Remaking the Male Body: Masculinity and the Uses of Physical Culture in Interwar and Vichy France 9780199695577, 0199695571

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REMAKING THE MALE BODY

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Remaking the Male Body Masculinity and the Uses of Physical Culture in Interwar and Vichy France J OA N T U M B L E T Y

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Joan Tumblety 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–969557–7 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn

To my family

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Acknowledgements The idea for this book came to me in 2003 when I first stumbled upon the get-fit guides and periodical press of early twentieth-century French body-builders and fitness fanatics. This literature struck me as unintentionally comic in its relentless cataloguing of the common aesthetic failures one could observe on the beaches, in the swimming pools and at the military examination boards of France. And there was a striking contrast between the apparent frivolity of the images conjured up in these publications (of men checking their semi-naked bodies for flaws in the wardrobe mirror before performing a series of physical exercises to build their musculature), and the presumed seriousness of the message (that the future of the nation and the ‘race’ depended upon men’s correct physique). It made me want to investigate the nature and status of these apparent body obsessions, and to connect them to the bigger debates, so familiar to scholars of interwar France, over national ‘decline’. Exploring these leads took me to several libraries and archives in Paris, where my research was supported by a grant from the British Academy. While there I benefited from the expertise and patience of staff at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Archives Nationales, the archives of the Paris prefecture of police, the Archives de Paris, the national institute of sport and physical education (INSEP), the CESAT military library at the École Militaire, and the army archives (SHD-DAT) at the Château de Vincennes. I would like to thank them for making these visits so productive and enjoyable. I am grateful to the la Rocque family for granting permission to consult the private papers of the Croix de Feu leader. I must also thank the University of Southampton for providing the sabbatical leave that enabled the research and writing for this project. I owe a special debt of gratitude to all the colleagues and peers who have at various times provided critical engagement, encouragement and good cheer. Chris Forth has been exceptionally generous in sharing his knowledge with me. Parts of the text have benefited from the incisive feedback of Matt Kelly and Nicholas Kingwell on earlier drafts, and my approach to the subject has been shaped by conversations with a good many others, including Mark Cornwall, Neil Gregor, Matthew Brown, Simon Kitson and Jackie Clarke as well as the seminar and conference audiences I’ve encountered along the way. I consider myself extremely fortunate to work in such a collegial environment, where I am reminded time and again of the difference that good colleagues can make. Generations of students have also sustained me, and have provided congenial sounding boards for some of the ideas and themes I develop in this book. I am glad that so many of them seem to have been as bewitched by the cultural fixation with male bodily failure as I have been. Rob Stuart and Richard Bosworth nurtured my early scholarly interests in the days when I was myself an undergraduate studying History at the University of Western Australia, and have proven unwavering in their support ever since. I owe them a huge debt.

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I would like also to thank the editors at Oxford University Press for making the journey from manuscript to book such a smooth one, and to the several anonymous peer reviewers whose helpful insights and suggestions I have tried to take on board. My Scottish family in Australia may be bemused by the interest in the get-fit crazes of early to mid-twentieth century France that hooked me into writing this book, but I dedicate it to them. Joan Tumblety May 2012

Contents List of illustrations List of abbreviations Introduction: ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’: the fragile bodies of men

xi xii 1

1 Physical Culturists, Masculine Ideals, and Social Hygiene in Interwar France The world of physical culture in the 1920s and 1930s Get-fit literature for men Social hygiene Conclusion

17 19 29 44 54

2 The Body of the Citizen-Soldier: Physical Education and the State The ‘French method’ and the army Institutional cross-fertilization The public powers, biological regeneration, and the conseil de révision Physical education reform, surmenage, and social hygiene The era of the Popular Front The Paris World’s Fair of 1937 Conclusion

57 60 62 68 74 79 84 93

3 Male Bodies Between Associative Life and Consumer Spectacle: The Mass Press and Popular Practice Male sporting cultures and normative masculinity Body culture, print culture Sport and male bodily regeneration Experience and subjectivity Conclusion

95 99 107 116 124 131

4 The Uses of Sport and Physical Culture in Mass Politics: Mobilizing the ‘New Man’, 1918–1934 Mobilizing young men through sport and physical culture Training a combat elite Building the ‘new man’ and revirilizing France: the poilu and the conscript Conclusion

133 135 149 156 165

5 Mass Culture and Mass Politics, 1934–1940 The rightist leagues The socialist and communist left Croix de Feu/Parti Social Français (PSF) Parti Populaire Français (PPF)

167 169 171 179 191

Contents

x Front de la Jeunesse Conclusion

6 The Defeat of French Manhood and the Vichy Imagination Physical education and the project of masculine renewal under Vichy Eugenics and regeneration under the Occupation Physical culturists under the Occupation Physical culture on the radical right Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Index

201 203 205 206 212 217 222 225 227 233 247

List of illustrations I.1 Marcel Rouet as he appeared in 1935 1.1 Unpaginated advertisement: a fixture of La Culture physique in the belle époque 1.2 Here the sartorial elegance of the bourgeois gentleman has been updated for the interwar period 1.3 Advertisement for the ‘Olympic trainer’ 1.4 Advertisement for a body lengthener 1.5 ‘La gymnastique de chambre’ 1.6 Front cover of Edouard Osmont’s satirical pamphlet 1.7 Ideal human proportions 1.8 ‘Appearances can be deceptive: one can be unfit for service and call oneself a sportsman’ 2.1 Main exhibition hall inside the Saint-Cloud annex, showing the USEPPSM stand 2.2 Exterior of the main pavilion 2.3 The entrance hall with classical sculptures and sports-themed art work 2.4 Official poster for the sports programme of the Expo 3.1 Illustration for ‘sports’ 3.2 Illustration for ‘sports’ 3.3 Illustration for ‘gymnastics’ 3.4 Advertisement for Professor Wehrheim’s physical training method 4.1 ‘Never forget!’ 4.2 Cartoon of the conseil de révision 5.1 Illustration of a conseil de révision 5.2 Illustration by M. Thiérry, ‘Un lecteur de “l’Huma” vous parle’ 5.3 Advertisement 5.4 Front de la Jeunesse postcard

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88 90 96 97 98 112 162 165 188 192 197 202

6.1 Ruffier measuring pupils in the film ‘La Cité du muscle’, 1941

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23 24 25 25 29 31 34 39 87 88

List of abbreviations ACJF AF AN AP APP BnF BSP CAJP CFFEPH CF/PSF CGEGS CGTU CNEGS CNMA CNS CREGS CSFP EGS ENEP(S) FFEPH FFA FFB FFN FGSPF FFCP FFEP FFFA FJ FSFSF FSGT FST INED INEP INSEP

Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Française Action Française Archives nationales Archives de Paris Archives de la Préfecture de Police (Paris) Bibliothèque nationale de France Brevet Sportif Populaire Club Athlétique des Jeunesses Cahiers de la Fondation française pour l’étude des problèmes humains Croix de Feu/Parti Social Français Commissariat Général à l’Éducation Générale et Sportive Conféderation Générale du Travail Unitaire Centre National d’Education Générale et Sportive Collège National des Moniteurs et Athlètes Comité National des Sports Centres Régionaux d’Éducation Générale et Sportive Cercle Sportif Française de Paris Éducation Générale et Sportive École Nationale d’Éducation Physique (et Sportive) Fondation Française pour l’Étude des Problèmes Humains Fédération Française d’Athlétisme Fédération Française de Basket-ball Fédération Française de Natation et de Sauvetage Fédération Gymnastique et Sportive des Patronages de France Fédération Française de Culture Physique Fédération Française d’Éducation Physique Fédération Française de Football Association Front de la Jeunesse Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail Fédération Sportive du Travail Institut National d’Études Démographiques Institut National d’Education Physique Institut National du Sport et de l’Éducation Physique

List of abbreviations

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IREP Institut Régional d’Éducation Physique IRS Internationale Rouge Sportive JC Jeunesse Communiste JOC Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne JP Jeunesses Patriotes LFEP Ligue Française d’Education physique LGEP Ligue Girondine d’Éducation Physique PCF Parti Communiste Français PPF Parti Populaire Français SF Solidarité Française SFE Société Française d’Eugénique SFIO Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière SPES Société de Préparation et d’Éducation Sportive STIR Société Amicale de Tir des Officiers et Sous-officiers d’Infanterie de Réserve UJSF Union des Jeunesses Sportives Françaises UPJF Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française USEPPSM Union des Sociétés d’Éducation Physique et de Préparation au Service Militaire USFSA Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques

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Introduction ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’: the fragile bodies of men This is in large part a book about the cultural meaning of muscles in interwar and Vichy France. In tracing the passage of ideas about the muscular male body within the realm of physical culture—from get-fit guides and advertising for home gymnasium equipment, through the popular press and the sports movement, to the mobilizing campaigns of popular politics and parliamentary debates about physical education in schools and the army—I explore the ideological work that discourses of muscularity allowed their interlocutors to perform. I show that a muscular ideal was deeply implicated in the articulation of normative masculinity in ways that were bound up with the expression of public anxieties about French national strength; that it helped to reinforce hierarchies of gender, class, and ‘race’, if not always in straightforward ways; that it facilitated both the medicalization of French society and the popularization of eugenicist thought; and that it was an instrument of radical political struggle on left and right. I hold that these cultural and political uses of muscular manhood demonstrate that interwar and Vichy-era discussions about a range of subjects were mediated by hopes and fears about manliness. It was indeed not only muscles but their lack that concerned the early twentieth-century agents of physical culture. Physical culturist elites certainly offered their male audience promises of self-transformation into the aesthetic, moral, and physiological ideals that were allegedly in danger of being lost. Marcel Rouet, one of the key figures discussed in this study, is emblematic in this regard. Coming to public prominence in the 1930s, Rouet won several male beauty competitions organized by the French federation of physical culture, and became a high-profile author of get-fit guides aimed largely at men and which used his own body as a model (Fig. I.1). He forged a successful post-war career too. Until his death in 1982 Rouet peddled relaxation therapies, cures for cellulite, and (latterly) sexual advice to an increasingly female audience.1 As a physical culturist in the 1930s he preached the necessity of ‘rational’ exercise for rescuing modern man—a being always at risk of physical failure—from the softening effects of civilization. This gendered critique of European civilization was commonplace in the early twentieth century, as demonstrated by the scholarship of Christopher Forth. Not untypically, Rouet believed 1 Gilbert Andrieu, Force et beauté: histoire de l’esthétique en éducation physique aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Bordeaux, 1992), pp. 216–26.

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Fig. I.1. Marcel Rouet as he appeared in 1935. Marcel Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique: cours complet de culture physique et mentale pour obtenir un corps harmonieux en parfait équilibre. Paris: Éditions J. Oliven, 1937, plate XIII, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

that the comforts of modernity wrought by masculine success (professional status, the motor car, a diet rich in food and wine) had led inevitably to a sedentary and over-stuffed existence that threatened to erase the visual markers of sex-difference, including the muscular power and toned physique that in the later modern age had underpinned male supremacy in the gender hierarchy.2 In his view, building muscle and blasting fat would rescue the Frenchman from ‘an epoch of physical decline’, achieving the interlinked goals of a healthy mind in a healthy body (‘mens sana in corpore sano’) and the ‘regeneration of the race’.3 As I argue in this book, this kind of language, which evoked both the fragility of masculinity and the simultaneously regenerative and virilizing potential of muscle-building physical exercise, was practically ubiquitous in the world of interwar and Vichy-era physical culture in France. Furthermore, the formulation was virtually indistinguishable from that of the physicians, novelists, educational reformers, and physical culturists whose fin-de-siècle views have been mapped out for us by historian Robert Nye. Many of the elements 2 Christopher E. Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilisation and the Body (London, 2008). 3 Marcel Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique: cours complet de culture physique et mentale pour obtenir un corps harmonieux en parfait équilibre, (Paris, 1937), p. 19.

Introduction

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were still there after the First World War: a critique of modern life bound up with a conviction in the biological decline of the French, a hygienist conception of both individual health and national security, the treatment of depopulation as a ‘master pathology’, the neo-Lamarckian belief in the heredity of acquired characteristics, concerns about ‘neurasthenia’ (a nervous depression often described as male hysteria) as a de-virilizing threat to the bourgeoisie, the ubiquitous fear of the damaging effects of fatigue on the individual organism and the wider gene-pool of Frenchmen—in short, ‘the generality of degeneration theory, and its tendency to telescope biological and social causes’ of life’s problems. Like their late nineteenth-century counterparts, interwar physical culturists—often physicians—deployed ‘the language of the clinic’ in formulating a ‘medical model of cultural crisis’.4 It seems remarkable that so few historians have explored this dynamic for the post-1918 period. Daniel Pick’s key work on the cultural history of degeneration for its part acknowledges the post-war multi-genre life of this ‘shifting term produced, inflected, refined, and reconstituted in the movement between human sciences, fictional narratives, and sociopolitical commentaries’, but its manifestations in the 1920s and 1930s, whether or not in relation to physical culture, remain underexplored.5 It is not hard to see why such ideas may have flourished in the interwar years, producing what Judith Surkis has called a ‘physiological politics’ where the problem of post-war reconstruction was often fixed rhetorically and legislatively on the body itself.6 For a start, the physical impact of the First World War on French men was all too visible. Not only had 1.3 million died in battle, but a million more drew invalid pensions as late as 1930. The figure of the disabled war veteran was omnipresent—in the Armistice Day parades, in the popular press, and on the street corners of French towns.7 Medical voices—now armed with institutionalized eugenics as a tool with which to think—often proclaimed that the biological stock of the nation had been bled white by the war. Men and women continued to die of tuberculosis in very high numbers, and the claim that French mortality was the worst in Europe echoed throughout the print media of the 1920s and 1930s. The long-lived phenomenon of dénatalité was exacerbated by the war, and the birth-rates slumped even further at the end of the 1930s. Fears of internal disorder and German invasion were amplified in an era marked by the growth of radical political groups on left and right and the establishment of authoritarian—including fascist—regimes elsewhere, whose apparent success in building robust and plentiful 4 Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline, (Princeton, 1984), pp. 132–70, 310–29. See also Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York and Oxford, 1993), in which the first footnote refers to one of Marcel Rouet’s early 1970s sex-manuals—a text whose biological determinism struck Nye as bearing close resemblance to fin-de-siècle views about male sexuality. 5 Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848–c.1918 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 7. 6 Judith Surkis, ‘Enemies within: venereal disease and the defense of French masculinity between the wars’, in Christopher E. Forth and Bertrand Taithe (eds.), French Masculinities: History, Culture and Politics (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 104. 7 Amy Lyford, Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2007), pp. 80–94; Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: ‘les anciens combattants’ and French Society, 1914–1939 (Oxford, 1992), p. 45.

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citizens was shouted from the front pages of newspapers in a surprisingly harmonious chorus of dismay. All of these problems, combined with the widely reported physical inferiority of French military conscripts, were routinely cited after 1918 as proof of an intertwined crisis of masculine virility and national vitality. The interwar views of physical culturists such as Marcel Rouet can also be explained by the fact that they were nourished by the writings and practices of ‘experts’ who rose to prominence before 1914. Many of the figures discussed across the following chapters had indeed begun their careers in the early decades of the Third Republic, but the post-1918 political landscape did more than simply entrench long-established anxieties. I show how the conviction that the degeneration of the French ‘race’ might be reversed through the right kind of physical activity became institutionalized across French society through novel organizations and activities to an unprecedented degree. In doing so I interrogate the interplay between body culture, (popular) politics, and medicine, drawing out connections and cross-fertilizations that scholars have hitherto ignored. I write about physical culture both as a set of practices and as a field of ideas. In the 1920s and 1930s the meaning of the term was slippery, since it was used both in reference to a relatively narrow set of physical activities (principally the kind of body-building and gymnastics favoured by Marcel Rouet), and on the other hand to embrace the broad range of sports that were increasingly practised by both men and women (if in different ways), such as football, rugby, cycling, boxing, swimming, athletics, and new crazes such as basket-ball and ping-pong. It was even spoken about in the same breath as mechanized pursuits such as automobile racing and aviation—in part because these activities were reported on the sports pages of newspapers, but also because they represented the embrace of a similarly energized and outdoors way of life. Despite their awareness of a female audience, interwar physical culturists proper as well as the leaders of the sports federations believed without exception that the right kind of exercise developed the physical qualities of manliness. These included ‘harmony of proportions’, strength and a muscular appearance, the moral qualities of courage, will, decisiveness, firmness, pluck and sang-froid, all bolstered by honour and fair-mindedness. This list formed a near ubiquitous mantra of virility that reverberated across the entire period. What they had in common, as subsequent chapters show, was the conviction that each man owed it to himself, to his nation, and to his ‘race’ to develop these physical and moral virtues. The desired corporeal strength of males was frequently articulated via a visual language of muscularity in which the aesthetic appeal of a toned physique functioned both as proof of physical aptitude and as a means of national defence. Physical culture thus served in the 1920s and 1930s as a disciplinary technology for building normative masculinity in a way that also reinforced the idea, whatever the logic of abstract republican individualism, that citizenship was both male and embodied.8 Who were the physical culture ‘experts’ who sought to transform the bodies of French men in this way? They were drawn from a wide range of professions 8 Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham and London, 2009), pp. 9–10.

Introduction

5

comprising physicians, physiologists, and other kinds of health entrepreneur, as well as pedagogues, military personnel, journalists, littérateurs, and various kinds of politician. The military was a natural home for those interested in the physical training of the male body, and many key figures in this study forged strong institutional links with the armed forces. Arguably the most famous was Georges Hébert, a naval lieutenant who developed his system of exercise after having observed the ‘vigour’ and beauty of ‘primitive’ men (as well as the sporting prowess of Americans) while touring the world with the French navy in the 1890s. In the early years of the twentieth century he began his publishing career and also directed physical education in the navy itself.9 A surprising number of the physical culturist elite (although not Marcel Rouet) were physicians trained in French medical faculties before the First World War, and it is a central part of this story that their presence in the world of interwar physical culture provided an interface between popular body culture and scientific discourse. The men we will meet in the first chapter—Georges Rouhet, James-Edward Ruffier, Emile Valtier, Henri Diffre, Maurice Boigey, and Marcel Bellin du Coteau among others—completed their studies in a period when medical education had only recently accepted that the laboratory was as important as the clinic as a site of learning about the human body. Alongside the 7,000 or so medical students studying each year in fin-de-siècle France, they were likely to have taken the classical baccalauréat and completed studies in chemistry, physics, and natural history before embarking upon at least five gruelling years of medical training. This culminated with a mandatory thesis that often served as an opportunity to apply medical knowledge to the practice of gymnastics or physical education, and to articulate a position on the social as well as the biological importance of exercise.10 In fact, these médecins-culturistes tended to have an uneasy relationship with the laboratory and the model of scientific knowledge it represented. On the one hand, some of them were much taken by the work of the immensely influential physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904)—in particular his attempt to capture the fundamental human movements of the ‘animal machine’ through ‘chronophotography’. This technique was ‘firmly rooted in a mechanistic and materialistic theory’ of the unity of energy and matter that lay at the heart of the thermodynamic revolution in scientific thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century.11 The late nineteenth-century physical education theorist Georges Démeny had performed as a subject in these visual experiments, and one of Marey’s disciples, Dr C.C. Pagès (himself an author of get-fit literature), had gone on to photograph the gymnastics guru Edmond Desbonnet for the same purpose. Like Marey himself, these figures were obsessed with forging the male body as a fatigue-resistant machine to protect 9 André Schlemmer, Deux maîtres de la méthode naturelle: Paul Carton, Georges Hébert (Paris, 1962) pp. 89–91. 10 Thomas N. Bonner, Becoming a Physician: Medical Education in Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States, 1750–1945 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 10, 281–9, 321–37. Edmond Desbonnet studied physiology in the 1880s without ever apparently completing a medical degree. 11 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley, 1992), p. 90.

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him against the assaults of modern life. As Robert Nye and Anson Rabinbach have documented, the physiological consequence of physical exhaustion—whatever its cause—was for these commentators the devirilizing nervous complaint commonly known as neurasthenia.12 Such a state could be avoided only by the regulation—the control, measurement, and organization—of one’s expenditure of intellectual and physical energy. Indeed, the insistence on the necessity of just this kind of ‘rational’ exercise by interwar physical culturists was often reflected in their engagement with the widespread contemporary interest in work science and ‘organization’ more generally. On the other hand, physical culturists popularized the kind of medical holism that George Weisz tells us was commonplace by the 1920s and 1930s, and here they were part of an anti-materialist backlash articulated not only by contemporary philosophers but by other scientists. They objected to what they termed ‘empirical medicine’ (that based on observations in the laboratory rather than underlying ‘rational’ physiological principles), and invoked physiological—alongside ‘spiritual’ or even ‘psychic’—rules that took account of the ‘whole man’ and avoided reducing the human organism to an unthinking and unfeeling mechanics of organs. They associated empirical medicine with scientific materialism, the reduction of all energy to the laws of physical and chemical reaction, which in their view failed to appreciate the spiritual and emotional dimensions of human life. This concern was particularly apparent among naturist physicians whose views rubbed off on physical culturists proper, in part through the personal networks that criss-crossed these fields of endeavour. When physical culturists used the term ‘rational’ to describe their vision of physical culture—as they nearly always did—it was thus to proffer a vision of a better organization of life and work, albeit one that was rooted in principles that had allegedly been lost in mainstream medicine. The word ‘rational’ was thus double freighted, carrying two mutually reinforcing meanings for the physical culturists who used it. Unlike the scientists, philosophers, and cultural commentators detailed by Anson Rabinbach, the idée fixe of interwar physical culturists was not labour power but degeneration. Convinced along with many others by the neo-Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, they believed that the fatigue and nervous disorders engendered by intellectual or physical overwork (surmenage) could be passed genetically on to future generations. This was the process by which, in their view, individual physiological failure could be translated into national and biological decline. Conversely, this neo-Lamarckian logic led interwar physical culturists to believe that ‘rational’ physical exercise—that which was both ‘organized’ (measured, efficient) and based on sound underlying physiological and spiritual principles—could ‘regenerate the race’. This is why they conceived of public health issues in terms of social hygiene and—for a good number—‘positive’ eugenics, in which the breeding stock of the nation could be improved by the selective breeding of the physically fit. In this, physical culturists picked up on the 12 Robert Nye, ‘Degeneration, neurasthenia and the culture of sport in belle époque France’, Journal of Contemporary History, 17 (1982), 1; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, p. 153.

Introduction

7

work of mainstream eugenicists such as medics Adolphe Pinard and Charles Richet—figures who themselves advocated the socially hygienic merits of physical exercise. As this book demonstrates, the physical culturist elite became a conduit for eugenicist thought, carrying it from medical journals and congresses into the domain of popular culture. Like the art historians Fae Brauer and Christina Cogdell, who write about other periods or places, I argue that they helped to embed this eugenicist culture not only through their written prescriptions but by visualizing the problem of biological decline and the promise of physical regeneration through exercise.13 Physical culturists measured the state of the French ‘race’ by its looks, often judging the strength of the nation through the ability of individuals to comply with the aesthetic standards of classical statuary: everyone could spot the degenerate man or woman because they were ‘ugly’. The appeal to beauty made in countless interwar get-fit guides, in which individual virility was conflated with national vitality, thus functioned as a rhetorical instrument of social hygiene just as it did for American pioneers of ‘streamlined’ design. As will become apparent in the chapters that follow, the casual ubiquity of these commentators’ invocation to ‘regenerate the race’ did not prevent them from ignoring the question of what statements such as this might actually mean. In fact, interwar physical culturists proved remarkably disinterested in dwelling on the question of what the French ‘race’ comprised: for them, the Frenchman was presumptively white, and they did not themselves focus on the physical nor other worth of immigrants, colonial subjects, or Jews—their fascination with ‘exotic’ natives being part and parcel of a view that placed such people entirely beyond the hexagon. Although these commentators assumed and perpetuated a conventional hierarchy of race based on colour and ethnic difference, as I will argue in the first chapter, they did not engage with the principal racial theorists of the era—men such as Lucien March and René Martial—perhaps because unlike medical eugenicists such as Adolphe Pinard and Charles Richet these writers did not dwell on the realm of physical exercise in their work. Neither were the physical culturists racial purists. Indeed, racial purism was not a feature even of the most racist of French racial theorizing in this period: Martial himself, who focused on blood groups and the problem of ‘interracial grafting’ in his reflection on the inroads that Mendelian notions of heredity were making in French scientific circles in the 1930s, overtly rejected the quest for racial purity on the grounds that the French ‘race’ was already plural.14 Racial purity, like social Darwinism, was tarred with the brush of being regarded as a German import: that did not prevent racial theorists from assuming hierarchies among peoples nor the development of a eugenicist social hygiene, but it did mean that such ideas were formulated in 13 Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 16, 62, 136, 139, 188; Fae Brauer, ‘Eroticizing Lamarckian eugenics: the body stripped bare during French sexual neoregulation’, in Fae Brauer and Anthea Callen (eds.), Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti (Aldershot and Burlington, 2008), pp. 97–129. 14 Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race, pp. 85, 90; William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 242–5; René Martial, La Race française (Paris, 1934), pp. 9, 227, 313.

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8

distinctly French ways.15 However, the physical culturists did draw on the kind of anthropological knowledge that lay at the heart of social hygiene in this period, and thereby helped to popularize a form of biological determinism with racist foundations. It helped that one of the chief sources of their scientific legitimacy was Charles Richet, who repeated his prewar claims in the 1930s that France was at risk of ‘racial swamping’ through the wrong kind of immigration as justification for ‘regeneration’ through physical exercise and selective breeding.16 In considering the world view of these physical culturist evangelizers, one is struck by just how transnational were their fears of decline and their dreams of biological regeneration. Indeed, the sports and physical culture movement as a whole, naturism, the cultural preference for a slim physique, and the print culture that grew up around all of these things, were developments that took place more or less simultaneously across the entire Western world. The same goes for the purchase of eugenicist thought and the tendency to biologize social problems on which it rested. Much as in France, physicians across Europe and beyond had acquired a good deal of both political and cultural power by the interwar period, facilitating the medicalization of popular culture. Muscular masculine norms were entrenched everywhere.17 Medical and social knowledge about the fit male body was constructed across national boundaries: networks of readers, writers, political activists, and conference-goers were truly international. Get-fit guides by writers such as the hugely successful Danish eugenicist and army lieutenant Jørgen Peter Müller were translated into twenty-six languages—including French—and sold millions of copies.18 Less magnificently, the works of Dr Jean Frumusan—the French doctor who was a specialist in weight-loss and the fight against premature ageing—were translated into English and thus reached a new audience across the Channel.19 Such examples could be multiplied, and a reading of the interwar French physical culturist press makes it crystal clear that ruminations about the French situation were conducted in the shadow of developments elsewhere. What, if anything, was distinctive about the French case? It is easier to pinpoint contextual differences than resolutely ideological ones. The French obsession over depopulation was more acute than in other nations where concerns over a declining birth-rate were nonetheless also expressed. The decline in marital fertility was certainly more marked and more long-lived in France, dating back to the late eighteenth century: in the closing years of the nineteenth century too, deaths overtook 15

Linda L. Clark, Social Darwinism in France (Alabama, 1984), pp. 172–4. Charles Richet, Au secours! (Paris, 1935), pp. 111–22; Charles Richet, La Sélection humaine (Paris, 1919), p. 118. 17 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain, 1880– 1939 (Oxford, 2010); Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago, 2003); James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers (Princeton, 1982); Ana Carden-Coyne, ‘Classical heroism and modern life: bodybuilding and masculinity in the early twentieth century’, Journal of Australian Studies, 63 (2000); Ana CardenCoyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War (Oxford, 2009). 18 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, p. 203; J. P. Muller, Cinq minutes d’entraînement par jour (Paris, 1929). 19 Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘The culture of the abdomen: obesity and reducing in Britain, circa 1900–1939’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), 248. 16

Introduction

9

births over five consecutive years.20 Because dénatalité was an obsession across the board, it made the defence of any kind of contraception—whether for eugenicist reasons or otherwise—virtually impossible. That said, the opposition between hereditary and environmental factors so common in British eugenicist thought did not function in French scientific thinking: it was not so much that the neo-Lamarckism of French commentators speaks to their preference for environmental solutions to social problems rather than biological ones, but rather that environmental influences on individuals were themselves thought to be passed on genetically.21 In France, neo-Lamarckian notions about the inheritance of acquired characteristics were more deeply embedded in both scientific and popular culture, collapsing the distinction between heredity and environment altogether. In France, one could thus quite easily be a positive eugenicist, arguing that making people physically fit would itself improve the ‘race’. Controversial questions of how breeders might be selected could be conveniently side-stepped, and discussion of any impact on the population issue bypassed. Even in countries such as Britain, where the threat of (German) invasion was less compelling than in France, a self-critical narrative of biological decline took root. The British may not have fixed on the image of failure represented for the French by poor results at the medical examination popularly known as the conseil de révision, the gateway to France’s democratic, conscript army of citizens, but they too panicked about military rejection rates, and the public powers and life reformers alike enlisted a military metaphor in seeking a general population classified as ‘A1’ rather than ‘C3’.22 The fact that a similar physical culture—and naturist—movement emerged in France in the face of such political and cultural differences is testament to the genuinely transnational nature of these developments. It begs the question of how these ideas and practices travelled, and I hope that this book helps to shed light on that process. The first chapter of the book explicates all the conceptual strands identified above in relation to the get-fit guides and exercise practices orchestrated by the physical culturist literary and entrepreneurial elite of the 1920s and 1930s, before moving on to chart how far they reverberated in other quarters. Across its five principal chapters, the book traces the shared conversations and patterns of thinking expressed by a seemingly disparate set of voices—physical culturists, state and municipal authorities, the sports intelligentsia and sports practitioners, and radical political actors—in which the physical training of men offered a salve to France’s real and imagined woes. At stake for these commentators was not only the improved health of the individual but the greater vitality of the nation, whether by a strengthening of the armed forces, the productive work-force, or the ‘breeding stock of the race’. Under particular scrutiny is how anxieties about ostensibly non-gendered subjects were mediated through the spectre of male physical failure: a muscular masculine ideal was refined and articulated in relation to the very contemporary 20 Joshua Cole, The Power of Large Numbers: Population, Politics, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca and London, 2000). 21 Clark, Social Darwinism in France. 22 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Managing the Body, pp. 151, 309–11, and ‘The culture of the abdomen’, 241–3.

10

Remaking the Male Body

national insecurities that it was simultaneously designed to assuage. As the above examples suggest—and as several historians have documented—whatever the strength of patriarchy and masculine privilege in this era, masculinity was characterized as inherently unstable—a test that men could fail and a set of physical and moral qualities that needed to be entrained and policed.23 Nowhere was the fragile nature of modern man more visible than in the twiceyearly medical examinations which, across the nation, sorted French men into those who were ‘fit for service’ in the armed forces and those who were not. This process was commonly named after the conseil de révision—the board whose judgements informed it. It is a phrase that haunted the interwar imagination, becoming a stock cultural trope of the era. Reports of high failure rates at this examination, and the apparently poor state of male physique on display there, echoed across the Chamber of Deputies and the popular press alike—a sign and a symbol of a national slide into disgrace. The ritual itself carried considerable ideological weight, constituting a test of patriotism and citizenship in a country where military service was universal.24 And if ‘conscription and the cultural baggage it carried continually re-inscribed the essentially male nature of citizenship in France through most of the twentieth century’, the conseil de révision presented this idea in its most condensed form.25 The ritual presented a specific time and space where citizenship was judged through conformity to the physique of normative masculinity and health, and it thus functioned as a ‘transfer point of power’ in the Foucauldian sense.26 Its cultural resonance helped to cement the notion that citizenship was embodied male, and it gave a tangible face to the conviction, not always fully articulated but widely felt in interwar France, that bodily virility and national vitality was one and the same. It functioned as a metaphor as well as literal proof of manly decline, and for many physical culturists it also provided a metaphor for a preferred eugenicist selection of breeders that might reverse that decline. For all these reasons the conseil de révision is a motif that will be encountered across all the chapters in this book. In the second chapter I explore the conceptual and institutional links between physical culturist ‘experts’ and the public powers. Political elites had been convinced of the link between male physical fitness and national strength at least since the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. I argue that both before and after the First World War, state and municipal authorities shared in the widespread cultural anxieties about the decline of French manhood, and that their language and deeds around the question of physical education and physical fitness in the interwar period betrayed a desire for its revirilization. There was, in fact, a widespread 23 Kristen Stromberg Childers, Fathers, Families and the State in France, 1914–1945 (Ithaca and London, 2003); McLaren, Angus, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries, 1870–1930 (Chicago and London, 1997). 24 See L’Assiette au beurre, March 1906, whose illustrations played on the vulnerability of the poorly-built male bodies under scrutiny; also the cover illustration, Le Petit journal illustré, 15 April 1928, 192. 25 Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great War, 1914–1918, trans. Helen McPhail (Cambridge, 2003), p. 18. 26 Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002), p. 16, drawing on Michel Foucault’s phrase about sexuality.

Introduction

11

admiration, even on the left, for the alleged success of the state’s investment in male athleticism found in ‘totalitarian’ countries such as Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: in those places the male body—and concomitantly the nation—had been remade, so why not in France? As this chapter will show, in official circles the language of degeneration and the ‘improvement of the race’ was as widespread as the belief in the national worth of muscular masculinity, and it was reflected very clearly by the fact that in the 1937 Paris world’s fair the category featuring sport and physical education also included eugenics. The third chapter demonstrates how the hopes and fears about male physical fitness expressed among physical culturists, as well as the activities they recommended, resonated more broadly across the popular press and sports federations. There can be little doubt that by the 1920s the sports movement had eclipsed gymnastics and any other kind of body-building in terms of popular appeal. In this chapter I tease out how the relationship between these two—often competing, often over-lapping—modes of organizing physical exercise developed into something of a popular culture. Crucially, there was a cross-fertilization between the two movements, perhaps symbolized best by Henri Desgrange—journalist, creator of the Tour de France, and founder of France’s biggest daily sports newspaper— who engaged the minds of physical culturists proper and gave them considerable space in his press. After 1918, print culture was marked by the further entrenchment of sport-spectacle in a commercial marketplace attuned to the powerful appeal of what Daniel Roche has called (for the eighteenth century) the ‘culture of appearances’.27 The mass press—alongside the physical culturist press—was fixated by the look of the body, often articulating this through a striking visual register and by attending to such topics as fashion, beauty, and health, as well as a celebration of the sporting hero. This popular culture around physical fitness must be seen against the growth of organized leisure and associative life—phenomena facilitated by the reduction of the working week in 1919 and by the introduction of paid holidays in the mid-1930s. The extension of open-air leisure activities not only provided competition for the ‘product’ being sold by physical culturists, but allowed them to extend their reach: thus the rash of beach clubs that sprang up after the First World War, for example, sometimes explicitly brought a ‘scientifically controlled physical activity’ to those enjoying coastal holidays.28 These activities were certainly all sites for the formation of manly ideals and aesthetic norms. But they also yield further evidence of the preoccupation with bodily regeneration that was born of a fear of physical decline and its national implications. This tendency was further manifested through the widespread media treatment of French elite sporting failure across the 1920s and 1930s—a lament that was often mediated by the unfavourable comparison between home-grown laissez-faire and foreign ‘totalitarian’ sporting models. It seems paradoxical that concern about male bodily decline persisted in these quarters despite the clear increase in sporting activities among interwar 27

Daniel Roche, La Culture des apparences: une histoire du vêtement (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris, 1989). Michel Rainis, ‘French beach sports culture in the twentieth century’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 17 no. 1 (2000), 145–7. 28

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Remaking the Male Body

French males. On the other hand, more self-conscious male (and indeed female) flesh was on public display than ever before in interwar France, which perhaps helps to explain the traction of this kind of cultural pessimism. The last section of the chapter delves into memoir material of sportifs in an attempt to comment on what we can know about how French men themselves internalized or resisted such masculine norms and fears of bodily failure. It is an important part of my argument that physical culture cannot be reduced to any one kind of politics in the conventional sense. The kind of activities—and the rationale for them—encouraged by Marcel Rouet and those in the wider sports movement had surprisingly broad purchase in the 1920s and 1930s, as it did in the closing years of the nineteenth century. One finds similar approaches to the cultural and political value of bodily fitness across the spectrum, from the communist worker sport model and the socialist left, through organized Catholic and Jewish sport to initiatives taken on the radical right. When Jewish commentator General A. Weiller decried the extravagant commercialism of spectator sport in 1935, demanding instead the mass ‘daily practice of rational physical education’ among the young so that the ‘human machine’ could serve productively in ‘all human domains’ (the professions, sport, and the military), he articulated views held by a disparate range of political actors.29 There were conservative and progressive naturists who extolled the merits of ‘rational’ physical culture as well as Catholic and anarchist vegetarians who did so. In brief, there was a good deal of commonality in terms of the tropes and sense of purpose among proponents of physical culture across quite divergent political ideologies. In the chapters that follow I try to signal the differences as well as the synergies across these appropriations and the insistence on the worth of the muscular manly ideal within them. If I cannot entirely disagree with sociologist of sport John Hoberman’s conclusion that for the left the cult of the virile, athletic body was principally an instrument of struggle, while for the right it was a source of political authority in its own right, I shall at least attempt to blunt the force of that opposition.30 To say that the physical culture movement was not the product of an identifiable party-political position, however, is not to say that it was without a politics. It was rare that the ideology and practice of physical culture did not secure hierarchies of gender (notions of sex-difference as well as hegemonic masculinity) as well as of ‘race’. I make it clear that, not least thanks to the influence of physicians, the discursive and real practice of physical culture often served to biologize social problems in a way that perpetuated a range of mutually constitutive racist and sexist optics. I also emphasize an important paradox: the various differences, tensions, and conflicts that marked the social and political worlds of early twentieth-century France— between left and right; bourgeois and working class; Catholic, Jewish and anti-clerical; between normative heterosexuality and lived homosexual experience—served to 29 General A. Weiller, ‘L’entraînement sportif de notre jeunesse’, Le Journal juif, 24 May 1935, 1, 3. Articles in the Parisian Zionist weeklies Le Journal juif and Samedi suggest the valorization of athletic muscle and the incorporation of physical exercise and sport into Jewish festivals. 30 John M. Hoberman, Sport and Political Ideology (London, 1984), pp. 85, 108.

Introduction

13

forge a homogenized, somewhat flattened out, muscular masculine ideal that each group claimed as a mark of distinction. All groups cleaved to a model of slim, muscular athleticism and the honourable sportivité of the athlete. They also at times construed their political opposition as devirilized in a way analogous to the tendency identified by Christopher Forth in relation to the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s, in which each voice in the national polemic configured its enemies as emasculated.31 I hope that in demonstrating these rhetorical uses of muscular and athletic masculinity in interwar debates about other things, one can demonstrate the traction that gender norms achieved at elite and popular political levels and shed light on the process by which ideas may function as material forces in their own right. As Ann Laura Stoler says of the imperial context, it is possible to discern those ‘moments of crisis that made anxieties and fears into political forces and things’.32 What made this homogenization of the ideal possible was the fact that practically all of these players shared a set of ideological hierarchies in which qualities tagged ‘masculine’ trumped those deemed either feminine or feminized. The broad and deep purchase of binary notions of biologically rooted sex-difference in this period is striking: women were always addressed in terms of their maternal destinies, and muscles were only counselled if facilitative of that role.33 Demonstrating athletic prowess and muscular strength was one accessible way for a man to demonstrate his difference from both women and the de-virilizing feminine.34 Indeed, as historians of sport and physical culture have noted, echoing the formula of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, one way of building individual social and cultural capital was to harness muscular manhood as a mark of distinction. Physical culturist authors could be quite explicit about the role played by exercise in maintaining traditional sex-difference. Albert Surier argued in the late 1920s, for example, that because men needed to be ‘virile’ not just in times of war when a ‘tonic of heroism’ was needed on a daily basis, but in civilian life too where a man’s authority as citizen and father, protector of women, should be maintained, a boy needed a ‘rustic’ upbringing with extensive practice of physical culture to fulfil this task. Failure would make him an ‘effeminate, puny runt’, ‘a ridiculous parasite’ whom no decent young woman would take seriously.35 If the association of muscles with manual labour might have lessened their appeal for the middle classes, bourgeois gentlemen nonetheless seem to have responded to fatiguing and sedentary office work by taking exercise to prevent them running to unmanly flab. And both working-class and middle-class Frenchmen were invited by physical culturists to check the general corporeal decline allegedly undergone by white European ‘races’ overstuffed with food, wine, and modern comforts because it threatened existing racial hierarchies: 31

Christopher E. Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (Baltimore, 2004). Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, p. 205. Mary Lynn Stewart, For Health and Beauty: Physical Culture for Frenchwomen, 1880s–1930s (Baltimore, 2001), pp. 152–72. Stewart focuses on the scope for defiance and liberation within female practice of physical exercise, while recognizing the sexism of ‘experts’ in this realm. 34 André Rauch, L’Identité masculine à l’ombre des femmes: de la grande guerre à la Gay Pride (Paris, 2004), p. 82. 35 Albert Surier, ‘L’Éducation virile’, Le Soldat de demain, October 1929, 342–3. 32 33

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Remaking the Male Body

black Africans were allegedly catching up in the ‘struggle for life’ because they were believed to inhabit muscular bodies honed by a rude but virilizing physical existence. Physical culture thus offered working-class men access to cultural ideals of respectable manliness; it promised middle-class men respite from the devirilizing physical inertia of professional life; and it guaranteed all men the edge over women and—if they worked out hard enough—racialized others. Muscular manly ideals certainly allowed for political mobilization in particular forms—the fit, athletic male body was an instrument of political struggle on left and right, and in ways that were strikingly similar despite the very real ideological differences across these factions. Here my arguments dovetail with those recently made by Jessica Wardhaugh, who notes that historians of interwar France have usually overlooked the ways in which the rituals and forms of popular political cultures resembled one another.36 Thus Chapters 4 and 5 of the book, which treat the periods 1918–1934 and 1934–1940 respectively, show how from the early 1920s onwards political movements on left and right developed their own models for enlisting the popular genres of sport and physical culture in their desire to mobilize (especially male) youth. On one level, this turn to the physical was simply a strategy for increasing the numbers of recruits by providing activities that were increasingly popular in the wider culture. Thus radical rightists in the Faisceau and the Jeunesses Patriotes established their own sports and physical education societies in the 1920s to take advantage of the post-war boom in sporting practice, although both of these efforts paled in significance next to the sustained mobilization of working-class youth by the socialist and communist left. Secondly, all of these factions overtly sought to politicize physical exercise in an attempt to make real their preferred social vision by creating—indeed remaking—a male youth instilled with the appropriate virtues. The ‘new society’ imagined by all of these groups, regardless of their ideological divisions, needed a ‘new man’ to build and maintain it. The virtues of this ‘new man’, I argue, include but are not restricted to the development of a certain kind of muscular physique and a certain way of being in the world, involving both courage and self-discipline, which further embedded the tropes of interwar hegemonic masculinity. I thus argue that these movements understood and sought to express the political realm through the physical, and that they offered a (usually unarticulated) legitimation of the cultural capital accumulated by a fit body. Thirdly, male bodies during the late Third Republic were not, in the political imaginations of right and left, restricted to a merely discursive existence. The physical fitness underpinning the muscular, athletic ideal celebrated as part of a social vision for an ideal future was also necessary to the present struggle to achieve that future against ideological foes. Underneath the ubiquitous vocabulary of ‘combat’ and ‘battle’ lay a social reality of frequent physical contact, aggression, and violence among rival groups which elicited the need for the physical training of shocktroops. Indeed, these final chapters show that most interwar political movements 36 Jessica Wardhaugh, ‘In Pursuit of the People’: Political Culture in France, 1934–39 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 229–35.

