ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the conflict over France’s future between left-wing and right-wing groups in the 1930s. It details frustration with the republican status quo and the growing influence of fascism in France, as well as the antifascist mobilization that responded to right-wing militancy. The mass movements that characterized these years, especially the antifascist Popular Front alliance, catalyzed many key changes that would influence later decades. Though the coalition fractured over economic and foreign policy, the Popular Front featured the unprecedented involvement of workers in political movements and the engagement of workers, intellectuals, artists, and the state in national cultural life.
