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| 6 February 1934 crisis | ||||
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| Part of theinterwar period | ||||
 Rioters attackingmounted police with projectiles outside thePlace de la Concorde during the crisis | ||||
| Date | 6 February 1934 | |||
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| Methods | Riots | |||
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| Casualties | ||||
| Death | 17 (including 9 right-wing protesters) | |||
| Part ofa series on |
| Far-right politics in France |
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The6 February 1934 crisis (French:Crise du 6 février 1934), also known as theVeterans' Riot,[1] was ananti-parliamentarist street demonstration inParis on 6 February 1934.
Prime MinisterÉdouard Daladier came to power in late January to replaceCamille Chautemps in the aftermath of theStavisky Affair. Daladier's dismissal ofJean Chiappe, theanti-communistParis Prefect of Police, caused multiplefar-right leagues to organize protests. These rapidly degenerated into ariot on thePlace de la Concorde, near the building used for theNational Assembly, against Daladier'scentre-left government and theThird Republic. Demonstrations ended when Daladier resigned and acaretakergovernment of national unity headed by former prime ministerGaston Doumergue was established.
The police shot and killed 17 people, nine of whom were far-right protesters. It was one of the major political crises during the Third Republic and the only time a government had been brought down by demonstrations.[2] France'spolitical left claimed it was afascistcoup d'état attempt, leading to the creation of several left-winganti-fascist organizations such as theComité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes. According to historianJoel Colton, "The consensus among scholars is that there was no concerted or unified design to seize power and that the leagues lacked the coherence, unity, or leadership to accomplish such an end."[3] AfterWorld War II, several historians, among themSerge Berstein, argued that while some leagues had indisputably desired acoup,François de La Rocque had in fact moderated toward a respect for constitutional order. The 6 February actions were arguably an uncoordinated but violent attempt to overthrow the left-wingCartel des gauches governmentelected in 1932.[4]
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In the early 1930s, theThird Republic ofFrance was experiencing a number of political and economic crises which led toinstability. TheGreat Depression, initiated by theWall Street crash of 1929, would eventuallybegin to affect France in 1931, somewhat later than other Western countries. A succession ofpolitical scandals rocked the French government at the same time, including theMarthe Hanau Affair, theOustric Affair, and theStavisky Affair. The Oustric Affair had involved the Minister of JusticeRaoul Péret and collapsedPrime MinisterAndré Tardieu's government in 1930. The economic and social crisis particularly affected themiddle classes who tended traditionally to endorse the Republic, in particular theRadical-Socialist Party. Parliamentary instability ensued, with five governments between May 1932 and January 1934, which encouraged anti-parliamentarists.[5] Dissidents on thepolitical right took advantage of scandals to agitate against the Third Republic and gain power.
The government of Prime MinisterCamille Chautemps was plagued bycorruption scandals after the Stavisky Affair had reached the news in 1933. It involvedBayonne'sCrédit municipal bank and centered aroundAlexandre Stavisky, afraudster andembezzler known asle beau Sasha ("Handsome Sasha") associated with several Radical deputies, including Chautemps and his ministers. Tensions rose when the press later revealed that Stavisky had benefited from a 19-month postponement of his trial because the public prosecutor was Chautemps' brother-in-law. On 8 January 1934, Stavisky was found dead by the police and his cause of death was reported assuicide — a convenient statement that raised public concerns of acover-up. According to the French right-wing, Chautemps had Stavisky assassinated to keep him from revealing any secrets about him and his government. The press then started a political campaign against alleged governmental corruption, while the far-right demonstrated.
On 27 January 1934, after the revelation of yet another scandal, Chautemps resigned and was succeeded byÉdouard Daladier, another politician of the Radical-Socialist Party. Thirteen demonstrations had already occurred in Paris since 9 January. While the parliamentary right was trying to use the affair to replace the left-wing majority elected during the 1932 elections, the far-right took advantage of its traditional themes:antisemitism,xenophobia (Stavisky was anaturalizedUkrainian Jew), hostility towardFreemasonry (Camille Chautemps was a member of theGrand Orient of France), and anti-parliamentarism. As historian Serge Bernstein emphasized, the Stavisky Affair was exceptional neither in its seriousness nor in the personalities put on trial, but in the rightists' determination to use the opportunity to make a leftist government resign, helped by the fact that the Radical-Socialists did not have anabsolute majority in theNational Assembly, and thus the government was weak and an alternativecoalition might be formed by the parties to the right.