Introduction

15

endorsed the same kind of martial manhood as that desired by the state—the creation of citizen-soldiers—even if the idealized combatant was fighting for revolutionary or counter-revolutionary ends rather than in the French army. Ironically, these factions also made rhetorical use of carefully selected male bodily failure, by exalting and harnessing to political ends the heroic failures of the war dead (figures deployed rhetorically to legitimate any given critique of state foreign or defence policy) or that of the conscript weakling judged unfit for military service (a figure perversely honoured by the communist left for his implicit rebellion against imperialist state desires on the male body). Chapter 5 extends this tripartite analysis into the years of heightened political crisis after the so-called Stavisky riots of 1934. I show how radical political movements invested even more heavily—rhetorically and pragmatically—in the mobilizing potential of sport and physical culture in this climate. Indeed, during the era of the Popular Front governments between June 1936 and April 1938, distinctions between mass politics and mass (physical) culture often collapsed entirely as sports stadiums themselves were used across the political spectrum as key sites for mass political expression. A considerable part of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of the under-researched but highly significant sport and physical education society (SPES) created within the radical rightist Croix de Feu/Parti Social Français (CF/ PSF). By the late 1930s, SPES was used by this enormous political party (it had an estimated membership of one million by 1937) not only to gain members but to seek social and physical transformation through the realm of physical culture. What emerges from an exploration of this kind of politically sectarian mobilization of the young male athletic body is that, in these circles too, an acknowledgement of the importance of physical culture for the ‘improvement of the race’ was commonplace. As William Schneider has demonstrated, the language of neoLamarckian eugenics was even overtly adopted by the French Communist Party after 1935.37 The chapter thus charts how far sport and physical culture were used as tools of popular political mobilization in the 1930s, examining the ways by which these factions, in surprisingly similar ways, took part in the pervasive public conversation on the problem of male bodily decline and its correction by physical exercise. In highlighting the purchase of these concerns in the interwar years I shed light on the roots of Vichy’s project for masculine renewal after 1940. For many onlookers, the military defeat of France in June 1940 furnished proof of male bodily decline rather than the accumulated strategic mistakes of the army. Thus the last chapter of the book outlines how responses to the collapse incorporated such a view, and explores the Vichy regime’s quest for a masculine physical renewal. Indeed, the Vichy regime invested more funds in the reorganization of physical education and mass sporting practice than even the Popular Front, and sought to impose muscular masculinity on the nation’s male youth under the leadership of former Wimbledon tennis champion Jean Borotra, the general commissioner for sport. I also trace the post-1940 careers of the interwar physical culturists and 37

Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 199–207.

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Remaking the Male Body

other proponents of physical exercise, some of whom—such as Marcel Rouet, Georges Hébert, James-Edward Ruffier, Henri Diffre and the fascists of Jacques Doriot’s Parti Populaire Français (PPF)—cemented their reputations and activities during this period of Occupation. I argue that Vichy’s public and sustained engagement with the desire to rebuild French men physically and morally in the wake of military defeat shows not only a further instance of the political instrumentalization of male athleticism, but also the renewed purchase of the interwar notion that the problem of male bodily failure could be solved by the application of a rational physical development that would save both individual and ‘race’. But crucially, I want this discussion to serve as a corrective to the reductionist view that the interwar cult of virility was inherently or exclusively fascist. By extending my discussion to Vichy I want to show that its celebration of hyper-masculinity drew on transnational patterns of thinking that were firmly rooted across a broad constituency in 1920s and 1930s France.

1 Physical Culturists, Masculine Ideals, and Social Hygiene in Interwar France This chapter explores how masculine norms—or manly ideals—were articulated within the periodical press, get-fit manuals, fitness schools, and merchandizing produced within the commercial world of physical culture in the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses on how the articulation of these norms betrays profound anxieties about the robustness of French manhood. Indeed, despite the documented increase in sporting activity, interwar get-fit literature and the physical culturist press as a whole was focused as much on male physical failure and decline as on a celebration of male strength and fitness. Its pronouncements suggest that male strength could be measured aesthetically and judged (often harshly) according to what a body looked like as well as what it could do: these were thus beauty manuals for men as much as guides to fitness. Crucially, the physical culturist world view was marked by what Christopher Forth describes as ‘the double logic of modern civilization’— the fear that the comforts of modern living, which left the male body ‘soft’ and thus potentially feminized, had resulted in an erosion of ‘the corporeal foundations of male privilege’.1 By the 1920s and 1930s the muscular masculine ideal was articulated more often than previously in a high-impact visual formula—in the growing print and consumer culture around stadiums, advertising, cinema, newspapers and magazines of interwar France—and probably reached a considerably larger and cross-class audience than in the years before 1914. But this is not just a story about the idealization of manhood. In order to see how constructions of masculinity in effect mediated debates about ostensibly nongendered subjects, these discourses must be situated in relation to the wider patterns of thinking with which they intersected, and to the institutional fields in which they were articulated. The writers who argued for the improvement of the male body through physical culture were scattered across a wide range of professions and institutions, although cross-fertilization of ideas and personnel among them was not uncommon. They played a role in developing what Anson Rabinbach, in his influential study of fatigue management in the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century imagination, termed a ‘body of social knowledge’ about the national benefits of a fit physique.2 As Gilbert Andrieu points out, the models for 1 Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West, pp. 5, 14–16. Similar criticisms formed part of the eighteenthcentury critique of luxury; Georges Vigarello, Les Métamorphoses du gras: histoire de l’obésité (Paris, 2010), p. 165. 2 Rabinbach, The Human Motor, p. 10.

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Remaking the Male Body

the ‘corporeal practices’ established in the school sector had in fact borrowed from the ‘commercialized practices’ of physical culturists that had developed in France from the early years of the Third Republic.3 And medical theses in this period were often discursive historiques of the chosen subject area, as likely to cite Maurice Barrès as the works of clinical investigation.4 Thus it would seem that medical research could easily echo wider, and much less scientifically legitimated, views on a range of aspects connected with the human body, just as it simultaneously influenced the terms of such cultural debate. Composed of doctors, political actors, freelance journalists, and commercial practitioners of physical culture who could be placed at a range of points along the conventional political spectrum, a physical culturist intelligentsia converged in the assumption that individual fitness was key to national vitality. Due to the considerable overlap in terms of personnel and ideas among physical culturists and official discourses and institutions, I argue that anxieties about masculinity resonated far outside the physical culturist enterprise itself. What is more, while physical culturist intellectuals engaged with the concerns of the medical and political elite, they simultaneously reached out to a mass audience in an effort both to appeal to the interests of sportifs and to convert the uninitiated into the benefits of physical culture. As a result, physical culturists operating in the commercial realm effectively popularized (indeed contributed to) various scientific attempts to engage with interwar society and politics. For a start, they were a conduit for the eugenicist concerns that emanated principally from the Faculties of Medicine. Secondly, in their emphasis on the importance of the ‘rational’ application of the principles of human physiology in developing the human body, they echoed the scientific thinkers whose world views are explicated in Anson Rabinbach’s work. For example, not a few of the physical culturists we will meet in this chapter favoured a system of measuring the ‘robusticity coefficient’ of each subject, based on physical measurements, physiological tests, and the observation of performance. Versions of such a thing had been developed by the military gymnast Colonel Amoros in the nineteenth century, but their popularity persisted.5 The great fear was that of surmenage, whether that ‘overwork’ took the form of intellectual labours at school and university, bodily exhaustion through repetitive muscular action in the factory, or a preference for a commerce-driven and over-competitive sporting practice (too often spectacular) that did not lead to an ‘harmonious’ development of the body. In this sense, physical culturists expressed the same kind of anxieties about Taylorism that animated debates about economic organization after the First World War. Somewhat like the engineers analysed by Jackie Clarke, physical culturists wanted to forge the male body as a new kind of rationally organized and fatigue-resistant machine 3 Gilbert Andrieu, L’Homme et la force: des marchands de la force au culte de la forme (XIXe et XXe siècles), preface by Jacques Thibault (Joinville-le-Pont, 1988), pp. 17, 19. 4 Gustave-Henry Daspect, La Volonté peut-elle s’opposer à l’emprise héréditaire? Thèse pour le doctorat en médecine (Bordeaux, 1925), 17, 23, 41. 5 Dr Bellin du Coteau, ‘La Valorisation humaine’, in Marcel Labbé and Dr Bellin du Coteau, Traité d’éducation physique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1930), pp. 528–9; André Rauch, Le Souci du corps: histoire de l’hygiène en éducation physique (Paris, 1983), p. 176.

Physical Culturists, Masculine Ideals, and Social Hygiene

19

while simultaneously guarding (if in different ways and for different reasons) against the reduction of such bodies to mere mechanical cogs in a rationally organized modern work-place.6 Indeed, tugging against this materialist scientific interest in managing the body was another great preoccupation—the wish for the medical and other sciences to embrace a non-materialist understanding of the ‘whole man’. In their recognition of the ‘spiritual’ deficit of modern civilization, in their diagnosis of physical ailments as a symptom of a deeper organic—and often ‘nervous’—crise that was causing the biological degeneration of Frenchmen, and in their advocacy of ‘natural remedies’ for these problems, interwar physical culturists demonstrate the so-called spiritual turn away from both the empiricist and materialist traditions of mainstream science.7 Physical culturists thus drew on two apparently contradictory scientific traditions: the materialist attempt to manage fatigue, and the anti-materialist (often naturist) contempt for the reduction of individual energy to physical matter. What they both provided was a set of tools for articulating and attempting to solve what was often described as a twentieth-century ‘crisis of civilization’. This chapter will demonstrate how these concerns about the alleged miserable state of male bodies under modern civilization; about surmenage, fatigue, and measuring human performance, about the need to rescue the ‘whole man’ from ‘false science’, and about degeneration and decline of the French ‘race’, intertwined in the multidisciplinary world of interwar physical culture in France. T H E WO R L D O F P H Y S I C A L C U LT U R E IN THE 1920s AND 1930s If it was ever true that in the nineteenth century ‘many men made a point of becoming bigger and fatter to advertise their wealth and power’, that formula clearly no longer worked by the 1920s.8 Christopher Forth and others have illustrated how a shift in masculine bodily ideals can be located in the latter part of the nineteenth century. By the 1890s, obesity in particular had ceased to be a marker of status and wealth for men, and instead had become a sign of physical and moral flabbiness. As Forth puts it, ‘the once favourable figure of the prosperously corpulent man was slowly being eclipsed by that of the muscular and energetic athlete or body-builder’.9 It was this period that witnessed the first great upsurge of dieting and physical culture for men in France, in which weight-loss manuals urged the development of a toned and slim-line physique. The ‘bourgeois belly’ no longer 6 Jackie Clarke, France in the Age of Organization: Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy (Oxford, 2011), pp. 29–30, 162–3. 7 Andres Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist: Alexis Carrel and the Socio-biology of Decline (New York and Oxford, 2007), 60–2; George Weisz, ‘A moment of synthesis: medical holism in France between the wars’, in Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz, (eds.), Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950 (New York and Oxford, 1998), pp. 68–93. 8 McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity, p. vii. 9 Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood, p. 172.

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impressed. The new model of lean plastic beauty in muscular movement was further accentuated amid ‘the rise of leisure, the new focus on the self, [and] the revolution in medical knowledge’ that characterized the interwar years.10 Several of the figures who had dominated the belle époque in this regard continued their careers well into the 1930s, and in many cases beyond. Certainly, Marcel Rouet (1909–1982) represented a distinctly younger generation than most of the get-fit gurus discussed in this chapter. Their methods were eclectic—if not deliberately ecumenical—and in practice involved a bricolage of the various kinds of gymnastics current in France, drawing most notably on so-called Swedish gymnastics that minimized the use of apparati. Principal among the physical culturist elite after the First World War was Edmond Desbonnet (1867–1953). Born in Lille, Desbonnet refined his own method—‘the gymnastics of organs’—while studying physiology in the 1880s, eventually adding hydrotherapy and hot-air baths. He claimed to have rescued himself from developing tuberculosis through his own physical culture ‘cure’, and he popularized these methods through the periodical that he founded, La Culture physique, and far-flung lecture tours (he reached London and Lisbon as well as several cities in France).11 Desbonnet’s long-term collaborator Georges Rouhet studied medicine in Paris (his thesis was on gymnastics) before setting up a medical practice in Bordeaux, where he amused onlookers by taking restorative mid-winter dips in frozen rivers.12 A third highly influential figure whose career spanned decades was navy man Georges Hébert (1875–1957), inventor of the ‘natural method’, which comprised walking, running, swimming, climbing, jumping, wrestling, boxing, and throwing, and whose chief periodical was entitled L’Education physique. Other significant figures that moved within these networks include the physicians Dr James-Edward Ruffier (1875–1965), Dr Henri Diffre (1887–1971), and Dr Emile Valtier (d. 1950). Ruffier abandoned medicine before 1914 to devote himself to his twin loves—physical culture and cycling—and spent his long career running physical culture establishments in Paris and on the south coast. Diffre was a specialist in sports medicine and the medical control of physical education, gave physical culture lessons on the radio, and directed activities at the La Bourboule thermal spa until at least the mid-1950s.13 Valtier, who served in the French navy during the First World War, was initiated into physical culture via Hébert’s method, coming second in his category in one of the latter’s competitions to showcase ‘complete athletes’ in 1913, before switching his allegiance to Desbonnet.14 10 Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, masculine corpulence was at times ridiculed just as svelte athletic silhouettes were praised, so the shift was not absolute. Vigarello, Les Métamorphoses du gras, pp. 169, 186–93, 251–61. 11 Pierre Marie, Force et santé pour tous: le triomphe de la culture physique (Paris, 1929), pp. 145–8; Pierre Bardel, obituary for Desbonnet, La Culture physique, August 1953, 4. 12 Professor L. Vissaguet, preface to Georges Rouhet, La Jungle des civilisés (Nancy, Paris, and Strasbourg, 1925), p. vi; Georges Rouhet, Revenons à la nature et régénérons-nous (Paris, 1913), pp. 225–6. 13 George Weisz, ‘Spas, mineral waters, and hydrological science in twentieth-century France’, Isis, 92 no. 3 (2001), 479–80; Michel Dupont, Dictionnaire historique des médecins dans et hors de la médecine (Paris, 1999), p. 194. 14 E. Ducher, La Culture physique, October 1929, 2.

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There was however much borrowing, adaptation and cross-fertilization among the many models in the physical culture market place. For Rouhet and Desbonnet, writing in the early years of the twentieth century, once their ‘gymnastics of the organs’ had built a sound rib-cage, adults ought to practise the movements necessary to life, such as running, jumping, carrying things, climbing, pushing, and pulling—a list reminiscent of Georges Hébert’s natural method.15 Others concurred in the idea that one ought to graduate onto the more challenging hébertiste regime after building a sound foundation. Dr Bellin du Coteau—a specialist in sports medicine whose opinions found their way into official circles—wanted those aged between six and fifteen years to begin their regime with fifteen minutes of gentle Swedish gymnastics that focused on breathing. Hébert’s ‘natural gymnastics’ would then take place, followed by sports such as wrestling, boxing, canoeing, shooting, football, fencing, tennis, jiu-jitsu, skiing, and horse-riding.16 Dr Ruffier wanted to augment hébertiste activities with training in weights.17 Yet others found Hébert’s regime too basic: Marcel Rouet recommended it for children; others, like military physician Maurice Boigey, thought it suitable for everyone, even girls.18 Dr Jean Frumusan, a specialist in weight-loss and anti-ageing, made no real distinction between the ‘Swedish method’ and that of Georges Hébert, as long as any work-out was taken ‘under the form of rational exercise’.19 Indeed, what these physical culturists had in common was the professed desire to develop a ‘rational’ scheme based on physiological principles whose effects could be measured, and which would lead to the integral ‘harmonious development’ of the body. This kind of language resonates throughout the physical culturist press for the entire first half of the twentieth century. One remarkable feature about this cohort of physical culturists is the great number of them who were physicians. Here the idea of the medical marketplace is helpful. There was a surfeit of trained medical doctors in France (15,000 in 1890 but 25,000 in 1931), which meant that many scrambled to make a living in the commercial world of alternative, natural, or ‘holistic’ remedies—all approaches that sought to treat the ‘whole man’ in ways that increasingly interested both the medical mainstream and the general public. Alternative health had been gaining ground due to the general revolt against ‘scientism’, specialization, and biomedicine that characterized the medical profession itself in the early twentieth century, and which meant that areas such as naturopathy and homeopathy enjoyed a certain official status. Pushing oneself as an alternative health specialist or holist therefore became medically and commercially viable. There appears also to have been a growing popular appetite for such alternative medical cures. As in Germany, men 15 Georges Rouhet and Edmond Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain (Paris and Nancy, 1908), p. 3. 16 Dr Bellin du Coteau, ‘Le système nerveux au cours de l’activité physique’, in Labbé and Bellin du Coteau, Traité d’éducation physique, p. 322. 17 Ruffier, Traité d’éducation physique, vol. 1, pp. 141–2. 18 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 129; Maurice Boigey, La Cure d’exercice (Paris, 1934), p. 73; Maurice Boigey, L’Élevage humain, I, Formation du corps, éducation physique (Paris, 1917), pp. 96, 103–9, 118. 19 Dr Jean Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement: le devoir, la possibilité et les moyens, 15th edn. (Paris, 1931), pp. 107, 133.

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and women ‘increasingly defined their personal problems in medical terms, described them in medical language, and understood them in a medical framework.20 If, as George Weisz argues, this ‘growing medicalization of French society . . . had turned large numbers of French men and women into consumers of pharmaceuticals’,21 it also made them receptive to a range of ‘natural’ health remedies including sun and water therapy, and physical culture. Many physical culturists may be described as medical entrepreneurs, presiding over commercial empires that included get-fit guides, a popular periodical press, physical fitness merchandise, and physical culture schools that offered not only exercise but also other natural remedies. Georges Rouhet opened schools in Bordeaux and Paris; Ruffier created his own establishment in the 1930s in Paris’s 9th arrondissement, offering gymnastics, massage, hydrotherapy, ‘Scottish showers’, and UV treatment. The Paris telephone directory for the 1920s and 1930s shows that such establishments were common, that they had longevity, and that they were not restricted to any single neighbourhood.22 Probably most successful were the schools opened by Edmond Desbonnet (see Figs. 1.1 and 1.2), whose first opened in his native Lille at the end of the nineteenth century, and who went on to create some 300 schools across France, Belgium, and Switzerland.23 The Paris branch (whose original director had been Dr Ruffier) included office space for medical ‘experts’, various halls for working out, shower rooms and cloak rooms, and a space for anatomical studies designed for use by trainee teachers. Advertisements for Desbonnet’s books and gymnasia, which were ubiquitous in the physical culture press in the first half of the twentieth century, frequently featured ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs of young or middle-aged men supposedly transformed by a couple of dozen lessons in one of Desbonnet’s schools. Although most of these gyms appear to have been open also to female membership, publicity materials suggest that their principal demographic was male. This also applies for the weight-loss manuals, which, as in Britain in this period, were targeted more systematically at men than at women.24 The specialist and popular press abounded with advertisements for get-fit merchandise, including the ‘Home Exerciser’ (a device made of rubber that was attached to a door-frame to form a pulley system) and the so-called ‘Olympic’ trainer, sold in models that were respectively labelled ‘lady’, ‘adult’, ‘man’, ‘athlete’, ‘Hercules’, and ‘Super-Hercules’ in the kind of muscular hierarchy common in the period (see Fig. 1.3). Perhaps most intriguing was the ‘grandisseur’ (see Fig. 1.4), marketed at the whole family in a promise to increase the height of users by as much as 7 cm, seemingly making them more elegant and bourgeois into the bargain. Its orthopaedic function was signalled too, since it was allegedly helpful for straightening the backbones of children with spinal deviations. This advertisement 20

Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, p. 3. George Weisz, ‘A moment of synthesis’, 68–93; George Weisz, ‘The emergence of medical specialization in the nineteenth century’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 77 (2003), 574. 22 Bottin du commerce for Paris, 1924–1940, Archives de Paris. 23 Léon Sée, obituary for Desbonnet in La Culture physique, August 1953, 1–2. 24 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘The Culture of the abdomen’, 254. 21

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Fig. 1.1. Unpaginated advertisement: a fixture of La Culture physique in the belle époque. Georges Rouhet and Edmond Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain, 1908, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

ran for decades. Historian Douglas Mackaman points out that it was placed in thermal spa newspapers in France in the early years of the twentieth century— evidence of the growing respectability of body culture among the bourgeoisie: he points out that the image would no doubt have been considered a ‘brash oddity’ if it had appeared much before that.25 The same product was marketed at least until the early 1950s, its scientific claims identical but the human figures sartorially updated, the man in jock shorts and the woman in a bikini.26 25 Douglas Peter Mackaman cites L’Echo d’Aix-les-Bains, 1909, in Leisure Settings: Bourgeois Culture, Medicine, and the Spa in Modern France (Chicago and London, 1998), p. 157. 26 La Culture physique, September 1953, n.p. The ‘poignée d’Hercule’ is another example: designed to be slipped into a jacket pocket for daily use, it was advertised as early as 1908 and as late as 1953.

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Fig. 1.2. Here the sartorial elegance of the bourgeois gentleman has been updated for the interwar period. La Culture physique, April 1930, n.p., The publication claimed that this poster appeared in public places across forty towns in France. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

As these examples suggest, physical culturists in this period often turned their attention to general body culture and advocated so-called natural remedies. There was, in fact, a good deal of cross-fertilization between culturists and naturists, just as in interwar Germany and Britain. In their scheme of things, physical culturists praised the therapeutic qualities of natural elements such as water (of varying temperatures), sunshine, and fresh air, as well as laying a good deal of emphasis on what might constitute a correct diet. In general, they counselled semi-vegetarianism,

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Fig. 1.3. Advertisement for the ‘Olympic trainer’. La Culture physique, July 1937, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

Fig. 1.4. Advertisement for a body lengthener. La Culture Physique, May 1926, p. 465. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

eating small amounts of red meat only with the midday meal and adhering to fish and/or vegetables in the evening: it was feared that red meat led to surmenage of the digestive system. Some interwar physical culturists advised a veritable vegetarian regimen (Rouhet himself admitted in the mid-1920s that he would be a

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complete vegetarian if he had the courage27), but in general the physical culturists remained omnivores. As Marcel Rouet put it in the mid-1930s: ‘[I]’ve never seen a well-muscled vegetarian.’28 There was near ubiquitous condemnation of processed foods such as white bread and pastries; and tobacco and spirits, if not always wine, were vilified. Prescriptions were at times class specific: Dr Maurice Fleury (1860–1931), a member of the Academy of Medicine in the 1920s, and an expert on neurasthenia, advised that a country gentleman who went hunting for six hours a day could drink ‘with impunity a measure of wine’ that would nonetheless be harmful to the ‘homme de cabinet’.29 There was much support for the drinking of copious amounts of water and tisanes in order to flush toxins out of the body.30 Reference to the most high-profile interwar exponent of vegetarianism in France, Dr Paul Carton, however, was sporadic, although there were clear echoes of his ideas in a number of respects. Indeed, Carton had met with George Hébert in 1912 or so, and their influence on one another appears to have been considerable.31 Carton favoured a diet vastly reduced in red meat, proclaiming that an ‘athletic constitution’ was perfectly achievable without it.32 For him, red meat was ‘an insidious poison’ whose consumption had risen by 300 per cent in the half century before the First World War: in addition to stimulants such as coffee, tea, and tobacco it led to a waste of ‘nervous energy’.33 Carton urged physical activity for ‘normal’ subjects and weaklings alike, favouring Georges Hébert’s natural method over boring Swedish gymnastics. As Carton put it, ‘one digests as much with one’s legs as with one’s stomach’. Heliotherapy too was held to facilitate digestion, boost the metabolism, and accelerate the elimination of toxins from the human body. Carton claimed success with Hébert’s method among the subjects in his ‘natural culture centres’ and holiday camps (including one in Brévannes, near Paris, aimed at working-class children), and hoped that such exercise would ‘rebuild our race, in reinforcing its physical vigour and its spiritual worth!’34 27

Rouhet, La Jungle des civilisés, pp. 22, 62. Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 152. 29 Maurice de Fleury, Quelques conseils pour vivre vieux (Paris, 1926), p. 102. 30 Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, p. 107. 31 See Jean-Michel Delaplace, Georges Hébert: sculpteur de corps (Paris, 2005), pp. 71, 143–9; Arouna P. Ouédraogo, ‘Food and the purification of society: Dr Paul Carton and vegetarianism in interwar France’, Social History of Medicine, 14, 2 (2001), 223. 32 Paul Carton, Enseignements et traitements naturistes pratiques, 2nd edn. (Saint-Amand, 1935), pp. 11–13. 33 Carton, Enseignements et traitements naturistes pratiques, p. 15. 34 Paul Carton, La Cure de soleil et d’exercices chez les enfants, 3rd edn. (Saint-Amand, 1935), pp. 8–9, 11, 22, 43ff, 102. Similar enterprises were created by arguably the most successful interwar naturists, physician brothers Gaston and André Durville, whose review La vie sage sold 400,000 copies a year and whose sports-orientated naturist camps Physiopolis (Villennes-sur-Seine) and Héliopolis (Ile du Levant) attracted thousands. See Sylvain Villaret, Naturisme et éducation corporelle: des projets réformistes aux prises en compte politiques et éducatives (XIXe–milieu du XXe siècle) (Paris, 2005), pp. 139–54; Stephen L. Harp, ‘Demanding vacation au naturel: European nudism and postwar municipal development on the French Riviera’, Journal of Modern History, 83 no. 3 (2011), 518–22. 28

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More broadly, Carton’s ideas resonated with those who hoped that ‘naturist medicine’—including homeopathy—would counter the negative effects of modern civilization. Like many others in this period, he yearned for a ‘spiritual turn’, for synthesis and holism in the diagnosis and treatment of health problems, and manifested an orientalist bent by extolling the merits of ancient Hindu medicine. Carton decried the ‘false science’ that had led to material progress at the expense of humanity’s long-term health.35 He joined in the chorus of interwar voices opposed to both physical and intellectual surmenage, simultaneously decrying the unintended consequences of modern transport and a sedentary lifestyle. The war too had created nervous tension, anxiety, and surmenage, leading to ‘fatigued organisms’ ripe for tuberculosis.36 In keeping with the dominant views among physical culturists, Carton thought that such diseases as cancer and tuberculosis were caused not only by contamination through ‘microbes’, but by the general weakening of the human ‘terrain’ due to the strains of modern life.37 He also conflated health problems with moral decline and political instability in his thinking, and in response he advocated ‘a just and tolerant synthesis at once religious, scientific, philosophical, and political, under the unity of leadership of a chef ’. In this respect, Carton’s—indeed like Hébert’s— was a conservative voice, for whom the cultivation of ‘national virility’ entailed the rediscovery of religious faith, a sense of duty, the confinement of women to their traditional social roles, and the fight against class struggle.38 He fashioned a natural principle out of social inequalities in way that was not shared by all those interested in physical and body culture in this period. As famous for his naturism as for his vegetarianism, Carton contrasted a ‘Christian’ naturism which hankered after a synthesis of the natural and the supernatural, the physical and the religious; with the mixed-sex and obscene ‘pagan cult’ emanating from Germany that advocated such ‘dangerous medicine’ as UV treatment, hypnotism, rejuvenation of the blood, and Freudianism. Carton instead celebrated a French naturism ostensibly based on Greco-Latin traditions.39 The naturist movement under the leadership of Marcel Kienné de Mongeot differed from Carton’s vision in significant respects, but it shared some of the former’s preoccupations about the problems of modern life and the place of physical exercise in solving them. It claimed to have at least 50,000 sympathizers in 1929, and although this is no doubt a vastly exaggerated figure, Stephen Harp judges that its periodical Vivre was ‘the most important and widely circulated 35

Carton, La Cure de soleil, p. 1. Paul Carton, ‘Les méfaits de l’heure d’été’, La Revue naturiste: revue mensuelle indépendante, January 1922, 4–7, and ‘La tuberculose, maladie de civilisation’, March 1926, 33–41. 37 Paul Carton, Les Lois de la vie saine, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1926), pp. 189–90; Dr Gaston Durville, L’art de vivre longtemps: comment prolonger la vie par le naturisme (Paris, 1930), pp. 55–8. 38 Carton, Enseignements et traitements naturistes pratiques, p. 25; Carton, Les Lois de la vie saine, p. 153. Carton admired Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras, and read Action Française. See Ouédraogo, ‘Food and the purification of society’, 239. The hébertiste organ carried advertisements for Antoine Rédier’s ‘fascist’ Légion, L’Education physique, 15 May 1922; the views of Maurice Barrès on red meat were cited if not endorsed by Jean des Vignes Rouges, ‘L’éducation de la confiance en soi’, L’Education physique, 15 October 1923, 7. 39 Carton, La Cure de soleil, pp. 108–9; Carton, in Revue naturiste, cited in Sport et santé, 15 September 1929, 7–8. 36

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nudist publication of the interwar years.’40 Its lectures on the theme of ‘sports nudity’, with a screening of a censored version of the German naturist film Strength and Beauty, reportedly attracted some 400 people in 1928.41 Kienné’s group extolled the merits of physical culture alongside hydrotherapy and sun therapy, preferring the hébertiste practice of outdoor exercise performed in the fresh air in semi-nudity to indoor movements taking place in confined bedrooms full of exhalations, tobacco, and gas from heating systems.42 Thus Vivre popularized the ‘centre hébertiste’ in Colmar, Alsace, and encouraged membership of its own nudist Sparta-Club north-west of Paris (Eure).43 Kienné de Mongeot’s organization no doubt represented the ‘pornographic’ face of naturism as far as Paul Carton was concerned. Indeed, in the late 1920s Vivre was temporarily banned for sale in Parisian kiosks by order of the Paris prefect of police, due to its publication of photographs of naked men and women.44 Still, Kienné worked for a time with highly respectable supporters of naturism such as Dr Henri Diffre, who also appeared on the central committee of the naturist league for physical and mental regeneration in the 1920s and early 1930s—an organization interested not only in nudism but in physical culture, heliotherapy, ‘rational food science’, hydrotherapy, swimming, sports, and ‘education in mental and emotional strength’.45 Just as Dr Ruffier and Dr Bellin du Coteau explicitly advocated naturism, their work was drawn upon by such naturist ventures as Dr Marcel Viard’s ‘Calme et santé’ and by the Durville brothers.46 Similarly, the Trait d’union naturist society, which had twenty-two branches in the early 1930s and ran a number of vegetarian restaurants and holiday camps in Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille, and Nice, carried the views of the director of the La Rochelle branch of Desbonnet’s physical culture empire on the importance of rational work-outs for the prevention of illness and premature ageing.47 These examples demonstrate synergies of interest across divergent kinds of naturism, and as the next sections explore, they anticipate those in the world of physical culture proper as well.

40 Marcel Kienné de Mongeot, Vivre: culture physique et mentale, 1 July 1929, 4; Harp, ‘Demanding vacation au naturel’, 517–18. The ‘Vivre’ movement probably reached a high point of 3,000 members in the early years of the 1930s. 41 Vivre intégralement, 15 May 1931, n.p.; Vivre, 15 May 1928, 13. 42 Dr M. Didier, ‘Grand air et air confiné’, Vivre, 15 February 1927, 7–8. 43 Hemdé, ‘Centres hébertistes’, Vivre, 15 July 1927, 12; Villaret, Naturisme et éducation corporelle, 167–9. Sparta-Club had 800 members in the late 1930s. 44 Vivre, 1 July 1929, 3. Carton approved of the ban on the sale of ‘obscene reviews’. Carton, La Cure de soleil, pp. 108–9. 45 Vivre, 15 July 1927, 2; inside cover of Lumière et vérité, no. 1, May 1930. The statutes were printed on the back cover of this first issue. 46 Sylvain Villaret and Jean-Michel Delaplace, ‘La Méthode naturelle de Georges Hébert ou l’école natursiste en éducation physique (1900–1939)’, STAPS, 63 (2003), 29–44; Dr G. A. Richard, ‘Le cœur dans le sport’, Calme et santé, November 1937, 4, and ibid., ‘La bicyclette’, December 1937, 4; Dr Gaston Durville, La Cure naturiste: pour entretenir sa vigueur et se guérir sans médicaments, vol. 1, 5th edn. (Paris, 1936), pp. 12ff. 47 ‘L’histoire du mouvement naturiste en France’, Régénération, April 1933, 77–80; Blutel, ‘Un facteur primordial de réussite dans la vie et de bonheur: la culture physique’, Régénération, June–July 1936, 17–21.

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G E T  F I T L I T E R AT U R E F O R M E N The get-fit manuals themselves repeatedly made the point that any man of any means could become an Adonis merely by the rational practice of a few minutes of physical culture each day. It was indeed common for physical culturists (among them Desbonnet, Rouhet and naturist Kienné de Mongeot) to present a narrative of personal transformation from childhood weakling to strongman—a journey from bodily failure to corporeal success through methodical exercise and healthy living.48 Dr Jean Frumusan joined the chorus of those who advocated a short session of physical culture in one’s bedroom soon after waking: this was known as gymnastique de chambre. Memoir literature certainly attests to the considerable popularity of this kind of activity. Naturist vegetarian Paul Carton prescribed a series of ‘natural’ movements—throwing, lifting, jumping, and so on—on arising from one’s bed, performed virtually naked next to an open window. For Carton, the routines should be completed with a work-out with a boxer’s punch-bag or a spot of ‘artificial canoeing’.49 The general idea is perfectly illustrated in Dr Ruffier’s physical culture manual, Soyons forts! (see Fig. 1.5). An exaggeratedly straightbacked middle-class man (one can discern his social class by his sock suspenders among other things), stands wearing only a tiny gym slip, holding his arms aloft, a

Fig. 1.5. ‘La gymnastique de chambre’. Dr J.-E. Ruffier, Soyons forts!, 5th edn., Paris, 1930, p. 51. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.) 48 Kienné de Mongeot, ‘Raisons et conditions de notre action’, Vivre, 15 October 1931, 3, was a self-confessed weakling until his mother took the family to living in the fresh air and open spaces of the Ardennes. 49 Carton, Les Lois de la vie saine, p. 116.

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weight in each one, before a set of open windows giving out to a sunrise over an urban landscape.50 Such an image suggests how far the domestic space of the bourgeoisie could be adapted to provide an indoor gymnasium.51 Both before and after the First World War, such manuals included a liberal sprinkling of photographs or drawings of moustachioed, near-naked males making ingenious use of their own plush domestic interiors for toning and building muscles.52 In the 1920s and 1930s some writers offered advice to those without the resources to create such a thing. The socialist Pierre Marie—advocate of open-air schools, journalist for socialist newspaper Le Populaire, and influential adviser to the Popular Front governments of the mid-1930s—wrote that equipment need only include a pair of 2-kg weights, widely available in neighbourhood hardware stores. One could even start by picking up an iron in each hand.53 It is often claimed that this kind of European physical culture—body-building and gymnastics—was the preserve of the petite bourgeoisie. According to Michael Hau, historian of the early twentiethcentury life reform movement in Germany, the very emphasis in these practices on the ‘rational’ management of one’s body makes them bourgeois in the widest sense, and he argues—as do many current sociologists of sport—that the appeal of this kind of physical culture is precisely that it allows men from the lower middle classes (and arguably artisans too) to develop, through shaping their body into the prevailing muscular ideal, the kind of cultural capital that might otherwise be denied them—a good education and accent, a set of conversational cultural references, an appropriate address, family connections, in general what the Germans call Bildung—thereby providing the enhanced social status that comes from marking oneself apart from the working classes.54 Edouard Osmont’s satirical popular pamphlet about physical culture plays with this idea that contemporary body culture mediates class relations and has the power to subvert them. Its opening story, written in the first person and thus ostensibly representing the experiences of the author, describes how a middle-class man keen to work out at home with a spring-loaded exerciser finds his technique criticised by his servant, Joseph. Joseph asserts the technical authority afforded him by his two years of training under a professor of physical culture. As the front-cover illustration suggests (see Fig. 1.6), Joseph in fact convinces his boss that a more efficient routine can be found in polishing shoes and cleaning floors. Indeed, the story ends with Joseph supervising the hard domestic labour of his master while sitting back in an 50

Dr J.-E. Ruffier, Soyons forts! Manuel de culture physique élémentaire, 5th edn. (Paris, 1930), p. 51. Tips were provided in ‘Nos leçons de culture physique en chambre: méthode du Professeur Desbonnet’, La Culture physique, November 1932, 329. 52 ‘Nos leçons de culture physique en chambre: méthode du Professeur Desbonnet’, La Culture physique, November 1932, 329; Dr C. C. Pagès, Manuel de culture physique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1911), pp. 9, 13, 25. 53 Marie, Force et santé pour tous, pp. 63, 133; Albert Surier, La Force pour tous, 3rd edn., Traité pratique de culture physique rationnelle. Santé, force, beauté (Paris, n.d.), pp. 34, 49, 55; Pascal Ory, La Belle illusion: culture et politique sous le signe du Front populaire, 1935–1938 (Paris, 1994), pp. 650–1, 658, 664. 54 Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, pp. 5, 29, 46–9. Christophe Granger argues that these physical exercises embodied the ‘cardinal virtue’ of bourgeois individualism—a strengthening of the will and character, Les Corps d’été, XXe siècle: naissance d’une variation saisonnière (Paris, 2009), p. 38. 51

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Fig. 1.6. Front cover of Edouard Osmont’s satirical pamphlet. Edouard Osmont, Culture physique, Paris: Flammarion, n.d., c.1921. (Author’s personal collection.)

armchair with a cigar. The fact that this story is relayed in the first person thus rhetorically underlines the extent to which the bourgeois has been cuckolded by his social inferior. The moral of the text seems to support the idea that physical exercise can indeed turn ‘body capital’ into ‘social capital’: servant can become master by acquiring strength and muscularity, if only—in this case—because the appeal of a fit body as the route to manliness is shared by the bourgeois professional. What is clear is that such activities were indeed self-consciously designed to build the moral and physical qualities of manliness, and were thus hailed as a way of virilizing French men, not least by forging a hard, muscular body in the constant fight against flabbiness. But manliness demanded a certain character as a well as a body type, and here competitive sport played a role, even if most culturists believed that a foundation of rational physical exercise was a necessary prerequisite.55 There was a consensus that football, rugby, and boxing in particular built the necessarily moral 55 Dr Labarde, ‘La déformation chez les spécialistes’, La Culture physique, June 1929, 173–7; also Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Les jeux sportifs et le développement sportif de l’enfant et de l’adolescent’, Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’éducation physique et aux sports, Chamonix-Mont Blanc, 3–5 September 1934, vol. 2, (Lyon, 1936), pp. 311–14; and Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 14.

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qualities of a man—decisiveness, a competitive spirit, will, pluck [cran], self-confidence, quick reflexes, honour, self-control, and moral resilience.56 Journalist Francis Marton, as part of the familiar criticism of the alleged excess of book-learning in school curricula, described football as ‘the great educator of our time’: a young man’s formal education may ‘trim up the mind, but it is the years of athletics that forge character’.57 Marcel Rouet, while decrying the ‘extreme specialization’ of sport, saw it favourably as the ‘utilization of muscular capital acquired by physical culture’.58 In fact, boxing—and its hero Georges Carpentier—was often hailed as a means of achieving an integral body work-out in its own right, despite its firm association in the public mind with commercialized spectacle and brutality.59 At the same time, physical culturists engaged in a heightened version of the anti-sport discourse discussed in the third chapter: competitive sport for them too often resulted in the kind of specialization that prevented the harmonious development of the entire organism. The result was skinny runners and fat weightlifters—men pushed to extremes by the training for their specialist area.60 Dr Labarde wrote of the ‘deformity’ and ‘incomplete’ physique of elite sportsmen: for him it was culturists whose bodies were ‘always well proportioned’.61 Strict medical controls on sporting practice were thus routinely demanded.62 There was sometimes a class dimension to such discussions about the merits of sport. Marcel Rouet was critical of bourgeois pursuits such as golf, skating, and yachting, and urged Frenchmen to stop practising sport out of a sense of vanity and the desire to parade social status.63 Bancharel—a writer specifically interested in worker sporting culture—dismissed motor racing, skiing, and watching horseracing as unmanly. For him they favoured a taste for elegance and social superiority over the hard work involved in athletic training. He claimed that disciplined physical exercise was disdained by ‘Daddy’s boys’ and ‘snobs of the upper classes’.64 Albert Surier, by no means a class warrior, concurred that tennis was ‘a sport for snobbery and flirting’ that failed to build manly qualities.65 Also critical of skiers and those who attended horse-races, he disdained those well-off men and women who confused physical exercise with physical comforts in their leisure activities and 56 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 80; Albert Surier, Notre Corse: etudes et souvenirs (Paris, 1934), p. 221; Henri Diffre, Contrôle du sport et de l’Éducation physique (Paris, 1923), p. 7; Marie, Force et santé pour tous, 41; G. Blanchet, ‘L’Education physique scolaire doit-elle être sportive?’, L’Educateur physique, February 1931, 11–14. George Hébert’s mantra was ubiquitous: ‘the moral and virile qualities that truly make men’ included will, energy, courage, sang-froid, daring, and a fight against laziness and ‘softness’, Guide pratique d’éducation physique (Paris, 1909), xv. The ideas remained practically unaltered in his three-volume L’Education physique virile et morale par la méthode naturelle published by Vuibert between 1936 and 1943; André Rauch, L’Identité masculine à l’ombre des femmes: de la grande guerre à la Gay pride (Paris, 2004), 84–5. 57 Francis Marton in L’Auto, reproduced as ‘Le sport et la volonté’, La Culture physique, February 1928, 55. 58 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, 14. 59 André Rauch, ‘Courage against cupidity: Carpentier-Dempsey: symbols of cultural confrontation’, in Richard Holt, J. A. Mangan, and Pierre Lanfranchi (eds.), European Heroes: Myth, Identity, Sport (London, 1996), pp. 156–68. 60 Rouhet and Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain, p. 175. 61 Dr Labarde, ‘La déformation chez les spécialistes’, La Culture physique, June 1929, 173–7. 62 Diffre, ‘Les jeux sportifs et le développement sportif de l’enfant et de l’adolescent’, pp. 311–14. 63 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p, 132. 64 Bancharel, Sain et fort par le sport, p, 11. 65 Surier, Notre Corse, pp. 220, 223.

