Is there a good analysis of how it was that the French Assembly voted so heavily for Fascism? Were the non-Fascists not in Vichy or were they cowed into going along by the collapse of the Republic in the face of German aggression?
Lucius
There is a very good account of this in Shirer’s “Collapse of the Third Republic.” I recommend it highly. It is a pity that the book is not still in print, but you can get copies at Amazon.com. I’ve had my copy since I was in 8th grade and it is literally disintegrating in my hands as I re-read it.
To really understand how easily the French Assembly voted itself out of existence, you have to read Shirer’s whole book and I can’t post it here. But suffice to say that the Third Republic was a flawed body politic from it’s inception, and there were many on the Left and Right that never supported it. The German victory crushed the spirit of those who would defend representative democracy. Don’t forget that there is a big question about just who the Deputies represented at this point. Most of the country is now occupied by Germans. The Deputies are essentially “in exile” in their own country, cut off from their constituents, in some rural backwater town. The last official government is already controlled by fascist-sympathizers like Laval and Weygand. Cowing the beaten and demoralized Deputies turned out to be quite easy in the early bitter aftermath of defeat.