors. Analyses which reduce fascism to a tool of a particular interest group, meanwhile, ignore the fact that the movement won independent popular backing. Instead Paxton proposes to examine the development of fascism through five stages: the creation of a movement; its rooting in the political system; the seizure of power; the exercise of power; its fate in the long term (radicalisation or entropy).

(...) Fascism emerged as a response to the development of mass democracy, seeking out, ‘in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification and purity’, and directing it against liberal individualism, constitutionalism and the left.16 Here the distinction between function and themes becomes clearer. Action, not doctrine or philosophy, is what drove the major fascist movements of the inter-war period. In a new era of mass politics, ‘emotions…carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric’ counted for more than ‘the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name’. In place of rational debate, fascism substituted the immediacy of sensual experience, turning politics into aesthetics.

(...) [yup] ...strong subtext to this book, which clearly exercises Mann at least as much as its actual subject, is what he refers to as ‘class theory’, by which he means explanations of fascism which focus either on its relationship to capitalist elites or on its middle class base. Mann claims that Marxists simply reduce ideas ‘to their supposed socio-economic base’.20 His argument is that most ‘class theorists’ do not take enough account of fascists’ own beliefs, which reject both class theories and materialism of any kind. Leaving aside the question as to whether fascists must believe they are pursuing class interests for that to be the case, ‘class theory’ appears, in Mann’s hands, as something of a straw man. This is unfortunate because his determination to portray class as just one sociological descriptor among many diminishes his own attempt to provide an adequate explanation of what makes fascism tick.

(...) As a consequence—and this is also true of Paxton’s book—there is no satisfactory explanatory framework for the conflict between radicals and opportunists at the heart of fascist movements and regimes. Mann refuses to accept that fascism represented one side of the class struggle, ‘or indeed any single class at all’.23 As others have pointed out this does rather beg the question as to what the paramilitaries were engaged in, if not a ruthless class struggle against the organisations of the labour movement.24 Despite acknowledging that once they neared power fascist movements ‘became biased on questions of class struggle’ and ‘tilted toward the capitalist class’, he offers little explanation as to why this should be the case and overall his analysis lacks sufficient feel for the texture of the motivations exercising fascist activists.

lecture 18, "the dark years: vichy france"
john merriman

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the fall of France, and collaboration

1936, again, possibly a time when Hitler could have been stopped in the Rhineland.

all of this has to be seen, in France, in the context of World War I and its legacy--there was a strong feeling, Wilson, etc., that wars were bad things done by evil people (and this was implicit in the resolution of the Treaty of Versailles, of course)

no one wanted another war, but Hitler had been agitating for one from the outset.

there was a feeling that another war would be unthinkable, in France. have to remember the tremendously traumatizing effects of WWI.

-------------

Hitler had of course been building military capacity in Germany, re-arming the nation, etc. Hitler's advisors had been expecting a war to begin, though, in 1940/1941--as we all know, the war actually begins on the 1st of September, 1939, when Hitler invades Poland (he takes power in 1933).

militarily, why does France fall so rapidly?

their respective troop strengths were relatively equal at the time of the invasion of France in May 1940. in tanks, the allies actually had superiority, though German tanks were lighter and faster (and they were used in divisions, which gave them an advantage).

Germans had a clear superiority in fighter power (and they had tried them out in Spain, don't forget)

how had the British and French been planning? they believed that it would be another war of attrition--a long, drawn-out battle in which a strong, defensive line would be critical.

the Germans, by contrast, believed in rapid attack--the "blitzkrieg"

the French are assuming that the forests in N. France and E. Belgium will be physical impediments to the German invasion, but did not prove to be this. 10 tank divisions pour through the forests and they simply waste these French tanks. in four days they're way inside France. the German High Command thought it would take 9 days--and it took 4!

Hitler does make one mistake, prof argues, which is he refuels, allowing the evacuation of French and British troops at Dunkirk.

you have refugees, and German fighter planes picking them off as they fled.

