Maurras and the phoney war

Charles Maurras, 71, had been the theorist of Action française since 1899 — monarchist, nationalist, antisemitic, a traditional Germanophobe. His paper L'Action française was one of the most influential opinion dailies of the French radical right. On 3 September 1939, Maurras and his team (Léon Daudet, Jacques Bainville, Pierre Boutang) had to decide their editorial line in the face of war.

Maurras' position before 1939: visceral anti-German feeling (the revenge of 1870-71, cultural anti-Protestantism), pro-Italian (Mussolini was treated as a counter-model to be imitated), radically anti-Soviet, militantly antisemitic. A Franco-British war against Germany ought in theory to have aligned Maurras with the Daladier government. But Maurras hated equally: the parliamentary Republic (which he held to be degenerate); the Socialists and Communists (whom he accused of cynical war-mongering); and the Jewish refugees from Germany (whom he accused of having pushed for war).

During the phoney war Maurras was torn: to support the national war effort without reservation, or to go on denouncing the Republic and the Daladier government he so loathed? The dissolution of the PCF, which he had demanded, had just been pronounced.

Maurras had to set the editorial line of attack for the months ahead.