Alcohol, Syphilis and Journalism: The fall of the Third Republic

Urban fox

Alcohol, Syphilis and Journalism
The fall of the Third Republic and the rise of France​

An
Alternative history
By
Urban fox​

FAUST: The mob streams up to Satan’s throne;
I’d learn things there I’ve never known…
MEPHISTOPHELES: The whole mob streams and strives uphill;
One thinks one’s pushing and one’s pushed against one’s will,
J.W. von Goethe. Faust​


Prologue:
The Stagnant Society:​

The French republic is a dead dog floating in a stream, and the French nation is ruined by alcohol, syphilis and journalism - Benito Mussolini​



Mussolini’s strictures on France weren’t absurdly wide of the mark, in the 1920’s Frenchmen drank about three times as much alcohol annually as Italians, most of it wine. Helped down by the assurances of the Ministry of Agriculture that French wine was the best antidote for alcoholism, and perhaps by the amiable linguistic convention that it se boit (drinks itself). There was also one bar for every 81 inhabitants of France as compared to one for every 225 in Italy.

At the same time perhaps four million people, ten percent of the French population were infected with syphilis, though matters improved a little after 1929 with the mass import of American made contraceptives. It may also seem perverse, that someone who prided himself on having been a newspaper should also blame journalism for wrecking France. However the editor-in-chief of Italian Fascism was referring to the government’s failure to control the French press, which was arguably the most vicious, libellous and corrupt in the world. Newspapers had hardly changed since Balzac depicted them as garish ‘’intellectual brothels’’. Their clients were individuals, commercial concerns and governments, either French or foreign. During the Great War some papers had taken bribes from Germany and this practice amongst other reasons prompted Time magazine to label the French press as the ‘’sewer of world journalism’’.

The political situation was hardly better, between 1870 and 1930 there were close to one hundred ministries on average lasting six months, deputies could bring down governments without causing a general election (held every four years) Ministries were formed from members of the many groups there was even a ‘’group of deputies not members of any other group’’ and party labels were almost meaningless. As one member of parliament said ‘’I am a deputy of the Left, I sit in the Centre and vote Right’’. The largest party the Radical Party was rigidly conservative on almost every issue except anticlericalism and united only in the sense of wanting to milk the State. Radicals were likened to radishes ‘’red outside, white inside and sitting in the middle of the butter dish’’.

This was mild compared to insults hurled in the Chamber, which sometimes did not stop at words. Fist-fights were common and even respectable members of the Senate came to blows, what hurt most was the truth most politicians really did get into the butter-dish if not the pork barrel. Constituents were cynical about corruption. Indeed, many were equally venal, eager to obtain favours from their elected representatives in Paris. As a ministry became more precarious it was also more inclined to generosity; so, as Andre Malraux wrote, ‘’the personal interests of the Deputy lie on the side of instability’’.

For all that, until the onset of the Great Depression France muddled along well enough. Bourgeois, peasant and worker alike gave their allegiance to the secular republic. In this land of 40 million the conservative consensus ruled. Less government was better government and if it didn’t work too well…Then it worked after a fashion,. In this it was like the plumbing in a country were most lavatories were little better holes in the ground, like the dirty antiquated railways where any train that attempted to run on time seemed liable to crash , it was like the telephone services where making a call from a post office could result in a wait of hours.

Ultimately as the shadows of the Great Depression settled over Europe the Third Republic, would be violently shaken from it’s state of comfortable stagnation…
 
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Urban fox

In terms of planned length? Well I’m not sure TBH. I have a good idea of where I want to take the TL for the first few years, and broader outlines for afterwords.


It’s just a matter translating that into a written product, but the further the TL diverges from OTL with obscure individuals in France having a more prominent role in events, plus the fact I need to consider the international implications of major internal convulsions within France. as things progress...


Beyond that I'll need to get people to read the damn thing, speaking of which I'll have the first couple of chapers ready to go quite soon.:)
 

Urban fox

Chapter One:
The Happy Isle​




A victorious France always gets rich militaristic and cocky, and nobody can get on with her until she has to be thrashed again -
Herbert Hoover​



As the great depression blighted the rest of the globe, initially France seemed curiously immune. Seemingly perched on piles of gold, Gallic self-confidence had risen to new heights, the French Army was the strongest in the world, Paris could claim to the cultural capital of Europe and the French Empire was second only to that of Great Britain. Indeed national pride in ‘’Greater France’’ was augmented by the ruthless domination of colonial populations, and French children were taught that their nation not Mussolini’s was the ‘’heir to Rome’’. French industry had been growing faster than it’s European and American rivals almost keeping pace with Japan and its car industry was the second largest in the world. French banks held much of the world’s gold amounting to one quarter on the eve of 1930, prompting in late 1929 the new Premier Andre Tardieu proposed to spend this huge surplus on creating a modern welfare state thus introducing France to the ‘’politics of prosperity’’.

Tardieu a man of brilliant intellect had piled up prizes and diplomas with ease. And skipped nimbly between the occupations of commerce, literature, academia, politics and diplomacy. Having climbed by way of several ministerial posts to the top of the political ladder, he now aimed to re-equip industry and improve agriculture along modern scientific lines.

However the veneer of opulence and vigour was deceptive, the essential condition of the Third Republic was decay. Marianne was protected by the initial onslaught of the global economic crisis not because of her strength but because of her fundamental weaknesses, symptomatic of this were French exports which remained competitive because the franc had lost four-fifths of it’s value during the 1920’s. Relaying on it’s relatively buoyant home market France sold fewer goods abroad than other great capitalist powers such as England, so it was less effected by the initial collapse in global trade. French industrialists for their part had cushioned themselves against a slump with large capital savings - by failing to invest in expansion and modern equipment.

The short term foreign money which flowed into France between 1929 to 1932 only did so because of the determination of the government to protect the franc against inflation, a policy which would soon leave French exports disastrously overpriced. Unemployment remained low because France had been shorn of manpower with 1.3 million dead and 1.1 million made invalids by the Great War.

The consequences of these ills and the dashed hopes that France might escape the Depression, was to be bitter disappointment, social stress, political radicalism the discrediting of liberal democracy. Ushering in what would later be called ‘’the time of blood and hate’’.
 
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