------------------

a new French government, then, collaborates with the Germans--Vichy France is born. (France is divided in two zones; the "collaborationist" government has its capital in Vichy.)

involves people who actively assist the Nazis in achieving their goals, acting on their aspirations. by the end of 1943/1944, if you were a French collaborator and you find graffiti with the word "K" on your door, you were toast--because it meant that the Maquis (or the resistance) was confident enough to make that kind of threat.

again, it's not only France--in Belgium, for example, the right-wing Flemish were more likely to collaborate, and it remains a tension. in Budapest, way you see a goulish shoe-memorial to Jews and Communists gunned down by Hungarian collaborators.

----------------

the historiography and history of collaboration is fascinating, prof is saying.

there's a myth of universal resistance, perpetuated by people who had actively collaborated and also by Charles De Gaulle (he needed people to forget the Communist resistance, and lead the French people to identify with his person and leadership--part of the mantle he'd assume.)

there was a movie from 1953-1954 about the Jews arrested in Paris in 1942--taken away, put in a transit camp north of Paris. in the film you see French guards--so what they do is they photoshop it, effectively.

three series of crucial events have jolted this myth, prof is arguing:

(1) the film called "the sorrow and the pity", which is 4.5 hrs long. what the producer does is he goes to one single town and he looked at what happened there in collaboration--some of the best documentary scenes about intentional forgetting, etc,--where teachers forget about their Jewish friends/colleagues. it was only shown in one theatre. made for French TV, but not shown until 1981/1982. why? because it told the awful truth, which was that lots of people believed better Hitler than Blum.

(2) "vichy france," by bob paxton in 1972. it cut through the intentional forgetting to look squarely at collaboration--bob paxton, actually, didn't have the right to french archival documents (the 50 year rule, and a "troublemaker"). but when this book came out, it had a very powerful effect. here was a great historian saying it "wasn't like what you learned in school."

(3) the trials--as collaboration came to be something that people wanted to know about--then people with bad histories were tracked down. one of the first was Touvier, who was involved in the torture of resisters, deportations of jews/communists. he was hidden by right-wing groups (bounced from monastery to monastery). but finally tracked down and tried. at this trial, Paxton became an "expert witness." and there was a trial of Barbi, as well, who had tortured people in Lyons. and then there was Maurice Papon, a functionary who signed the death-certificates of hundreds and hundreds of Jews. he went on to a very successful career in the fourth and fifth republic. and they caught up with this very very old man, and there was the question of whether he ought to be tried (in 1998, 1999 -- at one point he escapes, and they find him at a fine restraunt in Switzerland; he insists, "I was a good bureaucrat.") he used the "shield argument"--that if it wasn't for me(/we), thing would have been even worse. he was found guilty, and sent to jail.

"the Vichy syndrome."

so, from having no official memory of Vichy--only bits that had to do with the resistance--France underwent this re-evaluation of its relationship to the regime. and that was important for people who had lost their family members, for Jews (some 75,000 Jews never returned to France after Vichy). the big round-up in June 1942, for example, was not done by the Germans, but by the French police. one of the worst institutions of all was the milice (the militia), created in January 1943, to get tough on the Jews, the communists, the resistance.

remember, the militia's tactics required very personal forms of betrayal--people sending letters to the police, etc. (in the days after war, almost 10,000 collaborators were executed)

----------------

voting left superimposed on a map of de-christianization and there would be remarkable similarities, as prof said before. that is not true of collaborationists--this is not regional, or from one social class (this is the case in Belgium, though.) of course you're more apt to have people from the middle-classes collaborate, but it's difficult to generalize (you have working-class collaboration).

what about religion? the role of the Pope in all of this, professor is saying, is nauseating. the Pope knew, but did nothing. zero. the Catholic Church hierarchy was generally very collaborationist.
Roosevelt and these people knew (they knew before they did anything, prof reminds us), but their dilemma is trickier (can you bomb death camps? train tracks?)

the Church got what it wanted, during Vichy France--no divorce, two people executed for abortion. (though he is also insisting that it is not this open and shut)

-----------------

now, what did the people who collaborated want? a couple of themes

(1) argument made by Petain after the war. by collaborating with the Germans, you were saving the French State. but, as Paxton says, "they may have been saving the French state, but they were destroying the French nation."

(2) the xenophobia that characterized the French right, before the occupation, was obviously a prevalent theme during the collaborationists. no Italians, no Spanish (especially no Marxists).

(3) anti-semitism--the French Vichy regime (it's only in November of 1942 that the Germans occupy the Vichy zone, because the resistance is mobilizing) puts in laws depriving Jews of rights that the Germans didn't even ask them to do. in some ways even harsher than the infamous Nuremberg laws of the Reich.

