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Concept
Croix-de-Feu
Summary
The Croix-de-Feu (kʁwa də fø, Cross of Fire) was a nationalist French league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque (1885–1946). After it was dissolved, as were all other leagues during the Popular Front period (1936–38), La Rocque established the Parti social français (PSF) to replace it.
The Croix-de-Feu (CF) were primarily a group of veterans of the First World War, those who had been awarded the Croix de guerre 1914-1918. The group was founded on 26 November 1927 by Maurice d'Hartoy, who led it until 1929. The honorary presidency was awarded to writer Jacques Péricard. Also in 1929, the movement acquired its newspaper, Le Flambeau. At its creation, the movement was subsidized by the wealthy perfumer François Coty and was hosted in the building of Le Figaro.
It benefited from the Catholic Church's 1926 proscription of the Action Française, which prohibited Catholics from supporting the latter. Many conservative Catholics became members of the Croix-de-feu instead, including Jean Mermoz and the young François Mitterrand.
Unlike the Unions latines, which had promoted algérianité (Algerianness) and gained the support of French settlers, the CF adopted a new approach. European settlers in Algeria tended to support authoritarian and imperialist governments over French republicanism. They were anti-Semitic and xenophobic. Believing that Algerian Europeans were a new race, they saw themselves as "youthful, virile and brutal" and Metropolitan France as "degenerate, effeminate and weak". They often resorted to the use of force against Muslim and Jewish Algerians.
The Croix-de-feu had a massive propaganda campaign that won thousands of members in Constantine and Algiers. It proposed an alliance with local Muslims and attacked the left. Scholars see that as a tactic to funnel extreme and separatist frustrations caused by an economic disparity between European settlers and the local Algerian people. It used different propaganda in Oran, more similar to Jules Molle and the Union's latines, because Oran had fewer Muslims and was more anti-Semitic.
Official source
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