The French Media and the Forging of a Franco-British Alliance in the late 1930s

Abstract

This article explores the interconnections between the media in France and the emergence of a Franco-British alliance on the eve of World War Two, emphasising how newspaper, radio and newsreel coverage helped mould British perceptions of France during the late-1930s. It will argue that British assessments of France, and thus France's potential value as a wartime ally, were influenced greatly by the dominant representations furnished by the media. In 1936, such representations portrayed a polarised France unworthy of British support; by 1939, they depicted a strong and united country of inestimable value to Britain. This transformation was not simply fortuitous; by the late-1930s, French politicians, conscious of the deleterious effect that media representations of a divided France was having on their country's prestige, endeavoured to transform the media from a symptom of decadence and malaise into a weapon of unity and strength.For much of the interwar period Great Britain and France were uneasy allies, their relations marred by mutual suspicion and distrust. In the deteriorating diplomatic climate of the 1930s, France's all-too-frequent changes of government, ideological skirmishes, and industrial unrest further dented British confidence in their old war-time ally. The result was a residual perception of a weak and divided country and, as P. M. H. Bell has noted, France's 1940 defeat confirmed longstanding British suspicions that France was 'rotted from within before the blow fell from without'. 1 Early French accounts of the interwar period did little to counter these prevailing conclusions, providing instead the foundations of the 'decadence' thesis, ascribing France's defeat to the moral bankruptcy of the entire nation. 2 Translated into foreign affairs, decadence resulted in French policy becoming rudderless, subservient to what François Bédarida labelled the 'English Governess'. 3 More recent accounts provide a corrective to this dominant notion of decadence and submissiveness, emphasizing instead