RookieHistorian
Banned
Without any POD during the time of WWI itself, is there any possibility that France could have gone communist? Would it require a POD during or even before WWI? Would it require defeat at the hands of Germany?
A harder Great Depression is going to hurt the Left more than the Right. In interwar France, the Left was aligned with the forces of Law and Order, while the right was pretty solidly behind "Anything-but-this-goddamned-whore-of-a-Republic."Another would be the left succeeding a lot more in France during the Great Depression, and the Great Depression hitting them harder to accelerate it.
A harder Great Depression is going to hurt the Left more than the Right. In interwar France, the Left was aligned with the forces of Law and Order, while the right was pretty solidly behind "Anything-but-this-goddamned-whore-of-a-Republic."
The reason France didn't fall to the far-right IOTL was France's ability to adequately deal with the Great Depression while retaining liberal democratic institutions. A worse GD just further weakens an already-stressed Left-leaning liberal democracy.
Indeed. The majority of France's interwar governments were socialist, or at least involved the socialists in coalition with liberals. The French Right was more or less out of power until De Gaulle, with a few unfortunate exceptions like that shitheel Laval.So, you're saying the economic left is, in a sense, the establishment in France at this time? That... explains a lot.
That'll be damned hard. People were okay with socialism, but communism was something else entirely, especially since it had been coopted and directed by a clique of rather monstrous Kremlin-dwellers.Okay, couldn't France possibly democratically and normally transition to a Communist state, i.e. continued success of the left pushes France into Communism.
That'll be damned hard. People were okay with socialism, but communism was something else entirely, especially since it had been coopted and directed by a clique of rather monstrous Kremlin-dwellers.
A right-wing dictatorship taking over France and then making a mess of things before collapsing would be one way to maybe get the Communists into power democratically, but even then things will likely take on SCW dimensions since none of France's neighbors want to see her go Red.
You've just summed up the problem that has been plaguing the entirety of the Left for the past century.the Soviet Union ruins things for Communism worldwide.