Fascists and Honourable Men : Contingency and Choice in French Politics, 1918-45 PDF

Was France fascist in the interwar period? In this comprehensive historical, political and sociological account of the rise of an all pervasive technocracy in France in the first half of the 20th century, Nimrod Amzalak traces its elective affinities with certain tendencies of political radicalism, and proposes an original theoretical perspective for the study of French fascism.

Challenging current historiography, Amzalak dispenses with procrustean definitions of fascism and sets out to study the concrete historical trajectory of two groups in France whose fortunes were on the rise in the interwar period: engineers and political 'non-conformists'.

Enlisting the Weberian concept of 'elective affinities', he demonstrates how the association of the most consistent elements in either group, borne out of both contingency and choice, steadily built up during the interwar period and the occupation, empowering both groups and generating political consequences that bore a strong family resemblance to those emanating from Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy.