A French Hitler?

Titus_Pullo

Banned
What would it take for a Nazi regime headed by a cult of personality like Hitler taking power in France in the 1930s?

Loss and humiliation in WW1? Then in the 1920s you get very patriotic political parties springing up all over France running on a platform of having been stabbed in the back during the war, blaming the Jews for France's loss in World War 1 and going another round with Germany. French antisemitism of the rabid kind wouldn't be farfetched. Just look back to the Dreyfus case.
An obscure French army officer from world war 1, with a gift of eloquence and charisma comes out of the woodwork fashioning himself after Napoleon.

He comes to power and puts the economy on a war footing, building up the military. The French army changes its outdated doctrine and its officers realize that speed and mobility is key to striking hard at Germany in what the French high command calls "guerre d'éclair" (flash war).

Someone give me ideas to develop this timeline.
 
I'm a little confused,
Is the french loss caused by Germany crushing and defeating France, or Like in OTL, the French army collapses die to the severity of the Mutinies?
 

Titus_Pullo

Banned
I'm a little confused,
Is the french loss caused by Germany crushing and defeating France, or Like in OTL, the French army collapses die to the severity of the Mutinies?

French loss by all factors I guess, the Germans taking advantage of the mutinies, and Britain withdrawing from the war which the French Nazis (or equivalent of French Nazis would call a betrayal)
 
French loss by all factors I guess, the Germans taking advantage of the mutinies, and Britain withdrawing from the war which the French Nazis (or equivalent of French Nazis would call a betrayal)
then you got some pissed off frenchmen.
I know in OTL, the French army in WWII was acctual stronger than it seemed, so combine that with Nazi efficiantcy, you got a pretty formidably army.
althogh I can see Imperial Germany, Possibly joined up with the USA, USSR, and England defeating adn dividing up france.
 
If France is fully defeated by Germany in WW1 then Germany will in all likelihood still be a belligerent militaristic state. It will not tolerate French armament like Britain and France tolerated hers.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Nah, much could happen in the 20s, sure the German army and the Prussian Junkers would be very influential, but Germany would be forced to reform. Dissatisfaction with the system existed already pre- WW1. And if there are some kind of depression in the thirties as IRL, Germany would probably like all nations tend to her own problems and not see the French problem coming.
 

Titus_Pullo

Banned
Nah, much could happen in the 20s, sure the German army and the Prussian Junkers would be very influential, but Germany would be forced to reform. Dissatisfaction with the system existed already pre- WW1. And if there are some kind of depression in the thirties as IRL, Germany would probably like all nations tend to her own problems and not see the French problem coming.

Not mention that victory breeds complacency.
 

Typo

Banned
The problem is even a militaristic, fascist France will be, at best, a weaker version of the Second Empire, France simply doesn't have the population and the industrial power that Germany has to pull off anything like what Germany did in WWII
 

Titus_Pullo

Banned
Nah, much could happen in the 20s, sure the German army and the Prussian Junkers would be very influential, but Germany would be forced to reform. Dissatisfaction with the system existed already pre- WW1. And if there are some kind of depression in the thirties as IRL, Germany would probably like all nations tend to her own problems and not see the French problem coming.

In TTL the Great Depression still occurs which coupled with the reparations France had to pay to the Central Powers makes the situation even more ripe for a French Hitler.
And wouldn't you know it? In a bizare coincidence. This French Fuhrer was also from Corsica.
 
The problem is even a militaristic, fascist France will be, at best, a weaker version of the Second Empire, France simply doesn't have the population and the industrial power that Germany has to pull off anything like what Germany did in WWII

This is where The Russian Socialist Republic comes in.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I think a French Hitler will focus on North Africa (and the rest of France colonies less so) as Lebensraum, just as Hitler focused on Russia instead of on Elsass.

So a French Hitler is going to be a lot more terrifyring, because he won't need war of conquest, he can begin emptying land for settlement at once.
 
I heard someone once tell me about a novel where De Gaulle fills the role of Hitler. Does anyone know what that was called, and if it was any good?
 
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