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for whom ‘the centrepiece of their excursions is the casino and the music-hall’.66 In short, the warning was that bourgeois sports did not make one manly, despite the opportunities they presented for practising one’s skills with the opposite sex. Although dismissing this preference for elegance and romantic conquest over physical strength, interwar physical culturists were squarely set on the pursuit of male beauty, urging the use of mirrors to diagnose physical flaws and to aid in the process of self-transformation.67 Large mirrors adorned the walls of physical culture schools so that pupils could ‘correct their posture and defective movements’.68 Dr Pagès pictured the teenager in front of his bedroom mirror, inspecting and touching the muscles of his neck, chest, legs and hindquarters.69 Indeed the emphasis on looks is striking, revealing the assumption, shared with the worlds of art and medicine, that a certain kind of outward appearance was the principal indicator of both health and moral virtue.70 It is important to note that this interest in appearances both mediated and was mediated by a commitment to the principles of human physiology. Thus Pagès, who had conducted early experiments in cinematic photography while a pupil of the more famous physician Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904), caught Edmond Desbonnet on film exercising with his famous dumbbells—instruments that allegedly helped to ‘strengthen the will and focus the attention of the subject on the muscles at work’.71 The purpose of such photographs, as had been the case for the eclectic polymath Marey in the 1880s and 1890s when he photographed physical exercise pedagogue Georges Démeny in movement, was to capture the precise mechanics of the human body so they could be studied scientifically as part of the quest to maximize performance and reduce fatigue.72 Desbonnet was a collector of photographs of strongmen in his youth, and went on to produce studio portraits of his own male models, selling them as postcards in the belle époque. According to Fae Brauer, Desbonnet also used Alphonse Bertillon’s forensic measurement system to ‘monitor the evolution of the male body’ for his before-and-after photographs, and his models were used by artist Paul Richer to teach anatomy at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts.73 In all these kinds of photography, one might argue, an admiration of male beauty was in effect legitimated through the assertion of a scientific gaze. In any case, the most common aesthetic ideal to energize this literature was— unsurprisingly—that derived from ancient Greece.74 Before and after the First 66

Albert Surier, ‘Les sports qui tournent mal’, La Culture physique, February 1928, 49. Rouhet and Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain; Surier, La Force pour tous, p. 36; Professeur Max Abbat, Pour la race (petit manuel de culture physique) (Paris, 1913), p. 7; Surier, Forts par la culture physique, p. 61. The point is recognized by André Rauch, Le Corps en éducation physique: histoire et principes de l’entraînement (Paris, 1982), p. 66. 68 Marie, Force et santé pour tous, p. 13. 69 Dr C. C. Pagès, ‘Virilité et vitalité’, La Culture physique, November 1932, 335–7. 70 Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1992); Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, p. 6. 71 La Culture physique, ‘La mort du docteur C.-C. Pagès’, La Culture physique, January 1934, 55–7. Pagès was eulogized in La Culture physique as an expert in ‘culturist science’ when he was killed in an automobile accident. 72 Rabinbach, The Human Motor, pp. 7, 97–119. 73 Fae Brauer, ‘Eroticizing Lamarckian eugenics’, pp. 119–22. 74 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 110; J. Molnar de Versegy, Culture-ballon et culture-barre (Paris, 1937). 67

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World War the physical culturist press routinely featured artistic renderings of the classical male form and showed contemporary culturists in classical poses. Pierre Marie, echoing the obsession with ‘scientific’ measurement, offered drawings of the human body marked with a set of measurements to show perfect bodily proportions (see Fig. 1.7), and that message was echoed in the later 1930s by Marcel Rouet, who advised his followers to mimic the stance of the Greek statues that best

Fig. 1.7. Ideal human proportions. Pierre Marie, Force et santé pour tous, 1929, pp. 136 and 178. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

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represented their own body-type.75 Rouet was particularly pleased that ancient Greek statuary did not demonstrate the twentieth-century fashion for overdeveloped shoulders. Indeed, he spurned the bulging muscularity of the mature Hercules for the model of adolescent leanness provided by Belvedere’s much admired Apollo.76 This aesthetic gaze was reinforced by advertising and other visual material presented in culturist magazines, and to a lesser extent in the sports and general press, as demonstrated in Chapter 3.77 In the late 1930s the Paris telephone directory began to carry classically inflected advertising for sports equipment: for example, the ‘Apollo’ bathing suits and exercise wear marketed in 1938.78 Pierre Marie and Marcel Rouet were merely endorsing a classical ideal of male beauty that had been rediscovered during the Renaissance and which had at least since the mid-eighteenth century offered artists, medics, and naturalists a way of aestheticizing health and manliness and supposedly proving the superiority of white, European civilization into the bargain. There was nonetheless at least one dissenting voice where such classical ideals were concerned. Philippe Tissié pointed out that it was ridiculous for the French to attempt to understand ancient Greek physical education principally through the material culture left behind in the form of statues: ‘the Antinoüs did not exist in the streets of ancient Greece any more than they do in our day’.79 His logic—that an aesthetic ideal was not emulated by real bodies and therefore not relevant—was precisely the inverse of the standpoint of most interwar physical culturists, who found in the possibility of corporeal perfection the very proof of contemporary bodily failure. One may venture that Tissié’s view remained the exception that proved the rule. Still, in ways whose significance will shortly be teased out, the classical aesthetic ideal was in competition with at least one other. Some physical culturists in this period displayed a bona fide primitivism, holding a so-called ‘native’ physical ideal up for celebration and emulation.80 The most significant proponent of that view was Georges Hébert, who, from the early years of the twentieth century, had asserted the superior physique of dark-skinned colonial subjects whose lives had allegedly remained closer to a natural state. The problem with modern man was that he had lost the physical edge that a simpler, ‘primitive’ life, without the comforts of modernity, would have preserved. His advocacy of exercises such as walking, running, and jumping was founded on the conviction that the uncivilized specimen demonstrated ‘perfect and complete muscular development acquired without method’.81 In one of his early works Hébert included front and rear photographs of a scantily 75

Marie, Force et santé pour tous, pp. 62, 140; La Culture physique, April 1934, 105. Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, pp. 42, 53. La Culture physique, January and July 1937, n.p.; back cover advertisement, La Culture physique, September 1932; ‘Pour ressembler à Hercule Farnèse!’, La Culture physique, May 1928, 138; ‘Bétise humaine’, La Culture physique, January 1929. 78 See Bottin du commerce, 1938, Archives de Paris. 79 Tissié, L’Education physique de la race, p. 283. 80 See Daniel Sherman’s distinction between exoticism (a taste for difference) and primitivism (a celebration of simple ways of life), in ‘Post-colonial chic: fantasies of the French interior, 1957–62’, Art History, 27, 5 (2004), 776, drawing on Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton, 1994), p. 174. 81 Hébert, Guide pratique d’éducation physique, p. 3. 76 77

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clad black male adult to illustrate such perfect musculature and as a model for what his exercises were designed to achieve. The principal hébertiste organ, L’Education physique, alongside much of the naturist press, was given over to a celebration of the ‘natural life’ in extra-European societies in just this way.82 Like Hébert and his followers, many sports journalists and intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s too saw the black athlete as a perfect—almost ‘antique’—physical model, and one that was viewed somehow as proof of the degenerative nature of modern civilization. The latter’s product—the white man—failed in comparison.83 L’Education physique thus engaged in a less overt celebration of the classical nude than some of its rivals, although the publication featured occasional articles on the role of physical education in ancient Greece or the influence of antique ways of seeing on later artists.84 Yet the coverage of these ancient models was less adulatory and less focused on aesthetic matters than it was in other culturist publications.85 Tellingly, when one contributor sought to outline the similarities between Hébert’s natural method and the physical culture of ancient Egypt, it was to suggest that the Egyptians had been instinctive, early hébertistes, rather than to posit Hébert as a fanatic of antique aesthetic models.86 Such a view underscored the imagined universalism of Hébert’s system of physical exercise. One wonders if the publication expressed reservations about the classical model of male beauty not only due to Hébert’s preference for the primitive but as part of an attempt to discredit the kind of body-building espoused among the devotees of Desbonnet. L’Education physique routinely counselled against a methodologically flawed training regime that would lead to an excess of muscle offensive to the eye. Its contributors recognized that this quest for firmness was about emulating ‘the example of Farnese’s Hercules and all these fleshy bulges that cover the statues like enormous blisters’. For one writer, the late-eighteenth-century painter Jacques-Louis David had found the right balance, returning to a ‘rational aesthetic’ that backed away from ‘exaggerations of musculature’.87 Thus was the struggle for space in a crowded market mediated through male aesthetic norms. The need for this kind of competitive edge may also explain the criticism expressed in some quarters of this so-called primitive model of manliness. For example, Dr Vendeville, within the pages of La Culture physique in the late 1920s, compared the appearance of Australian aboriginals unfavourably to that of ‘our superb culturists’, despite the former’s access to all the ingredients of a healthy lifestyle—sun, air, and the natural life.88 Another such article featured a cheeky 82

Gabriel Gallet, ‘La vie naturelle du Tahitien’, L’Education physique, April–June 1936, 217–18. Timothée Jobert, ‘Ces obscurs objets de désirs . . . les sportifs “noirs” et l’hypervirilité à l’épreuve de l’histoire dans le champs sportif français (1880–1962)’, in Philippe Liotard and Thierry Terret (eds.), Sport et genre, vol. 2, Excellence féminine et masculinité hégémonique (Paris, 2005), pp. 229–39. 84 David Strohl, ‘L’influence de l’antiquité et de l’athlétie chez Michel-Ange et Raphaël’, and Jo and Roger Tourte, ‘L’Education physique en Grèce’, both in L’Education physique, April–June 1936, 221–3 and 300–4 respectively. 85 D. Strohl, ‘Les gladiateurs romains dans l’histoire et dans l’art’, L’Education physique, 15 October 1938, focuses on the moral (not aesthetic) qualities of gladiators. 86 D. Strohl, ‘La Méthode naturelle dans l’art égyptien’, L’Education physique, 15 April 1937, 129–36. 87 Robert Rey, ‘L’Esthétique du muscle’, L’Education physique, 15 May 1922, 24–6. 88 Dr Vendeville, ‘A propos du faune et de la forêt de Fontainebleau, naturiste réaliste et artiste sylvestre’, La Culture physique, January 1929, 10–11. 83

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swipe at the hébertistes, claiming that the ‘ugly’ bodies of a group of ‘native’ warriors had been ‘formed by the natural method, so dear to some’. The ‘scientific’ culturist method, it was asserted, was a better guarantor of health, beauty, and strength.89 This example brings to mind the persistence within the worlds of both art and medicine of thinking about the progress of civilization in terms of an ‘aesthetic evolution of man’ in which appearances become the measure not only of beauty, but morality and intelligence as well.90 Similarly, Michael Hau points out how life reformers in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany transposed the ‘aesthetic idiom’, in which they conceived of both gender and class, to their understanding of hierarchies of ‘race’.91 Ironically then, both ways of seeing the ‘primitive’ involved an implicit notion of a hierarchy among ‘races’ in which Europeans’ place at the summit was naturalized. For observers like Georges Hébert, the black African ideal of natural, muscular masculinity was held up as proof of the damaging effects of modernity on French men’s bodies, who should otherwise reign supreme. For critics of the primitive model, the so-called ‘natural’ inhabitants of Africa and Asia were compared not to the real bodies of French men but to the European classical ideals against which all men were judged. In some quarters, this failure of racialized others to conform to classical ideals of beauty became part of a justification for colonial conquest. Interwar anxieties that the French—and Europeans generally—were slipping from their imagined place at the top of the race hierarchy sometimes overtly demonstrated how this double-edged aesthetic imperialism could be turned against sub-standard European colonizers. One contributor to La Culture physique in the late 1920s, a medical doctor, argued that French men were not robust enough to run their own empire, comparing them unfavourably to Americans, all ‘handsome men’, ‘the product of muscular effort, of physical culture, of non-specialized sports’. This writer lamented the ‘cripples’ in urban offices who were fit only to be imperial administrators, exerting their influence only cerebrally and from a distance, rather than being conquerors of foreign climes. These men ‘are too little trained in defending themselves against wild animals, in swimming, chopping down trees, climbing, sleeping in a tent’. As a result, the French empire risked being colonized all over again by the infiltration of foreign products onto its marketplace, for lack of men willing and able to populate the French colonies themselves: ‘the soft foyer’ of France is ‘hard to leave’. Made hardy and robust through physical exercise in a matter of decades, Americans were held up as an example for the French to follow. If they copied the American model well enough, ‘our race’ would find ‘young blood’ in the colonies, ‘from where we would draw our soldiers, our harvests, our livestock’.92 Both classical and primitive models of manliness were articulated against this fear that modern civilization had eroded both the beauty and (therefore) 89 ‘Trois guerriers mois, formés par la méthode naturelle, si chère à quelques-uns’, La Culture physique, April 1934, 120; Dr Labarde, ‘Les races ne conservent leur pureté, leur santé, leur beauté et leur force que par l’exercice physique’, La Culture physique, January 1936, 12–15. 90 Stafford, Body Criticism, pp. 111–16. 91 Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, pp. 2, 82, 152–3. 92 Dr Pierre Chevillet, ‘A quoi reconnait-on une belle race?’, La Culture physique, August 1929, 230–1.

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the power of men—power over themselves, power over women, and ultimately power over colonized peoples. Indeed, as Dr Frumusan pointed out in one of his self-help guides, it was rare to see a man or woman over the age of forty who bore any resemblance to Venus or Apollo.93 Interwar physical culturists devoted considerable energy to diagnosing the symptoms and causes of an alleged physical decline from the ideal masculine form—a decline measured alternatively in the plague of obesity, or in the ‘bent’ spines, ‘frail’ necks, thin calves, and knock knees of contemporary youth, or in the upsurge of ‘twitchy, excitable, nervous, anxious, violent, indecisive or impulsive’ men.94 Its ‘proof ’ was found in the allegedly higher rates of rejection for military service.95 Pierre Marie wrote that raw recruits now found disrobing for the conseils de révision an acutely shameful act, such was their embarrassment at a bodily ugliness brought about by years of physical laziness.96 As Dr Henri Diffre put it, young men in the army want to be ‘good for service’ not just to be a good soldier, but to be a ‘bel homme’.97 French men were deemed to be failing on both counts. Dr James Edward Ruffier saw in the conseils de révision of the early 1920s the consequence of the penchant for sport over physical culture in which, he claimed, the ‘constitution’ of jeunes sportifs was not always better than that of the non-physically active recruits. Ruffier surmized that ‘the practice of sports has not resulted in the physical improvement of the race anticipated by the supporters and leaders of athletics’.98 A cartoon published in La Culture physique in the early 1930s articulates this disdain for sport—and its implications—perfectly (see Fig. 1.8). The first frame shows an entirely naked band of sportsmen parading on a pitch in the middle of a packed stadium. The caption tells us that at a conseil de révision the nakedness of these men would be sufficient proof of their degenerate status and they would be declared unfit for service. The second frame features the same men, in the same poses, but this time in sports clothes. The caption declares that when dressed in a jersey and shorts the unfit are instead called ‘athletes’, ‘acclaimed by the crowd’. But their bodies are unprepared by what should be the ‘ABC’ of all sports: la culture physique.99 Indeed, as we shall see in other contexts, the conseil de révision functioned in this kind of literature as both a literal and a metaphorical test of manly and national health. This state of affairs, too often disguised under a sartorial trickery that had warped the aesthetic sense of men and women, was often blamed on the growth of modern 93 Dr J. Frumusan, La Résurrection de la beauté: cure esthétique pour la régénération de la race, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1925), p. 51. 94 Dr Henri Balland, ‘L’Education physique nécessaire’, Sport et santé, 15 March 1929, 3–4. 95 Pierre Marie, Pour la santé du sédentaire (Paris, 1931), p. 5. 96 Marie, Force et santé pour tous, pp. 23, 59. 97 Diffre, Contrôle du sport et de l’Éducation physique, p. 19. Similarly, David Hopkin argues that French youths came to accept compulsory military service not because ‘it was taking peasants and making them French, but because it was taking boys and making them men’, ‘Sons and lovers: popular images of the conscript, 1798–1870’, Modern & Contemporary France, 9, 1 (2001), 35. The point is confirmed by Odile Roynette, ‘Bons pour le service’: l’expérience de la caserne en France à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris, 2000), pp. 193–4. 98 Dr J.-E. Ruffier, ‘L’avis de A-A. Zimmermann’, L’Educateur physique moderne, 15 May 1922, 12–14. 99 R. Delorme, ‘L’ habit ne fait pas le moine: on peut être réformé et se dire sportif ’, La Culture physique, July 1933, 222.

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Fig. 1.8. ‘Appearances can be deceptive: one can be unfit for service and call oneself a sportsman.’ La Culture physique, July 1933, p. 222. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

comforts too—public transport and cars, sedentary professions, an excess of food and drink, alongside the rise of unhealthy leisure pursuits such as bars and music-halls. Marcel Rouet complained that the motor car was especially guilty of encouraging human inactivity. ‘How many businessmen never walk!’ he explained in his practical guide to physical fitness.100 Maurice Cambier, military author of a get-fit guide published shortly after the First World War, held that men were quite simply clogged up and deformed from lack of movement: distended abdominal muscles were too weak to support the internal organs, which were in any case congested with ‘slow blood’.101 Dr Jean Frumusan complained that alcohol and cigarettes, too much food (which taxes the digestive system), and too much sex, sport, and work 100 101

Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, pp. 21–2, 124. Maurice Cambier, Culture physique de l’homme: chacun son système (Paris, 1920), p. 1.

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were ‘the starting point for organic degeneration in men’.102 Despite the widespread connection of physical decline with a sedentary, urban mode of life, the earthbound peasant was far from universally acclaimed as a physical model to follow. For Albert Surier—a physical culturist who moved in military circles (as we shall see in the next chapter)—there was a crisis of obesity in the countryside too: rural doctors, when called out to see a patient, more often than not found the patient’s organs ‘drowned in fat’. The problem for him was that in addition to their unhygienic lifestyles, country folk did not have access to rational physical exercise in the same way as did urban dwellers. As Surier put it, ‘after the Boche comes lard’.103 Evidence for this rural decline was measured by Emile Valtier in the allegedly higher numbers of conscripts declared unfit for service at conseils de révision in agricultural departments in comparison with those in the Paris region.104 At the same time as they decried the effects of an easy or badly managed life on the human body, physical culturists shared in the widespread contemporary critique of devirilizing intellectual surmenage, expressing fears that neurasthenia was rife among an educated elite that would soon produce a race of monsters whose brains were their only living part.105 Naturist Marcel Viard was certain that worldly success for men no longer lay purely in intellectual pursuits; rather, to be properly cultured, man had to be ‘master of himself on the physical level’. For Viard and his colleagues, a solely intellectual education often lacked ‘good sense, tact, coup d’oeil, physical activity, will, tenacity’—all the ingredients of manliness, in other words— and instead it was physical training that was required so as to ensure that his ‘nervous system [was] bathed in healthy humours, the orders given to the brain executed without hesitation, without trembling, with calm’.106 Dr Bellin du Coteau laid some emphasis on the problem, citing military physician Maurice Boigey’s distinctions between acute and chronic surmenage, and the conclusions of physiologist Jules Amar on the way in which a state of physical overwork leaves one open to ‘cultivate pathogenic seeds’.107 A contributor to La Culture physique in the late 1930s linked intellectual overwork with nervous disorders, in particular with ‘nervous depression’, which afflicted ‘school pupils, students, businessmen, or academics’. Only a good diet, plentiful sleep, and ‘exercise therapy’ would provide a cure.108 In the mid-1930s, Edmond Desbonnet himself declared that ‘the alma mater is the 102

Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, 61. Albert Surier, ‘L’invasion de la graisse’, supplement to La Culture physique, December 1929, 2. 104 Emile Valtier, ‘Non, la Culture Physique de Chambre n’est pas un pis-aller’, supplement to La Culture physique, January 1930, 2–3. 105 Marie, Force et santé pour tous, 14. See also Pierre Yrondelle, ‘L’éducation physique et le surmenage scolaire’, La Culture physique, April 1930, 113–15. The term ‘neurasthenia’ was invented in the 1860s by US physician George Miller Beard to describe nervous exhaustion. Rabinbach, The Human Motor, p. 153. 106 Dr Marcel Viard, ‘L’homme cultivé’, Vivre, 15 June 1928, 4–5. 107 Dr Bellin du Coteau, ‘Les fatigues’, in Labbé and Bellin du Coteau, Traité d’éducation physique, p. 406. Bellin cites Boigey, ‘Le surmenage au cours des exercices physiques’, Monde Médical, 15 August 1923, and Jules Amar, ‘Effets physiologiques du travail et degré de fatigue’, in C. R. Académies des Sciences, 20 October 1913. 108 ‘Potentiel nerveux et culture physique’, La Culture physique, November 1937, 9–10; Dr Pierre Vachet, ‘La neurasthénie’, Calme et santé, December 1932, 6–7. 103

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destroyer of our race’. French children were ‘stuffed with knowledge’ that did not confer on them ‘a genuine superiority in the struggle for life’ (la lutte pour la vie).109 This was an old critique. Max Abbat’s physical culture manual, published just before the First World War, addressed a cross-class and mixed-sex audience of businessmen, school pupils, and seamstresses in seeking to transform through physical exercise the corporeal effects of their sedentary lives, the physical deficiencies and neurasthenia caused by the intellectual surmenage of the modern school system and liberal professions.110 It was thus a combination of physical laziness and intellectual overwork that was destroying the nation, in the view of these commentators. Again, there was more than a glimmer of imperial anxiety in these patterns of thinking. It was widely cited that the English and Americans made more room in their school curricula for physical education, thus forging men who occupied centre stage in ‘the great highways of the world, in the colonies, in new countries where one must have vitality’.111 If one should chance upon a Frenchman in that world, Desbonnet lamented, he is likely to be a civil servant working at the taxpayer’s expense, waiting patiently for the hour of his retirement and dreaming of planting cabbages in some peaceful place. Another commentator concurred. Deprived of rigorous physical training and fresh air when young, French men were consequently unhealthy specimens, riddled with scoliosis and curvature of the spine and condemned to a life of mediocrity, while the English and Americans produced men conscious of their ‘physical worth’ who travelled to the colonies with the same ease as a Frenchman may take a boat trip to Suresnes. As this writer put it, ‘what do you want this runt to do in life, where struggle has become fierce?’112 The merits of the supposed Anglo-Saxon frontier masculinity—as well as its perceived imperial dividend—were widely celebrated. The physical culturist press addressed, and arguably exploited, this lack by offering advice to beleaguered men—the nervous leg-tappers and moustache-fiddlers.113 As Dr Henri Balland put it in 1929, the problem was that ‘Man is only a perfect master of his thoughts . . . and of his feelings . . . when he has worked out how to acquire or conserve, through physical culture, the mastery or control of his movement . . .’114 Thus the prescription—as in the advice given in the regular ‘psychic gym’ column in the hébertiste organ, L’Education physique—was to urge a mastery over the physical self through a daily exertion of the will. One ought to repeat such phrases as ‘I am vigorous’, ‘my muscles work well’, ‘I feel in good health’.115 Readers were advised, 109 Edmond Desbonnet, ‘L’instruction publique tue la race française, il faut alléger ses programmes qui contiennent la moitié de choses inutiles’, La Culture physique, January 1936, 1–2. The term is a social Darwinist one. By the 1890s such language was pervasive in high and popular culture in France, even if social Darwinism itself was often viewed as an unwelcome German import. See Clark, Social Darwinism in France, pp. 7–8. 110 Abbat, Pour la race, pp. 2, 14. Such intellectual overwork was noted in primary schools as well. See Paul Serviet, 10 minutes de culture physique par jour (Paris, 1931), p. 79. 111 Desbonnet, ‘L’instruction publique tue la race française’. 112 L. Cheroux, ‘Femme française: notre espoir est en elle’, supplement to La Culture physique, October–November 1930, 4. 113 Jean des Vignes Rouges, ‘La Maîtrise de soi’, L’Education physique, 15 July 1922, 12–14. On late nineteenth-century ‘will therapy’ see Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, pp. 223–5. 114 Dr Henri Balland, ‘L’Education physique nécessaire’, Sport et santé, 15 March 1929, 3–4. 115 Jean des Vignes Rouges, ‘L’auto-suggestion’, L’Education physique, 15 November 1922, 12–15.

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think about your career and the ‘admiration of your subordinates, the love of your fiancée’. Write down the word ‘Volonté’ on a piece of paper and let your pen run with the association of ideas around it. ‘Thus the words energy, resolution, self-will, tenacity, virile, stubborn, tenacious, fiery, etc.’ will come freely to mind.116 If men were encouraged to acknowledge feelings of inadequacy, then, they were also asked to apply the very manly qualities they lacked (in particular, volonté—will) in order to recover them. The acceptance in such literature of the constructed and performative nature of masculine norms therefore did not subvert but rather reinforced prevailing masculine ideals. This apparent paradox is reminiscent of the bind discussed by Michael Hau, who suggests that in Germany it was the spectre of professional failure that led men to join the life reform movement, and that the ‘health-consciousness’ they encountered there only served to exacerbate their corporeal anxieties.117 These examples also suggest how far the medical and popular desire to embrace the ‘whole man’ in diagnosing and treating modern ailments itself became a conduit for the consolidation of masculine norms. Much physical culturist literature indeed professed a psychotherapeutic and even spiritual remedy to the alleged materialist excesses of modern life and modern medicine. Dr Maurice de Fleury published his self-help guides to provide a kind of ‘family prayer-book’ of what he termed ‘physical morale’. Clearly focusing on bourgeois men, he claimed that the sedentary and over-intellectualized labour of the modern professions was pushing humanity beyond the limits of endurance both physically and emotionally, creating a kind of ‘worry about tomorrow’ driven by the surmenage of one’s employment.118 Dr Jean Frumusan, for his part, overtly attacked the materialism of the medical profession itself, which in his view had neglected the spiritual life of individuals for centuries. Frumusan felt that psychotherapy ought to play a role in the repertoire of any doctor, since a ‘re-education of the will’ and the ‘exaltation of the imagination’ was linked to physical factors in creating the desired ‘organic and spiritual regeneration of the organism’.119 Perhaps the most extreme assault on the medical mainstream that focused its attention on modern men’s struggle with their masculine selves came from the Yogi Varma, who founded the Ligue de la Santé in Paris in 1928, claiming the involvement of several physicians. It was designed to popularize Varma’s insistence that all human ill-health derived from a lack of alignment in the ‘vibrations’ of the nervous system—a state of affairs for which his principal treatment, ‘pranotherapy’, would provide a remedy.120 Varma addressed employees too afraid of their bosses to ask for a raise, generals with so little authority that soldiers disobeyed their orders, ministers who reddened with rage in argument,

116

Jean des Vignes Rouges, ‘Le Gout de l’effort’, L’Education physique, 15 January 1923, 7–9. Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, pp. 5, 15. 118 Fleury, Quelques conseils pour vivre vieux, pp. 5, 217; Dupont, Dictionnaire des médecins, p. 249. 119 Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, pp. 123, 154. 120 D. Varma, ‘La Ligue de la santé’, Pour mieux vivre, March and April–May–June1928, 1–3; ‘La fête inaugurale de la Ligue de la santé’, Pour mieux vivre, July–September 1928, 1–2. A similar idea about ‘vital energy’ called ‘prâna’ was advocated by Dr M. Dumesnil as part of an anti-materialist attack on science, ‘La vie qui est en nous’, Régénération, February 1929, 6–8. 117

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professors heckled by their own students.121 Through a course of massage, physical culture, and a retuning of his vibrations, man could learn to be ‘master of his nerves, master of his life’.122 It was, indeed, overtly the case that such ‘spiritual’ remedies involved an education in the qualities of manliness. One thing that emerges from a consideration of the get-fit literature aimed at men in this period is that male subjects were ubiquitously also the objects of the gaze. In the mass-produced specialist publications around gymnastics, naturism, and body-building, the male body was framed in terms of its aesthetic appeal, and held up as a model either to deride or emulate. The physical culturist and male beauty contestant Henri Brancaccio, for example, was a staple of the periodical La Culture physique. His naked body (dressed only in a fig-leaf ) adorned the magazine’s covers on many occasions, overtly celebrated (as in the August 1926 issue) as a contemporary incarnation of classical beauty and human perfection. The harmony of his proportions was sometimes spelled out: Brancaccio had an impressive neck, large shoulders and sculpted arms, a thin waist with a flat stomach, large and rounded pectoral muscles, ideal thighs, beautiful legs, and an intelligent and aristocratic face.123 Indeed, Edmond Desbonnet continued to take elaborately staged nude studio portraits of many of the culturists who trained under him, often in poses drawn from classical sculpture. The fig-leaves that were often the only item of apparel worn by the athletes on the publication’s front covers were thus no doubt a product of post hoc photographic editing so as not to flout the decency laws that were in this era brought to bear on the naturist press. It is inescapable that these photographs of nudes, whether in the immediacy of Desbonnet’s studio or in the air-brushed covers of magazines, elicit a homoerotic gaze, their subjects arranged for the admiration and intellectual desire, if not the physical arousal, of the onlooker. Indeed, the photographs seem arranged to achieve the most flattering aesthetic aspects of each subject. Fae Brauer argues that much belle époque art was in fact openly homoerotic, even if the furore over ‘inverts’ and the crisis in virility evoked by official reports into the depopulation problem after the 1890s effected a shift away from the artistic representations of the ‘ephebic male so vulnerable to construal as effeminate’.124 Indeed, Brauer argues that in this climate the ‘male bodies rippling with muscles generated from playing modern sport and practising body-building’ became more popular not only with artists but with proponents of ‘patriotic’ and ‘virilized homosexuality’. Gay writers such as André Gide and MarcAndré Raffalovich engaged directly in the natalist debates of the early twentieth century, claiming that the imitation of classical models of the muscular body ‘would foster healthy childbearing able to regenerate the race’.125 Ana Carden-Coyne similarly 121 ‘Tout le monde est nerveux! . . .’, an article plugging L’Education des forces nerveuses, Pour mieux vivre, September 1927, 8–9. 122 Institut Prânothérapique, ‘La Science de la santé’, Pour mieux vivre, June 1927, 30–2. 123 ‘En culture physique, seuls les résultats comptent’, back cover of La Culture physique, February 1929. 124 Fae Brauer, ‘Flaunting manliness: republican masculinity, virilized homosexuality and the desirable male body’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 6, 1 (2005), 24. 125 Fae Brauer, ‘Flaunting manliness’, 24, 34; Vernon A. Rosario II, ‘Pointy penises, fashion crimes, and hysterical mollies: the pederasts’ inversions’, in Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan Jr, (eds.), Homosexuality in Modern France (New York and Oxford, 1996), pp. 161–6.

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argues that the homoerotic appeal of the male body-building culture in interwar Australia had a ‘heterosexual and reproductive underpinning’ (not least through a eugenicist emphasis on improving the ‘race’), even if in practice it might have allowed for ‘homosexual desire to be identified and shared across pages . . . especially through visual content’.126 In other words, the loud public discourse on the moral necessity of natalism may have ironically harnessed homoeroticism to heterosexualist ends. That the images of nude men in poses drawn from classical statuary may have been homoerotic in intention or effect, and that they were at times mobilized in a belle époque defence of muscular homosexuality, did not preclude them from also endorsing the professed desire of the physical culturists to regenerate the ‘race’. S O C I A L H YG I E N E Interwar physical culturists certainly had a keen interest in personal hygiene, incorporating a whole range of technologies for keeping the human body fit, muscular, clean, and well-nourished. But, as many of the examples in the above section suggest, it is striking how far their insistence on the formulae for living hygienically extended to a prevailing concern with social hygiene—the latter distinguished from ‘public health’ by its emphasis on ‘biological regeneration’.127 The imagined physical failure and ‘degeneration’ of the male body was thought out against—and often conflated with—the imagined degeneration of the French ‘race’, just as it had been in the fin-de-siècle.128 In fact, interwar physical culturists continued their earlier tendency to use the ‘language of the clinic’ in what functioned as a ‘medical model of decline’ brought to bear both on individual bodies and the nation.129 This tendency has not gone unnoticed in historical scholarship on the interwar years, but it has not been fully explored either. Such a thing is perhaps surprising given how much attention has been paid by interwar contemporaries, and many of their historians, to the wider notion of decline in that period, often alleged to lie in the distinctive problem of the stagnating birth-rate and a supposedly ‘decadent’ elite and popular culture. Andres Reggiani has put scientific and medical uses of the term ‘degeneration’ back on the scholarly map for the 1920s and 1930s, showing how it resonated across high and popular culture as an explanation for the widely cited contemporary ‘crisis of civilization’.130 And Anne Carol has demonstrated how these concerns lingered in medical circles after 1918, nourishing the minds of ‘populationists’ worried about the consequences on French national strength of the trauma of war, the declining birth-rate, and increased immigration.131 As the next

126

Carden-Coyne, ‘Classical heroism and modern life’, 146–8. Schneider, Quality and Quanity, p. 54. 128 Nye, ‘Degeneration, neurasthenia and the culture of sport in belle époque France’, 57. 129 Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France, p. 321. 130 Reggiani, 2007, xii, 63. 131 Anne Carol, Histoire de l’eugénisme en France: les médecins et la procréation XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris, 1995), pp. 96–107. 127

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section shows, the tendency to think in terms of biological decline was very much in evidence within the world of interwar physical culture too. The persistence of these patterns of thinking can be explained in part by the longevity of physical culturists such as Desbonnet and Rouhet, who had always claimed that their methods were a means of ‘regenerating our poor weakened race’.132 Rouhet believed that his French ancestors the Gauls had been ‘almost all magnificent men, of a good height and a milky complexion’, whereas modern Frenchmen, ‘for the most part small and ugly’, hairy like gorillas, represented a decline of the species due to the compound effects of increased alcohol consumption. Jacques Bertillon may have argued that protecting the health of ‘the sickly and the puny’ lowers the mortality rate, but Rouhet pointed out that it lowered the birth-rate too, since such human specimens would not—or, more to the point, should not—procreate. Whatever the stupid cries of natalists, he asserted, ‘quality must be put before all else’.133 In his view, France needed babies, not ‘idiots’. It was also compounded by the fears of many that the Great War had shattered the collective nervous system of French men.134 Dr Henri Diffre reminded his audience that the height of conscripts had decreased in the 1830s, which he saw as the ‘profound repercussion’ of the impact of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars on the bodies of those who had been children at the end of the First Empire. He cited the poet Musset, who wrote of a ‘pale, nervous generation’. In Diffre’s view, the First World War was bound to have the same effect, and he referred to children in a ‘state of defectiveness’ whom he believed access to air, light, and a rational physical education programme would transform into ‘vigorous men’ for the sake of the ‘descendance’ of the French.135 Dr Philippe Tissié, who dedicated his 1919 book L’Education physique et la race to the French poilus of the First World War, believed that fatigue would be a major biological problem in the interwar period, facilitating the spread of syphilis (which already affected 40 per cent of French in his estimation) by making the organism more likely to fall prey to it.136 Dr Frumusan wondered whether the rise of such complaints as diabetes, fatigue, anaemia, thinness, obesity and neurasthenia were a result of a ‘physical and moral weakening’ caused by the Great War.137 In the view of naturist and vegetarian Paul Carton, the First World War had killed off the best of French manhood rather than offering an elimination of the weak, while the modern warping of natural instincts had resulted in ‘defects’ and ‘degeneration’ in the French ‘race’ that could have been avoided by the adoption of a simpler lifestyle.138 132 Strehly and Surier in the preface to Rouhet and Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain, pp. xxvi, xxxvi. 133 Rouhet, Revenons à la nature et régénérons-nous, pp. 27, 88. 134 Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, pp. 23, 27; Dr L. Durey, ‘Chez les naturistes étrangers’, L’Education physique, 15 June 1922, 22; Tissié, L’Education physique et la race, p. 233–4; Rabinbach, The Human Motor, pp. 266–70. 135 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Misère physiologique et hygiène sociale’, Lumière et vérité, July–August 1930, 3–4. 136 Tissié, L’Education physique et la race, pp. 233–4. 137 Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, pp. 23, 27. 138 Carton, La Cure de soleil, p. 2.

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Finally, the purchase of social hygienist thinking in the world of interwar physical culture was facilitated by the fact that many médecins-culturistes had connections to the hot-bed of eugenicist thought in the 1920s and 1930s: the Paris Faculty of Medicine.139 At the end of the nineteenth century this was the largest medical school in the world, according to George Weisz, and it was part of the integrated Parisian academic elite, sharing professors with both the Sorbonne and the Collège de France.140 Moreover, in their drive to make the study and practice of physical culture scientifically legitimate, culturist writers and publications frequently appealed to such medical experts. Thus a contributor to La Culture physique in the 1920s cited a medic interested in physical culture who demanded that ‘the physician must concern himself with the improvement of the race both in a practical and scientific way’.141 In the 1920s and 1930s the periodical La Culture physique advertised itself as the official bulletin of the society for the encouragement of the improvement of the race, and that was the professed goal of the French Federation of Physical Culture when it was founded in 1934 as well.142 In the late 1920s the magazine advertised a series of lectures on the theme of hygiene (encompassing ‘sports hygiene’, surmenage, nutrition, weight loss, heart trouble) and social hygiene (tuberculosis, alcoholism, venereal disease, heredity, infant mortality, and the ‘degeneration and bastardization of the race’).143 Dr Jean Frumusan began one of his therapy books by asserting that the ‘very future of the race is in peril’ on account of the ‘total neglect of hygiene and physical culture’ in France.144 A similar concern was expressed by the naturist league of physical and mental regeneration and across the naturist press as a whole.145 Naturist Dr Fougerat de Lastours lamented ‘intense overwork, multiple and frenzied stimulations, the prevailing electrification of our great cities’: he advocated fresh air, hydrotherapy, and sporting activities as a cure, claiming that such remedies represented ‘the supreme means of the renovation and grandeur of the race’.146 Albert Surier believed that to ‘acquire Strength for oneself ’ was the same thing as to ‘transmit it to one’s descendants’.147 The claim that physical exercise could improve the ‘race’ was ubiquitous. Such writers were able to make the jump from improving the individual to improving the ‘race’ because they shared assumptions about the mechanisms of 139 The French Eugenics Society founded in 1912 was dominated by medical doctors: 64.5 per cent of its founding members were medics, whereas in Britain, Germany, and the USA the proportion of medics was 22.5 per cent, 33.4 per cent and 19.6 per cent respectively: Carol, L’Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, p. 81. 140 Weisz, ‘The Emergence of medical specialization in the nineteenth century’, 548–50. 141 Dr G., cited in ‘La Culture physique qui date d’un demi-siècle est aujourd’hui une véritable révélation pour les médecins’, La Culture physique, March 1928, 66–7. 142 La Direction, La Culture physique, supplementary leaflet published in December 1928, 1; Pierre Marchesseau, ‘Toujours plus haut’, La Culture physique, April 1937, 112–13. 143 La Culture physique, May 1927, 154. 144 Frumusan, La Résurrection de la beauté, p. 11. 145 Vivre, 15 January 1927, 4, and 15 January 1929, cover. 146 Dr Fougerat de Lastours, ‘La nudité devant la médecine et l’hygiène’, Lumière et vérité, September– October 1930, 5–10; his views were also reproduced in a Sport et santé survey cited in ‘Les enquêtes sur le “nudisme”: quelques réponses de nos dirigeants’, Lumière et vérité, May–June 1930, n.p. 147 Surier, Forts par la culture physique, p. 4–5; Adolphe Chéron, in his preface, ibid., p. ix.

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heredity that had sustained French scientists and social scientists for well over a generation. In brief, they subscribed to a neo-Lamarckian understanding of heredity, inspired by French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), in which acquired characteristics such as physical fitness could be transferred genetically to the next generation. Neo-Lamarckism provided an analytical framework in which the imagined decline produced by the conditions of modern life could be simultaneously explained and remedied.148 Thus in 1936 the illustrated magazine Sport et santé stated that ‘the sedentary person . . . who practises no exercise, is doomed to a premature degeneration’, but at the same time reminded its audience that even heredity ‘can be modified by gymnastics and hygiene’.149 Physical culturists were not just adamant that a rational programme of physical culture could work miracles in this regard—that is, by building a better ‘muscular temperament’ that itself could be passed on genetically—but that problems such as alcoholism, syphilis, and tuberculosis could be explained—and wiped out—in a similar fashion.150 Despite the consensus around the bacteriological origins of tuberculosis, there was a willingness even in French medical circles to see an individual’s susceptibility to tuberculosis in terms of their physiological ‘constitution’ or ‘terrain’.151 Thus physical culturists in the 1930s could claim that even if the illness itself was communicated via contagion through ‘microbes’, one needed an ‘hereditary aptitude’ in order to succumb to it. Similarly, physical culturists often stated or implied that both syphilis and alcoholism were hereditary traits. Thus Dr Jean Frumusan understood that alcoholism and tuberculosis— all symptoms of an unhealthy environment in his view—could be passed on genetically, so that the ‘sons’ of these ill parents carried ‘their heavy inheritance on puny shoulders’.152 A neo-Lamarckian in his understanding of heredity, naturist Paul Carton believed that parents passed on ‘a capital of vital strength’ to their offspring, drawn from ‘the vital collective reserves of the species’, but thought that external factors had slowly drained it.153 Here such writers were referring to a supposed genetic transfer of acquired conditions (often passed on by fathers) rather than to phenomena that could be explained by environmental influences, or infection, in utero. But all of these problems—tuberculosis, alcoholism, syphilis, and a host of others—could be solved, in these physical culturists’ eyes, if men and women made themselves physically fit, improving their bodily ‘terrain’ in a way that could be passed on genetically. Thus the solution to a range of 148 On the purchase of neo-Lamarckism in French scientific and social scientific circles, see Carol, L’Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, pp. 120–2; Clark, Social Darwinism in France, pp. 11–12, 67–75. 149 Léon Courraud, ‘Le rôle de l’éducation physique dans la nation’, Sport et santé, March 1936, 9. 150 Surier, La Force pour tous, 3rd edn., p. 108; Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, p. 24. 151 George Weisz, ‘A moment of synthesis’, 70, 76; Dr Charmot, former intern at the Hôpitaux de Lyon, ‘La lutte antituberculeuse est-elle bien menée?’, Portez-vous bien!, January 1934, 29–42. This approach was common in the naturist press. J.C. Demarquette, ‘Appel au bon sens’, Régénération: revue naturiste de culture humaine, March 1929, 83–7, argued that ‘sports fatigue’ was a prime cause of tuberculosis because it weakened the organism: proof was in the poor results of the conseils de révision. 152 Frumusan, La Cure de rajeunissement, p. 24. 153 Carton, Les Lois de la vie saine, pp. 62–3.

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contemporary health problems was often discussed, inside and outside the world of physical culture, in a neo-Lamarckian language of the improvement of the species.154 In this, interwar physical culturists echoed the views of contemporary eugenicists. As William Schneider has shown, in France especially the lines between hygiene, social hygiene, and eugenics were blurred in this period. One does not find the absolute opposition between natalism and eugenics that one might expect in a land where the stagnating birth-rate was deemed such a pressing problem by so many. In fact, two of the most prominent eugenicists of the interwar period— the medics Charles Richet and Adolphe Pinard (that great evangelist of puericulture, the science of child-care)—had been founding members of the principal natalist organization, the Alliance Nationale (founded in 1896), before playing a key role in the French Eugenics Society (SFE). They both advocated a ‘negative’ eugenics involving state regulation of marriage in the 1920s. That apparent paradox is partly explained by a shift in their thinking over time, but also crucial is the way in which the neo-Lamarckian assumptions of such scientists meant that the idea of selective breeding could be wrapped up convincingly in the language of the protection of children. As Anne Carol has put it, puericulture was ‘the French doublet of eugenics’.155 Members of the French Eugenics Society were adamant that in the mid-1920s there was a growing public acceptance of eugenicist measures that would ‘curb the development of hereditary contagious diseases’. On 24 September 1925 the general secretary of the organization, Dr Georges Schreiber, went on the radio to give a lecture on just that subject.156 In 1926 an elderly Adolphe Pinard brought a Bill to the Chamber of Deputies that, had it been passed, would have introduced a compulsory pre-marital medical examination for grooms in an attempt to sift the ‘unfit’ out of the available pool of breeders.157 Historians may disagree over the strength of the eugenics movement in the 1930s, and the place of ‘negative’ eugenics within it, but it seems clear that even if medical eugenicists such as René Martial and Just Sicard de Plauzoles supported radical demands on population control that made alliance with the natalists unworkable, in general French social hygienists— a very large group indeed—continued to toy with eugenicist solutions of various kinds.158 In this broader world one might say that by the 1930s it was ‘positive’ eugenics (a project of educating the public about the benefits of physical exercise 154 William Schneider, ‘The Eugenics movement in France, 1890–1940’, in Mark B. Adams, (ed.), The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia (New York and Oxford, 1990), pp. 69–109. 155 Carol, L’Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, p. 38. 156 ‘Mouvement eugénique’, Eugénique, 1925, no. 7, 249–54. 157 Carol, L’Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, pp. 220–8; Schneider, Quality and Quantity , pp. 158–69. 158 Carol, L’Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, pp. 82, 107, 309, reads the SFE’s diminished membership after 1926 as an index of the decline of radical eugenics and the turn to ‘populationism’; but Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 173–4 and 177–86, argues that the 1926 merger with other organizations merely left the SFE without an institutional home and that in fact eugenics flourished as a system of thought and became radicalized in the 1930s: for him, extremist Sicard de Plauzoles is an emblematic figure, not an exception.

