Getting Away with Murder: Political Violence on Trial in Interwar France

Abstract

This article examines the trial and punishment of men and women involved in violence in a political context in interwar France. The law courts offered parties and leagues a staging ground to further expose the brutality of their enemy and skewer the alleged partiality of the democratic Third Republic. The investigation and punishment of such crimes encountered important obstacles, from the reluctance of witnesses to speak to the police to the practice of trial by jury, which contemporaries recognized frequently led to unsatisfactory verdicts. Acquittals, such as those of the killers at the rue Damrémont in 1925 and at Hénin-Liétard in 1934, provoked outrage in the partisan press. Yet juries brought with them to the courtroom an understanding that, in certain circumstances, extreme violence was legitimate. Analysis of the cases of those French who ‘got away with murder’ thus reveals broader attitudes to politically motivated violence in interwar France.