CRISIS IN FRANCE
By DAVID THOMSON By DAVID THOMSON
RECENT developments inside France have created a situation which is more explosive end more significant for the future of her people than any event since the creation of the National Committee of Liberation eighteen months ago. It is the product of forces in action both inside and outside France : but the attention which has naturally been focussed upon the evolution of what is in effect a _provisional French Government in Algiers should not be allowed to obscure the significance of what has happened meanwhile among the oppressed people of metropolitan France. The material conditions and political temper of the home country will be as decisive a factor in her future as the deliberations and aspirations of the men who are planning that future in Algiers. And both material conditions and political temper have undergone a revolution in recent months, which all whom it affects will neglect at their peril.
The mainspring of change has been the immense growth of organised resistance, the influx of new forces of resistance into that framework of underground organisations which has existed since xo4o. Under the pressure of German demands for fresh levies of workers for German factories, resistance during last autumn reached for the 'first time the level of a nation-wide mass-hostility. It took the form of powerful -reinforcement of the partisans from the ranks of the demobilised "Armistice Army," the newly conscripted younger age-groups, and many others driven desperate by German and Vichy extortions: of regular and systematic sabotage, assassination and terrorisation of collaborators on a ferocious and nation-wide scale ; of the snapping of all shreds of faith in the pretence of a "National Revolution" and in the ideological appeal of Marshal Petain's regime. Lagardelle went from the Ministry of Labour, which betokened the failure of the "Labour Charter ": the director of Petain's Legion of ex-Service men resigned from that intended agency of "National Resurgence" and went into open opposition : and exactly seventeen people attended the birthday celebrations of the Marshal at CauchyLatour. The administrative services of Vichy—never very sensitively responsive to orders from above—virtually broke down because of passive resistance even amongst the fonctionnaires and .police. Despite the absence of a million French prisoners and another million workers in Germany, and the enrolment of nearly another halfmillion in the disciplined Todt Organisation in France, the Germans have found it impossible to quell the rapid expansion of what is aptly called "the army in the interior." .
They have therefore hit on a new device: the rallying of all the hitherto separate Fascist " militias " of France into one organisation, and their close co-ordination with both Vichy police and German Gestapo. The key-man in this latest effort to meet the challenge of resistance is the ex-Cagoulard, Joseph Darnand. During the past month he has been given emergency-powers comparable to those recently bestowed upon Hinunler in Germany for a simi reason : though Darnand has-additional functions to perform, whi are worthy of dose attention in that they reveal the real alignrne of forces in France today.
The career of Darnand since 1940 is almost a synopsis of development of Fascist legions and militias in France. After armistice he became chief of the Legion of the Alpes Maritim and when the special band of shock-troops of the tricolour Legi was formed into the Service d'Ordre Ugionnaire (S.O.L.) appeared at its head. After the Allied invasion of North Africa, new "African Phalanx" to resist them was constituted by Darnand and it became clear that amidst the constant reshufflings of the vario groups of collaborationists which was, engineered by Laval so' as keep his own head above water, the trusty henchman inyariab inserted into the key post of " co-ordination " was Darnand. naturally took charge of the National Militia which -Laval formed t absorb most of the others and consolidate his own power during past year. On New Year's Eve it was announced that he had bee appointed to the Vichy. Cabinet in the new post of Secretary-Genera for the Maintenance of Order. In the decree announcing his appoint ment it was stated : The decision has been taken today to reorganise and reinforce completely the system of security which is linked-with the Ministry of the Interior. These changes are intended to give the Chief of Government, as well astheMinistry of the Interior, the means of getting from his services closer co-operation and greater efficiency.
• Marcel Lemoine was• made Minister of the Interior—possibly as a Lavalesque safeguard against an "over-mighty subject "—but Darnand was made directly responsible for public security becailse of the"qualities of leadership Which he has always shown.' Laval has always liked popular hatred to have a focus other than The full import of the move can be seen both from the GermanVichy negotiations which preceded it, and from the actions of Darnand since he assumed office. Abetz and Renthe-Fink put pressure on Petain to form an "invasion Cabinet," and at first Paris
collaborationists such as Deat and Doriot were tipped as the probable newcomers. But there can still be discerned a certain divergence of
policy between the Gestapo and the Wehrmachtover the treatment of France: the one favouring total terror and ruthless suppression, the other favouring a policy conciliatory enough to preserve the facade of Petain and prevent open mass-rebellion in a vital part of their strategic defences. At the same time, Laval resists the inclusion of rivals such as Deat, whose support the Germans know they can depend upon anyhow and therefore do not have to purchase. Darnand is the resultant compromise, satisfying all essential demands : a proven thug ruthless enough to protect all shades of collaborators impartially, acceptable to Petain and to the Germans as the champion of "order," and loyal to Laval by his past record.
This consensus of Opinion appeared a few days before his appointment in the joint meeting held in the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, at which Darnand presided and was supported by Deat, Henriot and Paquis, and in the subsequent welcome given tb his appointment by Diat and the other Paris Fascist leaders. He announced his belief that "it is only by a rallying of all the forces of order, and by strict co-operation between all para-military organisations, that terrorism can be broken in France and the country enabled to confront invasion." There is now, for the first time in his person, a union between the gangs of Fascist thugs (which are claimed to number some too,000), the State police and gendarmerie, and the Gestapo in occupation of France. It is a united front of all traitors against first the "army of the interior" and eventually against tit, armies of liberation. And the traitors' front has already opened its offensive, and Darnand has carried out an extensive purge of all Prefects, sub-Prefects and police officials who are suspected of lukewarmness. Believing, like Hirmnler, that preventive arrests are better than repression after the event, he has swept in Victims at the rate of as much as three or four hundred in one day. He has suspended ordinary criminal laws_ and has instituted courts-martial, each consisting of three men appointed by himself, which are to continue operating until the end of June. By a decree of January Mt, he was given supreme authority over all police forces in France. He has instituted a counter-terror, by protecting the authors (if all murders carried out by his militiamen.
The ascendency of a killer like Darnand in France, as of Himmler in Germany, betokens the early death-throes of a regime. Recourse to blind terror is the open confession of political bankruptcy. It is now virtually civil war between armed Fascists and armed partisans in France: a battle which can be won for the cause of the United Nations only by that immediate and plentiful supply of arms to the resistance -movements for which all their delegates in the Consultative Assembly at Algiers have been pleading, and by the eventual success of Allied armies of liberation invading France from north, est or south. For the internal tension to break and the crisis of revolt to come too long before invasion would be a tragedy, and one which the plans of Darnand may even be designed to produce.
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