Gun Control in Nazi Occupied-France Read online

  The article alleged that Dancart had provided war weapons to Colonel Francesc Macià when he was preparing his Catalan plot,26 for which Dancart had been imprisoned for four and a half months. He now “acts as an innocent angel,” stating that “collecting guns is no more reprehensible than merely collecting stamps, and moreover he was not hiding anything since we can see from the street the arms hung up on nails in his bedroom.”

  Describing Dancart as “a bird catcher,” the article continued: “When one knocks on his door, a concert of chirping sounds answers, and from the street, one can see cages more than display of guns.”27 Turning to his wife, it added that “Mrs. Dancart is an elementary school teacher precisely at the school on Rue du Château … where subversive theories seem to have been favored at times.” Under the subtitle “Bolshevik agent?” it asked, “Could the bird catcher–flee market vendor be one of those agents named by the Communists to carry out their plan of secret armament, which has been indubitable over the past few days?” Hopefully, the police search at his house, resulting in his arrest under Article 3 of the 1834 law forbidding arms caches, would only be the beginning of operations against others preparing for revolution.

  After the above operation, investigating Judge Roussel and Police Superintendent Pradier proceeded to Number 47 of the rue Ordener, the shop of another flea market vendor named Gruyer. His wife opened the door, explaining that he was at a scrap metal fair. Police confiscated twenty-seven revolvers, some automatic pistols, eight military rifles of different calibers, and two large bags filled with cartridges. The load was transported to the Renseignements Généraux Department (the RG, or police political security branch).

  Other searches were carried out by investigating Judges Saussier, Cuenne, and Verdier, assisted by Police Superintendents Oudard, Noetz, and Gianvilti from the RG Department. At Mr. Burgeroux’s home at 52 rue du Vert-Bois—Burgeroux was also a flea market vendor—investigators confiscated a German military rifle and some cartridges. They went to several other businesses but found no violations.

  Keeping Track of Gun Buyers

  Details on the proposed new law punishing the carrying and sale of prohibited arms were reported by L’Echo de Paris.28 At the general assembly on March 28 presided over by Théodore Tissier, the Council of State passed a decree bill proposed by the minister of justice and the minister of interior revising the law of May 24, 1834, Article I of which punished the manufacture, sale, or transfer of prohibited arms with imprisonment of one month to one year and a fine of 16 to 200 francs. The law would be amended as follows:

  Article 1 of the decree reported by Mr. Peyromaure-Debord, in charge of petitions, lists all arms for which the above Article 1 sanctions shall be applied: any models of pistols or revolvers, daggers, dirks [couteaux-poignards], clubs, sword canes, leaded and steeled canes (at one tip only), as well as any object liable to constitute an arm dangerous to public safety.

  In addition, in Article 2, the decree-law enacts that anyone involved in the commerce of arms prohibited to be carried and the ammunition thereof, must have a special register, each page of which shall be numbered and signed by the Prefect or his delegate, and without blanks or alterations. For each arm sold, it must include its features, as well as the full name and home address of the buyer, with an indication of the picture identification document provided by the said buyer to demonstrate his identity.

  A further proposed law considered by the Chamber of Deputies on May 17, 1934, provided that the sale, transfer, or trade of weapons of unregulated models or designs would require the presentation by the purchaser of a written, approved authorization prepared after an investigation by the prefect or the subprefect.29 The bill did not pass, but the subject would be addressed again the following year.

  Pierre Etienne Flandin was named prime minister on November 8. He proposed a bill to restrict private possession of firearms, which did not pass.30 His presidency ended on June 1, 1935, after which Pierre Laval took over.

  After serving in the Parliament, Laval would head the French government three times during the 1930s, and would assume a primary leadership role during the Vichy regime in the 1940s. In all four of these periods, he would serve as prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and at times other positions. His policies were French-style socialism and fascism.

  A Conscripted Army or a People in Arms?

