Political Belief in France, 1927–1945: Gender, Empire, and Fascism in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Français by Caroline Campbell (review)

There has been no shortage of research into the “Croix de Feu” (cdf), which played an important role in French politics and society from its inception as a veterans’ league in 1927, to its transformation into a political party, the “Parti Social Français,” in 1936, to its final incarnation as the “Progrès Social Français” under the German occupation. The scholarly interest exists because, post-1934, the cdf was the largest political formation on the French far right, possessing as many as one million members by the late 1930s. As such, the cdf (and its subsequent iterations) represented a genuine threat to the republic and has emerged as the centre of debate over whether fascism was a significant, homegrown French phenomenon.

Yet, despite the attention given the cdf, Caroline Campbell succeeds in adding significantly to our knowledge of the movement. Her new book, Political Belief in France, makes several invaluable contributions to the historiography on the cdf itself, and will be of interest to anyone studying the interwar period.

The book’s main strength is its focus on women. Not only is this the first monograph to concentrate on cdf women, it also reorients interpretations of the movement by showing that as it embraced leader François de La Rocque’s “Social First!” strategy, women became critical to its social outreach efforts and gained an increasingly influential voice in directing them. Others including Kevin Passmore have pointed to this phenomenon, but Campbell’s work goes beyond prior analyses in illustrating the centrality of women such as La Rocque’s lieutenant, Antoinette de Préval, to the organization’s leadership. As one example of how Campbell’s book should reconfigure the historiography, she illustrates that women, as the key decision-makers and front-line workers in the movement’s social programming, became also its frontline agents in the resistance to the German occupation (178–202). This study should thus help spur a rethinking of the masculinist image of both French fascism and the French Resistance.

Campbell also offers insights into why the cdf succeeded in recruiting tens of thousands of women whereas the other parties, including on the far right, struggled to attract women. She notes, for example, that the cdf styled its women’s activism as nationalist rather than feminist in nature, which made it appear less radical. Moreover, she draws connections between the cdf’s success and the history of Catholic women’s activism (49–85).

Another praiseworthy aspect of the book is the attention it pays to North Africa. Samuel Kalman has drawn historians’ notice to the divergences between North African and metropolitan fascists and Campbell adds to our understanding by showing that the violence of the North African cdf can be explained in part by three factors: 1) its more pronounced adherence to scientific racism; 2) its unwillingness to embrace the Social First! strategy; and 3) its reluctance to recruit women (147–177).

The reader is, however, left largely in the dark as to what happened in North Africa with the onset of World War II. Campbell mentions that the cdf went into decline in the Maghreb and opines that this was because the North African sections had neither embraced Social First! nor integrated women into their ranks (179), but nothing further is said about the trajectories of cdf militants in the region.

The title of the book is also maladroit. While the political culture and ideology of the cdf is a major component of the book, the role of women in the movement seems more central to its analysis. Further, “in France” implies that the study examines “political belief” across the political spectrum, when in fact it focuses exclusively on one admittedly significant far right organization.

There are also some odd omissions. Campbell barely...