Abstract
On 3 September 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany. This marked the start of what became known as the Phoney War, a state of being at war without waging war, which lasted until the German offensive of May 1940. It was during the Phoney War that the French government moved against the ‘internal enemy’, namely, the French Communist Party. At the end of August, in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact, the government had already banned L’Humanité and Ce soir, although from October L’Humanité was published clandestinely. Despite these measures and the PCF’s view that France was headed by a reactionary government, communist deputies had voted war credits on 2 September, called for national unity, and declared it was committed to defending France in the event of a German attack.
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References
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Drake, D. (2005). The Occupation 1940–44: Collaborationism, Collaboration and Resistance. In: French Intellectuals and Politics from the Dreyfus Affair to the Occupation. French Politics, Society and Culture Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230006096_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230006096_6
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