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and choosing marriage partners wisely) rather than ‘negative’ measures (such as the compulsory sterilization of those deemed unfit to reproduce) that enjoyed the greatest cultural purchase. As explained above, it was precisely the traction that the neo-Lamarckian understanding of heredity enjoyed in France that made that kind of eugenicist enterprise so plausible and so palatable. Medical eugenicists were themselves certainly interested in the transformative power of physical exercise.159 As a child-care specialist, Pinard wanted young men and women to know that they could ‘augment’ their own biological ‘capital’.160 Influential physiologist and ‘work scientist’ Jules Amar celebrated the imagined eugenic aspects of the classical practice of sports and physical exercise, and endorsed the alleged Spartan practice of sacrificing ‘feeble children’ for the sake of building a heroic and athletic people.161 In countries such as Britain, Germany, and the USA, these lessons had been learned according to Amar, but not in his own ‘degenerate’ country.162 Charles Richet, who learned measurement techniques directly from Marey in the 1870s, advocated physical exercise to build and maintain the muscular vitality necessary for good reproduction, fearing that ‘intellectual overwork, when combined with the absence of physical exercise, leads promptly to the degeneration of the race’, manifested by sterility and nervous disorders in subsequent generations. He thought that the French should follow the English example of holding physical exercise in honour. He likened the process of barring the unfit from marriage to the medical screening process, the conseil de révision, which preceded a young man’s incorporation into the army on military service.163 Medical doctors who spoke at the international congresses of medicine applied to physical education in the 1930s stressed the eugenic benefits of physical exercise as well. For example, Dr Rochu-Méry, who belonged to the national committee for physical education and sports and whom we meet again in the next chapter, spoke in favour of eugenics at a medical congress organized to coincide with the 1937 Paris world’s fair. He described eugenics as the sum total of factors ‘likely to preserve, improve, increase, the physical, moral, individual, and social qualities of future generations’.164 Rochu-Méry preferred to substitute the undemocratic eugenic ventures of other countries for a ‘positive’ eugenics involving the popularization of sport. He held that swimming and French boxing, perhaps uniquely among sports, were ‘complete’, whereas certain codified practices (football, rugby, fencing, tennis) did not lead to a rational development of the whole body.165 159

Jules Amar, Le Travail humain (Paris, 1923), p. 67; Richet, La Sélection humaine, p. 198. Dr Adolphe Pinard, A la jeunesse: pour l’avenir de la race française (Paris, 1925), pp. 7, 9. 161 Amar, Le Travail humain, p. 67. Carol notes that even where French medics seemingly argued against such practices, they arguably endorsed them through rhetorical sleight of hand. Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, p. 164. See Fleury, Quelques conseils pour vivre vieux, p. 286. 162 Amar, Le Travail humain, p. 68. 163 Richet, La Sélection humaine, pp. 115, 118, 173. 164 Dr Rochu-Méry, ‘Sport et eugénisme’, Communications faites au Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’éducation physique et aux sports, Exposition internationale de Paris, 1937, Paris, 11–17 July 1937, 103–5. 165 Rochu-Méry, ‘Contrôle et orientation de l’éducation physique et des sports: “le code du praticien”’, Rapports du Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’Education physique et aux sports, Paris, 11–17 July 1937, 199. 160

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This medic at least entertained a neo-Lamarckian understanding of heredity in which environmental factors, such as the development of the body through physical exercise, conferred a genetic gift on subsequent generations. A eugenicist language—mostly ‘positive’ but sometimes ‘negative’—was taken up and popularized within the physical culturist press, and at times the work of Jules Amar and Charles Richet was directly cited or reproduced in its magazines. The naturist organ Lumière et vérité published the work of Richet in the 1930s, which endorsed its own emphasis on the importance to health of exercise, sunlight, and air. In the late 1920s La Culture physique carried pieces by Jules Amar that explained what eugenics should mean to their readers: it consisted in retaining the features of the human organism that led to ‘the improvement of man and eliminated the factors of degeneration’. Amar endorsed the founder of eugenics Francis Galton’s views on the importance of the practice of sport, describing it as one of the ‘arsenal of physiological weapons, and equally legislative ones, for defending and strengthening the human species’.166 Ruminating on the relationship between elite sport and the breeding stock of the nation, he complained about the poor quality of the French delegation at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where the French representatives were often classed in last place.167 In the late 1920s, some writers, such as Pierre Marie, thought that despite the crisis of depopulation France in fact needed fewer births, but higher-quality ones.168 Similarly, in the mid-1920s Jean Frumusan devoted a section of his self-help guide to ‘eugenics and rational culture’, discussing the ‘principles of human breeding’. Plants and animals may have been cultivated via ‘rigorously scientific methods’, but humankind had only started to think about the ‘principles of puericulture’ that would provide ‘the supreme guide of all civilized humanity’.169 Although Frumusan did not specifically discuss the proposed Bill of 1926 that urged a pre-marital medical examination, his preferences were in keeping with it. Predictably, it was the tubercular, syphilitic, and alcoholic whom he singled out as bad breeders.170 The naturist publication Régénération picked up the theme of Colonel Legros’s report to parliament on behalf of the hygiene commission in 1932, commenting favourably on the compulsory pre-marital medical certificates recently introduced in Scandinavia and some US states, while ostensibly endorsing only ‘positive’ eugenics.171 In the mid-1930s Dr Ruffier complained that the human tendency not to abstain from reproductive activity during times of illness had prevented the process of natural selection from doing its job of ‘eliminating the weak and defective’.172 Yet for practical reasons he did not support pre-marital medical

166 Professor Jules Amar, ‘Eugénique et athlétisme: les sports ont servi, de tout temps, à l’embellissement de la race’, in L’Auto, reproduced in La Culture physique, June 1928, 163. 167 Professor Jules Amar, on his Hygiène sociale, 1927, in L’Auto, reproduced in ‘Les leçons d’Amsterdam et la culture physique’, La Culture physique, January 1929, 5–6. 168 This view was in keeping with the shifts identified by Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 174–7. 169 Frumusan, La Résurrection de la beauté, pp. 14, 25, 64. 170 Frumusan, La Résurrection de la beauté, p. 68. 171 J.C. Demarquette, ‘Au secours de la race’, Régénération, November 1932, 167–8. 172 Dr J-E. Ruffier, ‘La beauté humaine’, Portez-vous bien!, April 1934, 10–14.

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certificates that would attest to the health of the future spouse’s body and mind. Such a thing would not, he pointed out, guard against health problems that might become manifest later in life. Emile Valtier, writing in La Culture physique in the early 1930s, advocated a ‘pre-eugenics’ involving the rational practice of physical culture en masse. For him such a thing would diminish at a stroke the instances of tuberculosis and failure rates in the conseils de révision.173 In these years the publication hailed Edmond Desbonnet and Georges Rouhet (mistakenly) as the only two specialists in France interested in the question of human selection, having perfected their ‘art’—the ‘gymnastics of the organs’—over the previous half-century.174 Published alongside a photographic article on a male beauty contest, this article noted that animals in agricultural shows were routinely selected for breeding, so why should humans be any different? At the end of the decade Desbonnet himself counselled against an ‘ostrich politics’ in which the French merely buried their heads in the sand on the issue of depopulation: of the two main approaches to the problem of the regeneration of the ‘race’, he asserted, that which focused on the quantity—rather than quality—of individuals was misguided. Hospitals and other means of sustaining life merely ‘conserved weaklings who will beget weaklings’: it would be better, in his view, to spend 20 million francs on physical culture than 200 million francs on building new hospitals.175 A few years earlier he had claimed that tuberculosis did a necessary and effective job of eliminating the weak from society.176 Marcel Rouet agreed, insisting that the existence of sanatoria for the chronically ill weakened the race for exactly the same reason.177 The contributors to the healthy-living magazine Pour mieux vivre had even approved of Adolphe Pinard’s failed 1926 Bill to introduce a compulsory pre-marital medical certificate on eugenicist grounds, describing it as ‘an intelligent measure’. It was, in their eyes, ‘inadmissible’, given the current emphasis on social hygiene that ‘defective individuals contaminate with the help of the law and magistrates . . . healthy young women’, bringing into the world ‘miserable children’ for whom life would be nothing but a catalogue of suffering. In the name of individual liberty, ‘abdominable crimes’ were being perpetuated.178 In 1939 the prominent supporter of the French Athletics Federation, Dr A. Thooris, published an article in the principal eugenicist periodical of the period, the Revue anthropologique, warning that the French must determine which peoples were safe to mix with if they were to avoid ‘the suicide of the Race’.179 173

Emile Valtier, ‘Le véritable eugénisme’, La Culture physique, June 1932, 161–2. ‘L’élevage des animaux et l’élevage humain’, La Culture physique, July 1935, 197. 175 Edmond Desbonnet, ‘La Politique de l’autruche, c’est celle que l’on pratique pour régénérer la race’, La Culture physique, July 1938, 193. 176 Edmond Desbonnet, ‘La santé d’abord . . . le reste ensuite’, La Culture physique, March–April 1929, 2. 177 Rouet, Santé et beauté plastique, p. 90. 178 V. A. G., ‘Le certificat médical d’aptitude au mariage’, Pour mieux vivre, January 1927, 26–9. 179 Dr A. Thooris, ‘Réflexe de but et racisme’, Revue anthropologique, October–December 1939, 268–89; Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 172, 208–55. For eugenicist naturism see Marcel Kienne de Mongeot, ‘Notre but’, Vivre, 15 March 1926, no. 1, 1–2; Dr Fougerat de Lastours, ‘La nudité devant la médecine et l’hygiène’, Lumière et vérité, November–December 1930, 15–17. 174

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The interest that the proponents of physical culture had in eugenics, however, was multi-faceted, as a study of their reception of Alexis Carrel’s thought shows. It is not difficult to see why physical culturists praised the best-selling Man, the Unknown when it was published in 1935. While criticizing the shallow ‘worship of athletics’ in the contemporary world, it was clear that Carrel’s book endorsed the ‘harmonious development of the muscles’ in classical models and lay great emphasis on the importance of ‘muscular effort’ in developing the human species eugenically. Carrel also shared their critique of the softening and devirilizing effects of modern civilization on the bodies of men.180 But Carrel was received not only as an exercise-friendly eugenicist, but as an anti-materialist interested in the nature of humanity, as his favourable reception in the pages of La Culture physique and a range of other titles, whether related to physical exercise or not, suggests.181 Naturist Kienné de Mongeot read Carrel’s book as an endorsement of his life’s work—an indictment of the disastrous effects of modern civilization on the human body and spirit and the role of exercise in reversing them.182 Kienné praised Carrel’s work in the speech he delivered at the annual ‘Calme et santé’ banquet organized by Dr Marcel Viard, saying that the celebrated biologist had understood that human suffering was caused more by ‘mental’ than by economic crisis.183 The naturist publication Régénération described it as a courageous book about the human soul that warns of the degeneration caused by humanity’s failure to adapt to the modern, technologically driven world of its own creation. The moral and virile senses could only be developed by forging ‘culture without comfort, beauty without luxury, the machine without servitude to the factory, science without the cult of matter’.184 Similarly, one writer in Sport et santé peppered his discussion of the success of black athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics with references to Alexis Carrel’s work, picking up on Carrel’s own evocation of the unknown capacity of man: the long-distance and middle-distance runners, especially, showed that the ‘limits of human possibilities’ were being tested in the domain of elite athletics.185 In the late 1930s Pierre Torrès published a manual for physical culture that put the spiritual dimension at centre stage. The text offered constant reminders, via Carrel, that man was formed of both matter and conscience, and that as a result, body and soul were part of an homogenous and inseparable whole. Torrès, inspired by ‘the legend of Buddha’, wanted to convince his readership that methodical physical exercise was a sure route to physical well-being and even euphoria. He offered instructions in breathing and relaxation, for which he suggested conjuring up in the mind images, colours, sounds, and smells encountered while on holiday—forests, the sea, snow—that allow us to reconnect with nature, to ‘rediscover joie de vivre amid universal harmony’ in an escape from the ‘false riches’ of modern life. Ironically, in a swipe at body-builders, Torrès also counselled against the 180 181 182 183 184 185

Alexis Carrel, Man, the Unknown (London, 1935), pp. 26, 37, 69, 215, 276–77, 284–6. Henri Diffre, La Culture physique, March 1936, 77; Drouard, Alexis Carrel, pp. 182–3. Marcel Kienné de Mongeot, ‘Nous avons raison’, Vivre-Santé, 1 January 1936, 3–4. Kienné de Mongeot, cited in Calme et santé, December 1935, 5. Régénération, January 1936, 17–22, and February 1936, 19–26. Maurice Baquet, ‘La leçon des jeux olympiques’, Sport et santé, September 1936, 24–6.

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sculpting of ‘false muscles’ in adulation of classical forms, instead suggesting that one should fashion one’s musculature according to one’s soul.186 Emile Valtier, who moved in just those body-building circles, asserted the scientific basis of physical culture also in direct reference to Carrel’s ideas. He rejected the criticism that it was no more than ‘a collection of empirical practices’ without a scientific, rational basis by calling on Carrel’s notion of the ‘adaptive function’ of human beings—the way that their ‘soft matter’ is ‘alterable’ to ensure their own survival. A corporeally transformative physical culture would provide just such a means of adaptation—‘the defence of the individual against himself, against the external conditions of his regular life’. In this way, the individual could contribute to a wider regeneration, building ‘a strong France of strong men.’187 Carrel’s antimaterialist critique of modernity and his quest to improve the breeding stock of humanity were thus both called upon to bolster the business of physical culture. Carrel reached medical researchers interested in physical education as well, showing how hopes and concerns about the rationalization of the work-place intersected with a eugenicist vision.188 In the late 1930s, Jean Meynard submitted a thesis on sport and physical culture in industry to the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, focusing his attention specifically on the impact of Taylorist factory routines on the bodies of workers. Drawing directly on the work of Alexis Carrel, Meynard wondered ‘what influence will this new mode of life have on the future of the race’?189 In his view, the factory labour of the industrial age had turned men into machines rather than living organisms. They suffered from hypertrophy of the muscles, extremely bad posture, and such occupation-specific problems as the deformities of the lower limbs found in spinners. For Meynard, the solution was the development of sport and physical culture activities, both inside and outside the work-place, as long as a rational physical education preceded the introduction of sports. He recommended a specifically hébertiste lesson in the factory itself, complemented by such activities as cycling, which could be tailored to any age or ability; swimming, which developed the complete musculature of the body; and the bourgeois sport of tennis to build suppleness, speed, and reflexes, with the added bonus that it was sufficiently undemanding to be played even by ‘neurasthenics’. Finally, football would build skill, strength, sang-froid, decisiveness, courage, and discipline—in other words, a manliness that would protect its protagonists from feminizing nervous disorders. However, he thought medical supervision of this physical exercise was absolutely crucial: he advocated a kind of conseil de révision to weed out the unsuitable and inapt. This activity would raise the physical level of the individual and, via a neoLamarckian understanding of heredity, contribute to the ‘conservation and development of the race’ as well. After all, the years in which factory workers were at their 186

Pierre Torrès, L’Education physique au service des forces spirituelles (Paris, 1938), pp. 9, 14, 23, 31, 37, 56. Emile Valtier, ‘Les bases scientifiques de la culture physique’, La Culture physique, November 1937, 321–2. 188 Sicard de Plauzoles was another proponent of ‘industrial hygiene’, Schneider, Quality and quantity, 179; Clarke, France in the age of organization, 112–14. 189 Jean Meynard, echoing Carrel, Man, the unknown, in his doctoral thesis, Sports et culture physique dans l’industrie, 14. 187

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most productive, he wrote, was also the life stage in which they were most likely to ‘transmit to their offspring their virtues or their failings’.190 In the world of interwar physical culture in France, therefore, there was considerable cross-fertilization among physicians and the proponents of physical exercise where eugenicist patterns of thinking—and a wider critique of civilization—were concerned. My conclusions thus depart from those of sports historian Jacques Defrance, who claims that by 1930 or so there was a turn away from eugenics in French popular culture: if one bears in mind that the version that predominated was largely ‘positive’, and if one considers the exponents of physical culture that lay outside the mainstream sports press, one can see that such views persisted across the entire interwar period.191 Whether or not the convergence of thinking among eugenicists and physical culturists was directly causal in all instances, it suggests at the very least that both groups were fishing in the same pool of ideas, which in itself probably testifies to the deep cultural resonance of a medical model of decline and the desire of many to transform the ‘race’ through the application of rational physical exercise. C O N C LU S I O N This chapter has traced the purchase of fears of biological degeneration after 1918 amid a climate receptive to eugenicist patterns of thinking. The ubiquity of neoLamarckian assumptions among physical culturists explains why they saw the body as the site for a broader national and ostensibly ‘racial’ transformation, and eugenics gave them the conceptual tools with which to outline their vision. Their views were nourished by, and contributed to, a widespread discourse, exacerbated by the First World War, in which a fear of bodily failure intersected with concerns about national security, and may well have helped to build the kind of eugenicist culture that Fae Brauer has found in the pre-1914 period.192 The frontier between ostensibly distinct branches of knowledge and practice—medicine, sport, the popular press, pedagogy—was indeed a porous one. There were connections of personnel but also shared patterns of thinking and cross-fertilization: physical culturist writers popularized medical knowledge, which in turn betrayed wider cultural assumptions about decline. The chapter has also suggested that the world of physical culture was marked by the same concern about defending the ‘whole man’ that animated interwar medicine and debates about rationalization in the work-place. That interface was perhaps most 190

Meynard, Sport et culture physique dans l’industrie, pp. 17, 19, 21, 26, 42, 49. For Jacques Defrance, ‘L’eugénisme et la culture scientifique dans le champ des activités physiques et des sports’, in C. Pociello (ed.), Entre le social et le vital: l’éducation physique et sportive sous tensions (PUG, 2004), pp. 127–60, the 1930 papal condemnation of eugenics curbed its influence in France. 192 Fae Brauer, ‘Making eugenic bodies delectable: art, “biopower” and “scientia sexualis”’, 7–9, and ‘Eroticising Lamarckian eugenics: the body stripped bare during French sexual neoregulation’, 97–138, in Fae Brauer and Anthea Callen (eds.), Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti (Aldershot and Burlington, 2008). 191

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apparent in the instances where medics themselves turned their attention to how physical exercise could prevent the factory-worker from being reduced to a cog in the productive wheel, as in the case of Jean Meynard. That writer is significant too, in that he situated his interest in the health of workers’ bodies and minds in relation to the eugenicist anti-materialism of Alexis Carrel, suggesting how a concern with fatigue—a concern that Anson Rabinbach sees as ubiquitous among European intellectuals by the early years of the twentieth century—was shot through with ideas not only about the fragility of masculinity but about national and ‘racial’ decline. The example of Meynard thus helps to explain the widespread appeal of eugenics in interwar France: the ideas of Alex Carrel, Adolphe Pinard, Charles Richet, and Jules Amar were seductive not only for traditional racial purists, but for those concerned with seeking a solution to the problems of urban modernity. In addition, there is no doubt that the sphere of physical culture consolidated manly ideals, often based on appearance, although I would suggest that there were clear areas of tension: male elegance in self-presentation could denote either taste or effeminacy; masculine violence could connote either martial values or a lack of self-control; men’s muscles were either indicators of strength or a sign of narcissism; in competitive sport the will to win could be a product of manly strength of character or a lack of the values of honourable fair play. Ironically, the world of physical culture may have also functionally endorsed a homoerotic way of seeing. Men were increasingly objects of the gaze in this age of spectator sport and visually perpetuated cults of celebrity, and it is feasible that within the realm of body-building in particular that homoerotic, if not homosexual, activity was commonplace. Indeed, as the earlier example of Gide and Raffinovitch’s ‘virile homosexuality’ suggests, it may even have been the case that homosexual men in the 1920s and 1930s defended themselves against charges of effeminacy—and therefore a lack of patriotism—by endorsing an exaggerated version of the era’s preference for muscular masculinity. The lived experience of interwar homosexuality may thus paradoxically have further entrenched heterosexual gender norms. Finally, one might argue, the increasing embroilment of these ‘technologies of physical fitness’ in a commercially driven print and consumer culture had the effect of shoring up hierarchies of class as well.193 That, at least, was what the leaders of the leftist sports organizations feared, and its leaders invested much energy throughout the interwar period in attempting to wean their male working-class demographic away from the anaesthetizing appeal of ‘bourgeois’ sports federations (including body-building), as later chapters will show. If the get-fit literature of the interwar years represents an expression of bourgeois hegemony, however, we must acknowledge that it appealed to bourgeois aspirations in at least two ways. First, it may well be that its appeal for the professional and commercial middle classes lay in individual fears of losing a manly honed physique through the stressful rigours of sedentary office work. One might also argue (following Michael Hau and the sociologists of sport who draw on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu) that artisans and 193

Brian Pronger, Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness (Toronto, 2002).

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petit bourgeois alike may have found the world of physical culture appealing precisely because they believed that the acquisition of cultural capital afforded by a fit, muscular body might lead to a measure of increased social status, whatever the limits of that aspiration in practice. Ironically, then, class tension and competition may have served to shore up the muscular masculine ideal that all groups sought to emulate.

2 The Body of the Citizen-Soldier Physical Education and the State From the short-lived experiment of the bataillons scolaires of the early 1880s to the legislation governing mandatory physical education in schools, the Third Republic had always taken a keen interest in the physical fitness of French children. National governments preferred to invest in physical training than either spectator sport or the kind of mass sporting practice that took place on evenings and weekends across the country, at least until the Popular Front era of the mid-1930s.1 The fact that these state measures were so often fused with questions of military service meant that boys and young men were targeted in a more extensive and different way than girls and women. As this chapter will show, debates about reducing the length of military service in the late 1920s threw the problem of male physical fitness into sharper focus and reignited longstanding worries about the dangers of surmenage. These fears were sometimes joined with anxieties about public health and social hygiene, and the intersection of official and ‘expert’ interests in physical fitness, the male body, and eugenics in the 1937 Paris world’s fair is a particularly good example of this fusion. French sports historians have long recognized the hygienist and even eugenicist elements within the sphere of state physical education, but the ways in which these concerns merged and were mediated by imagined male bodily failure has neither been fully acknowledged nor integrated into the wider historical narratives of the period.2 Such connections were facilitated by a significant level of crossfertilization between the leaders of sports unions and federations and physical culturist experts, who functioned as lobby groups with close ties to government. State interest in physical exercise in the early Third Republic (1870–1914) was characterized by an interlocking web of concerns long familiar to historians—the spectre of biological degeneration and national decline, anxieties over the status and power of men, and concerns over surmenage in the school system—and it 1 Jean-Paul Callède, ‘Maire et ministres entreprenants: l’invention des politiques publiques du sport (1918–1939)’, in Philippe Tétart (ed.), Histoire du sport en France: du second empire au régime de Vichy (Paris, 2007), pp. 156. 158–9, 168–74. 2 Jacques Defrance, ‘Construction sociale d’une “compétence médico-sportive”, entre holisme et spécialisation (années 1910–1950)’, Regards sociologiques, 29 (2004), 75–93; Pierre Arnaud, ‘Les rapports du sport et de l’éducation physique en France depuis la fin du XIXe siècle’, in Pierre Arnaud, Jean-Paul Clément and Michel Herr (eds.), Education physique et sport en France, 1920–1980 (ClermontFerrand, 1989), p. 258; Ronald Hubscher, Jean Durry, and Bernard Jeu, L’Histoire en mouvements: le sport dans la société française (XIXe–XXe siècle) (Paris, 1992), p. 182; Jean Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, 1918–1939 (Paris, 2005), p. 43–6.

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flourished in the self-deprecating and revanchiste climate after French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. It seemed logical to many that the French military collapse reflected the bodily failure of her soldiers—men whose minds had been developed at the expense of their bodies by the French school system. When compulsory physical education was introduced in all boys’ state schools in 1880 (it was extended to girls’ schools in 1882), it was amid the ongoing expression of fears of the devirilizing effects of intellectual surmenage.3 Minister of public instruction, Jules Simon, declared in 1887 that through formal education ‘fifteen years are spent destroying his virility. We give society a ridiculous little mandarin who hasn’t any muscles.’4 Advice offered by the Academy of Medicine’s own study into surmenage that year fed into the ministerial circular of July 1890 that recommended daily physical education for all pupils.5 As Robert Nye and Anson Rabinbach have both illustrated, such ‘overwork’ was widely viewed as a cause of neurasthenia— that particularly male form of ‘hysteria’ deemed a feminizing force, something that threatened to subvert both prevailing notions of sex-difference and national strength.6 By this logic, the crisis of France was the crisis of her male bodies. In the early 1880s, republican educationalists embarked on an experiment with bataillons scolaires in order to build ‘a vigorous, healthy population, morally ready to fight’.7 As Philippe Marchand has shown, by 1886 there were more than a hundred such batallions in France comprising more than 43,000 boys aged as young as twelve, often in uniform and equipped with rifles, taking part in municipal ceremonies such as the unveiling of war monuments.8 Even though this social experiment failed (the rise of Boulangism in the second half of the decade hastened its demise), it helped to ensure that other sporting activities such as gymnastics and shooting were based on military models.9 Furthermore, like military training proper, the school batallions were designed to build men as well as military defenders of the patrie—identities that were mutually constitutive: military service conferred manliness on its bearer; conversely, to be manly one had to be willing to serve. An army training manual of 1913 spelled out the virility dividend for prospective soldiers: war exalts ‘the spirit of sacrifice, duty, patriotism, devotion’, and engenders ennobling ‘martial virtues’—skill, audacity, heroism, presence of mind, sang-froid, honour, firmness, bravery. Soldiers would fail the test of manliness if they could not overcome fatigue and ‘harden’ themselves against danger.10 The physical value of the French conscript was certainly read as an index of national strength. Robert Nye has remarked how moral reformers in the late nineteenth 3

Richard Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France (London, 1981). Jules Simon, head of the Committee for the Preparation of Physical Exercise in Education, ‘L’Education’, La Réforme sociale, 13 (1887), in John J. MacAloon, This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games (Chicago and London, 1981), p. 98. 5 Dr Philippe Tissié, L’Education physique et la race: santé, travail, longévité (Paris, 1919), p. 291. 6 Rabinbach, The Human Motor, pp. 146 ff. 7 Pierre Milza, ‘Sport et relations internationales’, Relations Internationales, no. 38 (1984), 163. 8 Philippe Marchand, ‘Les Petits soldats de demain: les bataillons scolaires dans le département du Nord, 1882–1892’, Revue du Nord, 67, no. 266 (1985), 769–803. 9 Milza, ‘Sport et relations internationales’, 163. 10 Capitaine Henri Carré, Manuel d’éducation guerrière, livre du soldat, les conseils et le préceptes (Paris, 1913), pp. 6, 9, 29, 34, 41. 4

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century saw in the fact that more French than Germans were rejected from military service on health grounds and that the average height of French conscripts had declined over the century evidence for the degenerative effects of alcohol consumption.11 In fact, even those who dismissed pessimistic claims about the quality of French conscripts sometimes spoke a similar language of decline. In a riposte to socialist criticism of belle époque militarism, Lieutenant Louis Guennebaud laughed off claims that the army was a source of physical surmenage and degeneration. Military medics and physical culturists might complain that conscripts were overworked in ways that threatened their organisms and thus national defence,12 but without military service there would be even less physical culture in France. It was the ‘struggle for existence’, alcohol consumption, syphilis, and excessively intellectual labours that produced the surmenage in their harried modern lives, he wrote, not the barracks. As a result, the numbers of ‘neurotic, weak, and timid’ had multiplied. Countering claims that military service led to a ‘backwards selection’ by temporarily taking the best physical specimens out of the marriage market and therefore the reproductive pool, Guennebaud claimed that young women would rather wait for those deemed ‘fit for service’ to complete their term than choose a weak or deformed man. In short, military service built vigorous bodies with a ‘physical force’ that would be transmitted to future generations.13 A range of voices thus agreed on one thing—that the male body was fragile, and that the defensive and biological fortunes of the nation depended upon its correct physique. The bloodshed of the First World War meant that, unsurprisingly, these interlocking concerns about surmenage, male bodies, and national strength lingered into the 1920s, and they are evident in the way that the public powers considered the question of physical education in both schools and the army.14 It was telling that until 1928 physical education was always discussed in relation to military preparation in the Chamber of Deputies: it helped to keep the debate over physical training gendered, even though physical education in schools was compulsory for girls too. The debates around reducing the term of military service (in 1923 to eighteen months, in 1929 to a year) had a similar effect, at once masculinizing and militarizing physical education: if conscripts spent a limited time in the barracks, it became more important to make them physically fit before they arrived there. Indeed, until the Popular Front era of 1936–38, when issues of sport and physical education came to the fore, the year in which parliamentarians most debated questions of physical training was 1929—the year that ‘service of one year’ was introduced.15 Furthermore, a study of the interwar years shows that many key physical culturists—Maurice Boigey, Bellin du Coteau, and Henri Diffre, all medical 11

Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, p. 157. Roynette, “Bons pour le service”, 296–310; Rouhet and Desbonnet, L’Art de créer le pur-sang humain, p. 79; Rouhet, Revenons à la nature et régénérons-nous, p. 65. 13 Lt Louis Guennebaud, La Vie à la caserne au point de vue social (Saint-Brieuc, 1906), pp. 11,49, 53, 60, 61, 124. 14 Defrance, ‘Concurrences et spécificités’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 20. 15 Pierre Arnaud and Michel Herr, ‘Le role de l’Etat en matière d’intégration de l’exercice corporel dans le système éducatif français vu à travers les textes officiels’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 274. 12

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doctors—lobbied governments in an attempt to popularize their own vision of physical education and at times played key roles in delivering such training. The division between the world of high politics and commercially driven private initiative was thus rather porous, and there was a clear exchange of ideas between these sectors, aided by the passage of figures such as Adolphe Chéron—keen military preparationist, short-lived under-secretary of state for physical education, and president of the sports category in the 1937 world’s fair—between them. This chapter will show how connections such as these facilitated the use of a dual vocabulary of ‘improving the race’ and athletic manliness in official circles, helping to cement eugenicist thinking and effecting the greater medicalization of interwar society. THE ‘FRENCH METHOD’ AND THE ARMY The ‘French method’ of physical training was nothing if not amorphous. There were fifty-two commissions set up either in the ministry of war or the ministry of public instruction between 1838 and 1924 to codify gymnastics in France, and in general the military gymnastics introduced to France by Colonel Amoros (1770– 1848) were replaced by 1900 with a style that drew on the Swedish gymnastics of Per Henrik Ling (1776–1839), synthesized and adapted by Georges Démeny (1850–1917).16 In the 1920s and 1930s, what shines through in official military and educational texts is not only the preference for a three-stage method based first on gentle Swedish-style gymnastics followed by a more demanding set of utilitarian activities broadly in keeping with the ‘natural method’ of Georges Hébert and completed by sports, but also the concerns about devirilization, measuring human performance, ambivalence to competitive sport, and the fight against fatigue and surmenage that animated the worlds of naturism and physical culture.17 These ideas were reflected in the plans laid out by the minister of war for training the second tranche of recruits in 1920. After incorporation, doctors were to divide conscripts according to their physical capabilities. Subjects in the middle category were ordered to rest (especially during the phase of compulsory vaccinations) and avoid all ‘unnecessary fatigue’; those deemed weakest were packed off to a centre of physical re-education; and only the best were to be tested on hébertistestyle physical exercises after weeks of training. Even for these men such activities should take place in a non-competitive atmosphere, the tests abandoned at the first sign of tiredness. Only after a second categorization would the strongest be permitted to play proper sports.18 Military manuals advised taking warm showers after 16 W. Weber and P. Black, ‘Muscular Anschluss: German bodies and Austrian imitators’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 16, 4 (1999), 63. 17 Lt Iwan Hamant, Conférence sur l’éducation physique dans l’armée (Paris, 1913), pp. 5, 12–13; M. Cazalet, Le Soldat de demain: manuel militaire de la jeunesse française, à l’usage des sociétés de préparation militaire, sociétés de gymnastique (Paris, 1913), pp. 84–173. 18 André Lefevre, minister of war, 11 September 1920, to commanding generals, SHD-DAT 7N 4237-1.

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exercise and taught that adolescents were at particular risk of physical surmenage because their nervous systems were easily worn down. Recruits should analyse slow-motion films of robust athletes to learn the essential elements of their movement, and photographs of semi-naked, muscular men provided exemplars not only for how to accomplish various exercises but how to look while performing them. The aim was to ‘perfect’ the individual by improving health, strength, skill, resistance, virility, and harmony of form in the fight against the ‘social scourges’ of tuberculosis, alcoholism, and venereal disease.19 In the mid-1930s General Brallion recalled the sentiments he had first published in 1912, imagining an army purged of weaklings, in which soldiers were alert and resourceful, having developed the qualities that had produced muscle strength, love of risk, and contempt for danger. He noted that revolutionaries, on the other hand, devoid of high morals in his view, were likely to be weak, unhealthy physical specimens.20 Such concerns reverberated in the training for military preparation certificates meted out by the countless gymnastics and sports societies that since 1908 had been eligible for subsidies from the ministry of war. In the words of one manual, the goal was to ensure that ‘the race remains strong and arduous’ by the development of physical strength, courage, skill, vigour, endurance, and initiative. Young men should begin each day with ten minutes of light gymnastics, performed while standing in front of an open window: one had to learn the ‘alphabet’ of physical education before ‘reading’ sports. The dangers of physical surmenage—cardiac, kidney, and lung problems, a pale face, an excess of emotion—were spelled out.21 Echoing the world view of physical culturists proper, it was common for such manuals to stress that physical education and hygiene went hand in hand, and the texts were peppered with the adulation of classical statuary (bodily elegance was widely prized) alongside calls to ‘regenerate the race’ through the rational application of physical exercise, fresh air, and water.22 The same messages appeared in the physical culture manuals published commercially by military personnel themselves. For example, Commandant Henri Arnould counselled a morning physical work-out and some sun alongside infusions to flush out the kidneys. Although addressed to a mixed-sex audience, his work underlined the usefulness of physical exercise for building virility. Included in Arnould’s list of manly attributes was the kind of beauty (the ‘consequence of harmony of form’) embodied both in classical statues such as Belvedere’s Apollo and the impressive physique of ‘primitive peoples’. He lamented that corporeal ugliness was often disguised by clothing: only in swimming pools and conseils de révision did one see the ‘physiological miseries hidden under the elegance of clothes!’ For him, neglect of the body led the nervous system to deteriorate, leaving one open to ‘psychic troubles’ and neurasthenia, and like many of his contemporaries 19 Ministère de la Guerre, Règlement général d’éducation physique: méthode française, première partie (Paris, 1926), pp. 13–17, 20–4, 33, 35, 50. 20 General Brallion, Essai sur l’Instruction militaire, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1935), pp. 26–8. 21 Cazalet, Le Soldat de demain, pp. vii–xii, 34, 494. 22 Dr Léopold Philippe and Louis Gauthier, De l’air, de l’exercice, de l’eau, du soleil: questions d’hygiène et d’Education physique individuelles (Paris, 1920), pp. 7, 10–11, 12, 74, 114, 117.

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he sought ‘the best use of our muscular strength resulting in maximum productivity of useful work with minimum fatigue’.23 Since ‘the virile and moral training of all youth in France and the colonies’ fell within its remit, he wanted the ministry of national defence to remedy the situation by fighting the consequences of the ‘intellectual force feeding’ that had made weaklings of the young.24 Commandant Royet, in his own get-fit guide for civilians, specifically addressed women and children, since it was hoped that some kind of family-based physical exercise was about to be made mandatory by law.25 Royet was adamant that making the civilian population physically fit would lead to the ‘regeneration and general rise of our French race’. Like physical training in the army and in military preparation societies, the formation of these civilian subjects should involve medical supervision and the careful practice of sports so as to prevent surmenage. Equipment could be found in the home: hook feet underneath the bed frame for sit-ups, and fix a bar of wood across a door-frame for chin-ups. These basics could then be supplemented by natural movements—swimming, running, walking, throwing— once widely practised but now casualties of the machine age that had led the body to degeneration. Unsurprisingly, adolescent girls and adult women were told to avoid strenuous sports: tennis, volley-ball, hockey, and swimming were in, football and cross-country running emphatically ruled out.26 Such a reaching-out to civilians was in keeping with the views of the minister of war in the early 1920s, who outlined the importance of sport and physical exercise in developing the ‘moral discipline’ of all youth, and who wanted the army to liaise with local civil authorities, sports federations, and universities in developing the bodies of the young.27 I N S T I T U T I O N A L C RO S S  F E RT I L I Z AT I O N These echoes of the world of physical culture are not surprising given that governmental policy on physical education in both army and schools was formulated in the light of scientific research into physical exercise and informed by a series of experts. There were clear interconnections among the leaders of private sports federations, prominent médecins-culturistes, and elected public officials. Perhaps most obviously this cross-fertilization took place in the national sports council (CNS)—a body founded in 1908 for the purpose of promoting cooperation across the sports unions.28 Furthermore, the architect of the ‘French method’ of physical training before the First World War, Georges Démeny, was university-trained in 23 Commandant Henri Arnould, La Culture physique chez soi ou dix minutes d’exercices méthodiques chaque jour (Paris, 1923), pp. 7, 9, 20, 38, 39, 42, 74. 24 Arnould, ‘Le problème national de l’éducation physique’, Le Joinvillais, February 1937, 7–13. 25 Dr J.-P. Langlois, preface to Commandant Royet, L’Education physique pratique: à la maison, dans la famille, en plein air (Paris, 1920), pp. 3–4. 26 Royet, L’Education physique pratique, pp. 5, 6, 26, 40–50. 27 André Lefevre, minister of war, 22 March 1920 to various commanding generals, SHD-DAT 7N 4237-1. 28 Frantz Reichel, ‘The Sports of France: their rebirth, their progress, their organization’, in Le Sport en France, preface by Henry Paté (La Haye, n.d.), pp. 19–22.

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engineering sciences. He worked with physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey at the latter’s outpost in the Parc des Princes, and there, still an advocate of the Swedish method, developed an interest in chronophotography and the measurement of performance.29 Démeny’s work met with official approval: he ran a physical education course for the Ville de Paris in 1891, and was awarded a chair in applied physiology by the ministry of war in 1902, which put him in charge of a research laboratory at the military Ecole de Joinville.30 Démeny had seen physical education as ‘the sum total of means designed to teach man to execute any given mechanical work with the greatest possible economy in terms of the expenditure of muscular strength’, thus suggesting the era’s anxieties about measuring human potential and fatigue management.31 Such links were also facilitated by the training of school physical education teachers through the University of Paris.32 Summer courses in physiology applied to physical education subsidized by the ministry of war were offered in the early 1920s at the Paris Faculty of Medicine under the direction of Professor J-P Langlois (1862–1923)—a former student of Charles Richet and expert on fatigue and work hygiene. Adrien Rey-Golliet, Inspector of schools in Paris, attended the school visits made during these lessons in which male pupils were prodded and measured by Dr Langlois himself.33 Lessons included physiological theory and the problem of muscular fatigue, and stressed the importance of physiological and medical measurements for each pupil. Langlois hoped that such principles would be applied not only to children and adolescents, but to mature adults for whom physical culture could stave off the decline associated with ageing.34 The growing acceptance of medical intervention in matters pertaining to physical education was also reflected in the formation of a medical sub-committee within Gaston Vidal’s consultative committee on physical education set up in the ministry of public instruction in 1922. Vidal also created a scientific sub-committee for research into methods, while a sports sub-committee addressed the problem of how to change parental attitudes towards the value of sport.35 The consultative committee as a whole, which acted for a time as the kind of higher council for physical education envisaged by a law drafted in 1919, comprised médecins-culturistes such as Professor Langlois himself, Dr Ruffier, Dr G-A. Richard (of the medical society for physical education), Dr Thooris (chief doctor at the Villemen military hospital), and Dr Tissié of the French league for physical education based in Pau.36 29 Dr G-A. Richard, ‘Education physique . . . et sport’, L’Educateur physique moderne, 1 January 1923, 111–14; Maurice Boigey, Physiologie de la culture physique et des sports (Paris, 1927), p. 50. 30 Marcel Bergeron, ‘Historique de l’Education physique’, in Marcel Labbé and Dr Bellin du Coteau, Traité d’éducation physique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1930), p. 60. 31 Marcel Delarbre, ‘À Georges Démeny’, Echo des sports, reproduced in L’Educateur physique moderne, 15 May 1922, 14–15. 32 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 49. 33 Letter from the Directeur de l’Enseignement Primaire de la Seine, April 1920, AP D2 T1 15; Dupont, Dictionnaire des médecins, p. 379. 34 Professor J.-P. Langlois, L’Educateur physique moderne, 1 August 1922, 33–45. 35 Gaston Vidal cited in L’Educateur physique moderne, 15 May 1922, 1–7. 36 Langlois, L’Educateur physique moderne.

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Also included was Dr Bellin du Coteau, the specialist in sports medicine who would go on to be technical director at the national physical education training college (ENEP) set up in 1933 and a member both of the French athletics federation and the cabinet of under-secretary for physical education Dr Pierre Dézarnaulds in the mid-1930s.37 In addition, Marcel Labbé, professor at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, was named rapporteur for a commission on physical education in schools whose first move had been to ask the stars of ‘the world of physical culture’—men such as Tissié, Hébert, Ruffier, Boigey—their opinions on the best method of exercise.38 He firmly believed that the state had a duty to provide physical culture in order to fulfil Jules Simon’s late nineteenth-century desire that lycées make not only well-instructed adults, but ‘men in the true sense of the word’. He complained that young men had ‘lazy bodies rather than active ones’, arriving at the age of military service insufficiently developed, hence the ‘deplorable statistics’ of the conseils de révision. Despite making a virtue of eclecticism, Labbé favoured the ‘natural method’ of Georges Hébert. Unlike the collective Swedish gymnastics of Ling, he claimed, hébertisme was fun, and was popular with pupils.39 Although it is difficult to establish precisely what influence such médecins-culturistes had on specific policies, these voices maintained constant public scrutiny of the initiatives proposed in this area by elected officials. Another important vehicle for cross-fertilization was the principal union of military preparation societies: the USEPPSM. This organization was founded in 1885 by Adolphe Chéron, long-term deputy and occasional under-secretary of state for physical education. After the First World War the editor-in-chief of its official organ was physical culturist Albert Surier. It was thus hardly surprising that the benefits of rationally practised physical culture were extolled along with Edmond Desbonnet’s ‘gymnastics of the organs’.40 In the mid-1920s the union claimed more than sixty-three departmental committees and 1,850 societies representing around 400,000 members.41 In effect, it functioned as a lobby group that pushed for better funding for physical education. Albert Surier had moved between the circles of physical culture and military preparation for some time, and with the collaboration of Desbonnet had published an officially recognized military manual shortly before the First World War.42 Another key collaborator in the USEPPSM was Dr Henri Diffre, former military doctor, war veteran, and high-profile contributor to the physical culturist press. Diffre had also been a brilliant sportif, playing tennis for France in a military championship and football for Racing-Club de Roubaix.43 By 1936 he was Director of the Parc d’enfants at the thermal spa La

37

Delaplace, Georges Hébert, p. 318. Boigey delivered his ideas on the impact of sedentarity to the commission, Le Figaro, 20 October 1922, 6. 39 Marcel Labbé, preface to Labbé and Bellin du Coteau, Traité d’éducation physique, pp. ii, iii, v, xii, vi. 40 Albert Surier, ‘Questions importantes dans un vaste sujet’, Le Soldat de demain, April 1934, 155–6. 41 Jacques Maire, ‘Compte rendu moral’, Le Soldat de demain, January 1924, 4. 42 Albert Surier, Manuel de culture physique militaire (Paris, 1910), pp. 6–7. 43 La Rédaction, ‘Le docteur Henri Diffre’, Le Soldat de demain, December 1924, 334–6. 38

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Bourboule in central France and Technical Director of the regional physical education institute in Lille.44 The Union was convinced of the necessity of using rational physical culture and carefully managed sports to correct the physical decline of modern man for the sake of national security.45 Its leaders acknowledged that the wrong kind of sport had galvanized the population: ‘school kids all read L’Auto’, more interested in boxer Georges Carpentier than Xenophon’s Anabase.46 Albert Surier used the union’s chief magazine Le Soldat de demain to spread the idea that the cult of the champion was causing the physical decline of the French, along with abuse of alcohol, amorality, ‘hereditary diseases’, and the kinds of nervous disorder exacerbated by the First World War.47 In the late 1930s he declared that young men in Nazi Germany were less ‘sensitive’ than the French and benefitted physically from the superior ‘politics of physical culture’ over the Rhine. As the question of international security became more central to public discourse in the 1930s, Surier claimed that it was crucial for the state to take physical culture seriously.48 In fact, the leadership of the USEPPSM manifested a clearly eugenicist pattern of thinking across the entire interwar period. In spite of the ubiquitous concerns with the size of the French population, these writers and lobbyists were adamant that quality mattered too. In the early 1920s the USEPPSM launched its own project for biological regeneration with the full cooperation of the army: a prize of 5,000 francs for the best athlete in the class of 1920 would be paid in instalments— on marriage and at the birth of his first three children. It was hoped that this gesture would accelerate ‘the proliferation of a healthy, strong, and skilful race’.49 Contestants executed a physical education lesson at the USEPPSM’s annual festival in the Tuileries gardens, and were judged by individuals chosen by the ministry of war.50 Participating athletes were selected carefully, since those who suffered from ‘any defect resulting from a veneral disease, or lesion of the respiratory organs, or any imperfection in heart function, or the presence of albumin in the urine’ were barred from entry.51 In 1921 Albert Surier had spelled out that increasing the numbers of the ‘scrawny, infirm, mad, and ill’ would not strengthen the nation, and he approved of immigration from France’s more prolific neighbours as a fix for the ‘demographic deficit’ as long as they were, in Surier’s words, ‘individuals of 44 Rééducation physique, revue de la Socété des professeurs spécialistes de culture physique médicale de France, October 1936, n.p. 45 Albert Surier, ‘Sur la mauvaise pente’, Le Soldat de demain, 25 February 1922, 47; Albert Surier, ‘Chut! Les oreilles ennemies nous écoutent’, Le Soldat de demain, March 1924, 63–4; Dr Henri Diffre, ‘La place des sports en éducation physique’, Le Soldat de demain, 1 December 1924, 331–2. 46 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘La Propagande par les sportifs’, Le Soldat de demain, January 1925, 4–5. 47 Albert Surier, ‘Pour le salut de la France’, Le Soldat de demain, February 1938, 28. 48 Albert Surier, ‘Pour une véritable politique de la santé’, La Culture physique, February 1937, 45. 49 B. Serrigny, for the minister of war, 7 April 1921, dossier on physical instruction, SHD-DAT 7N 4237-1; ‘Rénovation’, Le Soldat de demain, 15 February 1921, 17. 50 ‘Concours pour l’attribution du prix de 5 000 francs créé par “Le Soldat de Demain” (2e année 1921)’, ‘Section d’instruction physique’ dossier, SHD-DAT 7N 4237-1. The competition continued into the late 1930s. 51 Bouléaire, for the minister of war, 15 February 1923, dossier on physical instruction, SHD-DAT 7N 4237-1

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easily assimilable races’. The French needed ‘new blood’ (perhaps from Poland or Italy), but not at the risk of ‘degeneration through inbreeding’.52 Modern eugenics would mean for France, he claimed, a return to ‘the ancestral beauty of the contemporaries of Vercingétroix’.53 Surier also wanted to regulate marriage so that one was not free to marry ‘idiots’, ‘criminals’, and ‘physiological oddities of all kinds’ at will. Why not select ‘human progenitors’?54 In the mid-1930s Henri Diffre defended compulsory military preparation in eugenic terms. One need not go as far as the Spartans, he wrote, but should remember that neighbouring countries had already introduced compulsory sterilization: France would one day pay the price for her quantitative and qualitative inferiority by being conquered by powers driven to expand their territory by over-population and the ‘mystique of the superior race’.55 He wanted the conseil de révision in France to be a kind of laboratory where the competent not only judge but consider how to ‘improve our capital of solid and resilient men’, and counter ‘the more or less disastrous influence of civilization on the general physical development of a race’.56 In 1938 he complained that ‘natural selection’ no longer occurred, allowing those who would not normally have reached reproductive age to survive: he called it ‘the ransom of progress in medicine, hygiene, and social welfare’.57 Another highly influential figure who passed between the worlds of the military, medicine, and physical culture was Maurice Boigey, chief doctor at the Ecole de Joinville in the years immediately after the First World War. Boigey regularly contributed articles to the official organ of the USEPPSM in the early 1920s, stressing the benefits of natural remedies such as sunbathing as well as the importance of medical supervision in matters of physical training.58 He wanted a genuinely popular programme of physical exercise that would prepare all teachers (not just specialists) and chefs de famille to address the masses directly. These ideas were popularized through the courses in physiology that he taught at the Ecole de Joinville and in a range of influential publications.59 Boigey acquiesced in the universal praise of team sports such as football and rugby for building virile qualities such as ‘sang-froid’ and ‘coup d’oeil and decisiveness’ alongside ‘the spirit of self-sacrifice in collective effort’.60 Sport developed a certain kind of appearance too, and here Boigey bought into prevailing classical ideals: Greek statuary showed us what ‘normal man’ should look like.61 Even much maligned spectator sport, in holding up models of physical beauty to the crowd, might spur the sedentary onlookers, with their ‘deformed 52 Albert Surier, ‘Vingt ans après’, Le Soldat de demain, 1 May 1921, 121–2; Albert Surier, ‘La figure souriante de la France doit attirer l’étranger désirable’, Le Soldat de demain, 1 November 1923, 319. 53 Albert Surier, ‘De l’eugénisme à rebours’, Le Soldat de demain, December 1933, 409–10. 54 Albert Surier, ‘Le plus grand péril’, Le Soldat de demain, July 1936, 208. 55 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘La nation armée’, Le Soldat de demain, July 1936, 209–10. 56 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Les examens de santé’, Le Soldat de demain, 15 December 1936, 326–7. 57 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Conseil de révision et morphologie’, Le Soldat de demain, April 1938, 128–9. 58 Maurice Boigey, ‘À la source de la vie’, Le Soldat de demain, 20 July 1921, 225–6. 59 Maurice Boigey, Physiologie appliquée à l’éducation physique, general lectures ( Joinville-le-Pont, 1922), 8, 73–4; Le Temps, 7 July 1922, 5. 60 Boigey, La Cure d’exercice, pp. 121–5. 61 Boigey, L’Elevage humain, pp. 94–5, 100.

