All the General Secretary's Men

Hey guys I’ve been reading and posting on this sight for a few years now and so decided to post my first attempt at a Timeline.



I know that writing a timeline about civil conflict in France at this particular time is a little bit morbid, however the recent unrest has reminded me of a draft I wrote for a first chapter of a short TL in the style of “meet the new boss”. The TL will use several politicians within France to describe this recent history.



There are two PODS, the first is that France does not surrender and fights on in Africa, the second is Britain making peace with Germany in 1940, the TL could have been accomplished without France fighting on but the factional intrigue that is important to the later plot Is aided quite a bit with the French retreat to north Africa.


I am by no means an expert on these subjects (especially the ww2 part please do not rip it to shreds) so be aware of that. Some of the references I have made are a bit tongue in cheek anyway so don’t take this as a completely serious and scholarly TL. I Really aim to write an interesting political history of factions and figures that I imagine would interact in this Communist France, NOT a military history of WW2.


Also bear in mind that the details of French society from 1940-1964 will be described in several chapters.



I just had to post this as its been sitting on my computer for ages.







Chapter 1: Maurice Thorez 1946-1964

(Moscow)





1101460603_400.jpg




For the position of head of state, there was no man more uniquely qualified or supported by the party rank and file than Maurice Thorez. Born in 1900, he became a miner by age 12 party secretary of the communist party by 23 and with the support of Stalin the general secretary by age 30. After being elected to the National Assembly in 1932 Thorez would lead the party to new heights as part of the popular front of 1934 where radical socialists and moderates joined to form a government, the 1936 elections would represent a high point for communist support as a mass movement which would take a decade to return to these levels.


Thorez and his ideology took a hit during the Second World War as the Molotov Ribbentrop pact with Nazi Germany demanded that the French communist party oppose the French war with German. This policy had three effects, first the party was outlawed, secondly the surge in patriotic feeling drove many from supporting the party which they saw as being traitorous to France and thirdly when the German invasion of the Soviet Union took place in 1941 the party looked weak and unprincipled as they quickly changed their stance to that of resistance.


Thorez is popularly thought of as somewhat of a war hero, newspaper reports with the author "Maurice Thorez- somewhere in France" appeared in the underground newspaper "l'humanite" and he remained leader of the party throughout the five years of Their resistance campaign against the Germans. It was only later revealed that Thorez had been in Russia for the duration of the war and had almost no role in the day to day management of the party. From Moscow he could do little but supervise the bedraggled group of French emigres, create plans with the NKVD and respond to outdated reports from the central committees in Algiers and Paris who had actual party movements.


It is a testament to his popularity that he faced no post war challenges to his leadership from within the party itself, his skill as a leader and organiser would be put to the test and vindicated most spectacularly in these post war years as he seemed to take on all challengers from east and west without ever losing the confidence of his people.


From 1941 onwards the communists joined the resistance and under the directive of Thorez began to cooperate with anti-communist resistance groups as well as the government in exile in Algiers. Initially this support benefitted the communist party as they were able to fight more effectively against the German occupiers on both the Russian front and the home front. The problem started in 1944 when the tide of the war had obviously turned against the Germans and the red army was crossing into Eastern Europe. At this point Thorez and his deputies realised that the fascist occupation would end soon and proletarian revolution in France would be impossible to accomplish post war without first tackling the free French forces who would fight to restore liberal democracy. Thorez by this point was also not operationally in control of the bulk of the PCF, who were divided between Algiers, Moscow and France, these PCF centres would be important in the post war as factions within the PCF would become partially based on where the members spent the majority of the war.


