Boy Scouting for Grown-Ups? Paramilitarism in the Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Francais

Abstract

Historians have rarely lingered on the question of violence in French politics during the 1930s.1 One reason for this neglect is doubtless the widely held view that France was a fundamentally stable society, held together by a consensus around slow economic growth, rural values, and parliamentary democracy.2 Of course, it is accepted that France had its extremist movements. But these are said to have remained marginal unless they latched onto the republican consensus. Thus the Communist party expanded only after it abandoned revolutionary sectarianism, draped itself in the tricolor, and sought success through the ballot box.3 Much the same is said of the far Right. The largest of the leagues, the Croix de Feu, may have organized its four hundred thousand members in paramilitary formations. But for Rene Remond it prospered only once it had converted itself into a conventional electoral machine, the Parti social fran;ais (PSF), following dissolution by the Popular Front government in June 1936.4 Even before this mutation, the paramilitarism of the Croix de