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bodies’, to overcome their ‘physical disgrace’.62 What worried Boigey more than anything else, however, was that competitive sport could lead to surmenage, and he devoted much energy to diagnosing and treating the problem, suggesting that it posed a special danger to ‘puny adolescents’ whose ‘terrain’ made them susceptible to tuberculosis. Indeed, he saw a correlation between the popularization of sporting practice and the falling height of the French soldier, claiming that the French had recently become ‘a people of dwarves’.63 Boigey also worried about the effect of surmenage on the ability of men and women to create physiologically sound offspring and here he entertained eugenicist solutions.64 It was clear that Boigey connected the general problem of surmenage to the erosion of the corporeal and moral basis of masculine supremacy caused by the conditions of modern life. He complained of an era marked by ‘fever of movement’ where men and women alike ‘have exhausted their credit at the bank of nervous forces’.65 He sampled a 24-hour period in the life of a lycéen, and showed that after sleeping, eating, travelling, and study there was hardly any time left for methodical physical movement: ‘luxury and comfort’ suppressed physical effort and the bodies of urban children became trapped in fat.66 Contemporary man was ironically brought low by a combination of too much frenzied movement and not enough rational exercise. The recognition of the symptoms of surmenage (loss of appetite, nightmares, insomnia, lassitude, and so on) was similar to the list offered in texts on the subject by Ruffier, Tissié, and Lagrange, and Boigey warned of a descent from fatigue into the nervous depression of neurasthenia. In other words, modern overwork—whether brought about by the library or the stadium—could lead to an erosion of one’s masculinity. Boigey urged men to cancel out all unnecessary movements, advising them to stop waving their walking sticks about, playing with the buttons of their waistcoat, digging about fruitlessly in their pockets.67 Men had to ‘economize their strength and minimize wasting physical vigour’.68 The practice of sport could in this way be an instrument either of virilization or devirilization. The lectures which Boigey gave at the Ecole de Joinville in 1922 demonstrated all of these ideas, but also betrayed a concern with social hygiene. Referring to the work of German doctors who had demonstrated that the offspring of alcoholics were often ‘idiots’, epileptics, or dwarves, he also included a lecture on eugenics.69 In keeping with his contemporaries he did not distinguish between a properly genetic inheritance and environmental influences, betraying neo-Lamarckian assumptions 62

Maurice Boigey, Physiologie de la culture physique et des sports (Paris, 1927), pp. 341–2, 344. Maurice Boigey, Lésions et traumatismes sportifs: à l’usage des médecins, des entraîneurs, des secouristes, des professeurs d’éducation physique et des sportifs (Paris, 1938), pp. 62, 66, 79; Boigey, La Cure d’exercice, p. 48; Boigey, L’Elevage humain, p. 95. 64 Boigey, L’Elevage humain, vol. 1, p. 90; Maurice Boigey, Rôle de l’éducation physique dans la nation (Paris, 1922), p. 7. 65 Boigey, Physiologie de la culture physique et des sports, p. 321–6. 66 Boigey, Physiologie appliquée à l’éducation physique, pp. 40–2, 46–9. 67 Boigey, Physiologie de la culture physique et des sports, p. 330. 68 Boigey, L’Elevage humain, p. 214. 69 Boigey, Physiologie appliquée à l’éducation physique, pp. 196–7, 149. 63

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about ‘the mechanism of the transmission of acquired and innate characteristics’.70 Similarly, he was prepared to believe that Englishmen had transformed their bodies in less than a century through the popularization of sports.71 Boigey complained that arduous travelling on honeymoon caused physical surmenage: frail children were thus born to otherwise healthy adults at the optimum reproductive age, which in his view was twenty-five for men and around twenty for women. In developing such points he drew on the 1912 London eugenics congress organized by Leonard Darwin, and he endorsed the measures of US states to screen potential marriage partners on health grounds and to sterilize ‘inveterate criminals, the incurably insane, epileptics, and the scrawny’. Praising prewar attempts to bring about a similar kind of pre-marital health certificate in France, Boigey also commended Adolphe Pinard as the ‘apostle of eugenics’.72 Figures such as Boigey and the journalist leaders of the USEPPSM thus provided a porous interface between the worlds of military training and physical culture, through which ideas about virility and degeneration travelled. T H E P U B L I C P OW E R S , B I O L O G I C A L R E G E N E R AT I O N , AND THE CONSEIL DE RÉVISION It was not unusual to hear the various under-secretaries of state for physical education speaking in a combination of such terms in the 1920s and 1930s, even though support for so-called negative eugenicist measures was uncommon. What was widespread was the assumption that physical exercise could function as an instrument of biological regeneration through what must logically have been a neoLamarckian framework of understanding. Thus when Paul Bénazet—war veteran and deputy for the Indre who became general commissioner for war for matters relating to physical education—spoke at the 50th General Assembly of the USEPPSM, he underlined the importance of working together to ‘improve the race’ through physical education, not least by emulating Weimar German levels of funding for physical education societies.73 At the opening session of the consultative committee on physical education which he set up in spring 1922, Gaston Vidal claimed that France ‘suffered from the physical inferiority of her children’. Although the peasant poilus of 1914–18 had ‘overcome the failure of their bodies’ (as ‘poor weedy, puny soldiers’), they would have found their duty easier had their noble souls resided in a ‘robust body formed by rational physical education’. Vidal spoke of a nation ‘bled white by the war’: just as white blood cells group around threatened parts of the human body, so French youth were now gathering on the sports fields ‘to cure the patrie’. He implored his audience to remember that France was founded on Graeco-Roman traditions ‘born in the stadium’, and he hoped 70

Boigey, L’Elevage humain, vol. 1, p. 7. Boigey, Rôle de l’éducation physique dans la nation, p. 9. 72 Boigey, Physiologie appliquée à l’éducation physique, pp. 151–3, 161, 164. 73 Paul Bénazet, USEPPSM general assembly speech, 14 December 1924, Le Soldat de demain, January 1925, 9–20. 71

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that they shared the ancients’ ‘admiration for the musculature of the athlete’.74 In other words, for Vidal as for so many other commentators in this period, the beauty of muscular manhood carried a moral charge, and became the foundation for a biological regeneration of society. In late 1928, when sportif deputy Henry Paté took over the portfolio for physical education, he had a permanent delegation in both the ministry of war and the ministry of public instruction, but he had cut his teeth earlier in the decade when heading a committee for physical education and social hygiene set up by Edouard Herriot in 1918, and in the mid-1920s when he was put in charge of physical education and military preparation by Poincaré.75 In 1919 Henry Paté spoke in the Chamber about the urgent need to build the muscles and courage of men through sports education, since the war had demonstrated the scale of the problem of poor male physique.76 In the early 1920s he supported compulsory physical education and military preparation because they would make a ‘virile nation’ better able to defend itself, especially if the length of military service were to be shortened.77 When Henry Paté finally became under-secretary of state for physical education, he spoke to the press about his new task in terms of ensuring the ‘health of the race’. Alongside measures such as greater financial support for sports societies, he wanted rehabilitation of ‘the feeble’, such as open-air classes and summer camps, since—as he put it—‘we are not Spartans’.78 He also declared that a ‘universal disequilibrium’ had afflicted the world in which man was experiencing a ‘crisis of adaptation’ in ‘new conditions of existence’, deploying a medicalized organicist metaphor to suggest that each symptom ought to be treated as part of a deeper disease. Ultimately, in an echo of another favourite physical culturist theme, Paté favoured a system, steering a way between ‘Americanism’ and ‘Sovietism’, in which both body and mind were protected from the onslaught of materialism.79 Adolphe Chéron, whose appointment to the under-secretariat of state for physical education in late 1933 was warmly welcomed in the press, played a key role in physical education reform between 1923 and the late 1930s, serving as president of various commissions established on this question.80 In his youth Chéron had been an ardent gymnast, shooter, fencer, boxer, and runner, finishing first among his cohort at the Ecole de Joinville while on military service. He was later an instructor there in gymnastics and swimming, and a professor briefly in the 74 Gaston Vidal, speech, spring 1922, in L’Educateur physique moderne, 15 May 1922, 1–7; Callède, ‘Maire et ministres entreprenants: l’invention des politiques publiques du sport (1918–1939)’, Histoire du sport en France, p. 163; Gaston Vidal, ‘Jeux Olympiques 1924’, 12 February 1924, AP VR 156. 75 Callède, ‘Maire et ministres entreprenants: l’invention des politiques publiques du sport (1918–1939)’, Histoire du sport en France, p. 161; Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 18. 76 Henry Paté’s views cited in Tissié, L’Education physique et la race, p. 272. 77 Henry Paté, speech at Rouen congress, Le Soldat de demain, 20 November 1921, 329–34. 78 Henry Paté at a press conference, Le Soldat de demain, May 1929, 185–91; also in L’Educateur physique, November 1929, 11. 79 Henry Paté, La Jeunesse sauvera le monde (Paris, 1933), pp. 10–14, 29, 65, 125, 173. 80 La Rédaction, ‘Une carrière de cinquante années: celle d’Adolphe Chéron’, Le Soldat de demain, November 1938, 287–90.

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mid-1890s.81 Chéron—also a war veteran honoured with the Croix de Guerre— held that the laws on physical education and military preparation introduced after the war were about ‘rebuilding the race’.82 In the preface to one of Surier’s physical culturist manuals, he stressed that France did not need record-breaking sports champions, but a whole population ‘trained, improved, embellished’ through a methodical process.83 Chéron’s preferred method owed much to the ‘gymnastique de chambre’ favoured by Albert Surier and the editorial team of the USEPPSM’s official organ (‘a veritable physiological toilette’ performed naked in front of the wardrobe mirror every morning), but for military preparation Chéron favoured Hébert’s ‘natural method’, carried out as a form of martial arts.84 In a radio broadcast in 1924 he promised that physical culture would bring happiness to all and confer ‘the magnificent power of maternal fecundity’ on women.85 Indeed, it was clear that Chéron shared in the wider populationist reponse to the falling birthrate. In early 1936 he complained about ‘scrawny children; feeble, backward, pretubercular youth; ajournés and réformés of the conseils de révision [that is, those who failed the test]; deplorable patients in clinics and hospital wards’—alarming features in a people already impoverished by low fertility. Chéron found it ironic that incentives had been given for ‘the improvement of breeds of horses, cows, and pigs’ but not people.86 While falling short of urging selective breeding, Chéron used a eugenicist language in which, by rhetorical sleight of hand, he nonetheless managed to suggest it. It was certainly the image of the conseil de révision that resonated most in interwar political–military discourse as an emblem of male bodily failure. In the lamentations expressed about its twice yearly results commentators’ fears about the decline of male beauty and strength often intertwined with those about the quality of the nation’s breeding stock. More than just producing a verdict on the fitness of conscripts, the conseil de révision was inscribed into republican political culture as a ritual of some weight, and its compulsory nature and the presence of elected public officials on the selection board helped to reinforce its status as a test of citizenship. A 1905 law had stipulated that young men at the age of incorporation had to present themselves completely naked to a board comprising a military general, two departmental councillors, a recruiting officer, and a military doctor, who would then make the decision on their fitness for service.87 Cries of alarm about the apparently high numbers of those declared unfit at these examinations reverberated widely after the First World War. Army manuals and the military periodical 81 ‘A l’Ecole de Joinville’, Le Soldat de demain: bulletin officiel de l’Association nationale de préparation des jeunes gens au service militaire, February 1934, 47. 82 Adolphe Chéron in Le Radical, cited in ‘Education physique et préparation militaire’, Le Soldat de demain, 15 August 1921, 237–8. 83 Adolphe Chéron, preface to Albert Surier, Forts par la culture physique: méthode française pratique et individuelle avec planches d’exercices (Paris, 1920), v, ix. 84 Albert Surier, ‘On ne remplace point ce qui est meilleur’, Le Soldat de demain, January 1925, 4; Adolphe Chéron, speech to the USEPPSM, Le Soldat de demain, January 1924, 1–3. 85 Adolphe Chéron in ‘Par sans fil’, Le Soldat de demain, 1 August 1924, 236–7. 86 Adolphe Chéron, ‘1936’, Le Soldat de demain, January 1936, 4–5. 87 Dr F. Menier, ‘L’état sanitaire de la race’, L’Educateur physique, February 1937, 7–10.

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press were full of appeals to ‘improve the French race’ amid complaints about the poor bodily condition of the young.88 As we have seen, both Albert Surier and Henri Diffre wrote in terms redolent of fin-de-siècle complaints about the alleged degeneration of the French, blaming the ‘pathologies’ of crime, alcoholism, smoking, and urban leisure pursuits such as dancing and cinema. For Surier, working-class urban youth were ‘scraggy and pasty brats who, cigarette or pipe at their lips’, often ended up in hospital or in crime: the ‘professional criminal’ was usually a ‘physiological weirdo’ anyway in his eyes.89 Henri Diffre expressed contempt for the ‘weedy young ephebes’ paraded at the army medical examinations.90 Such specimens should not escape the ‘blood tax’ of military service, in his view, but be channelled into clerical work amid the ‘skirts’ in military offices as punishment for failing to be adequate men.91 In the mid-1930s General Brallion wanted statistics about ‘defects’ and ‘degeneration’ collected at the conseils de révision to inform public officials about the level of alcoholism, syphilis, and tuberculosis in a given district, and for these results to be fed back to sports societies as evidence of the success—or otherwise—of their physical training methods.92 It is not clear whether the situation was as bad as these commentators suggested. Army officials at times pointed to the physical improvement of French conscripts since the 1890s, and historian Odile Roynette confirms that interwar failure rates were no worse than those for the previous generation.93 It seems likely that the press inflated the percentages of those deemed ‘unfit for service’ by ignoring those excluded for temporary ailments such as bad colds, or those who deferred or gained exemption from military service for family or other reasons.94 On one occasion the army attacked a pessimistic article in Le Temps by pointing out that its author, General Lacroix, had ignored the contingent from the ‘invaded departments’ and Alsace-Lorraine as well as North Africa in claiming that only 47 per cent of registered men were fit for service.95 In any case, the military was more concerned about the numbers of conscripts declared unfit after incorporation, and often blamed the superficiality of the medical examinations for poor figures: in some districts as many as a hundred men could be examined in one hour.96 That is not to say that the military refused that a problem existed. For example, in 1922 Marshall Lyautey complained that 25 per cent of recruits into the Moroccan occupying force had to 88

Pantagruel, ‘La race et . . . ses directeurs’, Le Joinvillais, July 1935, 25–7. Albert Surier, ‘Chacun fait son destin’, Le Soldat de demain, 1 March 1921, 35. 90 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘L’erreur des conseils de révision’, Le Soldat de demain, May 1925, 181–2. 91 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Le Service militaire soi-disant obligatoire’, Le Soldat de demain, June 1925, 213–14. 92 Brallion, Essai sur l’instruction militaire, 250–2. 93 ‘Incorporation du contingent 1921’, SHD-DAT 7N 2331; Roynette, «Bons pour le service», 200–2. 94 Chef d’Etat-Major Général de l’Armée to the 7e Direction, 10 December 1921, SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 95 Chef d’Etat-Major Général de l’Armée to the 2e Bureau, 20 February 1921; ‘Comparaison entre les résultats des comptes-rendus officiels des opérations de révision en France, en 1918, des contingents 1919 à 1920, avec les chiffres donnés par le Général de Lacroix dans Le Temps’, n.d., SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 96 ‘Statistique sur l’incorporation de la 1e fraction de la classe 1923’, and document dated 26 March 1924, ‘Répartition de la classe 1923’ dossier; ‘Compte-rendu des généraux commandant les régions sur l’incorporation du deuxième demi-contingent 1923’, ‘Répartition de la classe 1923’ dossier, SHDDAT 7N 2331. Figures compiled by the ministry of war in the Statistique médicale de l’armée métropolitaine et de l’armée coloniale refer only to the physical fitness of conscripts after incorporation. 89

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be exempted in one way or another. He called for a tighter selection process, which only the most ‘vigorous’ could pass.97 There were criticisms too about the 20 per cent of military nurses found to have an ‘insufficient physical constitution’: it was intimated that men were being channelled into military nursing precisely because examiners deemed them too weak for the other services, but the job in fact demanded robust men resistant to fatigue.98 Politicians too were worried. In 1927 a group of senators feared that the winter conseils de révisions posed a hygienic hazard to rural lads who travelled in soaking rain and waited shivering for hours before being called in for their examination. Those already in danger of being declared unfit risked further complications on account of such treatment.99 In the early 1920s military personnel blamed the seemingly lower pass-rates of 1919 and 1920 on the slightly younger, ‘immature’ age of incorporation and the ‘inferior physical conditions’ experienced by many as a result of the privations of war.100 These low yields, it was hoped, would soon be improved by the spread of sports and better nutrition among the working class as a whole.101 Even when officials were kicking against the pessimistic narrative of male physical failure that reverberated throughout the press, their pronouncements reflected hygienist concerns. Nothing put the spotlight on the physical quality of conscripts as much as the debates about reducing the length of military service that took place in the 1920s. Although military exercises of some kind had supposedly been a mandatory part of school physical education for boys after 1880, repetitive legislation in this area (in 1889, 1905, 1913, 1921, and 1928) suggests that they had never been enforced. In practice, military preparation was provided through a range of optional extracurricular training programmes offered by thousands of sports clubs around the country where the hébertiste mantra of walking, lifting, carrying, running, jumping, climbing, throwing, and self-defence was reinforced. Successful candidates were rewarded with such privileges as extra leave days and fast promotion when they entered the barracks.102 Throughout the 1920s the question of making military preparation compulsory was raised time and again, usually combined with attempts for better enforcement of physical education in schools and the simultaneous professionalization and medicalization of physical education instruction. Senator Henry Chéron and Deputy Adolphe Chéron led the way, shepherding a bill on compulsory military preparation through both houses of 97 Marshall Lyautey (Morocco) to the minister of war and pensions, 13 September 1922, SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 98 Marotte, Directeur du Service de Santé du 7e Corps d’Armée, ‘Sur l’incorporation du 1e contingent de la classe 1923’, SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 99 Session of Senate, 3 February 1927, ‘Conseils de révision, 1920–1930’ dossier, SHD-DAT 6N 398. 100 Chef d’Etat-Major Général de l’Armée to M. Strauss, ‘rapporteur de la Commission de l’Armée au Sénat’, n.d. SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 101 ‘Comparaison entre les résultats des conseils de révision du contingent 1921 et le calcul du rendement probable du contingent 1921 (note du 17 février 1921)’, SHD-DAT 7N 2331. 102 ‘Rapport de M. Henry Chéron sur la proposition de loi relative à l’éducation physique et à la préparation militaire obligatoire de la jeunesse’, n.d. dossier on ‘Préparation militaire et éducation physique’, SHD-DAT 5N 584; ‘Instruction du 30 mai 1932 relative à l’organisation de la préparation militaire élémentaire, à jour à la date du 1er octobre 1935, dossier on ‘Préparation militaire élémentaire et supérieure, 1920–1939’, SHD-DAT 7N 2324.

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parliament.103 What explains their success is the support among key politicians for a reduction in military service: supporters of ‘service of one year’ knew that its success might depend on finding a way to ensure that conscipts were demonstrably fit before entering the barracks. Paul Bénazet—the deputy charged with physical education on the war commission in 1924—wanted this reduction in military service, as did Paul Painlevé, minister of war in 1925–29, who hailed the initiative as ‘one of the great democratic reforms’ of the era, maintaining national defence while resonating with the sensibilities of interwar pacifism.104 Conditions were indeed placed on the introduction of ‘service of one year’ in 1929—not only compulsory military preparation but the constitution of North African forces, the recruitment of more than 100,000 career soldiers, and the raising of the age of incorporation to 21, which was recommended by hygienists as a response to the nutritional deficit experienced by male youth during the war.105 Debates in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate on this question often suggested a belief in biological regeneration through physical exercise. As Jean SaintMartin has shown, Adolphe Chéron defended his position by arguing that after the First World War France needed ‘vigorous men’ in the barracks for the sake of safeguarding the ‘French race’.106 In defending the cause of compulsory military preparation, the army commission in the Senate lamented that despite the hard work of the Ecole de Joinville and Georges Hébert, the French were still in need of a hygienic physical education: in training their muscles young men would better understand their duties towards the nation, distancing themselves from the cabaret and ‘all the places of debauchery that enfeeble and corrupt the race’. A robust system of physical education would be ‘a genuinely scientific project of repopulation’, designed to assure ‘the selection of individuals, the hygiene and fertility of marriage, the protection of motherhood, the development of the child and the adolescent, and to correct, through appropriate methods, ancestral defects’.107 Furthermore, military preparation manuals taught recruits that it was a crime to contaminate one’s wife with syphilis, since it would lead to degenerate children, just as alcoholics too created intellectual or physical degenerates.108 An instructor in the Ecole de Joinville in 1935 agreed that the universalization of physical training would allow French youth to hold their own against the ‘proud and robust’ Anglo-Saxons and Germans: at present they looked feeble by comparison. Instead of a curriculum stuffed with intellectual work and ‘too many books’, one should 103 Adolphe Chéron, Journal officiel, session of 10 December 1920, Chamber of Deputies, in L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 41; Henry Chéron, ‘Proposition de loi tendant à assurer, en France, l’éducation physique et la préparation militaire obligatoire de la jeunesse’, Sénat, session ordinaire, Annexe au procès-verbal de la séance du 28 février 1928’, SHD-DAT, 5N 584-12. 104 Paul Bénazet, L’Organisation de la défense nationale et le service d’un an, Chamber of Deputies speech, 2, 9 and 10 March 1922 (Paris, 1922), 44–6; Paul Painlevé, De la science à la défense nationale: discours et fragments (Paris, 1931), pp. 120–1. 105 Commandant Z., citing Painlevé, ‘À propos d’une cérémonie’, Sport et santé, 15 November 1929, 21; Painlevé, De la science à la défense nationale, pp. 123–8, 141. 106 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, pp. 19, 40–2. 107 Revised Bill, reported by the Commission de l’Armée, 1928, 8, SHD-DAT-12. 108 Leroux, L’Elève soldat, guide du candidat, pp. 75–8.

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include daily physical exercise and sport to combat the plague of fragile children— weaklings without ‘vitality’ or joie de vivre.109 P H Y S I C A L E D U C AT I O N R E F O R M , S U R M E N AG E , A N D S O C I A L H YG I E N E The fear of devirilizing fatigue also haunted interwar debates on physical exercise in schools. Such a thing is unsurprising given the medicalization of physical education that was already underway and the hygienist concerns that underpinned it.110 Pierre Arnaud suggests that medical ‘traditionalists’ took over from military preparationists and pro-sport ‘modernists’ in this sphere due to the effect of the First World War—a conflict that facilitated ongoing concerns over demographic patterns, high rates of tuberculosis and alcoholism, the health of mothers and babies, and the ‘regeneration of the race’.111 It was an age in which, as we have seen, the line between public health and social hygiene could be a porous one. At the same time, one should remember that the line dividing medical, military, and sportif expertise was also porous, with physicians such as Maurice Boigey maintaining a good deal of influence inside and outside the army, and others such as Marcel Bellin du Coteau equally at home in the worlds of organized sport, medicine, and education. Furthermore, the state organized physical education and military preparation in relation to each other and the techniques of physical fitness employed in schools and the army were similar: sport had a qualified place in both areas. In 1919 the minister of war liaised with the minister of public instruction to use army training centres for schoolboys on summer holiday camps, using military instructors, and housing the children in barracks. Tens of thousands benefitted from the experience in 1919–20.112 As the minister of war himself put it, these visits were ‘considered as exercises in preparation for military service’.113 And although army instructors were removed from the educational sector with immediate effect in late 1921, military establishments such as the Ecole de Joinville still played a role in training civilian physical education teachers who worked in schools.114 However, this military control was admittedly diluted by the creation in 1927 of regional institutes of physical education (IREPs) attached to university medical faculties (they were set up on the initiative of physician and Swedish gymnastics 109 C. Leniaud, Ecole de Joinville, 14 June 1935, dossier on ‘Préparation militaire et éducation physique’, SHD-DAT 5N 584. 110 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 23. 111 Arnaud, ‘Les rapports du sport et de l’éducation physique en France depuis la fin du XIXe siècle’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 255. 112 G. Lagrue, Colonel Directeur de l’Infanterie, on behalf of the minister of war, 31 January 1920, AP D2 T1 15. 113 Circular from the ministry of war, 16 June 1919; Instructions outlined for the Seine area by Général Commandant, 18 July 1919, AP D2 T1 15. 114 Ministre de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts to the Inspecteur d’Académie, Directeur de l’Enseignement Primaire de la Seine, 14 November 1921, AP D2 T1 15; Hubscher et al., L’Histoire en mouvements, p. 181.

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enthusiast Philippe Tissié), and in 1933 of a national training school in Paris for physical education (ENEP).115 There was also considerable political will to separate out physical education from military training, especially among leftists whose hostility to military preparation was long-lived.116 In 1926 the position of high commissioner for physical education, once attached to the war ministry, was thereafter shared with Public Instruction, moving wholly to National Education in 1932.117 And in 1929 the budget for both physical education and military preparation passed, along with the under-secretariat, from the ministry of war to that of public instruction.118 Furthermore, when Louis Marin became minister of public health and physical education in Feburary 1934, policies on physical training were developed by inter-ministerial teams drawn from the health and education ministries.119 In 1923, when new instructions for physical education in schools were issued, minister of public instruction Léon Bérard reasserted the hygienist position that physical education in primary schooling should ‘correct the flawed posture that is too often inflicted by school work on the body of the child’. Lessons were to be conducted outside or in front of an open window, and followed by a tepid shower and rub-down—those based on the hébertiste ‘natural method’ generally much better received by pupils and teachers than the ‘former monotonous method’ based on Swedish gymnastics.120 Intellectual and physical surmenage remained a pervasive concern. In 1929 experts attested that primary school children crammed only two hours of physical exercise into their 40-hour weeks.121 In a parliamentary debate about the physical preparation of conscripts, Deputy Jean Ybarnegaray attacked the ‘absurd life’ of lycéens, devoid of physical exercise, and held up the higher level of funding for physical education in Weimar Germany as both model and warning.122 Four years later, under-secretary of state for technical and physical education, Hippolyte Ducos, fended off criticisms that physical education in schools was becoming militarized by stressing that surmenage was avoided by reserving only for older adolescent males the kind of gruelling athletics that would prepare them for military service.123 Fear of the imagined impact of fatigue on the ‘race’ also helped to drive various municipal experiments in open-air schools in the 1920s, in which physical education 115 Callède, ‘Maire et ministres entreprenants: l’invention des politiques publiques du sport (1918–1939)’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 162; Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, pp. 53–5, 137; Bernard Michon, ‘Esquisse d’une histoire sociale de la formation des enseignants en E.P.S.’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 202. 116 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 42. 117 Hubscher et al., L’Histoire en mouvements, p. 179. 118 Adolphe Chéron, ‘1936’, Le Soldat de demain, January 1936, 4–5. 119 Excelsior, 17 October 1934, AN 317 AP 222. 120 Léon Bérard in the Bulletin administratif du Ministère de l’Instruction publique, 1 August 1923, cited in L’Educateur physique et moderne, 1 November 1923, 211–13; ‘Réponses au questionnaire du 11 avril 1924’ on ‘Education physique d’après la méthode naturelle’, in boys’ and girls’ schools, Inspection de l’Enseignement Primaire, Préfecture du Département de la Seine, AP D2 T1 15. 121 R. Vuillaume, L’Education physique à l’école, conditions actuelles, améliorations à apporter (Nancy, 1929), pp. 285–6, cited in Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 17. 122 The views of Jean Ybarnegaray, Journal officiel: débats parlementaires, 9 December 1928, reproduced in ‘Tribune parlemenatire’, Le Soldat de demain, 10 January 1929, 9–13. 123 Hippolyte Duclos in Chamber of Deputies, Journal Officiel, 27 March 1933, 1557–8.

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played a central role. The idea of sending children away to mountainous or seaside resorts on colonies de vacances—designed as health cures as much as leisure activities—was well established before the First World War, with a variety of religious and secular camps on offer.124 Children of the working poor, many designated ‘pretubercular’, were specifically targeted: across the full range of leftist republican, Catholic and far-right initiatives, more than 400,000 children benefitted from such holidays every year in the mid- to late 1930s.125 Some municipally funded open-air schools had been set up before the First World War for similar reasons, and in the 1920s more initiatives followed.126 An international congress for open-air schools was held at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1922, whose delegates included Gaston Vidal as under-secretary of state for physical education, Henry Paté, his equivalent in the ministry of war, and Adrien Rey-Golliet, the principal inspector of physical education in the Seine prefecture. It comprised, among other things, a talk by Georges Hébert on how to equip sports grounds for physical education, and a physical culture festival held in the Arènes de Lutèce.127 In 1922 there were at least three permanent écoles de plein-air in Paris and another three temporary ones that functioned during the summer, all largely at municipal expense. A teacher at one establishment in Saint-Denis was proud of having created ‘a healthy soul in a healthy body’ for so many of his pupils.128 Experts underlined the need for such schools by warning that a full quarter of French boys and girls had a weak constitution and were thus predisposed to tuberculosis: the attention of doctors, pedagogues, and physical education specialists should thus be focused on ‘all that could strengthen the race and put the children of Paris in a state to struggle for life’. The fact that other European countries (Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany) had allegedly taken the lead in this area was used to justify these experiments in France.129 In the mid-1930s a proposal to organize an ‘open-air term’ for the school children of the capital was brought to the Paris municipal council by sportif Armand Massard, and fellow councillor Georges Lemarchand reiterated the demand the following year, claiming it would build ‘a strong and healthy race’.130 Specialist in sports medicine Dr Bellin du Coteau already presided over a charitable project in Bièvre (Seine-et-Oise) that offered physical exercise for Parisian children in a battle against the unhygienic conditions

124 Laura Lee Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working-Class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880–1960 (Durham, 2003). 125 Laura Lee Downs, ‘Municipal communism and the politics of childhood: Ivry-sur-Seine, 1925– 1960’, Past and Present, February 2000, 212–13 and 223–4; Laura Lee Downs, ‘“Each and every one of you must become a chef ”: toward a social politics of working-class childhood on the extreme right in 1930s France’, Journal of Modern History, 81 no. 1 (2009), 9. 126 ‘Les Écoles de plein air ont déjà un passé’, La Patrie, 5 November 1921; the minister of public instruction supported open-air education in principle, letter dated 6 September 1922, AP D2 T1 16. 127 ‘Premier congrès international des écoles de plein air’, organized by the Ligue pour l’éducation en plein air, 24–28 June 1922, AP D2 T1 16. 128 ‘Classe aérée et de perfectionnement physique de Villeneuve la Garenne’, AP D2 T1 16. 129 M. Deville and Frédéric Brunet on behalf of the 4th commission on the study of écoles de plein air. 130 Proposal brought by Georges Contenot and Armand Massard to the Paris municipal council, 1935, AN F 17 14460; Georges Lemarchand’s proposal, 20 March 1936, Conseil Municipal de Paris, BAVP.

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of urban life and the effects of intellectual surmenage.131 In late 1935 he tried to secure a state subsidy for the sports facilities on the site, arguing that his endeavour would reduce the numbers of deficient and nervous children.132 Concerns about the spread of tuberculosis and the deleterious moral and physical effects of both fatigue and the First World War also animated the 1929–30 commission—comprising politicians, medics, and pedagogues—that investigated the problem of overwork in French lycées. Indeed, it has been claimed that the findings were never made public for fear of adverse reactions in the press.133 The views of Dr Paul Boncour were used to legitimize surmenage as a physical affliction (not everyone believed in its existence), distinguishing between the sort of normal tiredness that a good night’s sleep might fix, and a ‘deficit in neuro-psychic energy’ that was properly abnormal.134 A group of teachers in Marseilles felt compelled to report that while there was no problem of surmenage in their school, with its leafy surroundings and healthy air, the problem in other districts was profound and resulted in migraines, fevers, and the development of pre-tubercular lungs.135 The commission’s rapporteur, Victor Bérard, concurred that there were high proportions of pre-tubercular children in the state school system, whether due to ‘defective hygiene’, intellectual fatigue, or generally poor urban living conditions.136 What these voices concluded was that however damaging surmenage itself, the main problem was a failure to adapt to the psychological conditions (the crises and worries) of modern life. In this way there was a sense in which the commission connected the biological threat of surmenage with an imagined cultural crisis brought about by the First World War. One school’s report suggested that since 1918 more families were incapable of supporting the ‘intellectual formation’ of their sons and lacked a decent stock of books.137 The Marseilles teachers felt that school students were not sufficiently supervised at home and worked in a state of ‘disorder’ that contributed to surmenage: this was a veritable crisis of domestic authority that represented ‘the wound of our time’.138 In part these views expressed the fear that the post-war generation would not be sufficiently well equipped to form the new professional elite the nation needed to replace Frenchmen lost in battle. Bérard was adamant that it was for this reason that schools had to turn out well-rounded and cultured individuals, ‘vigorous and subtle thinking’, rather than specialists. As he expressed it in his summary, the commission wanted a form of education that balanced intellectual study with physical exercise and would build ‘complete men’ capable of leading. Bérard asserted that if the ‘respectable man’ of the 131 ‘L’Oeuvre de plein air de l’Université de Paris’, n.d; Elise Vuillard, Statutes of the ‘l’Oeuvre de plein air de l’université de Paris’, founded 19 February 1935, AN F 17 14460. 132 Bellin du Coteau to the minister of public health, 27 December 1935, AN F17 14460. 133 Hubscher et al., L’Histoire en mouvements, p. 184. 134 Dr Paul Boncour cited by Bérard in the report of the Commission du surmenage. 135 Amicale des Professeurs du Lycée Périer Saint-Charles, Marseilles, 30 January 1930, ‘L’enquête sur le surmenage est-elle justifiée? Le surmenage existe-t-il? Dans quelle mesure?’, AN F17 17 500. 136 Victor Bérard, report of the Commission du surmenage, AN F17 17 500. 137 Questionnaire and report, ‘Enquête sur le surmenage’. 138 Amicale des Professeurs du Lycée Périer Saint-Charles.

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seventeenth century needed a classical education, the ‘cultivated man’ of the twentieth century needed ‘the close association of literary and scientific disciplines’.139 There was in these concerns traces of the anti-materialist complaint that scientific disciplines had edged out rounded humanist study as well as physical exercise in the school system, and that as a result the ‘whole man’ was being neglected. Thus Paul Hunziker, writing for the commission as president of a federation for parents of school students, complained that the early-twentiethcentury shift from ‘liberal’ education to vocational and scientific specialization had exacerbated the ‘excessive sedentariness’ of school life, which physical exercise alone could fix.140 Although the commission encompassed the education of girls, it was clear that the preoccupations of its members rested with the future of male youth. This is evident from their focus on secondary education and the baccalauréat (both dominated by boys), and by their emphasis on forging new professional elites. It is also evident in the vocabulary of virility deployed in making the case for physical education. While all children were encouraged to spend 10–15 minutes each morning doing physical exercise (not in ‘forming athletes’ nor breaking ‘records’, but rather ensuring the ‘complete and harmonious development of the human person’), advanced physical education—including sport— was also to inculcate the moral qualities of manliness such as courage, endurance, decisiveness, sang-froid, and self-control.141 It was precisely this kind of activity that Paul Hunziker felt would ‘reconstitute a compact elite, which, gifted at once with sound intellectual qualities, with responsible personalities, practical sense, good humour and health, will be able to tackle, with the greatest chance of success, the harsh battles of life’.142 But while sport could help develop the qualities of manliness in this respect, it was sometimes cast by those reporting to the commission either as one of the ‘material concerns’ that allegedly marked the younger generation, or as a source of surmenage in itself, over-taxing children’s ‘parallel life’ of school pupil and sportif. The Marseilles teachers embodied this dual thinking: they wanted to see youth play tennis, boules, and football, but also complained that they already indulged excessively in sport.143 In short, the nature of this governmental inquiry into surmenage echoes the physical culturists’ concerns about the relationship between physical exercise and competitive sport, the perils of physical and intellectual surmenage (not least the threat of tuberculosis), and the problem of revirilizing male youth after the crisis of the First World War, even if it did not cast the problem in terms of regenerating the ‘race’ and was more concerned with creating a civil elite of productive citizens than military defenders of the patrie.

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Victor Bérard’s report of the Commission du surmenage, AN F17 17 500. Paul Hunziker citing the views of Henry Le Châtelier in ‘La Crise de l’enseignement secondaire’, 1930, AN F17 17 500. 141 Bérard, report of the Commission du surmenage. 142 Hunziker, ‘La Crise de l’enseignement secondaire’, 1930, AN F17 17 500. 143 Amicale des Professeurs du Lycée Périer Saint-Charles. 140

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T H E E R A O F T H E P O P U L A R F RO N T The Popular Front arguably did more to raise the profile of sport and physical education in France than any preceding government, and its leaders continued both the hygienist and social hygienist emphasis of the earlier period. Most famously, the Popular Front entrusted the young and sportif socialist deputy Léo Lagrange with a new portfolio, the under-secretariat of state for sport and leisure, which he held between June 1936 and January 1938, and then again under the final Blum ministry of March–April 1938. In June 1937, when Lagrange’s portfolio passed to Jean Zay’s ministry of education, he became responsible for physical education as well as sport and leisure. Lagrange took seriously his remit for leisure, especially in relation to the working classes whose relative poverty had excluded them from the kinds of activity that the bourgeoisie had long taken for granted. Paid holidays were instituted in June 1936, and reductions in rail fares secured so that workers could benefit from seaside holidays: 600,000 of them took advantage of these special deals in summer 1936 alone.144 Lagrange actively encouraged youth hostels (his pet project) as a kind of ‘sports leisure’ that would complement ‘the joys of the stadium’.145 To facilitate mass participation in sporting activities, some 253 sports grounds were approved for subsidized construction or improvement in 1936: by early 1937 more than 25 million francs had been expended on this programme.146 Lagrange also created an optional sports certificate: the brevet sportif populaire. Born of the recognition that modern life was frequently sedentary, it was a means of creating an ‘extensive and generalized physical culture, of the kind that dominated ancient sport’.147 By the end of 1937 around 400,000 children had acquired it.148 The Popular Front also attempted to democratize activities such as aviation, tennis, and skiing that were previously the preserve of social elites.149 It has become commonplace for historians to assert that Lagrange was attempting to bring to France a democratic version of the mass leisure projects initiatied in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and the ways in which Popular-Front era physical education policy was self-consciously forged in the shadow of the Third Reich have been fully demonstrated by Jean Saint-Martin.150 Julian Jackson notes that ‘Mussolini also introduced the 40-hour week, an equivalent of the BSP, cheap holidays, trains for workers’, while pointing out that the French versions allowed for more pluralism and individual expression than did the Italian.151 Indeed, 144

Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 133. Léo Lagrange, radio speech, 10 June 1936, in Sport, 17 June 1936, 3. E. Raude and G. Prouteau, Le Message de Léo Lagrange (Paris, 1950), p. 97. 147 Journal Officiel, 10 March 1937, AN F 60 435. 148 Jackson, The Popular Front in France, p. 133; Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, p. 206; Arnaud, ‘Concurrences et spécificités’, Education physique et sport en France, p. 16. 149 Gary Cross, ‘Vacations for all: the leisure question in the era of the Popular Front’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989), 611. 150 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, 188–216; also Robert W. Lewis, ‘“A Civic tool of modern times”: politics, mass society and the stadium in twentieth-century France’, French Historical Studies, 34 no. 1 (2011), 165–8. 151 Jackson, The Popular Front in France (1988), pp. 134, 137; also Ory, La Belle illusion (1994), pp. 715ff. 145 146

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Lagrange openly criticized the illiberal and militarized character of the Nazi youth movement, saying that spontaneous joy cannot be ‘imposed artificially’, and he was especially keen that sport and physical education in France not be linked with military preparation.152 As André Malraux would have it, Lagrange’s specific challenge was to enlist popular support for his sport policies and their regenerative potential without taking the belligerent and liberty-crushing path of the totalitarian states.153 Simultaneously, physical education (between June 1936 and June 1937 the preserve of under-secretary of state for physical education, medical doctor Pierre Dézarnaulds) was being steadily medicalized.154 Dézarnaulds is probably most famous for the physical education experiment conducted by the education ministry over the 1936–37 academic year in three provincial departments—the Aude, Loiret, and Meurthe-et-Moselle. Five of the thirty weekly hours of classes in primary schools there were devoted to physical education, including half a day per week spent in the open air and practice of the ‘natural method’.155 Jean SaintMartin notes that despite financial difficulties the project was introduced in another twenty-nine French departments the following year.156 Minister of education Jean Zay defended the project by claiming that hygienists, teachers, and parents all acknowledged physical exercise as a remedy for surmenage—a theme he stressed in several speeches: historians have indeed seen this approach as the fusion of hygienist policies within the ministries of health and education.157 Such policies were further institutionalized through the Paris IREP, directed by Dr Paul Chailley-Bert from its foundation in 1928 through to the Occupation.158 It was here that school children from the Paris region started to come on their half day of weekly open-air activity provided by the ‘Dézarnaulds experiment’: their physiological and psychological measurements were taken, and they were categorized according to ‘biotype’.159 Zay himself underlined the importance of medical control, and his ideas for better preparing pupils for high school included an index-card system for physical apti152 Lagrange interview with Spencer Miller (American Youth Association) and radio speech, 10 June 1936, Raude and Prouteau, Le Message de Léo Lagrange, pp. 118, 131. 153 André Malraux, at the commemorative gathering for Lagrange in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, 9 June 1945, Raude and Prouteau, Le Message de Léo Lagrange, p. 181. 154 Pascal Ory notes the sanitary interest of Dézarnaulds in comparison with the ‘cultural bent’ of both Zay and Lagrange, although the examples in this paragraph suggest the contrast is not entirely warranted, La Belle illusion, p. 658. 155 Dr Paul Chailley-Bert, ‘Les horaires de l’éducation physique dans l’enseignement secondaire’, Rapports du Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’Education physique et aux sports, Paris, 11–17 July 1937, 86. 156 Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 203. 157 Minister of national education, ‘Exposé des motifs’, 22 May 1937; ‘Réforme de l’enseignement’, Bulletin trimestriel de l’Association amicale des censeurs des lycées nationaux (Roanne, 1937), AN F17 17 501; Jean Zay’s speech at the American-Club, 20 January 1938, AN F17 15 726; Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, p. 202. 158 Chailley-Bert, ‘Les horaires de l’éducation physique dans l’enseignement secondaire’, 88; Dupont, Dictionnaire historique des médecins, p. 132. 159 Dr Charles Lestocquoy, ‘Les laboratoires d’orientation scolaire et le centre d’hygiène infantile de l’Institut d’éducation physique de l’Université de Paris’, Université de Paris, Institut d’Education Physique (Paris, 1938), 5–11, AN F44 40.