By mid-1946 The red army had acquired a ceaseless, unstoppable momentum that cracked the Pomeranian wall and the Oder Neisse defensive line in the first month of the year with ease. Hitler had dragged Germany into an unwinnable war and had meddled heavily with the military, replacing and demoting all who questioned his decisions. In early February Adolf was travelling west in a quickly deteriorating mental state after being finally convinced to flee Berlin. Hearing of incoherent ramblings and constant accusations of treason, the desperate military decided now was the time to take revenge. They made sure Hitler’s butchery of the finest young Germans to put on uniform was repaid in kind by a uprising across the frontline aimed at disarming and eliminating the SS and gestapos power over the German army. Accounts differ on who exactly killed Hitler in the skirmish that took place between Wehrmacht infantry and Reinhart Heydrich’s ss forces on the 23rd of February 1946 near the town of Sonderborg. While most Wehrmacht troops were fleeing west planning to link up with allied forces, the SS distrusted the French and attempted to flee into Scandinavia when they met their ends. Manstein asserted that military police trucks carrying Hitler were struck by SS mortars while passing a Danish farmhouse, the SS claimed a Military shell incinerated the farmhouse where Hitler was based, somehow the soviets have also claimed the kill for themselves with heroic communist Danish partisans planting a bomb in a cowshed in preparation for the passing convoy. In any case there are perhaps more post grad students who care about the details of Hitler’s death now than there were German citizens who cared for the details of his death in 1946, by this point most were concerned with not starving until summer arrived.



What allowed the military to maintain some semblance of order in central and Western Europe during the soviet advance was two connected things, 1) the Soviet army was stretched thin after four years of brutal war on its home turf and 2) it was attempting to occupy eastern and Southern Europe with this stretched train of logistics and armies. In March, Having been restored from exile general Manstein delivered his famous "backhanded slap" which hurled what was left of axis firepower and tanks into an overextended soviet front line around the town of Merseuberg which destroyed the town totally and almost succeeded in destroying the soviet armies involved. Due to the timing and location of this battle it is dubbed "Märzkämpfe" or "marz aktion" and is celebrated as somewhat of a holiday for the right wing in modern Germany.


This battle combined with pragmatic actions on the part of the military allowed for millions of Germans to flee west and south to escape the chaos of the soviet advance, but it could not hold for long and by mid 1946 the wheels had come off the tracks of the German war machine.


The Free French had waited for this occasion for several years and had withdrawn to Algeria in 1940 expressly so they could retake their nation once the Nazi war machine has been crushed. The free French were mostly anti communist and so wished for nothing more than to liberate their country without soviet aid but the odds were not exactly in their favour, the Americans were concerned with the the Far East and Britain were similarly involved with the chaotic process of granting India independence, and lacked public support for reentering the war they had left five years earlier.


When the Zhukov's forces entered the Rhineland in June the free French army returned to France in force and accepted the surrender of most Axis troops with ease, in fact for months there were channels of negotiation between the resistance and the occupation to make a smooth transition from fascism to democracy and stop the potential encroachment of communism in Europe.


Thorez's genius at the time was to use this cooperation to brand communist takeover as simply a further liberation of France from fascism and German control. The communist party had several hundred thousand resistance fighters under their control, the largest political party membership by far and the soviet army backing them so Thorez returned to Paris with a grim determination to prevail over the bourgeois free French government at all costs. Peaceful cooperation between resistance forces was killed almost immediately by his orders, the FTPs (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans) were ordered to en masse round up axis soldiers, collaborators and civilian refugees who would be either killed or conscripted to serve hard labour for their crimes against the French people, this policy of harsh retribution was opposed by the free French army who accepted collaborator forces almost wholesale into their own army. Almost immediately the free French forces and the communist resistance came to blows and within weeks of the collapse of German occupation a civil war was breaking out with major industrial centers falling under the control of the PCF and free French troops taking the rural and coastal areas that they landed at.


Thorez's role in the military actions of the French civil war are not to be overstated and detailed description of the war will be saved for another biography, but what cannot be overstated is the unified message propagated by Thorez’s propaganda ministry which focused on the foreign nature of the free French white army as opposed to the patriotic red army. A message that was helped to an extent by the British and Spanish forces who had intervened on the free French side.


Two brutal years of civil war ended in a bloody stalemate with neither side able to decisively beat the other. By late 1947 the division between a capitalist west France and a communist east France had been mostly finalised.


As head of state Thorez oversaw France’s transition into on of the most loyal bastions of communism in Europe, the fact that French communists had been the first to overthrow German rule rather than be “liberated” at the point of a Russian bayonet had won the PCF considerable support from French working and middle classes. Meanwhile right-wing collaboration with fascism drove many from the free French cause aswell as the Anglo-American intervention making it seem once again as if French government was being dictated by foreigners.


