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)
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.
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)
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.