  As France experienced internecine conflict, Hitler was preparing for war. On March 15, 1935, the Führer announced the creation of the Luftwaffe and the introduction of conscription of young men into the armed forces. That same day, the Chamber of Deputies debated whether to require young Frenchmen to serve for two years in the military. The Socialists and Communists voted against it.31

  However, Socialist leader Léon Blum noted, “Jaurès declared here, twenty-two years ago, that the true military protection of a country lies not in permanent strong forces, or in numerous troops in barracks, serving as the basis of defensive strategy. Rather that it is to be found in what Revolutionaries have called the levying of the masses, in what our old master Vaillant called the general arming of the people….”32

  Blum was referring to Jean Léon Jaurès, who in 1910 had proposed a bill in the Chamber requiring all able-bodied citizens from age twenty to forty-five to provide military service.33 Besides promoting widespread rifle practice, the plan proposed that “[i]n the departments of the Eastern region, each soldier will keep his arms at home.”34 As he explained elsewhere, this was a scaled-down version of the democratic Swiss militia army in which all citizens served and kept their arms at home. Responding to those who may have feared a revolution of the proletariat, Jaurès stated, “I do not believe that the universal arming of the citizens, everyone keeping at home their sabers and their rifles, has the social consequence that one imagines.”35 The Swiss experienced no upheaval from having citizen soldiers keep their arms at home.36

  Indeed, the editors of an English edition of Jaurès’s book would write during the Great War that “[t]he rapidity and ease with which Switzerland mobilized all her active forces in August, 1914 was noted by all critics; and it has more than once been suggested that this accounts for Germany’s decision to attack through Belgium rather than through Switzerland.”37 But fear of social revolution made it inconceivable that the ruling parties in France, both before and after World War I, would trust the people at large with arms.

  To be sure, the French Communist Party advocated armed insurrection, and extremists on the far right reciprocated. For those in power, the potential risks of such upheavals—however unrealistic—outweighed the potential benefits of a universal militia.

  That is why such policy was not even raised in the above debates in 1935 over conscription. But another issue loomed large. Before the proceedings in the Chamber, Paul Reynaud met with Lieutenant Colonel Charles de Gaulle, who had been advocating an armored corps that could be rapidly deployed. Arguing in support of such armaments programs as well as conscription, Reynaud noted, “When Switzerland imposes on herself new sacrifices, is she joining in the armaments race? Yes, but only to ensure peace….”38 Switzerland was indeed building up its armaments in response to the Nazi threat.39

  The Chamber voted for the conscription measure. However, de Gaulle’s proposals for an armored corps fell on deaf ears. The static defense of massive concrete fortifications making up the Maginot Line, under construction since 1930, would become the losing strategy. And instead of arming the people as in the Swiss model, restrictions were about to be decreed to make it more difficult than ever before for citizens to obtain and keep arms.

  1. William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), 214–19. See also Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 30–33.

  2. “Le ‘Croix de Feu’ ont manifesté hier devant le ministère de l’intérieur,” L’Echo de Paris, February 6, 1934, 1.

&nb
sp; 3. See Soucy, French Fascism, Chapter 4 and p. 136.

  4. “Hier en fin d’après-midi et dans la soirée de graves bagarres se sont produites à l’Hôtelde-Ville, rue Royale et à la Concorde,” L’Homme Libre, February 7, 1934, 1.

  5. “Une soirée d’émeute a Paris,” Le Figaro, February 7, 1934, 1.

  6. “Le bilan des émeutes de mardi,” L’Homme Libre, February 8, 1934, 1.

  7. Henri Barbier, Le Délit de Port D’Armes Prohibées (Paris: Éditions Littéraires de France, 1939), 30.

  8. Soucy, French Fascism, 109, 167.

  9. “Les Croix de Feu parviennent aux grilles du Palais-Bourbon,” L’Echo de Paris, February 7, 1934, 3. See also “Une proclamation de M. Edouard Daladier,” L’Homme Libre, February 7, 1934, 1.

  10. “Une adresse des anciens combattants au chef de l’Etat,” L’Homme Libre, February 8, 1934, 1; “Les émeutes d’hier,” L’Homme Libre, February 8, 1934, 3.