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Petain, for the fascists, will be an answer for:

(1) the "decadence" and "feuding France" of pre-Vichy France

(2) the restoration of the earthly power of the Church. restoration of the soul of France; the old, Catholic/Christian values. a return to the "moral order"--when things are passed down from the "moral orders."

(3) nationalism, of a new sort--away from the legacy of the French revolution, towards a nationalism of patriotism and values. and, of course, with this comes an exclusionary ethic.

(4) authority--not the dirtiness of "democracy"; authority flows from the top, down.

(5) peasantism. "true France," not the France of Jews, striking workers, communism, etc., virtue is found in the soil (Joan of Arc is a peasant girl, remember--she becomes a symbol of all this). cities are places where Jews and workers hang out. the true France is the France of peasants on the soil.

(6) corporatism--they've read about Mussolini and Italian fascism, making the argument that workers and bosses have the same interests. and you can resolve these conflicts in the idea of the Nation--strong, marching, plutonic warriors

lecture 17 -- "the popular front"
john merriman

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France in the 1920s and 1930s has to be understood in the context of the international situation in Europe--and, in particular, the rise of fascism.

by 1939, only, in Central and Eastern Europe, only Czechoslovakia remained a parliamentary regime--when you think of fascism you think of Mussolini and Hitler, but it's important to remember that there were no parliamentary regimes left in the entire region. and even where democracy survived in W. Europe, there were indigenous Fascist movements (not to mention the case of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939).

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so, today, the rise of the Right in France; and its relation to the Popular Front.

the Popular Front era in France is remembered as one of the "magic" moments of French history.

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the political details of the Cartel de Gauche (Left-leaning) that came to power after World War I can be left to the reading. but, for all these countries, the right-wing temptation of the 1920s was evident. Mussolini was on the cover of Time magazine eight times in the US--known as the man who got the trains running on time (even if it was only to the ski resorts that American journalists frequented, quips prof).

Hitler doesn't come to power till 1933--and Hitler was of course only the most successful of a bunch of right-wing leaders in Germany agitating for the overthrow of the Weimar Republic.

one of the salient tactics is corporatism--the philosophy that you can get rid of social strife by organizing industries in a vertical way. Mussolini talked a good game in this regard.

so: Fasicsm was a European phenomenon, as well as a French one.i

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the spiritual leader of French fascism was [de la Rochelle?]. a novelist whose work was obsessed with suicide. in his autobiographical novel he thought Fascism could resurrect a medieval, Christian spirituality in France. Accion Frances was also, at this time, a pro-Monarchist group operating on similar principles. in France, the extreme right and Catholicism were interlnked.

and these groups begin to create paramilitaries (which is obviously what happened with the Nazis in Germany, and Mussolini in the early 1920s). the Accion France, then, takes the tactics of the early Boulanger movement and resurrects them. you have, also, the growth of right-wing groups through the trade union federation, the CGT.

they want to abolish parliamentary democracy. this activism develops to the extent that they are condemned by the Pope. and, indeed, many members leave the organization at this time, fearing ex-communication.

a number of other groups, who are even more radical, start up. Faisceau, which had begun in 1919, but increases its membership, and believes in violent struggle ("will to power"). another, the "Cross of Fire," attracted war veterans--founded in 1928 as a non-political organization, and its membership swells to 60,000 people.

of course, there has to be money behind these movements. interestingly, a bunch of producers of luxury products were funding these folk. and, because the newspapers,etc. are controlled by the right, much of these groups have ready means to disseminate their message.

