No, the Popular Front didn’t disarm France earlier than the Second World War | EUROtoday

On Jun 10, 2025

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SOn the solar of June 1940, France collapsed. On the roads, six to eight million ladies, males and youngsters flee, Hagards, in entrance of the German advance. The eyes meet, incredulous: how did we get there? Marshal Pétain, a tutelary determine of a rustic on his knees, delivers his sentence: “The spirit of enjoyment won over the spirit of sacrifice. We claimed more than we used. We wanted to save the effort, we meet today the misfortune ”(Call of June 20, 1940).

For Pétain, the reply is all discovered: it’s the fashionable entrance, with its strikes, its paid holidays, its pacifism, which has disarmed France. In the summer season of 1936, social and fashionable celebration, would not he have disorganized the nationwide economic system, weakened the trade and left the nation with no protection, whereas Nazi Germany, disciplined and laborious, was making ready for warfare?

The fable of the carefree Popular Front

Upon defeat, the Vichy regime is working to designate culprits. Léon Blum, a trustworthy determine of the left, is arrested. Charles Maurras rejoins: “I know, I see, I check that they are politicians […] of the Judeo-Masonism that threw us into the abyss where we are rolling. At the Riom trial in 1942, Blum, Daladier and Gamelin were on the accused’s bench: it is the Republic, and the Popular Front, which we judge.

Read too Who really murdered Marx Dormoy, a large figure of the popular front? What would have led to the debacle would be the pacifism of Leon Blum. It is to give it too much importance. Because, as the historian Jean Vigreux, a specialist in the history of the Popular Front well explains: “Society in its huge majority is marked by pacifism, by” never again “. Let us not overlook that in 1936, Verdun was merely twenty years outdated. There is mass mourning. We see gules damaged every day in wheelchair. Society is marked by the trauma of the First World War. »»

Until the spring of 1935, the SFIO and the PCF remained devoted to their pacifist traditions. But the emergence of the Spanish War, in July 1936, modified the sport: “Léon Blum believes that he cannot send troops because he was elected on a peace program. This is the paradox in which the Popular Front is located. On the other hand, he wishes to arm France, ensure republican defense, that yes, it is done, it is present, it is wanted “, slices laUtor of a” what to know “on the Popular Front (PUF, 2025).

The Blum authorities, whereas advocating non-intervention, drastically will increase bills within the protection trade. The extension of the German army service at two years outdated, introduced in August 1936, precipitated the French response.

An enormous rearmament effort

On September 7, 1936, the Council of Ministers adopted a 4 -year arms program. The employees requested 9 billion francs, Édouard Daladier, Minister of Defense of the Popular Front, obtained 14. On the identical day, Plan II of 1,500 fight plane is launched, adopted by a three-year naval program. These spectacular choices disconcert the troopers, accustomed to the shy effort of the Doumergue authorities in 1934 (solely 3.4 billion).

Unlike the picture of an carefree fashionable entrance, the figures reveal a totally completely different face. Military spending exploded: in 1938, they represented 8.6 % of nationwide earnings, twice as a lot in 1913, and even barely greater than conservative England (8 %). Admittedly, Nazi Germany devotes 17 % of its earnings to arms, however France has not been inactive.

Read too Georges Mandel sacrificed himLéon Blum, in his speeches in March-April 1938, insists: “France does not rearm to wage war, but to save peace, to protect, behind a solid steel shield, its bread, its factories and his freedoms. Rearmament is designed as a deterrence, not as a provocation.

A too late war effort?

But this effort has a cost. And inflation puts sticks in the wheels of Léon Blum. In 1936, inflation was 6 %; In 1937, it climbed to 25 %. “But what is going to contradict the federal government most is the huge flight of capital at the moment,” added Jean Vigreux. Rearmament, paradoxically, nourishes the flight of capital. The workers, worried, fear a war waged by the left, with the support of the Communists.

Pierre Cot, Minister of Air of the Popular Front, modernizes the industry by nationalizing around forty companies, grouped into six national companies. But the effects will not be felt until 1939: the mounting time of a Morane 406 (fighter plane of the time) increased from 30,000 to 8,500 hours and monthly production jumped from 4 to 101 aircraft between December 1938 and June 1939.

Read too Georges Mandel sacrificed him
To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

The French aviation, in full renovation, would have been prepared … in 1941 solely. We counted on the Maginot line, in-built 1929, to carry till then. As for the manufacturing of tanks, it was lastly adequate: in May 1940, France aligns as many armored autos as Germany (3,000 every). But the employees, a prisoner of exceeded conceptions, doesn’t know find out how to use them. French tanks, scattered, can do nothing towards German focus.

For the historian Jean Vigreux, “the causes of this debacle are clearly a number of, however they’re to be discovered particularly on the aspect of the army imaginative and prescient of the French employees. The generals had been nonetheless in a imaginative and prescient of a warfare from one other age, army techniques inherited from the First World War. To perceive the defeat of the French military, we should not solely give attention to technical means, however rather more on makes use of. »»

https://www.lepoint.fr/eureka/non-le-front-populaire-n-a-pas-desarme-la-france-avant-la-seconde-guerre-mondiale-10-06-2025-2591658_4706.php