Following the end of the Spanish Civil War, more than half a million Republican refugees headed for France. Having been ill-supported by Leon Blum and the Popular Front government, they could hardly expect to be received with much sympathy. Many were interned in ‘refugee camps’ that were little better than concentration camps: ‘Communists [and] anarchists had been sent to special disciplinary camps,’ some of which were in North Africa. French authorities tried to repatriate many republicans, whilst other ‘battle-hardened Spanish veterans’ were viewed as useful and encouraged to join the Foreign Legion. The International Brigaders from fascist-dominated countries could hardly expect to go home and were treated appallingly. However, the militant spirit in some veterans was not crushed, particularly the ‘many Spanish republicans [who] disappeared from labor camps in the Auvergne and joined French maquis groups or formed their own Spanish resistance units. One such group participated in the liberation of Montlucon’.53
Many French anti-fascists continued their propaganda activities, whether chalking anti-Vichy slogans on a wall or distributing leaflets in the workplace. The communist resistance paper L’Humanite was produced under severe duress. Other resistance propaganda supported the exiled De Gaulle and there was suspicion and mistrust between camps: the left saw De Gaulle as an imperialist stooge and the right saw the communists as Soviet agents. Whatever political bias, acquiring material for such propaganda was difficult, dangerous, and closely monitored. The Vichy police ‘considered Gaullist resisters to be misguided patriots, but were unwilling to extend such “tolerance” to the Communists’.54 There could be moments of community resistance such as on Bastille Day and May Day in 1942 when demonstrators took to the streets. In one town ‘no one had been arrested thanks in part to the vigorous reaction of several armed men who were former volunteers for the International Brigades in Spain’—something that was contradicted in the following day’s police report.55 Resistance took place in the workplace with sabotage, absenteeism and violence against collaborators, as well as ‘thefts of equipment, clothing, ration coupons, and other resources needed to supply the Maquis’.56
Under the Vichy regime, armed and pro-fascist militias joined in anti-resistance activities whilst simultaneously exploiting their positions of power, their motto being ‘To save France from Bolshevism’.57 As in Italy and Germany, extremist militia members indulged in gangsterism and ‘had a direct hand in the robberies, murders, deportations, and torture for which the Milice were justly notorious in the region…their actions could hardly be distinguished from those of common criminals—extortion, robbery, acts of vengeance against rivals, and much seemingly senseless violence’.58
Endnotes:
51 John F. Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French Under Nazi Occupation (Oxford: University Press, 1994), 85.
52 Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (London: UCL, 1995), 294.
53 Sweets, Choices in Vichy France, 112–115.
54 Ibid., 205.
55 Ibid., 209.
56 Ibid., 213.
57 Ibid., 108.
58 Ibid., 95.
Austria: Fascist Violence Could Only Be Met by Violence
In 1918, far right nationalism was hardly a new concept in Austria: in the 1880s Georg Ritter von Schönerer, a fervent nationalist who Hitler mentioned in Mein Kampf, was agitating for the unification of the German-speaking peoples. He was both anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic and referred to his compatriots as ‘racial comrades.’ In 1885, Schönerer backed the ‘Linz Programme’, which pledged to ‘eliminate Jewish influence from all spheres of public life’ and later, in 1887, urged that the ‘unproductive and obnoxious behaviour of many Russian Jews’ fleeing the pogroms be confined to the ghettos. Along with his anti-Semitic ultra-nationalism, Schönerer also appeared to sympathise with the worker and middle-class fears of ‘big capitalism’ and urged the nationalization of the Viennese railway as well as a limit on working hours. The socialist Karl Kautsky warned about these groups whose ‘appearance is oppositional and democratic thus appealing to the workers instincts’ as well as their anti-Semitism.1
It seems that wherever this strain of ultra-nationalism appears it is inevitably followed with violent reinforcement. In 1888, after the erroneous reporting of the emperor’s death, Schönerer and a gang of heavies barged into a newspaper’s offices demanding the supplication of the journalists, with unforeseen results: The journalists called in some printers for support and ‘a free fight developed in which the anti-Semites used beer glasses and walking sticks, but after some minutes were put to flight by the printers. Schönerer was put on trial for public violence and forcible entry’.2 It is tempting to view this incident as the first successful militant anti-fascist action.
Previously, in 1887, Schönerer took his followers to the streets to protest a bill that institutionalised the Czech language, thus equating the Teutonic with the Slav. There were violent confrontations between Schönerer’s supporters and the police, and in Graz, one student protester died. When parliament accepted the bill, further violence erupted in the chamber and demonstrations and riots broke out in several cities. By 1913, Schönerer’s political career had passed, but his anti-big business, anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic nationalism preceded Hitler’s by several decades, as did the use—albeit more spontaneously in Austria—of political violence to push forward their programme.
In 1918, Austria was no more exempt from the fear of ‘Red Revolution’ than any other country in Europe. Following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the rise of traditional nationalism, anti-clericalism (i.e., Rome) and anti-Semitism, there was also resentment over the Social Democrats’ ‘Red Vienna’ and their political reforms. Following the uprising in Munich in 1919, Bavarian defence units were set up, which forwarded large amounts of weapons to the Austrian Heimwehr, ‘the paramilitary force of the extreme right’,3 to bolster protection from the possible spread of malign Viennese and Hungarian Bolshevism which could link up with the north and Berlin in particular. This was all fuelled by the fear of ‘Asiatic hordes in the form of Bolshevism under Jewish leadership, against German culture’.4
The Heimwehr
The Heimwehr were the Austrian version of the German Freikorps, anti-communist authoritarians who