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why were middle-class people attracted to these movements? (a phenomenon characteristic of Italy and Germany, as well)

has to be seen in the context of the hard times of the 1920s--Europe is basically in a long depression, with the exception of the period from 1924-1929. E. Europe is in a very severe agricultural depression the entire time.

with this rampant inflation (of course nothing comparable to Germany), the people who get burned are middle-class people on pensions. people who have saved their entire life, and their savings are wiped out.

in Germany this is quite clear--you had bourgeois families forced to sell silvers/antiques in order to make ends meet.

these grievances are expressed, then, through various components of fascist ideology, which are virulently anti-communist, anti-Bolshevik, anti-communists, and virulently anti-semitic (Hitler begins as a socialist-hater, before he despises the Jews).

in the 1930s, of course, you have huge numbers of Spanish refugees into France. a further grievance.

furthermore, these groups despise parliamentary regimes. the Europe of the 20s and 30s was dictatorships. characterized by an aggressive nationalism.

this ties into xenophobia in France quite obviously--the population in France was basically stagnant, remember. France has relatively few numbers of people under the age of 20 (only about 30%), and relatively more people who were elderly. and beginning in 1935, more people died in France than are born there. who makes up the difference? Italians, Poles, Spaniards, Belgians, Jews--all are significant minorities (half of the 325,000 Jews had come after 1918).

7.5% of the French population consists of immigrants--highest of any country.

why, with the exception of Oswald Mosley, does the UK remain relatively immune? immigration in that country was relatively small compared to these other places (despite the fact that it was only in London that you would run into people of color, as early as the 18th century, because of the British empire, prof is noting).

you only need to look at the success of the National Front, prof is noting, today, to see the continuities.

the idea of "True France" is being threatened. immigrants are not included, of course. (Hitler's own pernicious view, prof is arguing, took this to its extreme--the power of deciding who remained part of the German people lay with the Fuhrer).

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this culminates in February 6th, 1934. a political scandal gives the extreme right an opportunity for action (this is a country that had political scandals before, of course). and so now the Republic is accused not only of being soft (not virile--a weak system without a strong executive), but also of being corrupt. the France of "camping out" will conquer the France of the Apertif(!).

the police look the other way as the right mobilize their forces on the street.

a Ukranian Jew, con-man, who made an illict fortune. gradually it all collapses on his head--in December 1933 he flees to the Alps, rents a villa. revelations pile up, one after the other. Stavisky was protected by government minister, who happened to be the brother of the Prime Minister. the Right takes full advantage, and urges a full protest against the Chamber of Deputies.

the Police move in to arrest him, and Stavisky blows his brains out. he leaves a suicide note to his son, though, which didn't seem quite right--the right-wing suspected the Republic was covering itself. on top of that he was a Jew, of course.

these demonstrations turn into riots, toppling the gov't (which is replaced by a coalition government).

on February 4th, 1934, every right-wing group plans to march in front of the Chamber of Deputies, plans to perhaps even overthrow the Republic. the police batter them back--prof's uncle claims to have been in a counter-demonstration.

14 demonstrators were killed, and several thousand were injured. several hundred policemen hurt.

on February 8th, the prime minister resigns, again.

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on February 12th, the largest demonstrations in French history occurs (until May 1968), in defense of the republic. organized by the Popular Front, which was organized in the wake of these right-wing demos. millions of people march, 24-hr strike following. the Republic seemed to have a new lease of life--but it could also be called, of course, a new "lease of death."

"something had changed," prof says, "these three parties--communists, socialists, radicals--were frightened."

in 1920, the Communist Party split from the Socialist Party. it retained some elements of the Guedist party; it was fairly top-down, along lines of democratic centralism. in 1922-1923, intellectuals were tossed from the party, as it obeyed quite faithfully orders from Moscow. provided very good social services, however, and so it had a prestige that quite predated their resistance during WWII. (330,000 members by 1936--particularly strong in the red belt around Paris, and with railroad workers/engineers)

they considered the socialists (and Leon Blum) to be a reformist party, so this was a painful alliance for them.

Blum himself was "bourgeois." Blum was an intellectual, literary critic, socially radical ("on Marriage"), etc. when Jaures was killed on 31st of July 1914, Leon Blum was the logical successor. he becomes the dominant figure in the socialist party.

Leon Blum was also Jewish. and one thing that you heard in 1934/1935/1936, right-wing students would chant "better Hilter, than Blum." at one time he was almost beaten to death by right-wing thugs.

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in the meantime, government after government falls.

in June 1934, the Communist party repudiates class vs. class strategy--allowing their alliance with the "bourgeois" socialists. and the three parties meet and decide on a compromise program--tax reform, shorter work week, unemployment benefits, international disarmament,, support for league of nations, dissolution of fascist league.

