Page 155 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

142 The French Diplomats

Britain, but it was large enough and sufficiently vocal to draw the attention
of political leaders. By 1936, more than two hundred pacifist organizations
had been formed, and quite a few of them could count on the support of
well-known intellectuals and members of the political elite. 107
early in 1934, the tensions within French society exploded into a riot
in the center of Paris by thousands of people protesting against the illegal
financial schemes of serge stavisky, which had caused turbulence in the
stock market. Minor riots had taken place during the evening hours for
some weeks, but the demonstration on February 6 was massive and much
more violent than in any previous incident. By midnight, the Place de la
Concorde, where fifteen people lost their lives and some fifteen hundred
were injured in numerous skirmishes, looked like a battlefield. Historians
still differ over whether the bloody events can be considered a genuine in-
surrection carefully designed to overthrow the government. the opposi-
tion seems likely to have had a less ambitious plan; it wanted the radical
government to be replaced by a more conservative one. that happened,
108
but it did not bring about political stability: over the next two and a half
years, five different people served as prime minister.
in June 1936, French politics underwent a transformative change with
the establishment of a socialist government. a major reason for the change
was that the riots had shocked many people into believing that the unrest
was directed at undermining the democratic order. to prevent such a po-
litical upheaval, the left-wing parties—the socialists, radicals, and Com-
munists—joined forces to form the Popular Front, which won a majority
of 306 out of 608 seats in the Chamber of deputies in the elections of
May 1936. léon Blum, the head of the government, which did not include
any Communists, was an intelligent, well-informed, and cautious man who
succeeded in introducing many progressive changes in economic and social
policies. Under his direction, the Chamber passed legislation that legalized
strikes, mandated twelve days of annual leave for workers, and limited the
work week to forty hours, to mention only the most notable measures. in
foreign affairs, however, Blum did not fare well. Because the radicals op-
posed support for the democratic forces in the spanish Civil War, Blum
adopted a policy of nonintervention, which irritated many of his supporters
on the left.
But on the more urgent question of how to respond to Nazi Germa-
ny’s increasingly aggressive moves, Blum’s judgment was simplistic and
unsound. a visionary who has been described as a “pacifist, antimilitarist
intellectual,” he believed that the answer to international strife, no mat-