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tudeww containing not only physical measurements and notes on nervous and psychological problems, but observations on character—the existence or otherwise of such qualities as initiative, energy, will, perseverance, consistency, exactitude, cleanliness, team spirit, and joy in work.160 Dézarnaulds also set about medicalizing the formation of physical education instructors, setting up programmes in medical gymnastics for trainee physical education teachers and courses for physicians wishing to specialize in sports medicine in order to pursue careers as school inspectors. These medical specialists were instructed in ‘school hygiene’ at the Faculty of Medicine, but were mainly based at the Paris IREP where, in an initiative calculated to fight tuberculosis, they were drilled in social hygiene and physical education as well as given practical guidance in the examination of ‘deficient’ children and the prescription of physical exercises and open-air therapies.161 Lessons in medical gymnastics were also established for trainee teachers at the ENEP, with Faculty of Medicine staff in charge alongside others such as David Strohl, the close collaborator of Georges Hébert.162 Such a trend was perhaps over-determined, given the influence of médecins-sportifs such as Dr Marcel Bellin du Coteau on Popular Front policies. He had created a federation of medical societies within the CNS in 1929 (its patrons included Léon Blum and Pierre Dézarnaulds), and had pushed for measures to professionalize physical education teachers for some time.163 As noted above, the distinction between hygienist and social hygienist motives was not at all clear. Minister of health, the physician Dr Henri Sellier, had justified the creation of the higher sports council in summer 1936 in social hygienist terms by arguing that ‘sport has a big role to play’ in the ‘renaissance and regeneration’ of the nation in a country ‘weakened by the sacrifice of so many young men’ in the last war. He thought the sports ground was ‘one of the elements in safeguarding the race . . . the opponent of the sanatorium and hospice.’164 In 1937 Dr Cazal-Gamelsy, on behalf of the physical education and sports commission, reported that compulsory and medically controlled physical education for teenagers would provide a balance between physical health and intellectual discipline, which was crucial at a time when ‘the relèvement of the race presents a paramount problem for the country’.165 These concerns were shared by Radical war veteran Léon Courson, who took over the physical education portfolio in January 1938.166 In February of that year Courson presided over the higher council of physical education and sport, 160 Zay to the ‘Recteurs d’académie’, 15 October 1937; Ministère de l’Education nationale, direction de l’enseignement du second degré, les classes d’orientation, Rapports et notes, September 1937, AN F17 17 501. 161 Dr P. Chailley-Bert, report on the Paris Institut d’Education Physique, 31 July 1941, and ‘L’Institut d’éducation physique de l’Université de Paris’, Université de Paris, Institut d’Education Physique (Paris, 1938), pp. 2–4; Dr Charles Lestocquoy, ‘Les laboratoires d’orientation scolaire et le centre d’hygiène infantile de l’Institut d’éducation physique de l’Université de Paris’, ibid., pp. 5–11; Dr G.-A. Richard, ‘Le Problème de la gymnastique médicale’, ibid., pp. 13–20, AN F44 40. 162 P. Pétat, ‘A l’école normale d’éducation physique’, Rééducation physique, February–March 1937, 14. 163 Defrance, ‘Construction sociale d’une “compétence médico-sportive”’, 89. 164 Dr Henri Sellier, Journal Officiel, 23 July 1936, AN F 60 435. 165 Dr Cazal-Gamelsy, ‘L’Education physique et les sports au collège’, 8 April 1937, AN F 44 37. 166 Ory, La Belle illusion, p. 139.

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explaining how daily lessons in gymnastics and a weekly half-day of sport would compensate for the intellectual and sedentary nature of working life. In a final flourish he cited the words of politician Henry de Jouvenel on the ‘problem of the race’—an issue that in his view surpassed all others.167 Such concerns resonated widely across the political spectrum. A few weeks after the Popular Front victory, a band of Radical deputies argued in the Chamber for an enhanced budget for physical education and greater powers for departments to build stadia, claiming that the example of other countries (Finland, Sweden, Italy, Japan, Germany, England, and the USA) showed that state investment paid off in the sphere of elite athletic performance. In France, however, there was only failure: sporting champions such as Georges Carpentier, Jean Bouin, and Jules Ladoumègue were exceptions that proved the rule, and an increasing number of young men were rejected at the conseils de révisions to boot.168 In mid-June 1936 several leftist deputies, including prominent communists Jacques Duclos, Maurice Thorez, and Paul Vaillant-Couturier, deployed the stock tropes of the physically failing conscript and the beleaguered elite athlete in a bid to demonstrate how specifically working-class youth had been badly hit by the 1930s economic crisis. The deputies’ remedy included compulsory physical education at all levels of the school system, medical supervision, and a municipal office of sports for every town. All this action would secure the ‘improvement of the race’ by ensuring that young men and women gained ‘a full physical development’.169 In July 1936, dozens of deputies put their name to a proposal presented in the Chamber of Deputies designed to ‘give to physical education the place that it deserves in the nation’. In a time when France was threatened by ‘the dangers of war’ and when failure rates at the conseil de révision were high, the old adage should not be forgotten—‘mens sana in corpore sano’. To develop intellectual capabilities over physical ones in the school-room risked the creation of ‘disequilibrum’ and ‘abnormal beings’ destined to suffer all their lives from physical and moral inferiority. This was something the ancient Greeks had understood: their aim in the physical development of youth was not ‘belliciste’, as some contemporaries thought, but creating a ‘vigorous and healthy race’. The French—unlike the Americans—had let their ‘physical faculties atrophy’, so that body culture had made American men ‘energetic’ and full of ‘physical vigour’, while their French counterparts suffered an excess of bookish labours: no wonder there were so many ‘neurotics’ among French intelletuals. The remedy, explicitly designed as a social hygiene, would be found in rational and medically supervised daily physical culture, tailored to age, sex, and physical condition, supplemented by open-air sports. Young men and women would thereafter marry in a healthy state (lean and free of premature ageing), thus creating life in ‘normal conditions’ and ensuring the ‘future of the race’. Tuberculosis and syphilis would slowly disappear, alongside the physical and mental defects 167

Léon Courson, speech of 26 February, Le Soldat de demain, March 1938, 83–5. Journal officiel, Annexe no. 198, Session ordinaire, 9 June 1936, 829; Saint-Martin, L’Education physique à l’épreuve de la nation, 192; Gay-Lescot, ‘De l’E.P. républicaine à l’E.G.S. nationale’, 134. 169 Journal officiel, Annexe no. 245, Session ordinaire, 11 June 1936. Schneider discusses the eugenicist language of the communist left in Quality and quantity, 199–207. 168

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associated with alcoholism. Physical re-education for those out of shape would complement the more rigorous training that formed ‘complete athletes’ without excessive specialization. One also needed air and light, modernized school spaces, and stadia equipped with showers and massage rooms: the deputies envisaged collaboration between the physician and the ‘health-centred architect’ for this ‘regeneration of the race.’170 Similar ideas were advanced by socialist deputy and physician Léon Martin, who thought his country was marked by too many ‘feeble young people’, suffering physically from war and economic crisis: ‘we must take measures to regenerate our race, give them muscles, health’. He admitted that France was behind other European nations—indeed, most ‘civilized countries’—in this regard. Czech, Soviet, Italian, German, and English efforts had recast the body by ‘creating the mystique of health’. Physcial education—rather than sport— should fight surmenage in the entire population, since specialization led to bodily ‘deformation’ rather than the ‘cult of the beauty of the individual’.171 It is not hard to see that these views resonated with the ideas of interwar physical culturists who thought that fatigue and intellectual labour had induced a biologically rooted crisis of virility just when France most needed strong soldiers for national defence. Furthermore, minister of health Henri Sellier’s June 1936 radio broadcast on the issue of public health was infused with an outright eugenicist language. Sellier complained that the lack of coherent public health plans in France had left the ‘sanitary arsenal of the Nation’ in a vulnerable situation. While billions had been spent on conventional defence, he asked if it was not just as urgent to ‘defend the race against the certainty of degeneration . . . that the lamentable statistics for the birth-rate, illness, and death suggest. A country inevitably dies when one makes fewer cradles than coffins!’ France, in his view, had too many abnormal heredosyphilitics, too many backward and scrawny specimens who clogged up hospitals, asylums, and prisons, and he advocated the unspecified methods used in the USA, Sweden, and Denmark to solve the problem. While also urging the destruction of slums, he wanted a system of physical education that would ‘create healthy men, some directed towards intellectual conjecture, others towards the practice of sports’.172 Sellier and Lagrange had used similar language when creating the BSP, asserting that daily life had led to increased passivity, which would ultimately ‘cause a clear degeneration in human beings’.173 Certainly, ministers were approached by eugenicist bodies trying to bend their ears. The Institut Prophylactique, founded in 1916, claimed several leaders of the late Third Republic as members—Albert Lebrun, Alexandre Millerand, Camille Chautemps, and Henri Sellier himself. Its chief animator, Arthur Vernes, lamented the effects of modern sedentarity and diet on the constitution of individuals. There were whole villages where the sons of formerly ‘strong and vigorous’ men now failed their conseils de révision, he wrote, where women did not know how to wash or cook and children fed on brandy and 170

Journal officiel, Annexe no. 617, Session ordinaire, 9 July 1936, 1253–4. Journal officiel, Annexe no. 903, Session ordinaire, 30 July 1936, 1550–1. 172 Henri Sellier, radio broadcast, 5 June 1936, dossier ‘Divers’, AN F60 600. 173 Sellier and Lagrange, 10 March 1937, AN F60 435; also cited in Marianne Amar, ‘Sport, éducation et redressement national’, in Education physique et sport en France, p. 120. 171

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pig fat.’174 Money was wasted on hospitals for increasing numbers of syphilis-induced ‘non-valeurs’: he wanted ‘prophylactic measures’ to solve the problem of this ‘exorbitant and irreparable loss in human capital’.175 Another group openly advocated sterilization and a compulsory health record that would help prevent undesirable marriages, holding up recent German measures as a good example.176 Whatever the effects of such lobbying, a compulsory carnet de santé was indeed introduced by the French government in June 1939 via a decree from the ministry of public health, although the document was regarded as the confidential property of each individual and thus its applicability in eugenicist terms was limited.177 Indeed, no overt eugenicist measure was adopted under the Third Republic, and it is inescapable that the Popular Front governments were manifestly progressive in their concern with public health. However, that should not obscure the broad purchase at elite political level of notions of collective biological degeneration—as opposed to mere individual physiological decline—and a concomitant faith in the regenerative and virilizing potential of physical exercise. T H E PA R I S WO R L D ’ S FA I R O F 1 9 3 7 The intertwined issues of physical fitness, virility, and social hygiene had a bearing on the Paris world’s fair of 1937. Most obviously, the elements of ‘sports, games, and eugenics’ were combined within Category 72 under the presidency of USEPPSM president and military preparationist Adolphe Chéron, their interconnections celebrated by the exhibition’s organizers.178 The committees that oversaw this category featured personalities drawn from the world of politics (Henry Paté and Paris municipal councillor Louis Sellier), elite sport (Jean Borotra, Henry Delaunay, Jules Rimet, and the leftist FSGT’s Auguste Delaune), the sports press (Henri Desgrange), the official world of physical education (Colonel Legros, commandant of the Ecole de Joinville; and Adrien Rey Golliet, principal inspector of physical education in the Ville de Paris), and the world of medicine (Marcel Bellin du Coteau, also president of the French Hockey Federation; Paul Chailley-Bert, and Emile Valtier, then president of the French federation of physical culture).179 Sports newspapers were offered generous subsidies for their coverage, and perhaps because FFCP general secretary Pierre Bardel was head of the sports service, La Culture physique devoted a regular column to the Expo, and the annual FFCP beauty contest took place under its auspices. Certainly, Bardel’s correspondence with Emile

174 Arthur Vernes to Edouard Daladier, 5 July 1939 and Arthur Vernes, ‘L’avenir de la race ou la ruine’, Pour la France, Doc. 2, dossier ‘Divers’, AN F60 600. 175 Arthur Vernes, ‘On ne conserve pas son rang dans la nature en se moquant de ses lois’, Pour la France, Doc. 1, dossier ‘Divers’, AN F60 600. 176 ‘Comité central de lutte contre les fléaux sociaux’, November 1938, dossier ‘Divers’, AN F60 600. 177 Schneider, Quality and Quantity, p. 172. 178 Historians have rarely noted this combination. For an exception see Shanny Peer, France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (New York, 1998), p. 32. 179 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7 (Paris, 1939), pp. 386–8.

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Valtier regarding the Expo was rather cosy.180 A war veteran and graduate of the Ecole de Joinville, Bardel had worked under the under-secretary of state for public instruction and physical education Emile Morinaud from 1930 to 1932 before setting up the FFCP with Emile Valtier in 1934. In 1939 he also took over the directorship of sports newspaper L’Echo des sports, one of the titles subsidized to cover the exhibition.181 On one level, sport was used deliberately to draw an audience for the Expo. One Paris municipal councillor saw it as key to the success of the whole event, since in the age of the sporting celebrity (he cited Jean Borotra as a key symbolic figure) it was necessary to mount ‘grand displays of physical exercise’ to achieve large crowds.182 Expo general commissioner Edmond Labbé was quite explicit in his final report not only that the ‘mystique’ of sport was overtly harnessed to boost the exhibition’s popularity—in recognition of the galvanizing effect of events like the Tour de France and Davis Cup on the general public—but that in doing so the Expo sports service was modelling its approach on the successful orchestration of spectacle at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to which it had indeed sent a delegation. Like that carefully managed affair, the Expo sports programme drew on classical models, open-air parades, and large displays of group gymnastics. Labbé thought that the skill and ‘power of muscle’ on show in these dazzling sports events had ‘crystaliz[ed] a “moment” of human progress’ in the eyes of the world through the application of ‘French flair’.183 But he sounded a common note of interwar selfcriticism when he noted that foreign athletes (especially gymnasts) won the highest honours in the Expo, no doubt due to the better investment in physical education in their respective countries: his list included Germany, Belgium, Denmark, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia.184 The sports programme was indeed considerable. Léo Lagrange, who inaugurated Category 72 in July 1937, emphasized the sheer breadth of the programme—173 sports events organized by 48 federations—which would see world-class athletes face one another in a spirit of peaceable competition.185 These contests took place in a range of venues across the French capital, from the Colombes stadium to the Vélodrome d’Hiver to the Grand Palais, and were made possible by 3 million francsworth of financial support from the Expo organizers and Léo Lagrange’s ministry.186 The programme, which ran from May to November, comprised a long list of world and European championships in such sports as fencing, weight-lifting, wrestling, 180 Valtier to ‘Monsieur Cher Pierre’ Bardel, 16 April 1937, ‘Presse’ dossier, AN F12 12219; ‘Budget du Service des Sports’, approved and signed by Léo Lagrange, 12 February 1937, AN F60 971. 181 La Culture physique, September 1952, 3. 182 Georges Prade, vice-president of the Commission des Transports of the 1937 Expo, ‘L’Exposition internationale de Paris 1937 et les sports’, Chambre et sénat, n.d., 1936, ‘sports’ dossier, AN F12 12147. 183 Labbé’s official report, Ministère du Commerce et de l’Industrie, Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 11 (Paris, 1940), pp. 318–21. 184 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7 (Paris, 1939), p. 264. 185 Léo Lagrange, ‘Brochure sur les sports à l’Exposition’ dossier, n.d. AN F12 12219. 186 Reitlav, ‘Courrier de l’Exposition de 1937’, La Culture physique, April 1937, 124; correspondence between Pierre Bardel and the leaders of sports associations in spring 1937, ‘Congrès sportifs’ dossier, AN F12 12219.

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football, and tennis. But not all events were reserved for the cream of elite athletes. The greatest financial aid was earmarked for the Office du Sport Universitaire, with the USGF gymnastics society and Catholic FGSPF not far behind; substantial sums were also given to the leftist FSGT and ‘preparationist’ USEPPSM. All of these organizations hosted displays and competitions under the aegis of the exhibition.187 Pierre Bardel, as head of the sports service, had to turn down many offers to include more grassroots contests because the sports programme was full.188 Perhaps most impressively, the Catholic FGSPF staged an event featuring some 25,000 French and 2,000 foreign gymnasts drawn from Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia: it was described by Pierre Bardel and the sports press as one of the most significant displays of the entire Expo.189 Indeed, according to Susan Whitney, this two-day affair was the largest sports event of the world’s fair, complete with ‘noctural gymnastic pageant at the Parc des Princes stadium and an open-air Mass’.190 Undersecretary of state for physical education Dr Pierre Dézarnaulds watched the spectacle from his seat in the stadium. At the other end of the spectrum, the leftist FSGT hosted a huge international omnisport event with the participation of athletes from the USSR, Norway, and England, and which also found ready press coverage.191 The annual festival of the USEPPSM, this year held as part of the Expo sports programme, also provided an impressive spectacle. Adolphe Chéron, still at the head of the organization, sat in the stands next to president of the Republic Albert Lebrun, enjoying an ‘impeccable lesson in physical education’ given by 6,000 civilian and military athletes, including school pupils, to as many as 40,000 spectators.192 It was this kind of mass pedagogical display of physical exercise— much like the exhibitions of the famed Bohemian Sokols—that the Expo organizers praised most highly. The bespoke arena for many of the smaller-scale indoor competitions was the omnisport stadium built for 5,000 spectators at the Porte de Saint-Cloud in southwest Paris, although the complex opened only in late August after a series of delays. It was renamed the Pierre de Coubertin stadium almost immediately after the latter’s death in 1937 on the initiative of Paris municipal councillor and president of the French Olympic Committee, Armand Massard.193 The international tennis tournament held there in November proved especially popular with the public. In addition, free weekly physical culture sessions for children were offered 187

‘Budget de la presse’ section, 3, of the ‘Budget du Service des Sports’. Pierre Bardel to J. B. Bouteloup, 11 May 1937, ‘Calendrier des manifestations’ dossier, AN F12 12219. 189 Bardel to Labbé, 7 June 1937, AN F12 12218; Robet Boutin, ‘L’Exposition de 1937 a, plus qu’aucune autre, fait une large part aux sports’, L’Auto, 26 November 1937, AN F12 12147. 190 François Hebrard, FGSPF president, to Labbé, 4 June 1937, AN F12 12 218; Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Durham, 2009), p. 234. 191 Match L’Intran, 1 June 1937, 4–5. 192 Special issue of Le Soldat de demain, July 1937; Bardel reporting on the USEPPSM’s Tuileries festival, n.d.; Chéron to Bardel, 22 May 1937, AN F12 12218. 193 Le Journal, 26 August 1937, ‘sports’ dossier, F12 12147; Armand Massard’s proposal to the Paris municipal council, 22 October 1937, Catalogue des rapports et propositions imprimés, 1931–40 (Paris, 1941). 188

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there by Andrée Joly, president of the French league for physical and rhythmic education.194 A pavilion in the landscaped grounds housed a range of exhibitions on the sporting theme as well as a tea room (see Figs. 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3). The display of Adolphe Chéron’s military preparation union, the USEPPSM, had pride of place in the main exhibition hall, and adjoining rooms included exhibits mounted by other sports federations as well as those on scouting, camping, gymnastics, sports equipment, and the sports press. The inclusion of rooms devoted to youth hostels, ‘cultural leisure’, and open-air activities shows the influence of the Popular Front.195 The eugenics exhibition was located in a room just off the main exhibition space, and, in the words of the official Expo guide, was designed to ‘show scientifically all that has been done or is intended to faire oeuvre vivante of the improvement of the race’.196 Developed under the leadership of Professor A. Latarjet, a special commission

Fig. 2.1. Main exhibition hall inside the Saint-Cloud annex, showing the USEPPSM stand. Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.). 194 ‘Les leçons gratuites d’éducation physique à l’Annexe de l’Exposition Porte de Saint-Cloud’, Le Peuple, 23 September 1937, AN F12 12147; note, 13 September 1937, dossier on gymnastics, AN F12 12 220. 195 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7, pp. 266–7. 196 Exposition internationale Paris 1937 arts et techniques dans la vie moderne: le guide officiel (Paris, 1937), pp. 149–50.

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Fig. 2.2. Exterior of the main pavilion. Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.).

Fig. 2.3. The entrance hall with classical sculptures and sports-themed art work. Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7, n.p. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

brought together statistics, diagrams, and pictures designed to communicate the subject to a lay audience. Physician and president of the French athletics federation, Dr Thooris, provided a collection of photographs of famous sportifs and other items to illustrate how eugenics could play a role in ‘the development and improvement

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of the individual and the race’.197 A leading member of the commission, Dr Robert Jeudon, had appealed to doctors, hygienists, and sociologists to offer their services, sending in information boards and other material.198 Jeudon—an expert on childhood learning and author of a treatise on the use of rational physical exercise in fatigue management and ‘virile’ education—believed that physical education was ‘one of the conditions of eugenics’, making man fit for the material ‘struggle for life’ while also putting ‘beauty, intelligence, and charm at the service of strength’.199 In explaining the rationale for combining sport and eugenics in a single category, the chief fair organizer Edmond Labbé was at pains to argue that the themes interpenetrated. As he put it, ‘Category 72 was nothing other than eugenics in action’. Illustrating ‘the link that unites sport, art, and science’, it showed the contribution of all these elements to the improvement and preservation of the species. Furthermore, in his view the category ‘encouraged the popularization of a new science and led artists to produce creations inspired by the passionate and youthful life of stadiums’.200 Indeed, the organizers stressed the impossibility of separating art from sport: the latter provided artists with perfect models of humanity, while art itself inspired the world of sport with its emphasis on grace, harmony, and balance. Such connections were illustrated through the ubiquitous use in the Porte de SaintCloud annex of a classical aesthetic—something in evidence also in the official poster for the Expo sports programme (see Fig. 2.4). The Expo art commission subsidized the decoration of the site’s frescos (by artists Pierre Girieud and Jules Emile Zingg) and its statue of a triumphant athlete by French neo-classical sculptor Paul Belmondo, which was placed in the main exhibition hall.201 President of Classe 72 Chéron hoped that the sports category would not only provide spectacle but inspire artists, ‘as in the times when the Greek sculptor sought out his models at the stadium’.202 Indeed artistic competitions in which some sixty-three individuals took part paid out large prizes across the categories of sculpture (whose theme was ‘athlete’), painting (‘jeux à la lumière’) and poetry (‘proud and strong youth’).203 One thus finds celebration of the same normative aesthetic for male and female bodies—in the service of social hygiene to boot—that echoed across the physical culturist press. Such a state of affairs is unsurprising given the ubiquity of classical motifs after the First World War, not only in body culture but on war memorials, stadia, grands projets of many kinds.204 No doubt Albert Speer, the designer for the

197

Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 7, p. 265. Communiqué signed by Latarjet and Jeudon, Le Practicien du Nord de l’Afrique, 15 March 1937, 189, ‘eugénisme’ dossier, AN F12 12136. 199 ‘Eugénisme’, Le Practicien du Nord de l’Afrique, 15 March 1937, 189–90, ‘eugénisme’ dossier, AN F12 12136. This cites Jeudon, L’Education du geste: étude physiologique et psychologique, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1941), 5–6. 200 Ibid., 263–71. 201 Robert-Guillou to Jean Cocquin, 23 February 1937, AN F60 971. 202 Adolphe Chéron, Revue mensuelle officielle, cited in ‘Les sports à l’Exposition’, Le Soldat de demain, June 1937, 232. 203 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, vol. 7, p. 269. 204 Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body. 198

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Fig. 2.4. Official poster for the sports programme of the Expo. Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, Paris 1937, vol. 11, n.p. (By permission of the British Library, London.)

German pavilion at the Paris world’s fair who pursued a similar neo-classical aesthetic, was fishing in the same pool of ideas in this respect.205 It is perhaps surprising that the eugenics section was not attached to the Expo category for hygiene, given that one of its sub-sections included a pavilion for the Chambre syndicale de puériculture—a natural home for matters relating to eugenics in interwar France.206 The literary revue Comoedia, in fact, thought the association of 205 Fiss, Karen, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris exhibition, and the Cultural Seduction of France (Chicago, 2010), p. 62. 206 Suzanne Schreiber-Crémieux, president of category 8A, ‘Projet d’aménagement de la Classe 8A en un Centre Social’, 26 January 1938, AN F60 608.

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eugenics with sport somewhat odd, asserting that while ‘the beauty of the human body is a living decorative art’, displays on ‘the science of making beautiful children’ would be better housed with hygiene.207 But writing in Le Soldat de demain, Dr Henri Diffre welcomed the coupling of elements in Category 72, attributing it to the influence of Adolphe Chéron himself, for whom Diffre imagined the combination represented ‘the crowning achievement and recognition of an entire life working towards the same goal: the improvement of the race and the grandeur of the Patrie’. As Diffre put it, Chéron had engaged in an energetic campaign in favour of the kind of physical education that would achieve a ‘genuine eugenics’.208 Chéron himself spoke supportively of eugenics and its focus on ‘l’élevage humain’—a term at the heart of the interwar French eugenicist vocabulary—although he acknowledged that the concept had its detractors.209 In any case the theme of eugenics spilled outside the exhibition spaces of the annex at the Porte de Saint-Cloud into the rest of the world’s fair. For a start, one of the many scientific conferences scheduled to coincide with the Expo was the first congress of the international federation of eugenics societies held at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. Louis Marin, prominent deputy and leader of the Fédération Républicaine who had been minister of health and physical education for most of 1934, presided over these so-called ‘Journées de l’eugénisme’. Marin was also a serious ethnographer and president of the International Institute of Anthropology as well as director of the Ecole d’Athropologie—the institutional homes of the former French Eugenics Society after 1927.210 While one eugenicist commentator expressed the view that the eugenics section of Classe 72 was a modest affair, ‘curiously attached’ to the sports programme, he recognized the greater success of the international congress on the subject, perhaps because it represented ‘positive’ eugenics rather than the ‘negative’ strand in evidence in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries.211 An international congress for medicine applied to physical education and sport was also held under the aegis of the Expo.212 One delegate, Dr Rochu-Méry, was pleased that the inclusion of eugenics at the Expo would popularize the ideas, goals, and methods of this ‘new science’.213 He made a radio broadcast for the ministry of public health, pointing out that the French had unfortunately only a dim sense of eugenics despite its genesis among the ancient Greeks.214 207 Yvanhoé Rambosson, ‘L’Eugénisme est-il bien à sa place dans la section des “Jeux et Sports”? . . .’, Comoedia, 27 April 1935, ‘Eugénisme’ dossier, AN F12 12136. 208 Dr Henri Diffre, ‘Jeux, sports, eugénisme’, Le Soldat de demain, June 1936, 179–80. 209 Chéron cited in Labbé’s official report, vol. 7, p. 271. 210 Revue anthropologique, January–March 1936, 190–1; ‘Eugénisme’, Le Practicien du Nord de l’Afrique; Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 94, 257. 211 Henri Briand, ‘Les progrès de l’eugénique et de la génétique en France au cours des dernières années: publications récentes’, Revue anthropologique, July–September 1938, 307–14. 212 ‘Concours sportifs organisés en 1937 à l’occasion des manifestations sportives’, ‘Calendrier des manifestations’ dossier; Charles Denis to R. Cassou, 4 May 1937, ‘Réceptions officielles’ dossier, AN F12 12219. 213 Dr Rochu-Méry, ‘Sport et eugénisme’, Communications faites au Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’éducation physique et aux sports, Exposition internationale de Paris, 1937, Paris, 11–17 July 1937, 105. 214 Dr Rochu-Méry, ‘Sport et eugénisme’, Le Soldat de demain, April 1937, 149.

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Eugenics was also a theme included—to a degree—in the biology section of the hugely popular Palais de la Découverte, located in the Grand Palais and dedicated to the popularization of scientific knowledge. The section was developed under the leadership of Professor Henri Laugier of the Paris Faculty of Science—an expert in the physiology of the nervous system, the physiology of work, and orientation professionelle who was also general secretary of the Society of Biotypology.215 In the words of the Expo’s official guide, the heredity display—based purely on Mendelian principles—focused on the ‘human machine’, showing the techniques used to define the ‘anthropometric or functional characteristics of individuals’ that permitted both vocational guidance and ‘selection’.216 More to the point, biologist Jean Rostand gave a lecture in the pavilion’s auditorium on human heredity in which, while overtly rejecting the neo-Lamarckian notion of the heredity of acquired charactertistics, endorsed ‘positive’ eugenics as a way of alleviating human suffering: he stressed the point that modern civilization had kept too many defective individuals alive.217 Ironically, one of the only voices raised in criticism of the exhibitions at the Palais de la Découverte blamed its medical section for being ‘strangely silent on public hygiene and the great “social scourges: cancer, syphilis, tuberculosis”’.218 But of course, the Expo dedicated a whole category to Hygiene (Classe 8)—‘this art of well-being’—where such issues were addressed directly. As Edmond Labbé wrote in his official report, hygiene should guide all ‘in the choice of our food, our clothing, our sports’, while social hygiene fought against the ‘scourges’ identified above. Thus the pavilion included exhibits on sanitary housing, the medical inspection of schools, colonies de vacances, and open-air schools (featuring the experiment in Suresnes set up by socialist mayor Henri Sellier). While the understanding of social hygiene here appears indistinguishable from public health, one exhibit endorsed the notion of a pre-marital medical certificate to ensure that the ‘physical responsibilites’ of each young couple were carried out.219 But it was the failed bid of Parisian municipal councillor and Deputy Louis Sellier to stage a grand ‘Rassemblement de la Jeunesse’ for 200,000 young male and female sportifs as part of the Expo’s youth programme where one sees clearly a social hygienist language of biological decline and regeneration. Sellier thought that this initiative would encourage the ‘physical renovation of the young generations’ and offer a cure for the ‘social scourges’ of tuberculosis and poor physique that had blighted the youth of France since 1914. According to Sellier, boys and girls alike now suffered ‘phyiscal deficiences’ and nervous disorders on a grand scale.220 Particularly tragic for Sellier was the fact that physical failure (measured by the decline in the quality of conscripts) was most 215 Les Cahiers de Radio-Paris, conférences données dans l’auditorium du Poste National Radio-Paris, Paris, 16 July 1937, iii. Christina Cogdell claims that this section drew the largest audience in the pavilion, Eugenic Design, pp. 118–19. 216 Le Guide officiel, p. 81; also Marcel Prenant, ‘Les salles de biologie’, Les Cahiers de Radio-Paris, pp. 707–12. 217 Jean Rostand, L’Hérédité humaine (Alençon, 1948), pp. 19–23. 218 Jacques Solomon in Les Cahiers du bochévisme, August 1937, in Ory, La Belle illusion, p. 482. 219 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques, vol. 5, pp. 151–66. 220 Louis Sellier, proposal to the Paris muncipal council and departmental council of the Seine, 1933, dossier on the ‘Rassemblement de la jeunesse’, AN F12 12219.

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marked in those regions that had previously provided ‘the strongest races of France’. He suggested that it was through the rational practice of physical culture for children of both sexes that one would leave the ‘generations doomed to infirmity and degeneration’ behind. Despite Sellier’s claims that the ‘miracle of physical culture’ had already worked its magic in both Germany and Japan, in the end this ambitious project, estimated to cost around 8 million francs, stalled due to lack of funds.221 Whatever the public profile of the official eugenics display within the sports category at the world’s fair, the fact that there was also a eugenicist or social hygienist emphasis in plans for the other pavilions—most notably in Hygiene and the Palais de la Découverte—suggests not so much the marginalization of the theme but the extent to which the Expo was saturated with its concerns. C O N C LU S I O N As demonstrated in this chapter, the place of physical exercise in the state institutions of the school and the army was frequently debated in the 1920s and 1930s within the Chamber of Deputies. In the interwar years the state repeatedly tried to justify, enforce, and extend the compulsory component of physical education in the school system, just as it sought at times to diminish the length of military service. Indeed, these two areas were intimately connected for state authorities who contemplated, under constant pressure from lobby groups, a compensation for the reduction of military service in the 1920s through the implementation of a compulsory scheme of military preparation for French male youth. For the public authorities, the physical fitness of young men was widely understood to hold the key both to national military strength and national regeneration, and the rhetorical strategies of deputies inside and outside the Chamber suggest the same kind of hygienist and social hygienist thinking that resonated across the world of physical culture. It is true that these official voices expressed concerns also about the physical health of French girls and women, but their constant evocation of high rejection rates at the conseils de révision and the clear intermingling of concerns about degeneration and national security suggest a preoccupation with male physique. The 1930s witnessed a worsening of dénatalité, increased concerns over the German military threat, and a severe economic depression. All these factors elicited a heightened interest among politicians and intellectuals in questions of individual physical fitness, and the threat to French vitality and security they posed seemed to make the fragility of the nation’s male bodies all the more stark. It was clear that state authorities—if not the physicists or biologists whose views informed the presentation of scientific knowledge at the 1937 world’s fair—shared the neoLamarckian and ‘positive’ eugenicist assumptions of physical culturists, even if 221 Louis Sellier, François Pietri, and J.-M. Renaitour, ‘Proposition de résolution tendant à inviter le gouvernement à créditer et à organiser à l’occasion de l’Exposition Universelle de 1937, un Rassemblement triomphal de la jeunesse sportive des villages et des villes de France’, n.d. AN F60 970; Pierre Bardel and Jules Coulon, report on the estimated costs, dossier on the ‘Rassemblement de la jeunesse’, n.d., AN F12 12219.

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these ideas were expressed less overtly by such elected officials. In addition, the classical model of male beauty as a sign of greater individual and national, even ‘racial’, health and fitness prevailed as much in official circles as among the commercial technicians of physical fitness. Such an overlap in concerns may well have been facilitated by connections between deputies and members of the medical, military, and commercial physical culturist elite. On the other hand, it may simply demonstrate the ubiquity of a line of thinking in which ideas about individual and national degeneration and regeneration intertwined and were focused on the imagined failings of the male body.

3 Male Bodies between Associative Life and Consumer Spectacle The Mass Press and Popular Practice To be a complete athlete, which must be the ideal of any intelligent man, one must be muscled, muscled in the proportions of a fine classical statute, in the style of Polykleitos’ Doryphoros, or the fighting gladiator. P. Cerson, reader of La Culture physique in Angoulême1

Comparing early Third Republican and interwar editions of the Larousse dictionary shows the changing contours of physical culture in France. The attention paid to sport in the later volumes (1929–30) had increased enormously, while the length of the gymnastics entry was radically reduced. In the 1870s there had been a sense that sport was something that the English upper classes played and the French at times emulated, but by 1930 sporting practice had permeated French popular culture for all social classes—not just as institutional training in the school and the army, but as leisure. If the sports movement had its roots in mid- to late-nineteenth-century gymnastics—especially in military and educational establishments—the twentieth century was to belong to the sports federations. The many illustrations in this twentiethcentury edition of Larousse suggest that a range of competitive sports and athletic leisure activities now touched the lives of men and women across a range of social classes (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). The very reproduction of such glossy photographs is indicative of changes within print culture itself: male and female readers were now routinely bombarded with images of sporting practice in newspapers and magazines, and addressed as consumers of sports-related activities, equipment, and products as never before. Yet we should not forget that the bodily work-outs endorsed by the physical culturists discussed in Chapter 1 in fact remained an important element within sporting associations, where physical education was often counselled as a prerequisite for competitive activity just as such pursuits as body-building and weight-lifting themselves involved elements of competition. Furthermore, as the illustrations for gymnastics in the 1930 edition of Larousse suggest, this kind of physical fitness training was to remain closely associated with the life stages of men—at school, in clubs and societies, and crucially in the army (see Fig. 3.3). The moustaches may have largely disap1

‘Courrier des lecteurs’, La Culture physique, July 1937, 209.

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Fig. 3.1. Illustration for ‘sports’. Larousse du XXe siècle, ed. Paul Augé, 6 vols. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1933, vol. 6, p. 454. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

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Fig. 3.2. Illustration for ‘sports’. Larousse du XXe siècle, ed. Paul Augé, 6 vols. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1933, vol. 6, p. 455. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

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Fig. 3.3. Illustration for ‘gymnastics’. Larousse du XXe siècle, ed. Paul Augé, 6 vols. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1933, vol. 3, p. 926. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

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peared, but in many other respects the activities themselves, as well as the cultural meanings and social utility attached to them, bear striking similarities to those of the earlier period. This chapter grapples with the role played by masculine ideals in the evolving relationship between physical culture proper and popular sporting practice amid the consumer culture that built up around them. First, it asks in what ways the male sporting culture (and more general body culture) that had emerged by this period was inflected with (perhaps conflicting) normative masculine codes. It explores how far the physical and moral qualities celebrated in relation to the new sports champions—in cycling, boxing, swimming, or tennis—were different from those admired in the older traditions of the strongman or body-builder, and considers the role of social class in shaping these ideals. Secondly, it will ask how far concerns about male bodily failure and the ‘improvement of the race’ discussed in the previous chapters were expressed by the sports press and sporting intelligentsia in the interwar years. How far did the acceptance of sport-spectacle among these voices attenuate the fears of physical laziness and national decline one finds among the purists in the world of the gymnasium? Was there a eugenicist vocabulary in play, a professed desire to improve the French ‘breeding stock’? Finally, the chapter will explore the evidence that suggests how individual men internalized, or not, athletic aesthetic and behavioural norms as well as wider anxieties about bodily decline. M A L E S P O RT I N G C U LT U R E S A N D N O R M AT I V E M A S C U L I N I T Y Of course, it was in the pre-1914 period that the foundations for French sporting life were laid, and the interwar period merely saw their consolidation and extension. As Richard Holt has pointed out, of the 5,000 or so clubs formed each year in France between 1900 and 1910, around a third involved sport.2 National competitions for increasingly codified sports were established at a great pace after the 1880s—for athletics in 1888, rugby union, football, fencing, and cycling (track and on-road) in the 1890s, and boxing in 1903. Basket-ball (1921) and horseriding (1931) followed among others after the First World War.3 It is easy to see why physical education expert, rugby enthusiast, and founder of the Bordeaux-based physical education league (LGEP) Philippe Tissié thought that this fin-de-siècle period witnessed a ‘physical Renaissance’.4 This associative life was regulated by a growing body of national sports federations, often affiliated to international counterparts, in a way that was soon to move beyond the omnisport model of the late nineteenth century. Federations for gymnastics, cycling, athletics, tennis, swimming, and boxing were established before the First World War, but in the interwar 2 Richard Holt, ‘Women, men and sport in France, c. 1870–1914: an introductory survey’, Journal of Sport History, 18 no. 1 (1991), 132. 3 Pierre Arnaud, ‘Le Sport et les relations internationales avant 1914’, in P. Arnaud and J. Riordan (eds.), Sport et relations internationales (1900–1941): les démocraties face au fascisme et au nazisme (Paris, 1998), p. 34. 4 Tissié, L’Education physique et la race, p. 252.

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period they were complemented by those for fooball (1919), rugby union and hockey (1920), skiing (1924), table tennis (1927), basket-ball (1933), rugby league (1934), and volley-ball (1936).5 Physical culture per se was part of this landscape. A national weight-lifting club had been founded in 1900, and the French Federation of Physical Culture (FFCP) was set up in 1934. Such sporting activities were not just a platform for elite athleticism, whatever the fears of the physical culturists about the advent of spectator sport. The sports movement was genuinely popular, embracing women as well as men, and recruited in provincial France as well as in Paris. Christopher Thompson notes the special popularity of cycling races in cities at the end of the nineteenth century, and the fact that cycling clubs—with some exceptions—thrived mostly in towns.6 The appeal of rugby in its south-western strongholds may have been due in large part to ‘its close association with both the reality and the mythology of rurality’, as Philip Dine has argued, but in general the growth of the sports movement was an urban rather than a rural affair.7 By some estimates, in 1929 the Comité National des Sports (CNS), the amateur umbrella organization for sports federations, counted 9 per cent of the population as its members—more than 3 million people and perhaps as many as 4.2 million.8 Despite difficulties in pinning down exact numbers, it would appear that the single-sport federations that recruited best included athletics, swimming, football, cycling, and tennis, although basket-ball took off suddenly in the mid1930s, and in fact the number of licensed rugby union players in this period decreased in the face of competition from a newly created—and professionalized— rugby league.9 The sudden popularity of basket-ball was facilitated by the encouragement of the Catholic FGSPF: a contemporary survey placed it as the latter’s most popular sport, incorporating almost 12,000 players in the mid-1930s.10 Despite the great upsurge in the number and membership of sports federations, societies whose main emphasis was gymnastics, body-building, or physical education continued to exist. The FFCP recognised more than eighty gymnasia and physical culture schools nationally, based in all corners of the hexagon and North Africa, as well as several in Paris itself. Furthermore, the FFCP’s membership list included sports associations such as the Association Sportive de la Bourse (Paris) and the Aquatic Club of Limoges, which suggests that clubs ostensibly devoted to other pursuits contained an element of physical fitness training.11 An appreciation 5 For a fuller list see, Jacques Defrance, ‘Le sport français dans “l’entre-deux-guerres”’, in Philippe Tétart (ed.), Histoire du sport en France: du Second Empire au régime de Vichy (Paris, 2007), p. 85. 6 Christopher S. Thompson, The Tour de France: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 13–14. 7 Philip Dine, French Rugby Football: A Cultural History (Oxford, 2001), p. 2. 8 Jean Toussaint Fieschi, Histoire du sport français de 1870 à nos jours (Paris, 1983), p. 77. 9 Jacques Defrance, ‘Le sport français dans “l’entre-deux-guerres”’, 90. The French swimming and life-saving federation comprised 765 societies and 16,680 registered swimmers by the late 1930s, while the French football federation (FFFA) encompassed 6,000 societies and 200,000 registered players. ‘Le développement de la FFN en 1939’, Bulletin officiel de la Fédération française de natation et de sauvetage, March 1940, 1; Report dated 25 September 1940, ‘La situation des sports en France’, APP GA F 22. 10 ‘Le “jeu pour petites filles” fait son chemin’, in ‘Entre nous’, Basket-ball, organe officiel de la Fédération Française de Basket-ball, Paris, 15 November 1934, 3. 11 Emile Valtier to Adolphe Chéron, 28 August 1936, AN F12 12 220.