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on the 7th of March, 1936, German armies move into the Rhineland. Hitler wins the big bluff against the League of Nations and the Allied Powers (his advisors warn him against the move, but Hitler gets away with it)

this leads to May 1936, when the Popular Front wins the election (57% of the vote--386 of 608 seats in the Chamber of Deputies). the communists refuse to participate in the cabinet, but their adding to the mix of three has made this victory possible.

on 3rd June, 1936, Leon Blum becomes prime minister.

what happens now, however, is that the largest wave of strikes (until May 1968) break out in France. in June 1936, there are 12,000 strikes, involving 2 million workers (for the first time ever, workers occupy factories; this happens in Flint, Michigan too, at the same time). there are pre-existing grievances, fanned by Popular Front rhetoric before the election (Taylorism, as well; "killing one's soul 8 hrs of day," factory as prison).

what is interesting is that the strikes take the labor federation and the communists by surprise. this isn't the last time this happens--happens in May 1968 as well, prof notes.

Leon Blum calls the government and employers together, and sign the Matignon Agreements, which promise 15-20% raises, 40-hr work week, paid vacation for a month, and free admission to the Louvre. (working-class resorts at beach develop in this period, prof is noting--"the working-class vacation"). an important conquest.

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but why does the Popular Front fail in the long run?

one of the reasons is because the employers have no intention of obeying their imperatives.

but really, it's the fact of the economic crisis--can't really bear the burden of these reforms, prof is arguing. wealthy people, also, run with their gold/silver to Switzerland. (Leon Blum does not put controls on currency).

and so at this point the Popular Front begins to unravel. in March 1937, police fire on demonstrating workers in Paris--the Communist Party denounces the gov't. the stock market goes into a tumble, the gov't has to devalue the Franc several times because of the outflow of gold.

but there's yet another reason that the Popular Front fails, says Prof, and that is Spain. people who lived in the late 1930s saw the war on Spain as a "war of Civilization." at the time people realized that it was a dry run for a war that was to come, later. the counter-revolution really starts in 1936 in Morocco--by 1939, an atrocity-filled war (but atrocities overwhelmingly on the side of the Fascists, no question, says prof) is ending.

the question was what was going to happen in Spain? but, of course, nobody gave arms to the Republicans. German planes strafe Guernica, though, and Italians try out their tanks.

there's a moment in France, when Blum is facing a crowd chanting "arms for spain, arms for spain"--and with tears streaming down his cheeks, Leon Blum says "I can't, I can't" (because the British and the Americans didn't want him to).

and, of course, Franco's regime lasts until 1975.

the Spanish Civil War is one of those moments, perhaps--maybe history would have been different if Hitler had been stopped at the Rhineland. or if Franco had been defeated.

as it pertains to the Popular Front in France, it survives, but in name only, until 1939. all this takes its toll. the government is defeated. Leon Blum ends up in jail, survives the war, and is active in politics during the Fourth Republic.

we live in a time of historical nostalgia, of course. prof's generation grew up listening to these tales of "arms for spain, etc." lots of the things that are good about France, prof is arguing, came out of this period of the Popular Front.

Well, they’re connected, because, you see, one of the great dangers of an economic crisis is it can lead to war. I remember Hitler coming to power very well. There were six million unemployed in Germany, and Hitler said it’s all due to the Jews and the communists and the trade unions. “Give me power,” said Hitler, “and I will give you jobs.” And he did. Half the unemployed, he put in the arms factories. The other half, he put in the German army. And we had another bloody war. And the two European wars from 1914 to 1945, in thirty-one years, cost 105 million lives, were lost in two wars, and that was not unpredicted with the grave economic crisis in the 1930s.

lecture 14, "trench warfare"
john merriman

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the war up through 1916, today

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on the last day of his life, jean jaures was troubled by what he was going to write about WWI--whether workers of France should fight workers of Germany.

his decision reflects what is called the "sacred union" between all political parties in the war effort. he wrote, then, an article with the headline "Forward/Let's Go," and he went out to a cafe after writing it--and a right-winger put a pistol through a curtain into the restaurant and blew him away. there was tremendous turmoil in the street, a sense that things would never be the same again.

