166
PARTISAN REVIEW
( 3.)
When the Germans first entered Paris, the local Stalini!ts seem to
have taken the Nazi-Soviet pact somewhat too seriously. The editors of
Humanite
are said to have sent around a delegate to the German
Kom–
mandantur
to apply formally for permission to resume publication! When
the delegate failed to return-permanently-the editors concluded they
had been over-optimistic, and the party went underground again, though
not before a number of members had been arrested by the Germans as
they openly gave out Communist leaflets on the streets. The party still
distributes leaflets, more discreetly now. In the early weeks of the occupa·
tion, these demanded the release of the imprisoned Communist deputies
and attacked Vichy, hardly mentioning the Germans. As Nazi-Soviet
friendship cooled, and as the popular feeling against the Germans rose,
the Stalinists have ventured more and more to agitate against the invaders.
They are badly compromised, however, in the eyes of the man in the
street, by their support of the pact with Hitler, and they command no
real following.
So, too, with the other old groupings of the left. The Socialist Party
has almost entirely disintegrated; the membership of the trade unions has
fallen almost to zero, since they can do little for their members. When
you add to this bankruptcy of the old workingclass organizations the
tremendous unemployment in Paris-some 600,000 out of a working pop·
ulation of little more than dou}Jle that figure-plus the ruin of the middle
class shopkeepers and rentiers plus the desire for revenge against both
the foreign conquerors' and the old parliamentary-democratic parties
which are held responsible for the national humiliation-when you put
all this together, you have all the objective preconditions for the rise of
a native fascism. And both the renegade Communist, Jacques Doriot, and
the renegade Socialist, Marcel Deat, are doing their best to rise to the
occasion. Their newspapers propagandize for the same sort of anti-capi–
talist, 'corporative' nationalism as the former leader of the Belgian Labor
Party, Henri De Man, has been trying to popularize in Belgium since the
blitzkrieg. Their efforts arouse little popular response, however, since
they also recommend that the 'national regeneration' should take place
under the aegis of a dominant Germany. All over Paris one sees, on
walls and in the Metro stations, the scrawled inscription: "DEAT VENDU
AUX ALLEMANDS.'' These demagogues are trying to square a political
circle-to create a fascist movement on the basis of collaboration with
the national oppressors.
Perhaps the most significant political event in Paris since the Ger–
mans came was the student demonstration on the Champs Elysees on
Armistice Day, November 11 last. Not only because it was the only
public anti-German demonstration of any size, but also because of the
fact that it seems to have been organized by student leaders of both the
left (Stalinists, revolutionary groups) and the right (Croix de Feu),
each
acting quite independently of the other.
It
was not until they actually
