How French democracy died in the 1930s: a decade of corruption, street violence and extremism that opened the road to Vichy
In 1940, after a swift and shattering defeat, Nazi Germany occupied northern and western France while Philippe Pétain's authoritarian Vichy regime took the south. As resistance stirred in the shadows, the new government swept away liberal freedoms and embraced antisemitism, racism and anti-communism. One of Europe's great democracies had collapsed—and turned collaborator.
But what led to France's fall, and how did it embrace dictatorship so quickly?
In this revelatory new history, Chris Millington traces the answer to the 1930s. Across a decade of political and cultural turmoil, left and right fought to control the nation's future. Government corruption, street violence and terrorist bombings were commonplace; public life curdled into extremism and hatred. Millington shows how the fractured France of the 1930s tore itself in two—and set the stage for the horrors of Vichy to come.