Thorez towed the line of forced collectivization, Nationalisation of industry and tight political control established by Stalinism throughout Europe. This adherence to Marxist Leninist orthodoxy came to a head in 1956 with the accession of Nikita Khruschev to power in the Soviet Union and the wide sweeping reforms made to reject Stalin’s legacy. Elements in French society and the PCF sought to emulate that change within France, this was not to be their time however and Thorez assisted his right hand man Jacques Duclos in purging the most egregious offenders in the 1957 lyon incident.


Much debate has been had over the extent to which Thorez was independent of control from Moscow, his adherence to Stalinism was attempted in Poland but was overthrown by order of Khruschev in 1958. French military and internal police force had not been established directly by soviet rule but had risen on its own through an indigenous revolution, in this way France can be seen less as a puppet of soviet communism but rather a co collaborator and independent communist state.



His death in 1964 on a cruise in the black sea was significant in both the internal French political situation with the rise of collective rule and also signified the shift away from Stalinism throughout Europe as being complete.
 

Attachments

  • 1101460603_400.jpg
    1101460603_400.jpg
    33.3 KB · Views: 123
Marty
Chapter 2: André Marty 1946-1952


(Moscow)




z17767528V,Andre-Marty--komisarz-polityczny-Brygad-Miedzynaro.jpg


Excerpt from A level history paper 2 “France and the two revolutions 1947-1986” question A


“Debate in historiography has often been centred on the issue of who played a more crucial role in the French civil war, André Marty or Maurice Thorez. Initial evidence based on propaganda leaflets, reports from front line troops and statements issued by the Peoples republic painted Thorez as the mastermind of proletarian revolution, the helmsman leading French worker-soldiers to a bright future. Similarly the popular conception of Thorez on both sides of the war seems to corroborate this, Thorez is remembered by many surviving witnesses to the French civil war as being pivotally important. Recent Scholarship by the likes of Robert Sheldon and Sam Hitchmough has shown the under repprted role disgraced political leaders such as Marty and…”


André marty was born in pepignan to a left leaning middle class family on the 6th of November 1886. He first became prominent in the communist movement as a mechanical engineering officer in the French navy, where he and his lifelong friend Charles tillon helped organise a mutiny in April 1919 in the black sea. The mutiny began as a protest over working conditions, however due to the French navys involvement in the civil war, this mutiny was celebrated by Russian Bolsheviks who elected Andre Marty to the Moscow soviet to represent dynamo factory. For his role in the mutiny, Marty was arrested and sentenced to 20 years of hard labour but served under 4, being pardoned in 1923. Returning a hero to the French left he joined the PCF immediately after leaving prison, was elected as representative for Seine-et-oise in 1924 and became part of the PCF central committee. The peak of his pre war power was attained in 1936 when he became a member of the Comintern Presidium and Political Commissar of the international brigades involved in the Spanish civil war. Critiqued by many for his harsh disciplinarian approach, he nonetheless gained skills that would be vital for his later role.


After the Spanish civil war Marty headed to the Soviet Union to work in the Comintern fulltime, after the fall of France Marty became second in command to Thorez in the Moscow faction of the French communist party. As the French civil war began in mid-1946 Marty was favoured over tillon for command of the east French armed forces, Thorez and Moscow needed to reassert the power of the Moscow exiles over the French communist movement and Marty was the man for the job. His stringent discipline and aggressive punishment of insubordination had landed him in hot water in the multi faction Spanish civil war but was useful in maintaining order within the French party and army in their establishment of a one party state.



In the late 40s and early 50s Marty was at the peak of his power, among the armed forces he was revered as a hero within the party itself he also had deep roots within the party. His dramatic fall from grace in 1952 has led many popular historians to dub him “the French Trotsky” but it is perhaps more useful to think of him as a French Zinoviev. Marty had been a staunch ally of Thorez and even helped overcome his rivals from the Paris and Algiers factions within the PCF, however his continued friendship with Tillon had allowed for their influence to be felt heavily throughout east France to the point of threatening Thorez’ power. In November 1952 editor of the l’humanite Etienne Fajon published scandalous articles claiming that both Marty and Tillon were employed as Police spies in the 1930s. These accusations were followed shortly with Martys expulsion from the PCF on December 2nd 1952. Tillon was side-lined and demoted and many of Marty’s supporters were expelled from the party or even imprisoned on the orders Jacques Duclos, Thorez’ new right-hand man. Marty was allowed to retire as he was in weak health and posed little threat.


