Fascist France

Ah but what if France goes fascist even if they win WWI? A militaristic France thats constantly watching a beaten Germany like a hawk, flooding Poland with French weapons and beating Italy, Spain, and Portugal into line but yet somehow manages to have good relations with Great Britain and the US. French military advisors in China and French agents working to push the various Balkans states into the French sphere as well as supporting facist movements in Belgium. Now granted its kinda wanking the whole facist France idea but it sounds cool any way. So you have three rival forms of fascism pop up in Europe Italian fascism which is just a pinch left of German fascism and the we have French fascism which is the most moderate of the three.
 
Well, it's not fair to call "fascist" to De la Rocque (actually, he was quite moderate), but just "butterfly" him a bit and...
 
Could France have gone Fascist after the First World War? If so, how?

Well the best chance for that is to escalate the February 6, 1934 riots into a full scale revolution. There were many fascist groups present there but the one with the most promise for me is the Action francaise of TL-191 fame. In fact, they were waiting for the approval of Charles Maurras to go ahead and overthrow the Republic, but he yielded as he was always a man of words and rarely of action. Make him say yes instead and the Republic could have been overthrown on that date.

Now the problem is that there would have been plenty of infighting amongst the various right wing groups, which would also give the government and the left time to strike back, something short of a Civil War could have erupted but lets just say the Action francaise triumphs over all opposition and takes power, what will happen to France?

The Action francaise was the oldest and most prestigious of the right wing factions. It was founded in 1905 and its influence could be found in all future European fascist movements. Its leader, Charles Maurras was the true pioneer of modern far-right politics, he could be called the Lenin of the right. Although what he founded, Integalism, could not be called "Fascism", the later fascist movements of Italy and Germany as well as the Vichy regime would be greatly influenced by it.

The Camelots du Roi predated Mussolini's blackshirts in modern political thuggery. They were the first to instigate streets fights, use violence against rival parties and field flamboyant, theatrical rallies, which they started doing way back in the late 1900's and early 1910's.

As the AF intended to reverse the effects of the French Revolution (which Maurras believed so much to be caused by English, German and Jewish influences that he refused to call it French), France would have reverted back to the ancien regime, an absolute monarchy under King Jean III Orleans (but of course he would be a mere puppet of Maurras), complete with the restoration of the ancient provinces, a pre-revolutionary Estates-General and Roman Catholicism as state religion.

Jews, Protestants, Freemasons and political dissidents, which would include other rightists who aren't monarchists (labeled meteques, a slur invented by Maurras which means "foreigner") would be persecuted immensely by the regime as they constitute what Maurras called "Anti-France".

As to what their foreign policy might be, with regards to Germany and the other issues of the day, I'm not so sure as I only ever thought about an AF France in the context of a Central Powers victory world. But I guess they would be as BrotherToAll said "watching a beaten Germany like a hawk", not making concessions with reparations and aggressively countering Hitler's every move. They would no doubt send troops to throw the Germans out of the Rhineland once they try to remilitarize it and it would have been a great propaganda victory for France and a massive humiliation for Hitler as the German soldiers were told to turn back and not resist if the French reacted to their invasion.
 
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fascism

Post WW1 should be ripe for a Fascist movement, they were jaded from a wasteful war that happened primarily in their borders, and suffered a bad depression afterwards for their efforts.

What is really needed for a good fascist society is a figurehead or group of figureheads. So far that has been key to any fascist society. Who would make a good Fascist Leader, what would his political focus be, and how would he gain power.

You also need enemies, but with post WW1 Europe, there would be no limit to possible enemies. From the generals and politicians that led the war, the warmongering Germans, the late Americans, the Monarch mudering Bolshevics, etc.....
 
You also need enemies, but with post WW1 Europe, there would be no limit to possible enemies. From the generals and politicians that led the war, the warmongering Germans, the late Americans, the Monarch mudering Bolshevics, etc.....

Keeping the iron heel of France at the throat of the Germans and along with building up Poland turning it into a shield against the accursed Bolshevic dogs and the Germans in case they rise agian the French will embark on a crusade to root out any and all leftists in all of French influenced Europe which of course would be all of Southern and Eastern Europe.
 
I think the Action Francaise are a dead end. They made lots of noise, and had some cool uniforms, but they had no real basis of support.

Nor should this surprise us; royalism was dead by the 1920s.
 