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the way the war started, the way the military planners wanted it to start. german soldiers were going to put Paris/France into a headlock--they would march into Belgium (netrual since 1830s), and wrap around France. Germany is under pressure, again, to win the war quickly.

on the 2nd of August, however, the Belgian government rejected German demands--they fought against overpowering German stregnth. eventually Liege falls after a huge bombardment on the 16th. and once the Germans get through the hills of Eastern Belgium, they move fairly quickly.

the German commander, however, uses some divisions to try and pin down the Belgians. and he has some concerns with regards to the home front (how far the French will go into Alsace). and they have to transfer some troops to the home front, there. so they have fewer troops than in the original plan. and sure enough, the British expeditionary force finally arrives on the 20th of August, in Southern Belgium. but everyone is fairly sure that the war will be over, relatively soon. four divisions, also, are sent to Russia, where the Tsar has advanced far more quickly than had been anticipated.

despite huge losses, on both sides. German forces soon come within 35 miles of Paris (so close that they bombard Paris on Easter Day 1918)--and you can hear the fighting in the city. if someone wants an explanation for how the French home front is able to hold, "spectacularly", throughout the war, there are two key factors: (1) pressure is obvious, and response is heroic; (2) the "sacred union" is extremely effective in mobilizing people across France. (this is unlike Berlin, which is another story).

so, as Germans are trying to drive to Paris, we're also seeing the dawn of air warfare (attempts to drop small bombs from planes). there's a recon pilot, however, who's noting that the Germans are leaving a flank open--at that point the French rush every available soldier to exploit this weakness in the Battle of the Marne (5th September to 12th September 1914). Even the Parisian taxis are conscripted to take soldiers to the front. The British help, pouring through another gap, forcing a 40 mile retreat. And that is the largest exchange of real estate that will take place until 1918. And, without question, this saves Paris.

this is the beginning of trench warfare (a race to the sea to capture ports). the Germans start to dig trenches to fortify themselves. the famous "Western Front."

it had been noted that in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, this had been seen. and this is what happens here, the spade, shovel, the machine gun, artillery, and gas/flame-throwers become the weapons of the war--two armies facing each other across no-man's land. trenches all the way from Switzerland to the English Channel.

attempts to break through don't work. and it's not difficult to understand why--the trenches have very strong defense lines behind them.

the strategy that they adopt is what is known as "creeping barrages"--you try and soften up your opposition by killing as many people as possible, in the area you're going to charge. and all this does is alert your opponent where you are going. thus, besides killing lots of people, these creeping barrages simply kill a lot of people--they create craters on no-man's land where you try and hide, but you are inevitably taken out by the line of machine-guns. horrific.

there's a vigorous historical debate on "did they know what they were doing?"--image of higher-ups drinking champagne in a Chatauex, sending young people to their deaths. it was clear, to the soldiers, that there wasn't going to be a break-through--but there isn't one until the Germans break through in the Spring of 1918. (real estate is exchanged in yards. gains of a couple kilometers are rare.)

a huge discontinuity between soldier and civilian life--popular press exaggerates virtues, bravery, etc., whereas soldiers obviously enormously jaded and scarred. impossible for soldiers to discuss their experiences with those who believe that they wake up every morning and shout "Long Live France."

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by the end of 1914 (half-year of fighting), German and French troops had combined casualties of 300,000 (600,000 wounded--terribly wounded, generally).

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story of Christmas Day, 1914, where they sung songs and played football with each other. in 1915, a British soldier suggested that they do it again--his officers put him against the wall and shot him, for treason. there was a rumor in the trenches that there were troops from both sides with light wounds who were surviving happily in an underground cavern.

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new ways of dying, new ways of going nuts--living amongst mice, lice, dead bodies, fallen comrades, etc. new miseries.

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there are countless atrocity stories that circulate on both sides. most of the atrocities on the western front were committed by the Germans. 500 Belgian civilians executed; rape, limited, not yet a weapon of war.

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why do the Germans try and push through, at Verdun, from February to December 1916. prof is contending that they believe that they can do so by virtue of their greater birth rate--i.e., they will win any battle of attrition, and can therefore afford greater casualties. "we will bleed them."

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what made this war "total warfare"? the mobilization of an entire society--its entire productive capacities--for an extended period of time, towards these martial aims.

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Germany losing this war, after being far inside France for an extended period of time, made it easy for Hitler and other right-wing leaders to say, "we were winning? how did we lose it? we were stabbed in the back by the anti-nationalists--the communists, the socialists, the jews."