  11. “Les émeutes ont repris hier, mais cette fois uniquement provoquees par les communistes,” L’Echo de Paris, February 8, 1934, 1; “Les communistes ont manifesté sur plusieurs points de Paris,” L’Homme Libre, February 9, 1934, 3.

  12. Shirer, Collapse of the Third Republic, 221.

  13. Geoffrey Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 56–57.

  14. Barbier, Le délit, 30.

  15. “Après les manifestations,” L’Homme Libre, February 9, 1934, 1.

  16. It recited the following:

  The laws of 16–21 August 1790 and 19–22 July 1791;

  The consuls’ [the three heads of the executive branch under the Consulat Regime (1799–1804), the first was Bonaparte] orders of 12 messidor (10th month of the Revolutionary Calendar = July), in the year VII, and 3 brumaire (2nd month of the Revolutionary Calendar = November), in the year IX, and the law of June 10, 1873;

  The law of August 14, 1885, article G.

  17. “Empêchés de manifester place de la République, les communistes out livre aux policiers de sanglantes batailles de rues,” L’Echo de Paris, February 10, 1934, 1.

  18. “La réouverture des armureries,” L’Homme Libre, February 20, 1934, 2.

  19. “A la Chambre une commission d’enquete pour les événements du 6 février,” L’Echo de Paris, February 20, 1934, 1.

  20. “Une lettre des ‘Croix de Feu’ à M. Doumergue,” L’Echo de Paris, February 23, 1934, 5.

  21. “Informations politiques contre les groupements armés,” Le Figaro, March 14, 1934, 5.

  22. “Des perquisitions font découvrir des depots d’armes a Paris & en Banlieue,” L’Echo de Paris, March 28, 1934, 1.

  23. “Les saisies d’armes,” L’Echo de Paris, March 28, 1934, 3.

  24. “L’autre désarmement,” L’Homme Libre, March 28, 1934, 1.

  25. “Plusieurs dépôts d’armes de guerre découverts à Paris et en banlieue,” Le Figaro, March 28, 1934, 1.

  26. The leftist-Republican Catalanist Francesc Macià had proclaimed an independent Catalan state from Spain in 1931, but compromised with a provisional regional government. “Francesc Macià,” http://www.catalangovernment.eu/pres_gov/government/en/president/presidents/macia.html.

  27. “Plusieurs dépôts d’armes de guerre découverts à Paris et en banlieue,” Le Figaro, March 28, 1934, 5.

  28. “Une nouvelle réglementation du port et de la vente des armes,” L’Echo de Paris, March 29, 1934, 3.

  29. Doc. Parl., Chambre, 1934, p. 571, in Barbier, Le délit, 116.

  30. Projet de loi du 20 décembre 1934 concernant l’importation, la fabrication, le commerce, la vente et la détention des armes, présenté au nom de M. Albert Lebrun, Président de la République française, par M. Pierre-Étienne Flandin, président du Conseil. Chambre des députés, 2e séance du 20 novembre 1934, J. O., Documents parlementaires, annexe n° 4143, pp. 128-129. J. O., 24 octobre 1935. Cited in Jean-Paul Le Moigne and Stéphane Nerrant, “Commentaire critique et comparé de la Proposition de loi n°2773 du 30 juillet 2010,” Gazette des Armes, 14 août 2010, http://www.armes-ufa.com/spip.php?article678.

  31. Paul Reynaud, In the Thick of the Fight, 1930–1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955), 43.

  32. Reynaud, Thick of the Fight, 105.

  33. Jean Jaurès, L’Armée Nouvelle (Paris: l’Humanité, 1915), 549.

  34. Jaurès, L’Armée Nouvelle, 552. “Dans les départements de la région de l’Est, chaque soldat aura ses armes à domicile.”

  35. Jaurès, L’Armée Nouvelle, 223. “A vrai dire, je ne crois pas que l’armement universel des citoyens, ayant chacun à domicile leur sabre et leur fusil, ait la conséquence sociale qu’on imagine.”

  36. Jaurès, L’Armée Nouvelle, 224–25.

  37. Jean Jaurès, Democracy and Military Service: An Abbreviated Translation of the Armée Nouvelle, ed. C. G. Coulton (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1916), Chapter 7, n.3, http://www.marxists.org/archive/jaures/1907/military-service/index.htm.