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of physical culture clearly extended beyond the formal reach of the FFCP. A guide to football practice published in the mid-1930s reminded its readers that the qualities needed for football—speed and physical resistance—could be self-taught through a few minutes of daily physical culture exercise undertaken at home, in front of an open window or in the garden.12 This kind of training, of course, remained especially important for all associations that drilled its members for military preparation certificates, such as the Catholic FGSPF and those bodies grouped under the General Union of Physical Education and Military Preparation Societies (USEPPSM). Indeed, in the mid-1930s the entry for ‘physical education’ in the Paris phone directory redirects the reader to ‘military preparation’.13 According to Sport et santé there were 5,971 physical education and military preparation societies accredited by the ministry of war in 1920, but 8,721 of them by April 1929.14 In this sense, popular practice of physical culture was overtly linked to preparing young men for their national duty as soldiers. Certainly, the practice of sport and physical exercise was still overwhelmingly a male affair in this period, despite larger numbers of female participants. Increased leisure time and the advent of popular tourism did mean that women took part alongside men in such activities as swimming and cyclotourism, never more so than in the youth-hostel movement of the mid-1930s, in which there was a good deal of mixing of the sexes.15 But in other ways the picture is rather different. Due to the mainstream sports associations’ distaste for women’s sporting endeavour, in January 1918 a separate Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France (FSFSF) had been formed in order to represent the interests of female sportifs. In the same period the omnisport USFSA created a women’s wing. By 1936, however, most male-dominated sports federations (cycling and rugby were notable exceptions) had opened their doors if not their elite competitions to female members.16 At grassroots level, one sports group based in working-class north-east Paris whose goal was ‘the physical and moral development of worker youth’ was open to both sexes, even for the practice of sports such as football and basket-ball: at its foundation in 1936 it had around 600 members.17 This initiative, however, is the exception that proves the rule. In general, the practice of codified sports remained sex-segregated, and cultural resistance to female participation in team sports such as football and rugby was considerable. Medics, hygienists, and pedagogues as well as sports leaders still concurred in girls’ and women’s fundamental unsuitability for the more athletic and competitive sports, even where commentators did urge some form of female physical activity.18 12

Maurice Bunyan, Le Football simplifié (Paris, 1934), p. 9. Bottin du commerce, 1934, Archives de Paris. Figures cited from the programme of Henry Paté by Commandant Z., ‘À propos d’une cérémonie’, Sport et santé, 15 November 1929, 21. 15 Siân Reynolds, France bewteen the Wars: Gender and Politics (London, 1996), pp. 58–61. 16 Thierry Terret, ‘Sport et genre (1870–1945)’, in Tétart, Histoire du sport en France, pp. 360, 362, 355–76. 17 Police file on L’Education physique populaire Gervaisienne (Pré-St-Gervais, Seine), September 1965, APP GA E3. 18 Anaïs Bohuon and Antoine Luciani, ‘Biomedical discourse on women’s physical education and sport in France (1880–1922)’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 26, 5 (April 2009), 573–93; Stewart, For Health and Beauty, pp. 151–72; Holt, ‘Women, men and sport in France’, 121–34. 13 14

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Such views were justified on grounds that were always natalist and at times eugenicist, and there are clear echoes of this discursive hostility to women in sport across the entire interwar period. All this meant that while rhythmic gymnastics, swimming, and tennis became sanctioned for female involvement on account of their allegedly gentle nature and compatibility with conventional (bourgeois) notions of feminine elegance and mixed-sex sociability, women were vastly under-represented in other quarters.19 According to Mary Lynn Stewart, only one Paris stadium permitted the women’s sports club Femina-Sport to use its facilities in the late 1920s, and female societies were generally overlooked in terms of state subsidies.20 Even the female proponents of women’s physical exercise usually bought into prevailing cultural mores. Thus Jeanne Dubarbié’s Dumaine’s manifesto for rhythmic gymnastics counselled women that a little exercise each day could stave off the ‘destructive work’ of time and prepare them for their ‘natural function’ of childbirth.21 The picture that emerges, then, is one in which the traditional pillars of sex-difference barely shifted even as it was becoming more common and more acceptable for women to take part in physical activities, sometimes even alongside men. There were divisions other than sex-difference. For one thing, the interwar life of sports associations still showed signs of the sectarian conflict between Catholics and anti-clericals that had dominated the late nineteenth century. Geoff Hare explains that both before and after the separation of Church and state in 1905, small towns often had two sports clubs—one for each inclination—whose rivalry sometimes lingered well into the twentieth century. The secular union of French sports and athletics societies (USFSA, founded in 1887), for example, remained in opposition to the Catholic gymnastics and sports federation (FGSPF, commonly referred to as the ‘patronages’ (youth clubs), founded in 1898).22 By 1914 the USFSA had 350,000 members; its Catholic equivalent 180,000. While the USFSA’s role diminished after 1918 with the rise of sports-specific federations, the Catholic patronages remained a vibrant hub of activity across the entire interwar period, sitting alongside the enormous Catholic youth movement, and boasting 300,000 male members by the mid-1920s.23 There was also a significant faultline produced by the tensions around social class, and manifested in the continued competition for the sporting loyalties of the working classes. Sporting practice and physical exercise was both cross-class and class-specific. In the early nineteenth century one could contrast aristocratic pursuits such as horse-riding, real tennis, and fencing with the kind of physical leisure activities favoured by the popular classes—boules, fishing, and early forms of football, for example. In the fin-de-siècle the emergence of codified team sports such as 19 Jean-Michel Faure, ‘National identity and the sporting champion: Jean Borotra and French history’, in Holt, Mangan and Lanfranchi, European heroes, p. 87. 20 Stewart, For Health and Beauty, p. 171. 21 Jeanne Dubarbié-Dumaine, Le Secret de la jeunesse éternelle: culture spirituelle, culture physique, culture rythmique, preface by Dr Gaston Duchesne (Paris, 1936), pp. 15, 150. 22 Geoff Hare, Football in France: A Cultural History (Oxford, 2003), p. 17. 23 Susan B. Whitney, Mobilizing youth: communists and Catholics in interwar France, (Durham and London, 2009), 84.

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football and rugby, in addition to competitive cycling, opened up physical leisure practices to the urban working classes like never before. Sports such as tennis, skiing, and motor-racing, meanwhile, were tagged bourgeois for good reason, and most historians concur that gymnastics and physical culture found their most comfortable home among the lower middle classes. Even though many activities cut across these social boundaries, in terms both of popular practice and spectatorship, the class dynamic allowed the instrumentalization of sport as a form of social control. By the late nineteenth century, sports facilities in France were often provided by employers in so-called sport patronal, whose express purpose was to channel worker leisure in ways that would preserve the socioeconomic order.24 This trend intensified after the reduction of the working week in 1919, when employerbased sports organizations worried about what workers would do with their extra spare time. Ministry of labour surveys showed (in 1921) that large industrial concerns such as Peugeot and Michelin had sports complexes and swimming pools, and (in 1935) that 94 per cent of factories surveyed had their own sports facilities.25 Renault factories in Paris provided stadia and sports grounds for workers, and oversaw the Club de Billancourt for athletics, rowing, boxing, and tennis, among other pursuits.26 Citroën provided something similar. This sport patronal popularized the exercise methods of Georges Hébert. By the 1930s the ‘natural method’ was the official creed of many factory schemes— perhaps most notably at Michelin—in addition to the dozens of scouts groups, private physical education societies, colonies de vacances, and state and private schools (including the prestigious Ecole des Roches) that had adopted it.27 In 1938 the SNCF held a hébertiste festival attended by Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, the minister of public works, which featured a display of the ‘natural method’ performed by apprentices of the Nord—a form of exercise that bosses hoped would prepare young men for their hard career as railway-workers.28 The Compagnie des Forges, with factories in Montluçon, organized hébertiste physical education for apprentices with the help of a specialist teacher, in order to prevent ‘physical or professional deformities’ and wean workers off ‘sporting excesses, spectacular displays’.29 As we have seen in Chapter 1, such initiatives were also a way of addressing the problem of worker fatigue, and were thus reflective of interwar concerns about rationalizing both body and work-place. ‘Worker sport’ was a deliberate backlash against just such employer-led initiatives. Born on the left with the creation of a socialist sports and athletics federation in 1908, its intention was to rescue workers from the bourgeois–imperialist values of mainstream and employer sport. The movement split after the creation of a separate French communist party (PCF) shortly after the First World War. Thus 24

Hare, Football in France, p. 39. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, p. 203. 26 Meynard, Sports et culture physique dans l’industrie sous contrôle du médecin d’usine, pp. 23–4. 27 Delaplace, Georges Hébert, pp. 254, 257–64, 267, 327–8, 405–7. 28 L’Auto, 26 and 28 May 1938. 29 Robert-Henry Huel, L’Education physique dans l’industrie: travail de l’Institut Régional d’Education Physique de l’Université de Nancy, Université de Nancy, Faculté de Médecine, 1931–2 (Nancy, 1932), p. 61. 25

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the socialist sports movement—by this point called the Fédération Sportive du Travail (FST) and boasting 20,000 members—splintered into the communist FST and the socialist union of workers’ sports and gymnastics societies.30 The FST thereby became the French section of the Moscow-based international of communist physical culture organizations (commonly known as the IRS), which were intended to function as ‘the physical avant-garde of the proletariat’.31 All links with socialist sports organizations ended until the ‘cultural turnaround’ of the PCF in the mid-1930s, when communist and socialist sports organizations merged into the workers’ sports and gymnastics federation (the FSGT) (as discussed further in Chapter 5). By 1938 it had well over 100,000 members.32 These tensions around social class, religion, and sex-difference echoed throughout the world of interwar sport and physical culture, and they were implicated, too, in prevailing notions of masculinity, in ways that the rest of this chapter will demonstrate. The ethos of all these sports associations was in keeping with codes of manliness developed since the end of the nineteenth century, and one is struck that the similarities outweigh the differences on that score, whatever the divisions discussed above. What is clear is that despite the upsurge in women’s participation in gymnastics and sports, physical fitness and athleticism not only continued to be tagged as specifically masculine virtues, but as technologies of self-management that also developed the ‘moral’ qualities of manliness. Secretary of the French Football Federation (FFFA), Henri Delaunay, emphasized that organized sport in France had been created to impart in the young ‘the discipline, courage, and initiative that are necessary to make strong men useful to their country’.33 French athlete Frantz Reichel—Olympic gold medalist in rugby in 1900, and one of the most prominent leaders of French sport until his death in 1932—wanted to ‘glorify’ the national benefits of physical exercise, reminding all citizens that it was their duty to ‘cultivate and perfect muscle’, and to cure youth of their predilection for cabaret and ‘dangerous idleness’ in the name of national strength.34 The list of manly attributes supposedly developed by sport and physical culture (and the embodied citizenship that they assumed) echoed across the newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, fiction, and film of the 1920s and 1930s. However much popular sporting practice may have been inflected by class-specific body ideals—especially over the value and display of muscle—there is a case to be made for the homogeneity of this muscular manly ideal. The association of muscles with the ‘physical capital’ wrought by manual labour did not prevent them becoming desirable for men of all 30 Regards sur le monde du travail, 16 June 1938, no. 231, 18; Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, p. 204; William Murray, ‘The Worker sport movement in France’, in Arnd Krüger and James Riordan (eds.), The Story of Worker Sport (Champaign, IL, 1996), pp. 28–42. 31 A. Gounot, ‘Entre exigences révolutionnaires et nécessités diplomatiques. Les rapports du sport soviétique avec le sport ouvrier et le sport bourgeois en Europe, 1920–1937’, in Arnaud and Riordan, Sport et relations internationales, p. 244. 32 Defrance, ‘Le sport français dans “l’entre-deux-guerres”’, 94; Jackson, The Popular Front in France, p. 136; Suzanne Trist, ‘Le Patronat face à la question des loisirs ouvriers: avant 1936 et après’, Mouvement social, 150 (1990), 54. 33 Delaunay, France-Football, 15 November 1945. 34 Frantz Reichel, ‘À la gloire du muscle!’, Le Muscle: le sport, le travail et la vie, 9 January 1927, 3.

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backgrounds, not least due to their continued function as a marker of sex-difference and their association with patriotic duty through military service.35 It is not surprising that there was a strong element of the martial in this normative masculinity—whether or not coupled with the look and power of muscles— when it is considered that due to universal military service, military preparation remained a significant part of associational sporting life for men. The shooting association for officers and non-commissioned officers in the reserve infantry (STIR), whose honorary presidents in 1934 included Philippe Pétain as minister of war and Louis Marin as minister of public health and physical education, believed in the pedagogical worth of shooting, suggesting that it helped to build the qualities of manliness deemed so necessary for national defence. The society’s own statutes held that it was ‘a magnificent sport, trainer of nerves, creator of will, of swift decisions, coup d’oeil, sang-froid, qualities necessary to all and more particularly to leaders and future leaders’.36 In a banquet speech in summer 1934, the society’s president spoke out against those pacifists who decried the practice of shooting as militarist. Such people were guilty of ‘cowardice’, in his view, and failed to understand the importance of national self-defence even in a peaceful nation. The youth of other countries who were ‘very sporting and patriotic, become each day more virile; more energetic, more disciplined and drilled’, and by comparison, ‘they soften up our youth of France’. Another speaker declared outright that pacifists ‘devirilized the French ethos.’37 These voices helped to perpetuate the martial ideal by defending their own associational interests in terms of the imagined connection between normative masculinity and conventional patriotism, rhetorically feminizing their pacifist opposition into the bargain. Furthermore, mainstream sports associations sometimes defended their athletic worth by stressing martial masculine credentials. When in the early 1920s the French federation for lawn-tennis, hockey, and golf put on a tennis demonstration for trainee officers at the Ecole de Joinville, the accompanying lecture by tennis champion André Gobert attempted to recuperate the sport from its reputation as a game for ‘snobs’ and women.38 Gobert insisted on the athleticism needed for tennis—‘a very rigorous physical preparation’—and urged young soldiers to play more of it in the barracks.39 In 1934 the official organ of the new French basket-ball federation (FFB) asserted that despite having a reputation for being a ‘game for little girls’, it was a bona fide

35 Gabrielle Houbre, ‘Le Cirque Molier et ses athlètes aristocrates à la belle époque: succès mondain et controverse politique’, M&CF, 15, 4 (2007), 505–7; Christopher Thompson, ‘Controlling the working-class sports hero in order to control the masses? The social philosophy of sport of Henri Desgrange, Stadion (2001), 143–4; Weber and Black, ‘Muscular Anschluss’, 77–8; Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Comment peut-on être sportif ?’, Questions de sociologie (Paris, 1980), p. 188. 36 Article 2 reproduced in Bulletin no. 2 of the Société Amicale de Tir des officiers et sous-officiers d’infanterie de réserve, November 1934, 1, AN 317 AP 222. 37 President of STIR and General Niessel cited from a banquet speech on 8 July 1934, in Bulletin no. 2 of STIR. 38 Robert Ménager, ‘Signe des temps’, Basket-ball, 24 January 1935, 1. 39 André Gobert cited from his lecture at the Tennis Club de Paris, in Tennis et golf, organe portant les journaux officiels des Fédérations françaises de lawn-tennis, de paume, de hockey, de l’Union des golfs de France et de la Fédération belge de golf, 16 January 1923, 2459.

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sport—and a photograph of a bronzed young star was included to prove it. How could one refuse to recognize the merits of basket-ball when the physical exercise required gave its practitioners such musculature?40 The federation recommended its practice to conscripts in the barracks, and supported military championships in the sport such as the Tournoi triangulaire (involving the army, navy, and air force) that took place in 1938 in front of delegates from the ministry of war.41 Martial values were also in evidence in the Catholic patronages, even if they were tempered by other ideals of masculinity. After all, it was common for the FGSPF leadership to underline at every opportunity that the federation trained the highest number of successful candidates for military preparation certificates. Indeed the very goal of the Catholic sports federation was to ‘prepare this youth for military service’.42 In the mid-1920s it responded to criticisms made by Paul Bénazet, the deputy in charge of physical education within the ministry of war, about the proselytizing that allegedly went on in Catholic sports associations by asserting its patriotic credentials: our Catholic youth would continue to ready themselves for the day when ‘the defeatist politics of the current government would, as in 1914, lead us to a new war’.43 As Susan Whitney puts it, ‘[f ]or Catholics concerned about perceptions of the church as a feminized institution, public exhibitions of muscular, male Catholic gymnasts asserted the strength and virility of the church’s followers.’44 Athleticized, martial prowess thus rescued Catholics from the double and interconnected charge of being both unmanly and unpatriotic. Fabien Groeninger argues that this notion of the Christian warrior, nourished in the early period of the organization by the desire for revanche against Germany, was attenuated in the 1930s by ‘Christian conscience’, both as a sobre response to the threat of a new war and as a bid by the FGSPF leadership to tempt the younger generation away from hedonististic and celebrity-diven spectator sport. As Groeninger puts it, ‘[t]he image of the combatant progressively gave way to that of the apostle.’ Certainly, in Catholic sports the general values of sportivité—fairness in play, selfcontrol, respectable behaviour off the pitch—were evoked as the antithesis of a supposedly secular model of sportsmanship based on ‘excessive passion’ and self-indulgent entertainment deaf to the promise of spiritual self-improvement through physical exercise.45 In the mid-1930s a Catholic journalist warned his readership against the hero worship of Tour de France cyclists by complaining that ‘a youth that has a passion only for muscle is a youth without soul’.46 Young men were instructed to prepare 40

‘Le basket-ball, est-il un sport?’, Basket-ball, 15 November 1934, 3. ‘Chez les militaires’, Basket-ball, 15 November 1934, 11 (a regular rubric); A. Pichon, ‘Chez les militaires’, Basket-ball, 2 June 1938, 4. 42 Police report on the FGSPF, 18 July 1923, AN F7 13 214. 43 ‘Les Sociétés de préparation militaire et les menaces des FF: Chautemps et Bénazet’, L’Echo de la Loire, 22 October 1924, reproduced in La Croix, 30 October 1924, AN F7 13 214. 44 Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 67. 45 Fabien Groeninger, ‘La FGSPF et son modèle de masculinité (1898–1939)’, in Philippe Liotard and Thierry Terret (eds.), Sport et genre, vol. 2: excellence féminine et masculinité hégémonique (Paris, 2005), pp. 217, 221, 222, 227. 46 J. Tournesac, ‘Le Maillot jaune’, Jeunesse nouvelle, organe de la Jeunesse catholique du Loir-et-Cher, August-September 1934. 41

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a ‘harmoniously muscled body’ only in conjunction with a ‘virile and disciplined character’ and courageous spirit.47 Ironically, the same elements of competitive sport—the use of brutal force untempered by honourable play, the search for financial reward, a hyper-competitive attitude, the tendency to develop one’s body at the expense of the ‘whole man’—were also condemned by laïc physical culture experts: in Catholic hands these features were simply tagged secular. Sports coverage in the Catholic press in fact indulged in the same kind of martial metaphors found elsewhere, especially for team sports such as football and rugby, where ‘attacks’, ‘assaults’, and ‘fights’ were held to showcase manly virtues such as ‘courage’ and ‘sang-froid’ in counterpoint to play that was ‘emotive and nervous’.48 And in the late 1930s the FGSPF still saw its role as ‘developing by the rational use of gymnastics and sports the physical and moral forces of our worker youth, and thus preparing for the country generations of robust men and brave soldiers’.49 It may well be that Catholic sporting masculinity was mediated by generational politics, sectarian conflict, and differences of opinion about the proper nature of manhood, but in general the FGSPF confirmed the merits of the dominant model of measured, martial athleticism. There was, indeed, reciprocality between the muscular athlete and the soldier, with the former admired for his patriotism and the latter for his athleticism in a way that reinforced the cultural value of both. In the case of Catholic sport, it may be not so much that there was a tension between spiritual and martial models of manliness but rather an integration of both sets of values and vocabularies. B O D Y C U LT U R E , P R I N T C U LT U R E Young men were presented with such models of manliness not only through the associative life around sport but in the print, media, and consumer culture that supported and fuelled it. Here there was a marked synergy between social and cultural practices: popular magazines demanded that both male and female readers sculpt their body into the prevailing lean and lightly muscled aesthetic norm required for the kinds of open-air activities that increasingly permitted the bearing of flesh in public, whether by sunbathing or physical exercise.50 By the 1920s and 1930s most mainstream national newspapers featured a sports column if not a sports page. Le Petit Parisien and L’Intransigeant had an entirely separate weekly sports supplement—Miroir des sports (founded 1920) for the former and Match-L’Intran (1926–1938) for the latter. The conservative glossy L’Illustration regularly covered rugby, aviation, horse-racing, tennis, and boxing; and Paris-Soir revolutionized its 47

Jeunesse nouvelle, organe de la Jeunesse catholique du Loir-et-Cher, December 1938. La Croix, 21 June 1938, 6, reporting on the football World Cup final. This kind of language was ubiquitous in sports-reporting generally. See Joan Tumblety, ‘The Soccer World Cup of 1938: politics, spectacles, and la culture physique in interwar France’, French Historical Studies, 31 no. 1 (2008), 77–116. 49 François Hebrard, president of the FGSPF, to Edmond Labbé, general commissioner of the 1937 Paris Expo, 4 June 1937, AN F12 12218. 50 Granger, Les Corps d’été, pp. 47–63. 48

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fortunes in the 1930s through its illustrated coverage of sport.51 But king of the sports press was without doubt the omnisport publication L’Auto—a vehicle dominated by the formidable entrepreneur, former elite cyclist, and founder of the Tour de France Henri Desgrange from its inception at the turn of the century until 1939.52 L’Auto could sell up to 300,000 copies a day in the mid-1930s, and in general doubled its circulation during the Tour de France.53 Technical developments in photography, printing, and communications allowed better quality photographs of sporting events to be published almost as soon as they took place, which helps to explain why the visual impact of sports-reporting was more pronounced in the interwar period than before. It also facilitated a cult of the sporting celebrity, most notably among interwar cyclists (like Henri Pélissier and Roger Lapébie), boxers (like Marcel Cerdan and Georges Carpentier) and tennis players (like René Lacoste and Jean Borotra).54 Cyclists were widely admired for their steely muscle and spectacular feats of endurance: photographs of them probably graced the front cover of Match L’Intran more often than any other category of athlete in the 1930s. Christopher Thompson aptly points out that during the Tour de France some bicycle shops displayed racers’ bikes in the window uncleaned (perhaps covered with sweat as well as dirt and oil), which suggests that ‘[t]hese machines were celebrated as the instruments of the racers’ heroism . . . more than as symbols of technological modernity’.55 The exploits of aviators—until the creation of Air France in 1933 more explorers than mere pilots—also received much illustrated coverage in the sports and general press, and popular heroes such as Antoine Saint-Exupéry and Jean Mermoz (authors themselves) were admired for a combination of athletic power, technical skill, and feats of bravery and conquest.56 The visual presentation of these sports stars was arguably just as eroticized in France as Erik Jensen argues it was in Weimar Germany, not least where the ‘taut physique’ of boxers Georges Carpentier and Max Schmeling were concerned—two athletes who enjoyed success also as film stars.57 The merits of athletic manliness were indeed no doubt cemented by the genres of sports fiction and by popular films, which used sport as a vehicle for the display of the protagonist’s virtues, for showing his successful homosociality, and for explaining his romantic success. Here too (working-class) cyclists and boxers featured heavily, although yachting and tennis were usually the sports of choice for the bourgeois hero.58 In a cross-class and 51

Tétart, ‘De la balle à la plume’, 314, 318–20. Police report, 1 October 1901, APP BA 1697. 53 Thompson, The Tour de France, p. 42. 54 Jean-Michel Faure, ‘National identity and the sporting champion: Jean Borotra and French history’, 86–100; André Rauch, Boxe: violence du XXe siècle (Paris, 1992). 55 Thompson, The Tour de France, p. 102. 56 Robert Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1920–1950 (New Haven and London, 2005), pp. 157–210. 57 Erik N. Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (New York, 2010), pp. 51, 72, 76, 85. 58 Colin Crisp, Genre, Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929–1939 (Bloomington, 2002), pp. 88–90; Martin O’Shaughnessy, ‘Cinematic stardom, shifting masculinities’, in Christopher E. Forth and Bertrand Taithe (eds.), French Masculinities: History, Culture and Politics (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 192; Thompson, The Tour de France, pp. 97, 99. 52

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multi-genre way this athletic model could not impress by brute strength and good looks alone, but demanded qualities such as self-control and honour—just as for the charismatic ‘heroes of empire’ recently explored by Edward Berenson.59 Live sport broadcasts too played a role in valorizing athletic bodies—a fixture of French radio from the 1920s onwards (indeed, radio ownership jumped from 40,000 in 1922 to as many as 20 million in 1939).60 André Rauch describes how the result of the boxing match held in summer 1921 between Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey in Jersey City, USA, was broadcast on banners and loudspeakers in venues all over Paris, including cafés and restaurants.61 But radio also helped to popularize physical culture proper in this period. Historian Philippe Tétart acknowleges that the 1924 morning broadcasts of hébertiste lessons on Radiola were ‘a classic of the genre’.62 In summer 1929 Dr Buzy, vice-president of the hygiene committee of the chief union of military preparation societies (USEPPSM) spoke about the role of medicine in physical education. Confirming the widespread physical culturist emphasis on appearances and the moral qualities of manliness, he called on athletes to preach by example ‘the beauties of sport’, driven only by the goal of developing ‘energy, vigour, skillfulness, sang-froid, and altruism’ in the knowledge that ‘sport was not made to produce stars’. In addition, physicians should teach the public about hygiene, diet, modern clothing, hydrotherapy, and puericulture, reminding citizens that ‘a country is only great through the worth of the resistance of her children and their good health’. The public should know that it is better to ‘make a woman capable of having robust children’ than to oblige a chef de famille to arrange for ‘the re-education of a sickly, puny child’.63 The use of the radio, whether for spectator sport or physical education, thus helped to cement the cultural worth of athletic and muscular manliness in this period, on this occasion harnessing it to the cause of social hygiene. One area where the sports press intersected with the world of physical culture was in the celebration but simultaneous ‘othering’ of black athletes. Nothing did as much to raise the profile of black athletes in interwar France as the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, where American sprinter Jesse Owens was depicted as a marvel of nature, and other African Americans as ‘felines of the track’.64 Indeed, so convinced were French sportifs of the superior qualities of black athletes that L’Auto and the French athletics federation launched a joint ‘mission’ in French West Africa in late 1937 in order to scout for talent in the hope of transforming 59 Edward Berenson, Heroes of Empire: Five Charismatic Men and the Conquest of Africa (Berkeley, 2011), pp. 11, 13, 228, 233, 237, 246. 60 Philippe Tétart, ‘De la balle à la plume: la première médiatisation des passions sportives (1854–1939)’, in Tétart, Histoire du sport en France, p. 313; Joelle Neulander, ‘Airing the exotic: colonial landscapes on French interwar metropolitan radio’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 27, 3 (2007), 313. 61 André Rauch, ‘Courage against cupidity: Carpentier-Dempsey: symbols of cultural confrontation’, in Holt, Mangan and Lanfranchi, European Heroes, p. 158. 62 Tétart, ‘De la balle à la plume’, 322. 63 Dr Buzy, ‘Causerie par Radio-Diffusion au poste émetteur de l’Ecole Supérieure des PTT’, La Culture physique, July 1929, 209–10. 64 Jacques Goddet, L’Auto, 4 August 1936, 1.

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French international sporting success.65 Footballer Raoul Diagne, son of a Senegalese diplomat and the first black man to play for France, was nicknamed the ‘black spider’ during the 1938 World Cup, due to his long limbs.66 Larbi Ben Barek, French football celebrity born in Morocco and of Senegalese background, was hailed for his ‘harmony of proportions’ and depicted as ‘a magical oriental prince, a hero of A Thousand and One Nights’.67 In this sense there were echoes within the sports press of the kind of primitivism espoused by hébertistes and the naturist press. As Timothée Jobert and Julie Gaucher both stress, the language of animality (one might add exoticism and primitivism, too) reinforced the sense that black athletes’ successes were ‘natural’ rather than the product of hard athletic training.68 In this way, Gaucher holds that the bestial metaphors and ‘racial clichés’ used to describe black athleticism in both the sports press and sports fiction had the effect of reinforcing ‘normal’ athletic masculinity as white.69 Whatever the distinctions wrought in the sports press between the ‘Frenchman’ and this racialized ‘other’, they served only to underscore the importance to manliness of both athleticism and muscularity. Another area of convergence between the worlds of the stadium and the gymnasium was the admiration, expressed in both the sports and physical culturist press, for boxers—both black and white—as supreme human athletic specimens. Boxing was often touted in both genres as an aesthetically enhancing ‘complete method of physical education’ in addition to being good for self-defence. This was in spite of the common anti-boxing refrain expressed even within the mainstream sports movement itself, that the activity suffered from extreme violence and commercialization.70 La Culture physique celebrated the physique of boxers while alerting readers to the high incidence of their early deaths from alleged physical ‘surmenage’.71 Boxers themselves emerged as heroes more often than not, usually represented—as were cyclists—as young men of humble backgrounds who had achieved a manly appearance and demeanour through sheer hard work. The career of Georges Carpentier— a ‘fine Greek statue’, and son of the people from the coal-mining north—was, as we 65 Stanislas Frenkiel and David-Claude Kemo Keimbou, ‘La Mission FFA/L’Auto: “pourquoi négliger nos noirs d’Afrique” (3 décembre 1937–15 janvier 1938)’, Modern & Contemporary France, 18, 1 (2010), 33–50. 66 Victor Sinet, La Coupe du Monde oubliée (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, 2002), p. 60; Tumblety, ‘The Soccer World Cup of 1938’, 103–5. 67 Gabriel Hanot, La Galérie des champions (Paris, 1946), pp. 3, 20. 68 Timothée Jobert, ‘Ces obscurs objets de désirs . . . les sportifs “noirs” et l’hypervirilité à l’épreuve de l’histoire dans le champs sportif français (1880–1962)’, in Liotard and Terret, Sport et genre, vol. 2, 238; Julie Gaucher, ‘Black males in the stadium’, 1171–86; Timothée Jobert, Champions noirs, racisme blanc: la métropole et les sportifs noirs en contexte colonial (1901–1944) (Grenoble, 2006). 69 Julie Gaucher, ‘Black males in the stadium: all “bad niggers?”: French literature, sport and masculinity from the 1920s to the 1950s’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 26, 9 (2009), 1175. 70 ‘Un gala de boxe française au Palais sportif de l’Exposition Porte de Saint-Cloud’, La République, 30 September 1937, AN F12 12147; G. Blanchet, ‘Boxe et éducation physique’, L’Educateur physique, February 1933, 12–15; Professor P. Peugniez, ‘De la boxe française comme méthode d’éducation physique, sa physiologie’, Communications faites au Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’éducation physique et aux sports, 50–5. 71 Boigey, La Cure d’exercice, 183; Edmond Desbonnet, ‘Marche ou crève . . . mais gagne-nous de l’argent: c’est le mot d’ordre du manager à son poulain’, La Culture physique, July 1926, 506.

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have seen, particularly high profile not least due to his post-retirement career in entertainment.72 Erik Jensen suggests that in Weimar Germany the muscular physique of the working-class boxer was self-consciously adopted by a male bourgeois audience conscious of the cultural denigration of ‘softening’ professional labour. He goes so far as to propose that boxing ‘elevated blue-collar toughness and outright violence as admirable qualities in a man’, although I would say that the evidence does not quite support that for the French case.73 Indeed, Christopher Thompson argues in relation to French cyclists that the emphasis on their self-control and diligence in press coverage (and demanded of riders by race organizers themselves) was a necessary strategy for recuperating this working-class sport for a respectable bourgeois audience otherwise quick to complain about the uncouth behaviour of competitive racers.74 What is clear is that boxing was presented by sports and physical culturist media alike as a manly sport par excellence, whatever the qualities— aggression, discipline, muscular beauty—that were signalled by journalists, and whatever purposes that admiration served—a self-deprecating middle-class emulation of a working-class or bourgeois attempt at social control. Such ideas crossed over into the niche world of economic organization.The short-lived lifestyle publication Le Muscle, set up through Ernest Mercier’s technocratic think-tank Redressement Français to popularize the movement’s world view (alongside other vehicles such as the women’s magazine Minerva), echoed the normative masculinity found in the physical culturist and sports press. The magazine’s presentation of athletic manliness in effect mediated Mercier’s vision of creating a country composed of efficient, ‘socially functional, productive and fecund bodies’.75 Editor Foussarigues claimed to be contributing something original to the field of existing sports newspapers such as Le Miroir des sports and Sporting Match, and indeed, regular contributors included an editor of L’Auto and editor-in-chief of La Vie au grand air and Très sport.76 Front covers featured star athletes drawn from a wide social range—rugby players, boxers, tennis players (including both René Lacoste and Jean Borotra), and strongman Charles Rigoulot, who recalled ‘the masterpieces of ancient statuary’.77 Similarly, content included coverage of diverse spectator sports—tennis, running, football, cycling, and rugby. Circus strongman Léon Verhaert from Flanders, an industrialist who had passed through the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, was held up as proof that, contrary to public opinion, one could engage in physical culture alongside higher study: he thus embodied Redressement Français’ vision of the manly expert.78 The features and serialized novels in the publication also confirmed the merits of the physically fit man of action, combining ‘the finest moral qualities—and “muscle”’, often in an 72

73 Rauch, Boxe, pp. 137, 147. Jensen, Body by Weimar, pp. 63, 97. Thompson, ‘Controlling the working-class sports hero’, 147–8. 75 Clarke, France in the Age of Organization, pp. 23, 42–4; Le Muscle: le sport, le travail et la vie, 10 April 1927, 4; Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, p. 204. I would like to thank Jackie Clarke for alerting me to this periodical. 76 Foussarigues, ‘Notre programme’, Le Muscle, 9 January 1927, 3. 77 78 Le Muscle, 13 March 1927, 1. ‘Un grand athlète amateur: M. Léon Verhaert’, Le Muscle, 3 April 1927, 4. 74

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adventure-filled imperial context.79 This kind of coverage was no doubt intended as an invitation to the paper’s notional audience of (presumably sports-obsessed) workers to trust in the legitimacy of a manly elite to lead an efficient work-force into a future of cross-class solidarity. Athletic manly ideals were also communicated in the advertisements of the high-circulation mainstream press. While it seems that physical culture schools per se did not advertise widely in newspapers such as L’Auto, the publication carried publicity for military preparation societies in which the tropes of muscular masculinity abounded.80 And in 1937 L’Auto publicized Professeur Wehrheim’s physical training method, which promised a muscularly expanded and ‘harmonious body’ viagymnastique de chambre in just 10 minutes a day (see Fig. 3.4). Bald, puny, and

Fig. 3.4. Advertisement for Professor Wehrheim’s physical training method. L’Auto, 3 May 1937, p. 4. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.) 79 Foussarigues, ‘Notre programme’, Le Muscle, 9 January 1927, 3. See Julien Maigret, ‘La chasse au gorille en Afrique équatoriale’, Le Muscle, 16 January 1927, 4; Claude Albaret, ‘Salut au roi de la jungle!’, Le Muscle, 30 January 1927. 80 L’Auto, 2 January 1926, 6.

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middle-aged customers were invited to model their transformation on the impressive physique of young body-builders. The official organ of the French basket-ball federation carried advertisements for classically inflected ‘Apollo’ gymwear illustrated with images of weight-lifter and strongman Charles Rigoulot.81 The marketing of apéritifs regularly deployed the sportif trope as well, which was in keeping with their claims to be health tonics. Suze, derived from the gentian plant, was advertised in L’Auto during the Tour de France in 1936, illustrated with a smiling, muscular cyclist holding aloft a bottle in triumph.82 Byrrh regularly advertised in Match-l’Intran, deploying images of working-class-friendly male athletes such as runners, cyclists, fishermen, and footballers. And Martini was hailed even in elite men’s fashion magazine Adam as ‘the most powerful source of energy . . . for the worker, the sportif, for all those who expend their strength’.83 Publicity for the energy drink Ovomaltine at times featured a rugby player with rippling muscles, and claimed that to succeed in competitive sports, training had to be supplemented by a rapidly absorbed tonic rich in natural elements.84 In the late 1930s the drink was endorsed by Dr Bellin du Coteau in an advertisement claimimg that 85 per cent of champions owed their results to the product.85 Advertisers clearly played with the tropes of muscular masculinity in reaching out to an enormous cross-class audience of male readers who enjoyed following the fortunes of elite sportifs whatever their own lifestyles. These ideals were reinforced further in the largely bourgeois world of fashion, where sportswear for both sexes was marketed after the late 1920s by designers such as Jeanne Lanvin and Chanel, as well as in mainstream department stores.86 The upmarket male fashion magazine, Adam, offered a guide to taste and elegance for the aspiring bourgeois gentleman who could afford his own tailor and servant, instructing readership in how to avoid common dressing errors: beware of overcoats that are too tight, lapels out of harmony with the rest of the outfit, exaggerated shoulders, and over-sized pockets.87 The well-to-do fat man was instructed not to wear double-breasted jackets—an affront to harmonious proportions.88 Indeed, it is clear that a slim physique was demanded of readers, and the services of physical education schools were advertised to this end. One included a striking illustration of an obese, crying, prostrate man (naked save for his top hat) visited by a 81

Basket-ball, 15 November 1934, 7. L’Auto, 14 July 1936, 8. Muscular athletes were also used to sell products in Weimar Germany: Jensen, Body by Weimar, p. 30. 83 Match L’Intran, 22 June 1937, 4 and 6 July 1937, 14; Adam: la revue de l’homme, Paris, 15 January 1938, n.p. 84 L’Auto, 10 January 1926, 4. 85 L’Echo des sports, 20 July 1937, 4. Bellin is cited from Nouvelles médicales de Paris, where he explicitly praises the product for its effects on athletes. 86 Madeleine Ginsburg, Paris Fashions: The Art Deco Style of the 1920s (New York, 1989), pp. 77–96; Mary Lynn Stewart, Dressing Modern Frenchwomen: Marketing Haute Couture, 1919–1939 (Baltimore: 2008), p. 209. 87 ‘Pour le même prix on peut s’habiller mal ou bien’, Adam, 15 January 1938, 38–9. I would like to thank Chris Forth for suggesting this periodical to me. 88 Adam, ‘Nos erreurs’, Adam, 25 February 1926, 10; Pierre de Trévières, ‘Porterons-nous cet hiver l’habit de couleur?’, Adam, 15 December 1925, 2. 82

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nymph wearing nothing but wings and holding a set of weights.89 The director of this physical culture school himself wrote articles for the magazine that spelled out the ideal physique needed to carry off fashionable clothes—‘broad shoulders, a straight back, narrow hips, a flat stomach . . . and sturdy legs’. The heavy muscles of the Herculean circus strongman were passé; rather, the ‘more refined silhouette’ of Belvedere’s Apollo was better suited to contemporary open-air lifestyles. Readers were asked to be careful not to emulate boxers too much, since despite their ‘harmonious muscles’ they had a tendency to fall prey to ‘professional deformities’ and bashed faces. Daily movements were counselled—abdominal crunches and reverse lifts to build back muscles; punch bags, fashioned from sacks of sand, suspended from ceilings and used to build shoulder muscles. In effect, bourgeois readers were being encouraged to emulate the impressive bodies of working-class and petit bourgeois sportsmen while preserving the sense that they were doing something less vulgar. Fantasies of class distinction thus served to extend the muscular ideal across class boundaries.90 Muscular masculinity perhaps found its fullest expression in the mass press through coverage of the male beauty contests organized after the late 1920s in French body-building circles. The national competition moved around the country, being held in Vanves in 1934, Vichy (1935), Paris (1936 and 1937) and La Baule (1938). In 1937 the 700 French finalists hailed from all over the hexagon— Calais to Avignon, Metz to Cannes.91 What boosted the event’s profile in that year was the fact that it was held under the auspices of the Paris world’s fair—something that the French physical culture federation had been at pains to arrange.92 It must have helped that Pierre Bardel, FFCP general secretary, was also head of the Service des Sports for the Expo, and that the fair’s organizers provided 36,000 francs to underwrite the costs of mounting the competition.93 La Culture physique proclaimed that of all the displays organized for the world’s fair this was the one dearest to the hearts of the ‘artisans of the regeneration of the race’.94 The audience—for this would be a spectacle—would surely see how they too, in several minutes per day of moderate exercise, could develop the vigour and beauty of the participants. In 1938 the event was plugged as domestic tourism, promoted as a festival during which visitors could benefit from the sea-side location and the 40 per cent reduction on rail fares offered by the SNCF.95 In that year, the event became truly international when extra-European contestants were entered for the first time.

89 Advertisement for G. Lerousseau’s physical culture school, Adam, 15 December 1925, reproduced in Forth, Masculinity in the Modern West, p. 188. 90 Georges Lerousseau, Director of a physical culture school on the Champs Elysées, ‘La Silhouette tailleur’, Adam, Paris, 25 January 1926, 12–13. 91 Official communiqué, 1937, signed Pierre Bardel, AN F12 12220. 92 Emile Valtier, ‘La culture physique et l’exposition de 1937’, La Culture physique, January 1936, 48–9. 93 Note by Pierre Bardel, n.d., and Valtier to Chéron, 28 August 1936, AN F12 12220. 94 Reitlav, ‘Courrier de l’Exposition de 1937’, La Culture physique, September 1937, 287. 95 Emile Valtier, ‘Concours international du plus bel athlète 1938’, La Culture physique, July 1938, 208–9.

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The contest was unabashedly a display of aesthetic norms rather than sporting performance. Although the FFCP pointed out that candidates were judged according to a ‘hard test of strength’ in addition to their ‘plastic beauty’,96 the organizers clearly looked for conformity to the ideals of classical form. In 1938 the candidates wore ‘Apollo’ undershorts and were asked to strike poses drawn from Greek statuary—most commonly, the fighting Gladiator or Borghese’s Mars.97 In ‘sculpting their own statue’ Dr Ruffier thought that these men had succeeded in ‘freeing themselves from the universal ugliness that depresses humanity’.98 In fact, winners were usually sportifs anyway: Emile Bonnet, who triumphed at the international competition in 1938, was an American weight-lifter, footballer, and swimmer; Jean Pitet, winner of the French category in that year, an elite rower; and Pierre Cottier, the European champion in 1936, an Olympic weight-lifter. 99 Winner of the French category in 1935 and 1936, physical culturist Marcel Rouet, was described as an expert swimmer, runner, and gymnast.100 And runner up in 1935, André Rolet (nicknamed ‘arms of steel’) was not only a sportsman, but in the late 1920s had been a professional dancer, performing acrobatic routines on the musichall circuit both in Europe and the USA.101 Whatever the hostility the FFCP expressed towards both competitive sport and spectacle, then, its competition very much integrated both elements. The event also demonstrates how the relatively marginal world of body-building was connected to, and perhaps exerted some kind of influence over, the much larger population of sportifs. First of all, the specialist jury (in the early years under the medical direction of Dr Georges Rouhet of the Paris Faculty of Medicine) was multi-disciplinary, comprising physical culturists, medics, educators, and physical training instructors.102 In 1936 the jury included Colonel Legros, in charge of physical education at the national military college, the Ecole de Joinville; and Adolphe Chéron took part in the banquet hosted by the FFCP.103 Regional commissions comprising doctors and artists as well as physical culture teachers gave participants marks for beauty before their physiological state was judged by representatives from the FFCP’s own medical commission.104 Mainstream newspapers L’Auto and Le Journal provided prizes and press coverage, and it was by reading these titles that contestants found out about the details of the eliminatory rounds.105 In 1936 at least, the event was sponsored by Match-l’Intran and L’Intransigeant, 96

Communiqué of the FFCP on the competition, 1937, AN F12 12220. La Fédération, La Culture physique, August 1938, 240–1. 98 Dr J.-E. Ruffier, ‘Concours de beauté pour Hommes, Femmes et Enfants’, Portez-vous bien!, July 1935, 45–7. 99 Emile Valtier, ‘Considérations sur le concours du plus bel athlète du monde’, La Culture physique, October 1938, n.p. 100 Emile Valtier, ‘A propos des concours de beauté plastique’, La Culture physique, July 1935, 196; ‘Résultat du concours du 12 juillet 1936’, La Culture physique, August 1936, 243. 101 Le Joinvillais, bulletin de la Fédération Nationale des Joinvillais, nos. 157, 158, 159, 1988, 38–9. 102 La Culture physique, November 1926, 618. 103 Fernand Lomazzi, ‘Marcel Rouet est pour 1936 le Plus Bel Athlète de France’, L’Auto, 13 July 1936, 7. 104 Emile Valtier, ‘Le Concours annuel du plu bel athlète de France’, La Culture physique, July 1936, n.p. 105 ‘Concours du “Plus bel athlète de France et d’Europe”’, La Culture physique, July 1937, 208. 97

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and L’Auto reported that Marcel Rouet was a marvellous example of a lean ‘plastic beauty’ very much in vogue.106 Sports journalists tended to think, however, that the competition should be extended beyond body-building and weight-lifting to include athletes from cycling, football, and rugby—something that would do more to test speed and endurance as well as beauty, health, and strength. As one writer put it, until now the FFCP was judging ‘Hercules more than Discobolus, Tarbais horses more than thoroughbreds’—an ironic comment, given that La Culture physique too preferred the lean lines of the latter to the heavy musculature of the former.107 In 1937 the event’s place in the sports programme of the world’s fair raised its profile further. It was held in the popular venue of the Palais des sports (Vel d’Hiv), and the evening’s festivities included elite displays by wrestlers, fencers, and champion weight-lifter Charles Rigoulot.108 One journalist wrote approvingly that all the French finalists were ‘clothed only in their muscles’, oiled, tanned, and ‘happy with themselves’.109 And the 1937 winner—a physical culture professor from Moulins in central France—was quizzed on his diet and exercise regime by the press. But L’Echo des sports complained that the competition was stacked in favour of men who worked their muscles to develop beauty at the expense of strength.110 One journalist, describing a minor incident in the competition in which an overlooked contestant had rudely grabbed the microphone in a show of defiance, commented that one could have been ‘among young lady contestants for a beauty prize’: only the tears were missing.111 Thus one might say that the press did at times construe male bodily display as unmanly. However much the wider press seems to have bought into the general value of muscles, there could be a fine line between muscularity and narcissism, and it was a line that culturists were deemed more likely to cross than sportifs. S P O RT A N D M A L E B O D I LY R E G E N E R AT I O N We have seen that the normative masculinity of the physical culturists discussed in the first chapter was broadly shared in the sports and general press of the 1920s and 1930s, despite the latter’s encouragement of both competition and spectatorship— two aspects of the modern sporting world that the physical culturists usually condemned. The preference for slimness was there alongside the aesthetic and moral 106

Lomazzi, ‘Marcel Rouet est pour 1936 le Plus Bel Athlète de France’. Fernand Lomazzi, ‘Les problèmes que pose le succès remporté par le Concours du Plus Bel Athlète’, L’Auto, 15 July 1936, 6. 108 ‘Le concours du plus bel athlète de France et d’Europe’, L’œuvre, 19 September 1937; ‘Quel est le plus bel athlète de France?’, Le Jour, 18 September 1937; ‘Le Concours du plus bel athlète’, L’Excelsior, 16 September 1937, AN F12 12147; see also the official undated communiqué signed Pierre Bardel, AN F12 12220. 109 C. Gaudin, ‘On a élu le plus bel athlète de France’, Le Jour, 19 September 1937, AN F12 12147. 110 ‘Le plus beau n’est jamais le plus fort’, L’Echo des sports, 21 September 1937, 2. 111 Gaudin, ‘On a élu le plus bel athlète de France’. 107

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worth of musculature: there were even similar reservations about the value of ‘excessive’ muscles. Class differences and class tensions may have paradoxically served to shore up a shared ideal, as bourgeois men sought to recuperate the (working-class) reputation of one of the most obvious markers of sex-difference— muscles—as an antidote to the imagined unmanning effects of a civilized and sedentary lifestyle. There was the same diluted model of martial (that is, patriotic and combative) yet chivalrous manhood, with its insistence on the worth of honourable conduct. This section will explore how far the mainstream press was also marked by a conflation between male beauty, health, and fitness on the one hand and national regeneration on the other—a conflation in which belief in bodily and national decline intertwined. We will see—not least as a result of links between L’Auto and La Culture physique—that the concerns of physical culturists echoed throughout the print and media culture around sport in this period, despite the significant differences between these spheres in terms of attitudes to commercialized and increasingly professionalized sport-spectacle. As noted above, there was in fact a mutually supportive relationship between physical culture and sport, and it was nourished by shared interpersonal networks along which ideas could travel. In the mid-1920s, for example, regular social events provided a meeting of minds for members of both camps, and an occasion to profess common ground about the wisdom or otherwise of professionalization in sport, the place of competition as training for qualities of manliness, and the need to ‘regenerate the race’. Edmond Desbonnet presided over a formal dinner for sportifs and culturists in spring 1926, arranged by the grouping Amis des Sports. Journalists from the sports and mainstream press (L’Echo des sports, Le Petit Parisien, Paris-Soir) attended, alongside representatives of high-profile sports associations such as the Racing Club de France and the French athletics federation.112 Professor Paul Carnot, a member of the Academy of Medicine who presided over an international conference on medicine applied to sport and physical education in the mid-1930s, was happy to welcome delegates not only from the medical profession proper, but from the Club Alpin Français, the Ecole de Joinville, and the national federations for athletics, boxing, fencing, football, tennis, swimming, and skiing.113 However much La Culture physique sniffed at competitive and elite spectator sport, the publication functionally supported sporting endeavours. The body-building athletes who graced its front covers—all trumpeted as harmonious, ‘complete’ athletes with bodies sculpted through the rational application of physical culture—were also usually hailed as sportsmen. When future beauty contest winner André Rolet featured in July 1927 it was pointed out that despite being a culturist from the age of twelve, he took part in competitive rugby, football, boxing, cycling, rowing, and swimming, including races organized by L’Auto; indeed, he was almost national running champion over 400 metres, and as a weight-lifter 112 D. Bonneteau, ‘Aux “Amis des Sports”, dîner mensuel, sous la présidence du Professeur Desbonnet, sportifs et culturistes font connaissance et s’aperçoient qu’ils ont le même but: la régénération de la race’, La Culture physique, April 1926, 435. 113 Professor Paul Carnot, Congrès international de médecine appliquée à l’éducation physique et aux sports, Chamonix-Mont Blanc, 3–5 September 1934, vol. 2 (Lyon, 1936), pp. 7–16.

