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Abstract
In 1934 French politics became polarized in a bitter struggle for the soul of France between Jeanne d'Arc and Marianne. In the course of the war in Spain, the positions taken by the Left and Right did not change; they simply hardened. Socialist doctrine was grounded in pacifism, but now it had to confront fascism. The Right, in its many varieties, was pro-appeasement and pro-Mussolini, and did its best to close its eyes to Italo-German rapprochement; Hitlerism was viewed as a terrible danger, but it was still the lesser ideological evil. Toulouse provided a fine observation point on Spain, and its varied press included the centre-left La Dépêche, of international renown. Among its writers, Heinrich Mann and Émile Vandervelde expressed an excessive pro-Republican optimism (as did Léon Blum in Le Midi Socialiste). L'Express du Midi called for volunteers for Franco, and Franco fumed at the poor response. Guglielmo Ferrero meanwhile warned that Europe was now plunged into the greatest intellectual and moral confusion in all its history. With Franco's victory, what all sides came to realize was that France now faced hostile forces on three frontiers.
Notes
1 L'Express du Midi, 5 May 1936. All translations included in this article are by the author.
2 See David Wingeate Pike, preface to his France Divided: The French and the War in Spain (Brighton/Portland/Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), xvi–xviii.
3 They included Julio Álvarez del Vayo, Sir Norman Angel, General Armengaud, Clement Attlee, Augusto Barcia, Paul Bastid, Julien Benda, Aimé Berthod, Yvon Delbos, Marcelino Domingo, Georges Duhamel, Guglielmo Ferrero, Jean Giraudoux, Édouard Herriot, Gaston Jèze, Léon Jouhaux, Salvador de Madariaga, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Diego Martínez Barrio, Jaume Miravitlles, Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo, Joseph Paul-Boncour, Jules Romains, Herbert Samuel, Albert Sarraut, Count Sforza, François de Tessan, Albert Thibaudet and Émile Vandervelde. They were joined in 1936 by two Spanish editors whose printing houses in Madrid had been destroyed: Antonio Gascón, managing editor of Informaciones, and Manuel Chaves Nogales, editor of Ahora, whose circulation had been the highest in Madrid.
4 La Dépêche, 11 January 1936.
5 La Dépêche, 9 April 1936.
6 La Dépêche, 6 May 1936.
7 La Dépêche, 6 May 1936.
8 La Dépêche, 6 June 1936.
9 La Dépêche, 22 February 1936.
10 Le Midi Socialiste, 1 January 1936.
11 Le Midi Socialiste, 22 February 1936.
12 L'Espagne Nouvelle (Nîmes), 26 April 1937.
13 Georges Bernanos, Les Grands cimetières sous la lune (Paris: Plon, 1938), 150.
14 ‘Le Pape contre le Front Populaire,’ Le Midi Socialiste, 13 May 1936.
15 ‘Le Pape part en guerre’, Le Midi Socialiste, 19 May 1936.
16 L'Express du Midi, 7 May 1936.
17 L'Express du Midi, 4 March 1936. Two days earlier L'Express had published a photo of the ‘Maison brune’, headquarters of the French pro-Nazis, on Rue Roquépine in Paris.
18 L'Express du Midi, 10 March 1936.
19 Even Le Journal de Toulouse, its right-wing colleague, admitted (23 January 1938) that, not long after L'Express du Midi was founded in 1891, its editors had personally taken part in the violent anti-Dreyfus outbreaks.
20 L'Express du Midi, 13 February 1936.
21 L'Express du Midi, 30 June 1936.
22 Judex, L'Express du Midi, 26 May 1936.
23 D'Adhémar, L'Express du Midi, 29 April 1936.
24 L'Express du Midi, 16 September 1936.
25 Le Journal de Toulouse, 26 July 1936.
26 L'Express du Midi, 4 March 1936.
27 L'Express du Midi, 3 April 1936.
28 L'Express du Midi, 26 April 1936.
29 L'Express du Midi, 30 April 1936.
30 L'Express du Midi, 6 June 1936.
31 F. Mazelié, L'Express du Midi, 13 February 1936.
32 L'Express du Midi, 20 January 1936.
33 Gaston Guèze, L'Express du Midi, 7 May 1936.
34 L'Express du Midi, 6 June 1936.
35 Le Journal de Toulouse, 7 June 1936.
36 L'Express du Midi, 30 June 1936.
37 L'Express du Midi, 11 November 1936.
38 L'Express du Midi, 29 March 1936.
39 Le Journal de Toulouse, 3 May 1936.
40 Le Journal de Toulouse, 26 July 1936.
41 L'Express du Midi, 22 January 1936.
42 F. Mazelié, L'Express du Midi, 11 March 1936.
43 L'Express du Midi, 28 March 1936.
44 Judex, L'Express du Midi, 2 June 1936.
45 Le Journal de Toulouse, 26 July 1936.
46 La Dépêche, 20 February 1936.
47 La Dépêche, 1 March 1936.
48 La Dépêche, 19 April 1936.
49 La Dépêche, 19 April 1936.
50 Le Journal de Toulouse, 26 April 1936.
51 L'Express du Midi, 29 April 1936.
52 La Dépêche, 23 August 1936.
53 La Dépêche, 9 August 1936.
54 La France Catholique, 3 November 1936.
55 La Croix, 9 December 1936.
56 Le Jour, 1 September 1936.
57 La France Réelle, 20 January 1937.
58 L'Express du Midi, 14 March 1936.
59 L'Echo de Paris, 21 September 1936.