It was Daladier's dismissal ofJean Chiappe, theParis Prefect of Police, that ultimately provoked the massive demonstrations of 6 February. Chiappe was a ferventanti-communist accused ofdouble standards and leniency towards the street agitation of the far-right. This included demonstrations, riots, attacks against the few leftist students in theQuartier Latin by the monarchistCamelots du Roi, the youth organization of theAction Française. According to leftists, Chiappe's dismissal was due to his involvement with the Stavisky Affair, while the rightists denounced the negotiations with the Radical-Socialists: the departure of Chiappe was said to have been in exchange for an endorsement of Daladier's new government.
Rightist anti-parliamentary leagues had been the main activists during the January 1934 demonstrations. Although these leagues were not a new phenomenon (the oldLigue des Patriotes ("Patriot League") had been initiated byPaul Déroulède in 1882), they played an important role after World War I, in particular when leftists were in power, as they had been since the 1932 legislative elections.[6] The leagues differed in their goals, but were united by their opposition to the ruling Radical-Socialist party.
On the night of 6 February, the leagues, which had gathered in different places in Paris, all converged onPlace de la Concorde, located in front of theBourbon Palace, but on the other side of the riverSeine. The police and guards managed to defend the strategic bridge of the Concorde, despite being the target of all sorts of projectiles. Some rioters were armed, and the police fired on the crowd. Disturbances lasted until 2:30 AM. Seventeen people were killed and 2,000 injured, most of them members of theAction Française.
Far-rightist organisations had the most important role in the riots; most of the UNC veterans avoided the Place de la Concorde, creating some incidents near theElysée Palace, the president's residence. However, Communists belonging to the rival leftist veterans' organization ARAC may have been involved; one public notice afterward condemned the governing centre-left coalition (known as theCartel des gauches) for having shot unarmed veterans who shouted "Down with the thieves, long live France!".[citation needed]
While on the right side of the Seine (north, on the Place de la Concorde), the policemen's charges contained the rioters with difficulty, theCroix-de-feu had chosen to demonstrate in the south. ThePalais Bourbon, the building used by the National Assembly, is much more difficult to defend on this side, but theCroix-de-feu limited themselves to surrounding the building without any major incident before dispersing. Because of this attitude, they earned the pejorative nickname ofFroides Queues in the far-rightist press. Contrary to the other leagues which were intent on abolishing the Republic, it thus seemed that Colonel de la Rocque finally decided to respect the legality of the republican (unlike the Action Française) and parliamentary (unlike the Jeunesses Patriotes) regime.
In the National Assembly, the rightists attempted to take advantage of the riots to cause theCartel des gauches government to resign. The leftists, however, rallied around president of the CouncilÉdouard Daladier. The session was ended after left and right-wing deputies exchanged blows.
During the night, Daladier took the first measures to obtain the re-establishment of public order. He did not exclude the possibility of declaring astate of emergency, although he finally decided against it. However, the next day the judiciary and the police resisted his directives. Moreover, most of his ministers and his party denied him their endorsement. Thus, Daladier finally chose to resign. This was the first time during the Third Republic that a government had to resign because of pressure from street demonstrations.
The crisis was finally resolved with the formation of a new government directed by former president of the Republic (1924–31)Gaston Doumergue, a rightist Radical Republican who was ostensibly the only figure acceptable to both the far-rightist leagues and to the centrist parliamentary parties. Termed a "National Union government", in reality it was a government containing all political traditions but excluding the Socialist and Communist parties. It included the most important politicians of the parliamentary right wing, among them the LiberalAndré Tardieu, RadicalLouis Barthou, and social-CatholicLouis Marin, although also included were several members of the centre-left (the Radical-Socialist and similar smaller parties), plus War MinisterPhilippe Pétain, who would later command the collaborationistVichy regime during World War II.