His death in 1956 in a small village near Lyon marked an end in a chapter of the PCF’s history that would not be revisited until 1964…
 
Last edited:
Duclos
Chapter 3: Jacques Duclos 1946-1964


(Paris)

220px-Jacques_Duclos_en_1959.JPG



“No figure of east French history has been popularly reviled more than Minister for state security Jacques Duclos. Many crimes of the east French government have been ascribed to Duclos but in recent years this view has been re assessed. His targeting of officials within the communist party has been compared ad nauseam to beria and stalin, however the brutality of his tactics were hardly un-precedented. Marty’s military police and political commissars unleashed their fair share of horrors on suspected collaborators in the early stages of the French civil war, while unreported at the time the arming and directing of French mobs to attack german refugees is stomach turning to read, so why is Marty not viewed with such a critical eye? A potential answer is that to an extent, post 1964 regimes have attempted to break with a Stalinist past through attributing Stalinism to Duclos alone.”


“A reassessment East France” by John Reeks 2011.



Much like the other leaders of the PCF, Jacques Duclos came from relatively humble origins, and served in the French army in WW1. Entering the communist party in 1920 duclos sat in the national assembly, became a member of the PCF central committee in 1926 and head of propaganda in 1936. He also had an impressive record in the international communist movement, exerting pressure on both the Belgian and Spanish communist parties to become more disciplined. The “black legend” surrounding Duclos can often be claimed to have started in 1940 with the occupation of France, fully supportive of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, he entered into negotiations with the nazi government to re open l’humanite and re legalise the communist party. While these collaborationist acts are heinous by post war moral standards, they were a logical result of the PCF’s instructions and a great number of other members would have done the same in his position. Duclos along with benoit frachon and Charles tillon would lead the Paris faction of the PCF as the clandestine secretariat, controlling much of the resistance effort, his personal contribution to the resistance in contrast with the other members has been downplayed for fairly obvious reasons.


In the post war period of WW2 Duclos became Minister of the Interior, under his tenure the National Gendarmerie was abolished and replaced with a paramilitary bureau of state security (BSS) formed out of Civil war era internal security divisions. The wide-reaching intelligence gathering capabilities of the BSS was heavily controlled by Duclos, communist cells in the west of France were maintained from guerrilla movements into clandestine cells that survived for decades. This BSS was headed up by the PCF resistance intelligence chief, Pierre Villon. As a member of the Paris faction he held a substantial power base, however thorez also favoured him for his staunch Stalinist stances in the resistance, reckless and independent minded men like tillon were denied the highest posts for the opposite reasons.


The Marty Affair is an area in which Duclos has been attributed a huge amount of blame, traditional views of the affair state that Maurice thorez’ stroke in 1950 was the primary cause, the power vacuum allowed Thorez to manipulate his contacts within propaganda wing of the party to attack marty and power over the secret police to arrange the purge of Marty and his supporters. Recent personal correspondence between Thorez, Frachon and Duclos in early 1950 show that a purge of Marty had been considered even before Thorez’s health faltered. Duclos killed remarkably few people in his purges of the PCF mostly lower ranked members, and in Tillon’s case did not even stunt their career significantly. Some repressive actions of the BSS can be seen as prudent, for instance the 1957 purge of the Lyon branch of the communist party where several hundred members were arrested and 50 killed. Recent declassified documents leaked to the Italian government in the 1950s showed the Lyon PCF to have been actually infiltrated by the locally powerful Trotskyist communist party during the chaos of the civil war using the fittingly named tactic “French turn”.


Duclos’ BSS was also a far less outwardly aggressive than later iterations, while hostile to the west French in the extreme, there was very little arming and assistance to the “three bs” (Basques, Bretons and Bouteflika) that would claim many west French lives during later decades.