  38. Reynaud, Thick of the Fight, 104–5.

  39. Stephen P. Halbrook, Target Switzerland (New York: Sarpedon, 1998), 35–37.

  2

  Pierre Laval Decrees Firearm Registration

  PIERRE LAVAL NOW returned to power in his third ministry, which would last from June 7, 1935 to January 24, 1936. As always, he was both prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. On June 8, the Chamber of Deputies passed an enabling act granting Laval power to rule by decree. In opposition to groups such as the Croix de Feu, the Radicals joined with the Socialists and Communists in the Front Populaire.1

  By fall, the leftist press warned that the Croix de Feu was planning to seize power. The alarm was at high pitch at the Radical Party conference meeting on October 24–27. On October 23, Laval took advantage of the panic by issuing three decree-laws (décret-lois) without legislative action, under the enabling act of June 8. The power of the government would be strengthened to restore public order.2

  First, the size of the Mobile Guard, which could be used to suppress dissent, was increased from 15,000 to 20,000 members.3

  Second, people who wished to organize an assembly were required to register several days in advance with the police, who could prohibit the demonstration if it might “disturb public order.”4

  Third, people who wished to obtain a firearm had to register with the police. Proposed under the previous government, this had been introduced by Georges Chauvin as “a bill concerning demonstrations on public streets, and commerce, import and possession of arms.”5 It was now proposed by Léon Bérard, minister of justice, and Joseph Paganon, minister of the interior,6 the pertinent cabinet members, and given final approval by Pierre Laval.7

  As a member of the Senate when the Nazis were overrunning France in 1940, Bérard, a member of the liberal Union républicaine, would cast his vote on July 10 to give full powers to Philippe Pétain. He thereafter served the Vichy regime as an ambassador.8 Paganon, a Radical-Socialist who had served in previous cabinets, would die in 1937.9

  The Laval decree defined “war weapons” as arms so designated by the ministers of the land, sea, and air forces.10 Military arms, including small arms and ammunition therefor, were already banned to civilians, with punishment of up to two years’ imprisonment, under an 1834 law.11 The new decree also restricted importation of firearms, extended record-keeping requirements, including the keeping of daily registers by firearm manufacturers and dealers, and prohibited the sale of firearms by flea market vendors.12 Its most radical provisions required registration of firearm owners and of their firearms, and punished violators without regard to any evil intent. Specifically, Article 9 stated:

  Each person in possession of a firearm at the enactment of the present decree must make a declaration of it to the prefect or the sub-prefect of the place of his residence within the time limit of one month.

  Anyone after the enactment of the present decree who receives a firearm must make a declaration of it to the prefect or the sub-prefect of the pla
ce of his residence within the time limit of 8 days.

  Receipts of the declarations referenced in the two previous paragraphs will be delivered to the concerned parties.

  Each violation of the requirements of the first two paragraphs of the present article shall be punishable by a fine of 100 to 1,000 Francs. The court in addition will order the forfeiture of the weapon….

  Failure to comply with this order shall be punishable with imprisonment of from six months to two years….13

  However, the registration requirement did not apply to hunting guns or to historic or collectable firearms.14

  Prominently publicized was that the decree “requires anyone in possession of arms to declare his place of residency to the prefect or his assistant.” It was further published that people involved in the manufacture and commerce of arms were required to declare them to the police prefecture within a month, and that owners of firearms (other than hunting arms, historic arms, and collectible arms) had to make a declaration to their neighborhood or district police superintendent within a month. The deadline would expire on November 24, 1935.15

  For the first time in the history of modern France, the Laval decree mandated the registration of firearms. It also enhanced existing prohibitions on the sale of ordinary military arms, such as bolt-action rifles. To be sure, something needed to be done about the very real violence in the streets and subversive threats by extremist groups on the left and the right. Successive governments of differing political stripes would not repeal the Laval decree, suggesting that it had considerable support. But it was naively aimed at firearm owners at large and did not focus on those responsible for fomenting political violence.