Parti Populaire Français
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The Parti Populaire Français (French Popular Party) (28th June, 1936–February 22, 1945) was a fascist political party led by Jacques Doriot before and during World War Two. It is generally regarded as the farthest to the right, most pro-Nazi, of France's collaborationist parties.
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[edit] Formation and early years
The party was formed on the 28th June, 1936 by Doriot and a number of fellow former members of the French Communist Party (including Henri Barbé and Paul Marion) who had moved towards the nationalist right in opposition to the Popular Front. The PPF initially centered around the town of Saint-Denis, of which Doriot was mayor (as a Communist) from 1930-1934, and drew its support from the large working class population in the area. Although not avowedly fascist at this point, the PPF adopted many aspects of fascist politics, imagery and ideology, and quickly became popular among conservative nationalists, attracting to its ranks former members of such groups as Action Française, Jeunesses Patriotes, Croix de Feu and Solidarité Française. The party held a number of large rallies following their formation and adopted as the party flag a Celtic cross against a red, white and blue background. Members wore light blue shirts, dark blue trousers, berets and armbands bearing the party symbol as a uniform, although the uniform was not as ubiquitous as in other far right movements.
Despite the Communist origins of much of its leadership (which retained the name Politburo), the party was virulently anti-Marxist. Physical violence by PPF members (especially the PPF paramilitary wing, the Service d'Ordre) against Communist Party supporters and other perceived enemies was not uncommon. The PPF, in its initial, working class, phase, was economically populist and anti-bank. It moved closer to capitalism in 1937 when Doirot was deserted by his traditional working class base in losing the mayoral election in Saint-Denis, and the party began receiving financial support from right wing leaders of business and finance such as the General Manager of the Banque Worms, Gabriel Leroy-Ladurie. Doriot proposed to Colonel François de La Rocque uniting his Parti Social Français with the PPF to form an anti-communist alliance to be called the Front de la Liberté, but La Rocque, who was a conservative and not a fascist, rejected the move. That same year, the PPF contacted the Mussolini regime to request support. According to the private diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano (Benito Mussolini's Foreign Minister and son-in-law): "Doriot's right-hand-man has asked me to continue to pay subsidies and provide weapons. He envisages a winter filled with conflicts "(Ciano diary, Sept. 1937[1]) Ciano paid 300,000 francs from the coffers of Fascist Italy to Victor Arrighi (head of the Algiers section of the PPF).
These funds from the Italian Fascists and French banking and business interests were used to purchase a number of newspapers, including La Liberté, which became the official party organ. After this, as its funding base shifted to big business, the PPF became increasingly pro-capitalist. In time, as the Nazi regime began to contribute a greater share of the PPF's funds, it began to advocate corporatism, and pushed for closer ties with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in a grand alliance against the Soviet Union.
[edit] Ideology and Fascism of PPF
The PPF's ardent advocacy of collaboration with the Nazis was accompanied, somewhat discordantly, with nationalistic rhetoric. Members of the PPF were required to take the following oath:
"In the name of the people and of the fatherland, I swear fidelity and devotion to the Parti Populaire Français, its ideals, and its leader. I swear to serve until the supreme sacrifice the cause of national and popular revolution which will leave a new, free and independent France."
The PPF is generally regarded to be a fascist party in its ideological, as well as its practical, orientation. The party denounced parliamentarianism and sought to limit French democracy and remake French society according to its own, authoritarian beliefs. It was vehemently opposed to both Communism and liberalism and also wished to rid France of Freemasonry, about which it was greatly concerned (as were most other Fascist groups of the time). The PPF were critical of the supremacy of rationalism in politics and desired a move towards politics dictated by emotion and will rather than reason. Intellectuals who are often viewed as fascists, notably Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Ramón Fernandez, Alexis Carrel, Paul Chack, and Bertrand de Jouvenel, were members of the PPF at various times. Moreover, the PPF was anti-semitic. They had initially been ambiguous towards anti-Semitism, expressing a negative view of Jews in their literature (associating Jews with banking interests) but allowing a Jew, Alexandre Abremski, to sit on their Politburo until his death in 1938. In 1936, Doriot stated: "Our party [the PPF] is not anti-Semitic. It is a great national party that has better things to do than fight Jews."[2] By 1938, PPF literature was filled with references to the "Judeo-masonic-bolshevik" conspiracy. As the PPF moved to the right, and especially after the French defeat and the establishment of Vichy France, anti-Semitism became much more a central feature of party policy. In 1941, Doriot, writing in the journal Au pilori, would write: (t)he Jew is not a man. He's a stinking beast." This overt anti-semitic ideology was manifested in the PPF paramilitary (Gardes Françaises formerly the Service d'Ordre) participating in wide-scale violence against Jews in France and North Africa, and actively participating in the mass-deportation of Jews to concentration camps.
[edit] PPF under Vichy
After the France's defeat in the Battle of France and the establishment of the regime of Philippe Pétain at Vichy, the PPF received additional support from Germany and increased their activities. The U.S. State Department placed them on a list of organizations under the direct control of the Nazi regime.[3] The PPF staked out a position to the right of Petain, criticizing the regime for being too moderate, and advocating closer military and other collaboration with Germany (such as sending troops to the Russian front), and modeling French government, and its racial policies, directly on Nazi Germany. The PPF increasingly placed anti-Semitism at their core as they collaborated with units of the Gestapo and the Milice, the French secret police force led by PPF member Joseph Darnand, in violently rounding up Jews for deportation to concentration camps. The PPF paramilitaries participated in beatings, torture, assassinations and summary execution of Jews and political enemies of the Nazis. For this, the Germans rewarded them by allowing them the right to steal property from the Jews they arrested.
After Pierre Laval ascended of to leadership of the government on April 18, 1942 , he requested that Nazi Germany allow him to force the PPF to merge into his own supporters, but the Nazis denied that request. However, as Laval moved France closer to the Nazi regime, the PPF ceased to be as useful to the Nazis as advocates of greater collaboration. As a result, the PPF was politically marginalized and their role as critics of the regime was diminished, although it did not cease entirely. By the end of the war, the PPF had virtually ceased to function as a political party, the attention of its leader and many of its members turning more directly to partipation in the Nazi war effort. (In 1941, Doriot had formed the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF) or Brigade Charlemagne, which sent volunteers to fight near Moscow. After this, the LVF participated in anti-partisan actions in Belarus, which included partipation in atrocities against Jewish civilians. In late 1943, the surviving LVF volunteers were inducted into the Waffen-SS Französische SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Regiment (Waffen-SS French SS-Volunteer Grenadier Regiment). In September 1944 this unit was renamed Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS "Charlemagne", with the addition of French collaborators fleeing the Allied advance in the west. In February 1945 the unit was officially upgraded to a division and renamed 33.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne".)
In 1943, Doriot had moved to Germany where he became part of the so-called Vichy government-in-exile. On February 22, 1945, Doriot, attired in his SS uniform and being driven in a Nazi officers car, was killed by Allied strafers near Mengen, Württemberg, Germany, while en route from Mainau to Sigmaringen. The PPF movement did not survive the death of its leader, and no attempt was made to revive it in post-War France.
[edit] References
- Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave 1933-1939, 1995
- G. Warner, 'France', in SJ Woolf, Fascism In Europe, 1981
- Christopher Lloyd, Collaboration and Resistance in Occupied France: Representing Treason and Sacrifice, Palgrave MacMillan 2003