Despite the inflated nature of Duclos’ vicious reputation, it is still undisputed that his purges of the PCF did inspire a resentment among the party rank and file who did not rise to his support when he was removed from power shortly following the death of Thorez in 1964. His death in prison shortly after his fall from grace firmly ended the hopes for a Stalinist continuation in France, as a new form of collective rule came to pass in France, and the apparatuses of state established by Thorez and Duclos were heavily modified.
 
Tillon
Chapter 4: Charles Tillon And The Second Black Sea Mutiny 1964-1969

(Paris)

CharlesTillon.jpg


One of the great survivors of French history, Charles Tillon is seen as a hero by many French people both on the left and right wing. His short term as part of the ruling clique and sweeping reforms brought to France during his tenure brought have been hailed as defusing a ticking time bomb in France and paving the way for later democratisation. Not only is he admired for political feats, but in large part for his sheer force of will and ability to overcome all enemies he found.


Tillon was an alumnus of the famous black sea mutiny of 1920 and during this time a long-term friendship was formed between himself and Andre Marty. Following his return to France, Tillon joined the PCF and eventually was elected to the national assembly. He grew in influence within the PCF and by the beginning of WW2 was one of the highest ranking members of the PCF as a member of the central committee.


Another prominent event that thrust Tillon into the limelight was the German invasion of 1940, while most of the PCF supported the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and therefore refused to resist the German invasion, Tillon would be one of the key voices of resistance. He instead called for a peoples resistance to the Nazi occupation and began organising resistance cells immediately. Tillon along with Benoit Frachon and Jacques Duclos became one of the PCF clandestine secretariat which would hold control over the party apparatus that still existed within France. Tillon furthered his legendary status when he became the creator and commander in chief of the largest resistance force in France; the The Francs-tireurs et partisans, he did this by merging the Bataillons de la Jeunesse, the Organisation Spéciale and the Main-d'œuvre immigrée . By 1946 over 200 thousand resistance fighters were aligned with the FTPs, and they dwarfed numerous other right wing resistance movements.


Tillon’s independent streak gained him much popularity, but both of these factors led to his partial side-lining in 1946 when the soviets arrived in western Europe. Thorez placed the muscovite Marty in charge of the armed forces and turned Tillon to simply being ministry of the air, the French red army had to develop an air force almost from scratch as the best pilots were almost all in the west French air force. By the end of the war in 1947 Tillon commanded a respectable airforce and had made powerful links and friendship with air force commanders that would be vital to his later successes. Tillon however had been excluded from the central committee and denied access to the huge powerbase he had cultivated from 1940 to 1946.


Tillon and Marty ultimately were not broken apart by Thorez’ scheming, rather their friendship spanned across factions, and they commanded respect across French society that threatened thorez’ monopoly on power. In the later 1940s Thorez was also under pressure from Joseph Stalin, now arguably the most powerful man on earth, to purge nationalist elements from the French communist party as had been done in eastern Europe and Tillon was an obvious target.


The Marty affair and the purges in 1952 led to Tillon’s demotion to management of a remote French Air base near lyon and almost expulsion from the party. He could not be expelled or imprisoned due to the still close memory of his management of the Partisans. The death of Marty in 1956 and the soviet invasion of Hungary were powerful personal catalysts that made him question Stalinist and communist orthodoxy, if you believe his memoirs.


As Thorez’s health continued to fail in the 1960s he rehabilitated men like Tillon to counterbalance the Increasingly dominant BSS which had grown to be tens of thousands of men strong and increasingly intervened in military matters. Tillon was made a general in the air force in 1960, the same year that military police capabilities were stripped from the BSS and placed in the hands of the ministry of defence, still led however by war hero Pierre Villon.