After 6 February, leftists were convinced that a fascist putsch had occurred. The importance of the anti-parliamentarist activity of far-rightist leagues was undeniable. Some of them, such as theFrancisque, had copied all of their characteristics from the ItalianFascio leagues which hadmarched on Rome in 1922, thus resulting in the imposition of thefascist regime. Although historian Serge Bernstein has showed thatColonel de la Rocque had probably been convinced of the necessity of respecting constitutional legality, this was not true of all members of hisCroix-de-feu society, which also shared, at least superficially, some characteristics of the fascist leagues, in particular theirmilitarism and fascination for parades.
On 9 February 1934, a socialist and communist counter-demonstration occurred while Daladier was being replaced by Doumergue. Nine people were killed during incidents with the police forces. On 12 February the trade unionConfédération générale du travail (CGT) (reformist, with some associations with the Socialist Party) and theConfédération générale du travail unitaire (CGTU) (revolutionary, and associated with the communist party) decided to organize a one-daygeneral strike, while the socialist partySection française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO) and thecommunist party opted for a separate demonstration. However, at the initiative of the popular base of these societies, the demonstrations finally united themselves into one. Thus, this day marked a first tentative union between the socialists and the communists. It had at its core theanti-fascism shared by both Marxist parties; a union had been opposed since the division of the 1920Tours Congress, but this new rapprochement resulted in the 1936Popular Front (consisting of radicals and socialists and endorsed without participation in the government by the Communist party). This antifascist union was in accordance withStalin's directives to theComintern, which had asked the European communist parties to ally with other leftist parties, includingsocial-democrats and socialists, in order to block the contagion of fascist andanti-communist regimes in Europe.[9]
Furthermore, several anti-fascist organizations were created after the riots, such as theComité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (Watchfulness Committee of Antifascist Intellectuals, created in March 1934) which included philosopherAlain, ethnologistPaul Rivet and physicistPaul Langevin. Theanarchists also participated with many antifascist actions.
After the crisis, the parliamentary rightists also began to get closer to thecounter-revolutionary far rightists. Several of its main activists would lose all trust in parliamentary institutions.Daniel Halévy, a French historian of Jewish ancestry, publicly declared that since 6 February 1934 he was now a "man of the extreme right". Although he personally abhorred Italian fascism or German national socialism, he later endorsed the Pétain regime of Vichy.[10] The radicalization of the rightists would accelerate after the election of thePopular Front in 1936 and theSpanish Civil War (1936–39).
The American journalistJohn Gunther wrote in 1940 that theCroix-de-feu "could easily have captured the Chamber of Deputies. But [de la Rocque] held his men back. 'France wasn't ready,' he explained". It was possible, Gunther said, that "like Hitler, he hopes to gain power by legal means".[11] To the far rightists, 6 February represented a failed opportunity to abolish the Republic, which only presented itself again in 1940 after the balance had been changed by the étrangedéfaite (Marc Bloch) or "divine surprise" (Charles Maurras), that is the 1940 defeat during theBattle of France against Germany. This deception prompted several far-right members to radicalize themselves, endorsing fascism, Nazism, or the wartime Vichy regime.
Despite the claims of the leftists, the 6 February crisis was not a fascist conspiracy. The far-rightist leagues were not united enough and most of them lacked any specific objectives. However, their violent methods, their paramilitary appearances, their cult of leadership, etc., explained why they have often been associated with fascism. Other than these appearances, however, and their will to see the parliamentary regime replaced by anauthoritarian regime, historiansRené Rémond and Serge Bernstein do not consider that they had a real fascist project. Opposing this opinion, other historians, such asMichel Dobry orZeev Sternhell, considered them as being fully fascist leagues.Brian Jenkins claimed it was pointless to seek a fascist essence in France and preferred to make comparisons which resulted, according to him, in a convergence between Italian fascism and the majority of the French leagues, in particular theAction Française (in other words, Jenkins considers fascism an Italian historic phenomenon, and though a fascist-like philosophy existed in France, it should not be termed "fascist" as that name should be reserved forBenito Mussolini's politics).[12][13]
