Mouvement Franciste

Last updated
Francist Movement
Mouvement franciste
President Marcel Bucard
Founded1933;90 years ago (1933)
Banned1944;79 years ago (1944)
Preceded by Le Faisceau [1]
Headquarters Vichy, France
NewspaperLe Francisme
Paramilitary wingBlueshirts
Membership10,000 (1933 est.)
Ideology Francism
Political position Far-right
Colours  Blue   Red   Gold
Party flag
Flag of Mouvement Franciste.svg
Bucard and members of the Francist Movement, 1934 Francisme.jpg
Bucard and members of the Francist Movement, 1934

The Francist Movement (French : Mouvement franciste, MF) was a French Fascist and anti-semitic league created by Marcel Bucard in September 1933 that edited the newspaper Le Francisme. Mouvement franciste reached a membership of 10,000 and was financed by the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. Its members were deemed the francistes or Chemises bleues (Blueshirts) and gave the Roman salute (a paramilitary character that was mirrored in France by François Coty's Solidarité Française).

Contents

It took part in the Paris protests of 6 February 1934, during which the entire far right (from Action Française to Croix-de-Feu) protested the implications of the Stavisky Affair and possibly attempted to topple Édouard Daladier's government. It incorporated the Solidarité française after Coty's death later in the same year.

All of the movements that participated in the 6 February riots were outlawed in 1936, when Léon Blum's Popular Front government passed new legislation on the matter. After a failed attempt in 1938, the movement was refounded as a political party (Parti franciste) in 1941, after France had been overrun by Nazi Germany.

Together with Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Français and Marcel Déat's Rassemblement National Populaire, the francistes were the main collaborators of the Nazi occupiers and Vichy France. The Parti Franciste did not survive the end of World War II, and was considered treasonous. Bucard was executed as a collaborator after the war.

Creation

Francisme was created in August–September 1933 by Marcel Bucard, a former seminarian and war hero, who had already participated in a number of nationalist and proto-fascist movements: French Action, Faisceau, French Solidarity and Croix de Feu. The official creation takes place on 29 September 1933 at 11 pm, during a ceremony organized at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Marcel Bucard whilst delivering a speech at the ceremony stated that he wanted: "(...) to found a movement of revolutionary action whose aim is to conquer the power" and "to stop the race to the abyss". [2]

The movement was heavily inspired by Mussolini's National Fascist Party and so received significant funding and support from the Italian fascist movement. In response to this Bucard wrote, "Our Francism is to France what Fascism is to Italy".

Collaboration with the Germans

During the Occupation, the Franciste Movement was relaunched and along with Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (PPF) and Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally (RNP) is one of the most notable political movement to collaborate with the occupying German authorities.

On May 5, 1941, Marcel Bucard and Paul Guiraud (associate of philosophy, son of Jean Guiraud, editor-in-chief of La Croix ) relaunched Francisme. Paul Guiraud attempted to give the movement a more "socialist" look. Similarly, Bucard defended the General Confederation of Labour (dissolved during the occupation) and criticized the Labor Charter elaborated by the Vichy regime, which he considered not socialist enough. [3]

Like the other collaboration movements, the movement failed to become a mass movement. At its peak (summer 1943), according to historian duo Lambert-Le Marec it had some 5,500 members (4,000 in the provinces and 1,500 in the Paris region) or, according to other sources, reach a maximum of 8,000 members. [4] The newspaper Le Franciste reached a maximum circulation during the war of 20,000 copies.

In 1943, it participated in a collaborationist front, dominated by the National Popular Rally, in an attempt to unify with other fascist movements. Like the other parties, the Franciste Movement was heavily collaborationist (creation of the Task Forces to fight against resistance was one such example). Many of its members participated in anti-Semitic and anti-communist operations as well as its members joining the Milice which actively targeted the French Resistance. [5] Particularly well established in the departments of Seine-et-Oise and Morbihan, where locals were involved in incidents of violence.

On July 4, 1944, a policeman was killed and another injured by the bodyguards of Bucard during an altercation. Bucard was then imprisoned but released on July 29, just in time to flee to Germany on August 12 with the other Francists as the Allies launch Operation Overlord. Bucard was finally arrested, tried and sentenced to death on February 21, 1946, shot on March 19 at Fort Chatillon, near Paris. Facing the pole, he refused to wear a headband and, once attached, shouted, "Qui vive? La France!" before the salvo struck him dead. His family were denied a request that his body is deposited in the family vault, and Marcel Bucard was buried in the Parisian cemetery of Thiais, in the current department of Val-de-Marne.

Related Research Articles

Solidarité Française was a French far-right league founded in 1933 by the perfume manufacturer François Coty (1874-1934) as the "Parti national corporatif républicain".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Doriot</span> French journalist, communist, fascist politician

Jacques Doriot was a French politician, initially communist, later fascist, before and during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcel Déat</span> French socialist turned fascist politician

Marcel Déat was a French politician. Initially a socialist and a member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), he led a breakaway group of right-wing Neosocialists out of the SFIO in 1933. During the occupation of France by Nazi Germany, he founded the collaborationist National Popular Rally (RNP). In 1944, he became Minister of Labour and National Solidarity in Pierre Laval's government in Vichy, before escaping to the Sigmaringen enclave along with Vichy officials after the Allied landings in Normandy. Condemned in absentia for collaborationism, he died while still in hiding in Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Valois</span> French journalist and politician

Georges Valois was a French journalist and national syndicalist politician. He was a member of the French Resistance and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Le Faisceau</span> Political party in France

Le Faisceau was a short-lived French fascist political party. It was founded on 11 November 1925 as a far right league by Georges Valois. It was preceded by its newspaper, Le Nouveau Siècle, which had been founded as a weekly on February 26 but became a daily after the party's creation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Popular Party</span> Political party in France

The French Popular Party was a French fascist and anti-semitic political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War II. It is generally regarded as the most collaborationist party of France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcel Bucard</span> French politician (1895–1946)

Marcel Bucard was a French Fascist politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François de La Rocque</span> 20th century French soldier and politician

François de La Rocque was the leader of the French right-wing league the Croix de Feu from 1930 to 1936 before he formed the more moderate nationalist French Social Party (1936–1940), which has been described by several historians, such as René Rémond and Michel Winock, as a precursor of Gaullism.