In 1964 Maurice Thorez was onboard a cruise in the black sea, where he was discussing policy and geopolitics with Russian officials when he suddenly died. The KGB upon hearing of the death promptly shut off all communication off the boat and decided to not directly notify the French government of the fact of Thorez’s death. They wished to secure a more moderate and reformist French leadership as the constant flare ups on the French border were compromising Russian geopolitical interests, the Russian government led by Nikhita Khurschev resolved to prevent Duclos or another Stalinist from taking power. They notified the French government once Jacques Duclos had left the capital to attend a hospital opening in Marseille. While Duclos was headed south, the KGB notified Tillon of the situation, allowing him time to rally his supporters and assemble Central committee of the PCF. The central committee had tolerated Duclos’ actions in the past but without the benefactor of Thorez, balked at such an authoritarian personality taking power after Thorez’s death. Tillon organised a late-night meeting of the central committee which agreed to denounce Duclos and expel him from the party. Duclos attempted to fly back to Paris the minute he heard of the death of Thorez, but two Migs circling his airport near Lyon notified the Base that a no fly zone had been established for “security reasons” and that they would would strafe the runway if any attempts were made to take flight. Now racing to the capital by train, Duclos was finally caught before entering the suburbs of Paris by military police who stopped the train and arrested Duclos. This dramatic series of events is referred to in popular culture as the second black sea mutiny, a fitting revenge and high point of Charles Tillons popularity which was first ignited by The black sea Mutiny.


The Era following Thorez’s death and Duclos’s imprisonment has been referred to as collective rule, the central committee was dominated not by a single commanding personality like Thorez but rather a group of committee members, the first group was made up of Three reformists, Tillon, Roger Garaudy and Waldeck Rochet. This group has been called the “French Troika” by some historians but the much more popular name that has lasted is “ménage à trois”. Spanning across factional and generational lines, the ménage had popular appeal within the cadres and the general public. Garaudy headed up the ministry of the interior, placing another war hero Euegene Henaff as head of the BSS, a younger man and more moderate Henaff was still an experienced spy master and long-time colleague of Tillon. Waldeck rochet became general secretary, a veteran of agricultural affairs who had much experience integrating party cadres from rural areas which were becoming increasingly important. Finally, Tillon became head of state due to his mythical stature in French society and widespread respect from the French populace.



As head of state, Tillon brought about sweeping changes to the French communist party and east France as a whole. Emulating the Titoist model of market socialism, cooperative firms were created that took over much of small business enterprises and farms, while heavy industry remained in state hands. This new economic plan firstly allowed for an economic upturn in the east French economy, as well as reconciliation with much of the rural population which had been alienated by the brutal forced collectivisation that took place in the late 40s. Moderate political liberalisation took place at this time under Tillon too, Large prison camps were opened up and censorship laws were partially relaxed. The PCF was also expanded in membership to a much larger swath of the populace.

Tillon’s moderate streak extended to foreign affairs because since the 1963 Putsch In west France Flare ups along the French border had become commonplace, Soviet premier Khruschevand the warsaw pact made several demands of west France that they de-escalate the situation in order to prevent a global war from taking place. Tillon acquiesced to the Warsaw pact demands fearing economic and military collapse should support be withdrawn and a war with the west breaks out. Ultimately Tillon was undermined by the events of 1967 when South Italy collapsed wholesale, ideas of total French unification were floated again.


Tillons fall would come as a result of his inability to respond to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The 1968 tripartite agreement between Italy, Yugoslavia and Albania had presented an example of freer non-soviet aligned communist states that Czechoslovak leaders attempted to replicate. This so called “Turin Pact” alliance was thwarted by pro-soviet communists who overthrew the reformist Czechoslovaks with the aid of soviet and polish forces. Tillon refused to condemn the invasion and so was removed from the central committee by a vote of no confidence in 1969, which was announced as a retirement for health reasons.


Tillons five-year reign has been looked on favourably by many French people from the east and the west, the lack of major internal purges or unrest gave him little opportunity to ruin his stellar reputation. His establishment of collective rule and expansion of party membership stood in stark contrast to the junta who ruled France during this period and so perhaps Tillon is a romantic figure only due to his comparison with contemporary west French and previous east French regimes.
 
Where is the inner French border?


Northern border is just off the west french city of Caen.

In the south the border is the western edge of the Camargue regional park, the area is sort of an analogue to the Korean dmz in its nature preservation.

East France holds Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, Nice and Nîmes

West France holds Bordeaux Nantes Perpignan, Montpellier, Toulouse and tours.

I’m not a skilled map maker but I can draw a rough one if it helps?
 
Top