Petain's Ghost: Fascism in Postwar France?

Could France have ever reverted to right-wing authoritarianism and revolutionary nationalism after World War II, not unlike in For All Time's dystopia?
 
If we eliminate De Gaulle and allow the Fourth Republic to trudge on, there's a chance that Pierre Poujade's right-wing anti-parliamentary movement, the UDCA, might have come to power at some point...but even if so, I doubt they would have any real shot at abolishing the republic.
 
doubt it: I think the Vichy government and the experience of occupation by the Nazis discredited the far right in France for a long, long time.
 
Please. :rolleyes: He's referring to Jean-Paul Vichy, the famous french commando best known for personally defeating Otto Skorzeny on the peak of the eiffel tower.

Vichy: 'Let my people go!'

Skorzeny: 'Join me, Vichy - and we will rebuild Europe in our image! We've already done so much for you. JOIN ME.'

Vichy: 'NEVER!' *dragon uppercut*
 
I don't see why France couldn't have at least had a much more influential right-wing movement than anything in OTL - probably something like the Poujadists given the right sort of proding by circumstance. Not Fascist per se, but something radical and right-wing. The Fourth Republic was a very rickety construction. Christ, but for de Gaulle there might have been a coup at the time of Algeria.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Fascism is a bad way to describe Petain's government. All French fascists supported the Free French troops, mostly because they hated the Germans. Petain's government should be called authoritarian conservative I guess.
 
Fascism is a bad way to describe Petain's government. All French fascists supported the Free French troops, mostly because they hated the Germans. Petain's government should be called authoritarian conservative I guess.

And here we get into the crazy "measure of a fascist" arguments again. Maybe the Fascist Party of France or whatever were Free French, but Vichy was a hard-core right wing anti-semitic authoritarian police state that was one DOW away from being an official German ally and put a bloody fasces on its flag. In my books it was fascist.
 
All French fascists supported the Free French troops

All? All? I agree on the advisability of calling Vichy Fascist - it was a weird mess of all sorts of strands of the Third Republic's right-wing, doctrinal Fascism only being one of them - but by no means was it free of support from individual Fascists and Fascist influences and nor was the Free French ridden with them.
 
Fascism is a bad way to describe Petain's government. All French fascists supported the Free French troops, mostly because they hated the Germans. .

:confused::confused::confused::confused:

Are we from the same TL?

In mine all ( or almost all ) of the cagoule supported the Vichy government.

In fact, the only major far right ( as in invloved in the 34 insurrection ) figure I can think of which was resisting was De La Roche. AFAIK the others supported Vichy.

Unless of course, you mean they supported the free french after July 44.:D
 
De Gaulle falls ill and dies before his time, in the mid-1950s?

No strong "centre" leader to settle far-right and left-wing swings in the Fourth Republic, Algeria may very well be a 'last straw' for antiparliamentary militarists, after all you've got a bunch of liberal, corrupt career politicans saying you should pull out when you've basically won the war, and no iconic general to lead the anti-war shift, I can see coups abrewing in a far stronger vein than OTL

Couple this with something like 1968 with strikes and student marches, and I can see the Communists and Unions at least getting trampled
 
Given that Communists had very credible claim at power in post-war France, as far as popular support is concerned, it would only take De Gaulle's death around 1942-1944 for Allies to support some ultra-rightist movement, which could prevent Red Plague from swallowing France. "They're SOBs, but they're our SOBs", along the lines of relationships between Franco regime and post-war Anglo-Americans.
 
The problem, though, is that France by the end of WW2 is rather happy with its republican tradition, and seeing as the very unstable 3rd republic didn't give way to a fascist coup (before Germany's invasion, of course), I don't see why France would decide to go fascist, especially after what happened with Germany.
 
hell if de gaulle dies ff would get even more help from america. fdr thought that gaulle was a wanabe facist anyways. maybe if fdr was right about that then we could have facist france:)
 

yourworstnightmare

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:confused::confused::confused::confused:

Are we from the same TL?

In mine all ( or almost all ) of the cagoule supported the Vichy government.

In fact, the only major far right ( as in invloved in the 34 insurrection ) figure I can think of which was resisting was De La Roche. AFAIK the others supported Vichy.

Unless of course, you mean they supported the free french after July 44.:D

Francois de la Rocque for example defected to the Free French in 1942, most of Action Francaise defected (although I agree Maurras never did), the only group that did not split or defect was the PPF (although they openly challenged Petain, in hope of getting in power themselves). Hobsbawm also clearly state in his Age of Extremes that the French hatred of the Germans made many French Fascists suspicous of the Vichy regime, and even if they in the beginning seemed cooperative, in time most of them defected (1942 here the crucial year).
 
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