I think the Action Francaise are a dead end. They made lots of noise, and had some cool uniforms, but they had no real basis of support.

Nor should this surprise us; royalism was dead by the 1920s.

Agreed I think the movement that would rise the the fore front would be a a right wing facist Catholic party of some kind, monarchists are a dead movement in France after WWI. Instead of being really racial supremacists they'll instead be religious supremacists going after anything thats not seen as Catholic thus not being truly French. They would stomach the Anglicans only to have the English on their side but other than that the Catholic states of Europe would slowly drawn into the orbit of facist France. I also think the French would go out their way to be extra nice to the US as well, but only in order to secure American help against the Soviets.

I think in this TL you'd have a facist France that has pulled Italy, Portugal, Spain (assuming the civil war happens OTL), Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and Austria into its sphere with special interest in Poland which I assume will be flooded with Italian and French weapons in order to act as a meat shield against the Soviets and the possibility of a reasurgent Germany. Also there a is good chance that the governments in Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria are leaning pro French as well. Czechoslovakia also might be pulled into the French sphere but the poor relations between Czechoslovakia and Poland might hinder that. Though they will lean French ITTL mostly due to the fact that the Germans want to carve them up and the Soviets want to make them Communists.
 
I think the Action Francaise are a dead end. They made lots of noise, and had some cool uniforms, but they had no real basis of support.

Nor should this surprise us; royalism was dead by the 1920s.

But they were one of the major far-right leagues of the interwar years and only really stepped into the fringe sidelines of French politics after WW2. It enjoyed plenty of support from the nobility, the rich & urban poor, the bourgeoisie, country people and the Catholic clergy. Although after WW1, they began to loose portions of their support to the newer far-right groups, they still remained a very strong influence.

Indeed, the AF's influence could be seen more than any other far-right league's, in the creation of the Vichy regime and its National Revolution ideology, many of whose leaders were former AF members.

And when you say Royalism was dead by the 20's maybe you mean the mainstream royalist groups like mainstream Legitimism, Orleanism and Bonapartism as the AF was very much separate from these mainstream monarchist groupings and belonged more to the thriving far-right leagues. Firstly, the AF was reactionary where the mainstream monarchists were merely conservative. Secondly, aside from the new reactionary Integralist ideology that came with the AF's restored monarchy, the AF was very distinct from the traditional monarchist movements in one very significant respect; as the mainstream monarchists in France rejected political action and had such an apathy for it, which is what no doubt caused their decline, the AF favored an offensive political strategy that put them ahead any other monarchist movement and in league with the rest of the far-right, an active policy of counterrevolution, epitomized by their slogan "Politique d'abord!" or "Politics first!". That is why as the Legitimist, Oreanist and Bonapartist movements were all but "dead" in the 20's, the AF was alive and thriving.

Also, you must remember that the AF's monarchism was not born out of any loyalty to the House of Orleans, the AF was monarchist because of very pragmatic reasons, it believed in the need for strong hierarchical leadership which only a traditional monarch could be the head of.

Agreed I think the movement that would rise the the fore front would be a a right wing facist Catholic party of some kind, monarchists are a dead movement in France after WWI. Instead of being really racial supremacists they'll instead be religious supremacists going after anything thats not seen as Catholic thus not being truly French.

You don't know it but you've just described the Action francaise. The AF was as much Catholic as it was monarchist, favoring the return of Catholicism as the state religion. But they were Catholic not because they were faithful Catholics but for the same reason they were monarchists, they believed that a single state religion would be the only way to maintain order and they believed in a strong heirarchical leadership and saw the Church's heirarchical structure as the perfect model for which to mold the rest of France.

The AF was not at all racist as Maurras rejected the popular "scientific racism" of the time in favor of the much simpler "state antisemitism" and criticized Hitler's racial policies. Their prejudice was grounded on religion, which is the reason Protestants and Freemasons, even if they were pure blooded Frenchmen were persecuted just as heavily as Jews. These three, Jews, Protestants and Freemasons were joined by a fourth group in Maurras' "Anti-France", the meteques or foreigners, which simply meant anyone in France who did not agree with the AF, either for political or ideological reaons, who therefore existed outside of France and who therefore, were not French.

In stark difference with the racial policies of Germany where German society was open to Britons, Dutch, Scandinavians, Americans, etc, because they were seen as being "fellow Aryans", the AF's basis for prejudice was much simpler and more static, people were persecuted simply for being "not French".
 
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