The far-right leagues were several French far-right movements opposed to parliamentarism, which mainly dedicated themselves to military parades, street brawls, demonstrations and riots. The term ligue was often used in the 1930s to distinguish these political movements from parliamentary parties. After having appeared first at the end of the 19th century, during the Dreyfus affair, they became common in the 1920s and 1930s, and famously participated in the 6 February 1934 crisis and riots which overthrew the second Cartel des gauches, i.e. the center-left coalition government led by Édouard Daladier.

The far-right tradition in France finds its origins in the Third Republic with Boulangism and the Dreyfus affair. The modern "far right" or radical right grew out of two separate events of 1889: the splitting off in the Socialist International of those who chose the nation and the culmination of the "Boulanger Affair", which championed the demands of the former Minister of War General Georges Boulanger. The Dreyfus affair provided one of the political division lines of France. Nationalism, which had been before the Dreyfus affair a left-wing and Republican ideology, turned after that to be a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right. A new right emerged, and nationalism was reappropriated by the far-right who turned it into a form of ethnic nationalism, itself blended with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Protestantism and anti-Masonry. The Action française, first founded as a review, was the matrix of a new type of counter-revolutionary right-wing, and continues to exist today. During the interwar period, the Action française (AF) and its youth militia, the Camelots du Roi, were very active. Far right leagues organized riots.

<i>Révolution nationale</i> Ideological program of Vichy France

The Révolution nationale was the official ideological program promoted by the Vichy regime which had been established in July 1940 and led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. Pétain's regime was characterized by anti-parliamentarism, personality cultism, xenophobia, state-sponsored anti-Semitism, promotion of traditional values, rejection of the constitutional separation of powers, modernity, and corporatism, as well as opposition to the theory of class conflict. Despite its name, the ideological policies were reactionary rather than revolutionary as the program opposed almost every change introduced to French society by the French Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Popular Rally</span> Political party in France

The National Popular Rally was a French political party and one of the main collaborationist parties under the Vichy regime of World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Croix-de-Feu</span> Political party in France

The Croix-de-Feu was a nationalist French league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque (1885–1946). After it was dissolved, as were all other leagues during the Popular Front period (1936–38), La Rocque established the Parti social français (PSF) to replace it.

Robert Soucy is an American historian, specializing in French fascist movements between 1924 and 1939, French fascist intellectuals Maurice Barrès and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, European fascism, twentieth-century European intellectual history, and Marcel Proust's aesthetics of reading.

Roland Silly (1909–1995) was a French trade unionist and politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French National-Collectivist Party</span> French far-right party, 1934 to 1944

The French National-Collectivist Party, originally known as the French National Communist Party, was a minor political group active in the French Third Republic and reestablished in occupied France. Its leader in both incarnations was the sports journalist Pierre Clémenti. It espoused a "national communist" platform noted for its similarities with fascism, and popularized racial antisemitism. The group was also noted for its agitation in support of pan-European nationalism and rattachism, maintaining contacts in both Nazi Germany and Wallonia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Arthuys</span> French industrialist

Jacques Arthuys was a French industrialist, a right-wing intellectual and early leader of the French Fascist movement. He was initially a pan-European but became opposed to the Nazi movement. During World War II (1939–45) he was leader of a French Resistance organization. He was arrested, deported to a concentration camp and killed by the Germans.

Léon Émery was a French pacifist activist and a French collaborationist with the Nazi regime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Clémenti (politician)</span>

Pierre Clementi, real name Francis Anthony Clementi, was a French politician active during the 1930s and the occupation of France during the Second World War. He was the founder and leader of the French National-Collectivist Party, which espoused a platform of National Communism, a combination of Fascism, French nationalism and to a certain extent Communism.

French nationalism during World War II experienced divided attitudes towards the Nazi occupier, the Vichy government and the resistance.

References

  1. (Bucard was a member of Le Faisceau, and many elements of the Mouvement originated from Le Faisceau)
  2. Bucard, Marcel. Le Francisme (in French). Impr. Spéciale du Francisme. OCLC   491659976.
  3. Ory, Pascal (1980). Les collaborateurs, 1940-1945 (in French) ([Nouv. éd.] ed.). Paris: Seuil. ISBN   2-02-005427-2. OCLC   300236049.
  4. Lambert, Pierre Philippe; Le Marec, Gérard (2009). Vichy 1940-1944 : organisations et mouvements (in French). Paris: Grancher. ISBN   978-2-7339-1051-1. OCLC   318871505.
  5. Bancaud, Alain (2019). "L'épuration judiciaire à la Libération : entre légalité et exception". Histoire de la justice. 29 (2019/1 (N° 29)): 229 to 254. doi:10.3917/rhj.029.0229. S2CID   239388066.