Fighting for France : Violence in Interwar French Politics

Fighting for France is the first book to examine violence between political extremists in interwar France and the ways in which contemporaries understood it. This has important implications for understanding twentieth-century French politics, not least the French experience of collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War.

Fighting for France is a ground-breaking examination of violence in French politics in the interwar period. During these years, a range of groups at the political extremes employed physical aggression against their enemies and threatened to bring about the violent demise of the democratic regime. Until now, historians have denied and downplayed the frequency and seriousness of French political violence in favour of an interpretation that emphasises France''s weddedness to democracy. Fighting for France demonstrates that the democratic culture of the late Third Republic co-existed with a culture of violence in which the physical punishment of rivals and opponents was considered acceptable. Drawing on the narratives constructed around outbreaks of violence, the book reconstructs the lived experience of fighting and the sense that contemporaries made of conflict. It examines violence in a variety of settings, from the street to the factory floor. A range of actors come under investigation, including fascists, communists, and the police. Fighting for France transforms our understandings of the course of interwar France and Europe.