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he had represented France in the 1924 Olympic Games. According to La Culture physique, Rolet (‘a magnificent specimen of the race’) was nonetheless able to maintain perfect health and a beautiful physique because his wide-ranging prowess demonstrated a refusal of specialization (if not surmenage) in his career of physical exercise. There was, in fact, a clear cross-fertilization of ideas between L’Auto and La Culture physique that was facilitated by the interest that L’Auto editor Henri Desgrange himself took in physical culture. Desgrange—arguably the most influential interwar media figure in the world of sport—was difficult to ignore: L’Auto was the most significant title in the sports press by far, and Desgrange’s views were heeded in official circles.114 Although he represented a world that the physical culturists professed to despise—that of commercially driven, elite spectator sport, which led to the surmenage of the participating athletes and the decrepitude of their fans—Desgrange’s views on official policy on sport and physical education were widely reported in the culturist organ, especially where they dovetailed with the culturists’ own.115 Desgrange, in truth, seemed to sing from the culturists’ hymnsheet when he pronounced that ‘an outdoor stadium is much more useful than a hospital’, and that, with its declining population, what France really needed was children who understood the benefits of physical education so that they could live healthier lives.116 Indeed, according to socialist Pierre Marie, Desgrange was a ‘fervent culturist’ and former pupil of Edmond Desbonnet.117 (In response to requests by university students, L’Auto published a guide to la gymnastique de chambre that drew explicitly on the latter’s methods.118) Dr James-Edward Ruffier too met Desgrange when both were energetic young cyclists in the fin-de-siècle—their relationship strengthened, according to Ruffier, by the ‘conversion’ of Desgrange to physical culture. Ruffier claimed that this friendship was instrumental in securing the publication in L’Auto of several of his own articles over the interwar years—a coup that took his views to an extremely large audience.119 Unlike the physical culturists, however, Desgrange did not object to the use of stadia in sport-spectacle, either because he believed that spectator sport helped to raise general standards of health through emulation, or merely as a rationalization of his own commercial interests. The views of prominent physical culturists were reproduced not only in L’Auto but across the print media of the interwar years. Dr Ruffier wrote on the perils of obesity for Desgrange’s newspaper in 1926. No matter how active the fat man tries to appear, Ruffier led his readers to conclude, he is always ‘nervous’ and 114 Thompson, ‘Controlling the working-class sports hero’; Desgrange’s views were sometimes called upon to legitimize official actions regarding sports grounds. See M. Andruejol, Inspecteur des eaux et forêts, ministry of agriculture, 13 August 1937, AN F 60 436; also the report of the fourth commission of the Conseil Supérieur des sports, n.d., probably 1938, AN F 60 435. 115 Henri Desgrange, ‘La bonne besogne d’Henri Desgrange’, La Culture physique, May 1926, 464. 116 Henri Desgrange, ‘Ne nous frappons pas!’, L’Auto, 15 February 1934, AN 317 AP 222; Henri Desgrange, L’Auto, 19 May 1938, 2. 117 Marie, Force et santé pour tous, p. 202. 118 Article reproduced from L’Auto, in La Culture physique, January 1932, 23. 119 Ruffier, ‘Autour de l’armistice: obsèques de H. Desgrange’, Le Cycliste, December 1947; Ruffier, Souvenirs et voyage à bicyclette, 64–5.

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quick-tempered: although a live wire in his business affairs, he is ‘lazy in his muscles’, living in an organism that suffers in the work of constant digestion.120 Dr Henri Diffre, whose links to sports and medical societies were flagged for readers, spoke through L’Auto in the early 1920s about the problem of intellectual surmenage in the scholastic system, arguing for medical control, sun and air remedies, and a ‘triple programme’ of moral, physical, and intellectual education in the tradition of Dr Tissié of Pau.121 Such contributions to L’Auto continued across the entire interwar period.122 The treatment of these figures in the sports newspaper was sometimes playful, however. In the mid-1920s it published a satirical survey into the physical exercise routines of public figures, in which Dr Ruffier was rather comically depicted in his office being brought a set of weights for training at his desk, desperate to exercise at every possible moment.123 Nonetheless, the views of Ruffier and Dr Maurice Boigey, the military physician in charge of physical training at the Ecole de Joinville, were routinely published in other best-selling mainstream dailies across the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to offering guidance on fitness, these writers alternatively voiced concerns about the ‘physical decadence’ entrained by the rise of spectator sport and manifested in poor results at the conseils de révision, or expressed hope in the power of physical exercise to beautify and strengthen French men.124 The physical culturists’ interconnecting concerns about (social) hygiene, surmenage, and bodily decline certainly resonated across the popular culture media. It was common for sports leaders to articulate how their chosen sporting practice could solve the ‘social scourges’ of tuberculosis and alcoholism by encouraging hygienic open-air activity. The ‘planiste’ Le Muscle, showing a preference for hébertisme over ‘fastidious’ physical culture exercises, made much of the moral and virile components of physical education alongside the merits of cold-water bathing.125 Its journalists imagined teachers examining skin, teeth, and hair in purpose-built ‘hygiene rooms’. ‘What real progress for the health of the race!’ it declared, if each school had one of these.126 Elite men’s fashion magazine Adam recommended wearing artificial silk as a ‘hygienic fabric’ because of its being permeable to the supposedly healing ultraviolet rays of the sun.127 It stressed that swimming was an exercise perfect for keeping the ‘human machine’ in good physical condition, 120 Dr Ruffier, ‘Education physique: comment le spectacle de la gloutonnerie peut nous conduire à la sobriété’, L’Auto, 1 January 1926, 2. 121 Dr Henri Diffre cited from La Réforme de l’enseignement in L’Auto, 27 October 1921, reproduced in Arnould, La Culture physique chez soi, p. 70. 122 For example, Dr Ruffier, ‘La conquête de la santé’, L’Auto, 22 May 1938, 1. 123 ‘Une formidable enquête!’, L’Auto, 2 January 1926, 1. 124 Dr Ruffier, ‘L’erreurs sportives’, Le Figaro, 31 August 1926, 3. Also André Geiger, ‘Olympie à Joinville’, Le Figaro, 3 June 1920, 1; Louis Chavet, Le Figaro, 13 January 1937, 1; ‘Pour rester jeunes’, Le Figaro, 2 November 1930, 2; Armand Crestois, ‘Du “coup de bélier” du Docteur Boigey’, Le Figaro, 9 February 1937, 1. 125 R.C., ‘Une Gymnastique “omni-sports”: où pratiquer la méthode naturelle?’, Le Muscle, 6 March 1927, 4. 126 Jacques Nancy, ‘Pour apprendre à mieux vivre’, Le Muscle, 9 January 1927, 9. 127 Front cover illustrations and captions, Adam, 15 August 1933. Heliotherapy had been deployed since the late nineteenth century as a naturist cure. Granger, Les Corps d’été, 50.

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lamenting the numbers of young men who began military service without this skill.128 One feature highlighted the wardrobe choices of a Paris-based cosmetic surgeon who had adopted his white coat as rational and hygienic go-anywhere dress—a uniform fit for both the operating theatre and for leisure activities. A keen aviator and motorist who had styled his scientific professional persona as a ‘man of action’, he nurtured both mind and muscles. Echoing the mantras of many physical culturists and naturists, this surgeon wanted the French to ‘save our strength, avoiding as far as possible the different forms of wear and tear’ that led to premature ageing. Alongside good nutrition he urged the abandonment of hard collars and constricting belts, as well as buttons, sock suspenders, and hats that attracted dirt. He also pointed out that shorter skirts for women gathered less muck from trailing along the ground, decreasing the risk of bacterial contagion. If the formula were right, this medic claimed that ‘there will no longer be anything but wars to mutilate men’.129 He imagined future human specimens as fatigue- and germ-resistant— hygienic machines able to adapt to the onslaughts of modern life. The threat of an unmanning surmenage was never far away in these sources. One New Year’s issue of Adam recommended that men make ‘virile resolutions’ that included better personal hygiene and the regulation of working life.130 Readers were advised to use the summers for ‘physical and moral rest’, regenerating their bodies, detoxifying their muscles, and purging their minds of wintry metropolitan woes through the practice of tennis, golf, and fishing.131 In addition, activities such as ice-skating and bobsleigh would ‘exalt our vital powers . . . calm the excessive cerebrality of over-refined, civilized men, fatigued by business and flirting’.132 Winter sports were thus presented here as an antidote to the body-softening and mindfatiguing nature of bourgeois life, rather than—as Marcel Rouet had suggested—a further expression of it. The professional was evoked as a ‘modern man of action’ constantly distracted by knocks on doors and ringing telephones, in need not only of daily physical culture (plus golf on Sunday afternoons) but ‘intellectual hygiene’: only ‘supermen’ could achieve more than eight daily hours of mindlabour. A hobby would restore ‘nerves exacerbated by tumultuous city life’, and an annual seaside vacation would serve as ‘veritable detoxification therapy’.133 The conservative monthly La Revue des deux mondes also picked up on this issue of intellectual surmenage, prescribing a similar kind of physical exercise as a way of resolving the burden of devirilizing over-work among the put-upon bourgeoisie. These issues were often seen through the lens of biological regeneration and degeneration. For a start, the language of ‘improving the race’ was ubiquitous. 128

Hoggar, ‘Natation’, Adam, July–August 1926, 2. Jean Bouchon, ‘Le costume du “travailleur intellectual” ’, Adam, Paris, May 1927. Pierre de Trévières, ‘Janvier’, Adam, January 1927, 1. 131 ‘Panorama des modes sportives du mois’, Adam, 15 August 1933, 18–21. Similarly, Vogue counselled bourgeois women in the ‘mysterious’ rejuvenating effects of the summer sun, and Marie-Claire claimed that sunbathing could burn fat and develop muscle. Granger, Les Corps d’été, 43. 132 Champion, ‘Les sports d’hiver’, Adam, Paris, December 1926, n.p. 133 Philippe Girardet, ‘L’hygiène de l’homme d’affaires’, Adam, Paris, 15 September 1938, 39. 129 130

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Sports journalists routinely argued that the ‘undeniable influence of physical exercises on the improvement of races and individuals’ was uncontested.134 Archivist for the French football federation and former player, Georges Duhamel, seemingly spoke for a generation when he saw in football ‘a means of virilizing the race’.135 In 1937, Paris municipal councillor Armand Massard reached out from the pages of Le Figaro, echoing Dr Maurice Boigey’s recommendations for physical exercise to be tailored to age and aptitude—principles on which the ‘salvation of the race’ depended.136 This casual rhetoric of biological regeneration sat alongside a widespread suggestion of male physical failure in which the line between individual and collective physiological decline was sometimes blurred. L’Auto editor Henri Desgrange, reflecting on a recent ministerial press conference on the quality of physical education teachers, wondered sarcastically if these instructors were not deliberately recruited among ‘the puny, the physically inadequate, the bodily unfit’, drawn from the same unhealthy lot as regular teachers—those weaklings and nervous sorts whose lack of physical aptitude had driven them into a career in education. Echoing contemporary fears about the bodily consequences of intellectual surmenage, Desgrange cried, ‘one must make of these pupils, not only cultured brains, but strong beings, risk takers’ capable of action in the ‘struggle for life’. Desgrange invested little faith in official plans to solve the problem by creating an institute of physical education and applied hygiene. Instead, he wanted prospective teachers to take ‘a muscular exam’ to show that they were something other than merely ‘machines for stuffing our offspring with Latin and mathematics’. The state should realize that it needed educators who could forge ‘biceps-men’ as well as ‘brain-men’: the ‘too numerous scraps of humanity’ who apply to become teachers should thus be rejected at the outset.137 Thus for this champion of commercial spectator sport, the same enemies that physical culturists and some others saw in sport-spectacle—bodily surmenage and the engendering of bodily passivity among the crowd—were located instead in an over-stuffed academic school curriculum and failing state physical education policy. The content of Desgrange’s vocabulary and fears were the same, even if the object of his criticisms was different: modern civilization devirilized men, but physical exercise promised both redemption for themselves and salvation for the collective. The discourse of bodily failures so prevalent in the physical culturist press, where it was so often linked to the sense that modern bodies had failed to adapt to modern life, was also apparent in the widespread observation that French elite athletes were inferior to their foreign counterparts.138 In 1924 one commentator, anticipating the outcome of the Paris Olympic Games, acknowledged that France suffered ‘from the athletic point of view’ when compared to other nations, probably as a result of the ‘dreadful 134 Tristan Bernard, preface to M. Pefferkorn and Dr Bellin du Coteau, L’Entrainement sportif (Paris, 1924), 5. 135 Georges Duhamel, Le Football français: ses débuts (Angoulême, 1959), 2; see also A. Charlet, L’Ami des sports, 29 November 1936, 1. 136 Armand Massard, ‘Bonnes semences et mauvaises graines’, Le Figaro, 26 April 1937, 7. 137 Henri Desgrange, ‘Le Professeur à tout faire’, La Culture physique, June 1926, 484. 138 Maurice Baquet, ‘Préparation olympique et éducation physique’, Sport et santé, March 1936, 31.

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bloodletting’ of the First World War.139 Journalist Jean de Pierrefeu, reflecting on the sporting ‘renaissance’ of the previous half-century, lamented that sporting values had not yet penetrated deeply into daily life. Once the game is over, the athlete puts on civilian clothes and rejoins life. Sporting activity was supposed to be ‘a systematization of ancient life . . . giving back to the body its vigour and health, at the precise moment when these things were threatened by the conditions of existence of a civilization that more and more substitutes the machine for man’. Instead, sport—‘a practical means of virilizing races threatened by excess and wear and tear’—had become tarnished by commerce and individualism.140 L’Auto had eagerly anticipated the Olympic Games of 1924, with its ‘best selection of human muscle’ and ‘supermen’ from every corner of the globe.141 But its reporters condemned the inferiority of the French delegation, claiming that despite the natural elegance of ‘our race’ the national temperament did not support rigorous training as did the American and Finnish. Physical education in schools should prepare champions from a young age: ‘[u]ntil now we have been only children. It is time to dream of becoming men.’142 Indeed, Pierre de Coubertin himself wrote a letter to sports lobbyist Frantz Reichel in 1927, published in Le Figaro, advising that the main point of the Olympics was for elite athletic prowess to be emulated among the wider population. In France, Coubertin lamented, only a minority do the kind of physical exercise that would ‘improve the race’.143 Increasing anxieties about national security after the mid-1930s had the effect of intensifying this discourse of failure. One journalist, thinking ahead to the spectacle of the 1937 Paris world’s fair, complained that having stadia was one thing, but it would be better to have athletes worthy of the name to put in them: ‘old fogeys’ and the unfit were barring the way to ‘men of action’, and French sport consequently suffered ‘utter anarchy’. ‘No one is trying to give muscles to the nation’s youth . . . The proof lies in . . . the crushing defeat of our teams in international competitions, each year more and more bitter for our national self-esteem’.144 Another journalist reflected in melancholic tone on the failure of Frenchmen in all sorts of sporting competitions. He felt ‘a deep bitterness to observe the regression of our country’, which, in slightly earlier times, had ‘fine and respectable teams’ that impressed on the world stage. Worrying that ‘powerful races’ were developing around France, he wrote that ‘the foreigner now appreciates the moral worth, the respectability, and the prestige of a country through the number and quality of its successes’ in sports competitions.145 A Je suis partout journalist was far from alone 139 Le Médecin sportif, ‘Actualités: Les Jeux Olympiques’, Revue médicale d’éducation physique et de sport, 1924, no. 1, 7–11. 140 Jean de Pierrefeu, L’Illustration, 16 August 1924, 131–4. 141 L’Auto, 5 July 1924, 1. 142 Louis Maertens, L’Auto, 14 July 1924, 1. 143 Pierre de Coubertin to Frantz Reichel, Le Figaro, cited by Marcel Kienné de Mongeot, ‘L’Etat ne fait rien pour régénérer la race!’, Vivre: culture physique et mentale, 15 August 1927, 3–4. 144 ‘A la recherche du stade de l’Exposition’, La Banlieue nouvelle, 2 February 1936, press clipping in the ‘stades’ dossier, AN F12 12147; also Paul Audinet, ‘La France et l’Italie disputeront la finale du tournoi de l’Exposition’, L’Epoque, 15 October 1937. 145 Charles Franck cited from Revue de l’Automobile-Club de l’Ile-de-France, July 1938, L’Education physique, 15 October 1938, 213.

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in thinking that it was the ‘totalitarian’ countries that ‘work the longest, run the fastest, build the best cars, the best planes, throw the discus, and javelin the furthest’.146 Indeed, the poor results of the French at the Berlin Olympics were routinely cited as proof of French physical inferiority in terms that evoked the risk which this fact posed for the defence of the patrie. The failure of the elite athlete was twinned with the failure of the conscript, and this common association of the athlete and the soldier helped to link the questions of sporting success to those of national security. The alleged corporeal inadequacy of French military recruits reverberated throughout the sports press almost as much as it did in the world of physical culture.147 Frantz Reichel expressed concerns that a ‘considerable number of recruits’ entered their regiment without sufficient physical preparation, complaining that only 25,000 per year passed the current basic form of the military preparation certificate.148 General Prételat, head of an interministerial commission on compulsory physical education, lamented at a gymnastics event in Paris in the late 1930s that 54 per cent of conscripts were deemed unfit for service, and his comment was picked up in the mainstream press. L’Echo des sports expressed the view that ‘the depressing physical inadequacy of the current cohorts of recruits’ necessitates ‘a bold policy of developing physical exercises and muscular activity’.149 During a radio broadcast on the dangers of sport in the late 1930s, Dr Dorvaux suggested that the contemporary reign of muscle had been overstated. ‘Does the height and corpulence of our little soldiers and our slender young shopgirls really represent our ideal of power and respect?’ Have sports, he asked rhetorically, really fulfilled their ‘promise to regenerate the race?’150 Jacques Defrance has shown that until the mid-1920s at least, articles in L’Auto and other titles in the sports press used an overt language of degeneration that at times had a distinctly eugenicist flavour. Such opinions were bolstered by the testimony of ‘experts’ such as eugenicist scientist Jules Amar, whose work was introduced in previous chapters and who wrote in L’Auto of the necessity of organizing sports exercises scientifically. In addition, in 1920 eugenicist Sicard de Plauzoles approached L’Echo des sports in order for it to take part in a public health campaign to help save the ‘race’, for which the publication enlisted Dr Marcel Bellin du Coteau to publish a series of articles.151 Early in 1925, Amar provided a front-page article for L’Auto which endorsed eugenics as a means of ‘developing vigorous, active, and healthy races’, not to mention better-looking ones. He wanted the French to avoid ‘weakening and uglifying agents’: physical education could improve the ‘pedigree’ of the French, especially if inherited ‘defects’ were already removed 146 Dorsay, ‘La France ne perdra tout de même pas sur tous les terrains’, Je suis partout, July 8, 1938. See also André Bourdennay, ‘Au secours du sport français’, L’Echo des sports, 18 August 1937, 1. 147 Jean Perrigault, Siècle médical, cited by Dr F. Menier, ‘L’état sanitaire de la race’, L’Educateur physique, February 1937, 7–10; Bernard Busson, Le Jour-Echo de Paris, 7 July 1938, cited in L’Education physique, 15 October 1938, 261. 148 Franz Reichel, ‘L’Organisation de l’éducation physique et sportive’, L’Ami du peuple, 1 June 1928, 5. 149 L’Echo des sports, 8 December 1936, cited in L’Education physique, January–March 1937, 75. 150 Dr Dorvaux, cited from a radio broadcast by Ruffier, ‘Les prétendues dangers du sport pour la santé’. 151 Defrance, ‘L’eugénisme et la culture scientifique’, 146.

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through careful unions. Amar held that ‘physical culture is a factor of hygiene’, training muscles and nerves and building will and intelligence, and he supported governmental intervention to realize its potential through ‘sports eugenics’.152 In 1927 Le Muscle published a letter to the editor that picked up approvingly on the proposal for a compulsory pre-nuptual medical certificate.153 And in November 1936, Herman Grégoire wrote admiringly in the rightist L’Ami des sports of French eugenicist Alexis Carrel’s best-selling work, Man the Unknown. He claimed to have sent a copy to Léo Lagrange in order to remind him that deploying physical exercise to improve the breeding stock of the nation needed to be carefully organized: ‘one risks badly damaging the cause of sport by considering it a panacea whose use can be unthinkingly prescribed for obesity, toothache, calluses, and foot-andmouth disease’.154 It seems there was a hint of a neo-Lamarckian eugenicist world view within the Catholic sports movement too. An inquiry into members’ attitudes in 1925 sounded out opinion on ‘the preparation of the young man for his role as chef de famille’: it asked whether young men were concerned about developing their physique for the sake of their future paternity, suggesting that leisure time should be used in part for gymnastics and sport. A small but not insignificant minority of groups (16 per cent) thought that physical education was practised for the goal of procreation. For example, an ACJF group of Saint-Quentin (Aisne) affirmed that ‘concerns about maintaining and developing one’s physical vigour exist among young men’ who were desperate to avoid passing on any ‘physical defects to their descendants.’155 When addressing a crowd of 3,000 young Scouts leaders in 1937, Father Rimaud cited a passage from ‘our friend’ Alexis Carrel’s Man the unknown: ‘Man should be the measure of all, but in fact, he is a stranger in the world he has created . . . In the middle of the wonders of modern civilization, the human personality tends to disappear.’156 Unsurprisingly, Catholics found the antimaterialism of Carrel’s philosophy as appealing as did the physical culturists, but examples such as these suggest that they were also not immune from thinking that unathletic men let down not only themselves but the wider gene pool. EXPERIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY The material presented so far has focused much more on how manly ideals, whether or not connected to notions of decline, were disseminated in French popular and consumer culture, and much less on their reception among the male populace at 152 Jules Amar, ‘Sélection humaine et eugénique’, L’Auto, 28 January 1925, 1–2, AP VR 156. The same issue featured an illustration of strongman Charles Rigoulot, complete with bodily measurements, and describing the athlete as ‘a splendid specimen of the French race’. 153 ‘Punch’ cited by Robert Dieudonné, Le Muscle, 9 January 1927, 10. 154 H. Grégoire, ‘L’Homme et le sport’, L’Ami des sports, 8 November 1936, 1. 155 Groeninger, 226–7. 156 Father Rimbaud cited in Tony Guedel, ‘Les Journées nationales des scouts de France se sont tenues sous le signe de la Jeunesse’, Jeunesse de France, 7 November 1937, 1–2.

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large. Michael Roper is not the only historian to worry that the ‘cultural turn’ in gender history has not only led to the neglect of this problem, but has arguably muddied the waters further by confusing ‘abstract subject positions’ configured in discourse with the messiness of lived experience.157 How far can one know how individual men internalized the normative codes of manliness that informed the vocabulary and rhetorical strategies of interwar commentators? Memoir literature, testimonials, and letters to the editor may shed some light on this question, but are far from unproblematical. Such autobiographical texts must be recognized not as vehicles for neutral testimony but as terrains of construction that ‘contribute to the formation of subjectivity’ itself.158 Ultimately, how can one distinguish between the expression of subjective experience and the deployment of that subjectivity to impress an audience of readers or to conform to imagined expectations? Nonetheless, it may be that the discursive adoption of a manly persona in such literature is revealing in itself, not so much of the emotions and experiences of the individual man, but of the belief system his words betray. Subjectivity, after all, must be about thoughts as well as feelings. These reservations aside, the sources discussed in this section suggest that the association of muscularity and athleticism with manliness and social success was a phenomenon that crossed boundaries (of social class, political persuasion, and sexuality) in the interwar period. It would be a separate project, however, to piece together a veritable prosopography of sporting experience as Pierre Charreton has done for the sporting theme in literature.159 Undoubtedly, political and cultural elites incorporated an element of sportivité into their—especially young—lives. We know that president of the Republic Gaston Doumergue rose at 5 am for a daily bout of physical culture followed by a brisk hour-long walk, unless the rain stopped him from leaving the Elysée Palace. According to Emile Valtier, this bodily regime made the presidential load easier for Doumergue to bear.160 Pierre Marie suggested that the ‘grand literary monument’ left to posterity by Victor Hugo was due to the writer’s ‘magnificent health’— a product of anti-ageing bodily exercise and principles of hygiene. And just look at 89-year-old Georges Clemenceau, with his daily physical culture exercises and ‘lucidity of mind’.161 Henry Paté, under-secretary of state for physical education in the late 1920s, was celebrated for his ‘athletic body . . . great personal charm, elegance in manly bearing’, a sportif expert in rugby.162 Léo Lagrange, who had played football at Henri IV and was a teenage scout, was eulogized both before and 157 Michael Roper, ‘Slipping out of view: subjectivity and emotion in gender history’, History Workshop Journal, 59 (2005), 57–72. 158 David Carlson, ‘Autobiography’, in Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History (London, 2009), p. 176. 159 Pierre Charreton, Les Fêtes du corps: histoire et tendances de la littérature à theme sportif en France, 1870–1970 (Saint-Etienne, 1985). 160 Emile Valtier, ‘Les temps prédits par le fondateur de la culture physique sont révolus’, La Culture physique, October 1926, 587–8. 161 Pierre Marie, ‘L’obligation de la Culture Physique’, supplement to La Culture physique, November–December 1932, 4–5; Marie, Force et santé pour tous, pp. 69, 73. 162 Marcel Delarbre, ‘Henry Paté’, in Le Sport en France, preface by Henry Paté (La Haye, n.d.).

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after his death in battle in 1940 as a manly sportif.163 When in 1934 Louis Marin, deputy for the Fédération Républicaine and new minister of public health and physical education, nostalgically recalled his childhood experiences of play hunting with crossbows in the woods, he saw this and later real-life hunting experiences as crucial for the development of both his shooting skills and manliness—‘one acquires the control of one’s muscles, coup d’oeil, decision.’ Shooting builds ‘the mastery of man over himself ’.164 Such connections were also made by a number of well-known intellectual elites in the interwar years, forming what one might call a sports intelligentsia. As a young man, the notorious essayist and political writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (whom we meet again in Chapter 5) took part in motoring, polo, skiing, football (at which, by his own admission, he failed), and hunting.165 When the adolescent Drieu apologized for the trembling handwriting in which he scribed a letter to his best friend in 1911, the result of a burst of ‘gymnastique de chambre’ deployed as a break from examination revision, it was plain that he was a devotee of physical culture. Aware of the aesthetic risks posed by a sendentary bourgeois lifestyle, Drieu made a virtue of combining hard study with physical training that would ‘exercise the muscles, discipline the nerves, invigorate the blood’ in building ‘male self-confidence’. Drieu was appalled by the ugliness of other men’s bodies in the street, with their thin arms and pock-marked legs, but equally disgusted by his own failure to overcome physical weakness and decrepitude.166 Essayist and serious footballer Henry de Montherlant also celebrated sport through an idealization of the male body.167 In the words of one biographer, while Pierre de Coubertin had a humanitarian interest in sport, Montherlant’s was about the exaltation of its ‘virile quality’, although, as we have seen, that opposition need not be an absolute one.168 Montherlant had the admiration of Henri Desgrange at L’Auto, who described him as ‘the finest sportif poet of our times’. Montherlant’s most high-profile publication, Les Olympiques (originally published in 1924), had sold 60,000 copies in France, and by the late 1930s had been translated into seven languages.169 Both Drieu and Montherlant, of course, were ideologues for the (radical) right, whose fetishization of the muscular male nourished a broader, fascist-friendly aestheticization of politics. It was not unusual for the hard-edged athleticism of the 163 Raude and Prouteau, Le Message de Léo Lagrange, pp. 23–4; Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (London, 1995), p. 160. 164 Louis Marin cited from a banquet speech on 8 July 1934, in Bulletin no. 2 of STIR. 165 Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Le Jeune Européen, suivi de Genève ou Moscou (Paris, 1978), p. 28. Leonard Smith describes Drieu as ‘the consummate failed initiate’, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Ithaca and London, 2007), p. 35; Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (London, 1980), p. 27. 166 Drieu la Rochelle to André Jéramec, 30 June 1911, in Correspondance avec André et Colette Jéramec (Paris, 1993), pp. 40, 48, 49–50. For an example of self-deprecation see ‘Aussi loin’, La Suite dans les idées, reproduced in Ecrits de jeunesse, 1917–1927 (Paris, 1941), p. 174. 167 Pierre Sirpriot, Album Montherlant: iconogrphie réunie et commentée par Pierre Sirpriot (Paris, 1979), p. 96. 168 Sirpriot, Album Montherlant, p. 98. For an example, see Henry de Montherlant, ‘Le Paradis à l’ombre des épées’, 1924, in Les Olympiques (Paris, 1954), p. 43. 169 Henri Desgrange, L’Auto, 24 May 1938, 2.

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Nazi ideal itself to draw in male youth, perhaps most famously in the cases of littérateur Robert Brasillach and ultra-collaborationist and volunteer for the Waffen SS Christian de la Mazière.170 While the politics of such figures were extreme, the look of their chosen manly ideal was widely shared. Whatever the politics of Montherlant, for example, the communist L’Humanité published a favourable review of Les Olympiques on its reissue in 1938, describing its author as a ‘musician of the human body’.171 The rhetorical reiteration in such works—of sport as a school for building muscular and moral manliness or as compensation for its lack, sport as combat, sport as an instrument of national regeneration or international peace—no doubt helped to consolidate a (Nazi-free) discourse of martial but honourable manhood among a very wide audience. In any case, it was not only men of the radical right who valued muscles. Writer, rugby enthusiast, diplomat, and pacifist Jean Giraudoux complained that in countries such as France, one had passed from ‘natural life’ to ‘artificial life’ without making the necessary corporeal adjustments, the result being a nation of men who travelled in ‘Fourth Class bodies’.172 Radical historian and interwar leftist–anarchist activist Daniel Guérin (who worked for a time as a proofreader at L’Auto) clearly adored the muscular athleticism of sportifs: he recalls masturbating over the sports pages on one occasion, with their ‘images of beautiful Scandinavian athletes, with fair hair and long muscles’.173 Guérin recounts many youthful amorous adventures in sporting settings—the spa town of Vichy where his parents had funded a visit to cure a bout of ill health, the changing cabins in the chic Pointoise swimming pool in Paris’s 5th arrondissement, and the nude bathing that took place after each physical culture work-out at the Christian union in the rue de Trévise.174 Swimming pools and bath-houses are frequently mentioned in gay memoir, literature, and scholarship, indicating that physical activities, if not physical culture schools, were part and parcel of homosexual cultural life by the end of the nineteenth century.175 It seems that steam baths often provided same-sex meeting places in this period, at least in Paris—the kind of hydrotherapeutic establishments (‘oriental baths’, ‘rain baths’, or ‘steam baths’) like those in the Latin Quarter’s rue Soufflot or the avenue des Gobelins. Such commercial spaces were recognized as sites of homosexual activity at least since the belle époque.176 The example of Daniel Guérin suggests not 170 Christian de la Mazière, The Captive Dreamer, trans. Francis Stuart (New York, 1972); Philippe Carrard, ‘From the outcasts’ point of view: the memoirs of the French who fought for Hitler’, French Historical Studies, 31, 3 (2008), 477–503; David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, AntiSemitism and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton, 1995). 171 G. Benicou, L’Humanité, 11 June 1938, 8. 172 Jean Giraudoux, unspecified newspaper article, Occupation era; and Le Sport: notes et maximes (Paris: Hachette, 1928), p. 8. 173 Daniel Guérin, Le Feu du sang: autobiographie politique et charnelle (Paris, 1977), pp. 31, 57. 174 Guérin, Le Feu du sang, p. 19; and cited in Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou, Paris Gay 1925 (Paris, 1981), pp. 43–61; Florence Tamagne, Histoire de l’homosexualité en Europe: Berlin, Londres, Paris, 1919–1939 (Paris, 2000), p. 84. 175 Michael D. Sibalis, ‘Paris’, in David Higgs (ed.), Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600 (London and New York, 1999), p. 25; Julian Jackson, Living in Arcadia: Homosexuality, Politics, and Morality in France from the Liberation to AIDS (Chicago, 2009), p. 29. 176 Barbedette and Carassou, Paris Gay 1925, pp. 411–12.

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only that the exploits of sportifs were objects of a homoerotic gaze, but that the appeal of muscular manhood was shared across different sexualities as well as conventional political and ideological divisions, even if—as for Guérin—muscles were seen less as a basis for politics than for personal pleasure. Memoir literature also attests to the cross-class appeal of both sporting practice and the athletic manly ideal. Working-class communist militant Léopold Figuères from Perpignan served an apprenticeship as a typographer and later became Director of the Jeunesse Communiste newspaper L’Avant-garde.177 Figuères evokes the appeal of two competing styles of masculinity when he recalls his awe at the physical appearance of Gabriel Péri, whom he met in 1934 (‘physically slim and distinguished, with a natural elegance’), noting the contrast embodied in L’Humanité editor Paul Vaillant-Couturier, with his impressive ‘body of an athlete, face of a fighter, and the mane of a lion’, whose power as an orator could crush opposition.178 Petit-bourgeois northerner Louis Gosselin, who left school at age thirteen to work in a bank, remembered a post-1918 period populated by mutilés de guerre—a disillusioning world from which he found release in sport. He was thrilled to find out that his role model Jean Bouin—the first Frenchman to hold an official world record in running, and himself a casualty of the First World War—had belonged to the same athletics society. In Gosselin’s milieu, sport and Sunday dancing were the leisure activities of the young: the men played billiards, cards, and ping-pong, and visited the cinema, while young girls took part in Catholic youth activities.179 Marcel Hansenne, French running champion and Olympic bronze medal winner for the 800 metres in 1948, remembers himself as a poorly, thin child growing up in a modest family in the northern industrial town of Tourcoing. The family doctor had told his adoptive mother that ‘this child was not born to live’. A puny adolescent (36 kg and 1.67 m at the age of sixteen), his school friends nicknamed him ‘Hercules’ as a joke. Hansenne admitted feeling intimidated by the ‘beautiful physical power’ of local sportsmen. But he caught sport as though it was another of his childhood viruses—first playing basket-ball at the local Catholic patronage. That did not stop him from feeling depressed about his thinness, bony knees, and prominent ribs, however: and even beer could not fatten him. Hansenne spent all his money on copies of L’Auto, which he read from cover to cover (he pointed out that in working-class families, newspapers were more affordable than radio).180 In his memoir, Hansenne associates social confidence and worldly success not only with athleticism but with sartorial and bodily elegance, recalling how impressed he had been by the chic suit and stylish hat of an industrialist sponsor, and how intimidated by the svelte bearing of Gaston Meyer, the former athlete and journalist for L’Auto who would later become his trainer.

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Police notes, 21 September 1949, 30 April 1946, and 31 August 1948, APP GA F15. Léo Figuères, Communiste, une aventure militante: chronique d’une action communiste des années 1930 à 2001 (Pantin, 2001), pp. 17, 19. 179 Louis F.V. Gosselin, Une Jeunesse entre les deux guerres (Dijon, 2000), pp. 28, 41, 74, 88, 85. 180 Marcel Hansenne, Du sport plein la tête (Paris, 1983), pp. 5, 6, 7, 8, 11. 178

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Furthermore, readers of La Culture physique from a range of backgrounds provided testimonials that echoed the world view of the publication’s editors. The son of a tailor wrote to Dr Georges Rouhet in gratitude for his self-transformation. A ‘sickly, ill-looking child’, he had joined a gymnastics society, but on proving talented at the pole-vault had entered competitive ‘violent sports’, resulting in multiple injuries and the onset of arthritis. On the recommendation of physical culturist literature, he started to work out with light weights and became hooked on ‘the taste for beauty and strength’, eventually finishing first (out of 75) in his military preparation class.181 One middle-class reader considered himself typical of ‘the frail young things of our modern cities’. Having taken up running and cycling after school in search of ‘sporting glory’, he wore out his body through physical surmenage and the hard intellectual labours of boarding school. He confessed that he was wrong to think that playing sports would make him a man, and that only the systematic practice of gymnastics and physical culture lessons could build his strength. When he stood next to superior athletes and caught sight of his body in the mirror, he overcame the ensuing feelings of discomfort by fixing on the steady eyes of the master.182 The rhetoric of biological degeneration and regeneration was sometimes there too. A married working-class father wrote to Vivre to say that having stumbled upon an issue of this magazine by accident, he had been glad to discover Frenchmen who were really concerned with ‘the regeneration of our race’.183 This vocabularly was not uncommon, frequently peppering the language of letters to the editor.184 Bourgeois André Bardin published a testimonial in a naturist magazine, thanking ‘summer air and sun therapies’ for helping him to overcome a delicate childhood exacerbated by long months in classrooms and ‘the smoke-filled air of the capital’. Intellectual surmenage had led him to a state of ‘extreme nervousness’ and neurasthenia, accompanied by infections, headaches and insomnia, in which the least exertion seemed an insurmountable effort, and he had to drag around his ‘miserable carcass like a burden’. Bardin turned to naturism to reconnect with instincts that the ‘obligations of so-called civilized life’ repressed. He was soon doing ‘group nudity’, bathing naked, attempting (if failing) to become a vegetarian, vastly reducing his intake of wine, and undergoing a daily 20-minute session of fat-blasting physical culture each morning.185 Bourgeois Vogue illustrator Raymond de Lavererie recalled with emotion ‘the glorious muscular aches of camping’, but engaged in considerable self-criticism: ‘Before the pathetic spectacle of my sloping shoulders, before my spindly calves on which my socks fell down, I dreamed

181

Letter, 17 December 1928, addressed to Georges Rouhet, La Culture physique, February 1929,

71–2. 182 Maurice Pelletier, ‘Comment je suis venu à la culture physique’, La Culture physique, May 1933, 148–9, Paris, 27 December 1932. 183 J. Raulin, letter published in Vivre, 15 January 1928, 12. See also J. M. N., in Vivre, 15 March 1928, 13. 184 For example, P. Camus, Le Havre, in La Culture physique, February 1929, 72. 185 André Bardin, ‘Comment je suis devenu “Libre-Culturiste”’, Lumière et vérité, October– December 1931, 9–18.

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of strength and beauty’. Caught by the ‘tarantula of sport’ he began to visit stadia, swimming pools, and gymnasia, but despite admiration for muscle he associated it with a lack of intelligence, noting that ‘the “sportif ” is not a very brilliant human specimen’. Lavererie expressed disgruntlement that women were nonetheless betwitched by a handsome athletic appearance, even though it was often the product of superficial exercise designed to develop looks at the expense of fitness. He preferred the ‘well-balanced’ and vigorous (and no doubt middle-class) practitioners of squash and badminton to the small-brained ‘holier-than-thou enthusiasts of rib-cage measurement’, which suggests—again—that the association of physical culture with low class status did not prevent the valorizing of muscle and athleticism among the bourgeoisie.186 This desire for self-transformation was nourished by physical culture professors themselves, of course—not least Edmond Desbonnet and Georges Rouhet—who admitted to having been childhood weaklings saved by the rational practice of 15 minutes of exercise each day.187 Typical was the case of Dr M. Didier, another culturist graduate of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, who opened a hébertiste naturist institute in Algiers—a town whose favourable climate he thought made it destined to become ‘the French capital of Muscle and Naturism’ during the winter season. Didier confessed to having suffered from ‘nervous troubles’ in his own youth, afflicted by neurasthenia caused by sedentarity and ‘intellectual surmenage’. This lifestyle had robbed him of his manliness, so that he was ‘lacking personality, emotional, tormented by doubt, tortured by an excessive shyness, a heavy handicap in the struggle for existence: in short, a nervous system without vigour, ready to wobble at the least shock’. At the age of 25 he was obese, had dark rings around his eyes and an aged face, and suffered from palpitations, anxiety, insomnia, and fatigue. A cautious programme of physical culture, with a little hydrotherapy thrown in, had saved him, to the extent that Didier was made head of medical services at the Reims Collège d’Athlètes in 1913 and trained officers in physical culture during the war.188 Indeed, reader testimonials often mentioned failure at the conseil de révision and a subsequent redemption due to systematic physical culture.189 Male readers of the interwar culturist and naturist press were certainly invited to scrutinize their bodies and find them lacking, just as they were asked to believe that a muscular and strong physique was the reflection of a manly character and patriotic virtue. It was no doubt in the commercial interest of the physical culturist elite to nourish these bodily anxieties. The apparently widespread desire for physical and moral transformation to which these publications appealed was not only a French affair, as we have seen in earlier parts of this book. Ana Carden-Coyne has shown that in interwar Australian body-building culture too, gymnasia were 186

Raymond de Lavererie, ‘3 sports peu connus’, Adam, 15 May 1939, 28–9. Abbat, Pour la race, p. 6. 188 Dr M. Didier, La Culture physique et le naturisme sous le soleil d’Alger: les tendances nouvelles de l’hygiène et de la médecine (1930), pp. 6–7, 8, 20. 189 Daniel Bellenand’s letter to Emile Valtier reproduced in La Culture physique, April 1927, 101; J. Vieira, ‘Courrier de nos lecteurs’ column, La Culture physique, July 1938, 200–1. 187

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adorned with photographs of ‘perfect men’, and that punters, through the use of ‘measuring tape, callipers, and mirror’, were asked to compare themselves unfavourably with images of athletes and classical sculpture.190 The same could be said for the body culture of Weimar Germany, where, as the work of Michael Hau shows, men attempted to overcome their perceived imperfections by engaging in activities predicated on the very existence of those failings.191 Models of male physical perfection and decline were in this way exchanged and reinforced in the commercial market place of body culture. C O N C LU S I O N The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that individual men did subscribe to the aesthetic norms of muscular manhood, and recognized that achieving the look and the behaviour associated with this kind of manliness functioned as an aid to social success. There was undeniably a market for the commercial and ideological strategies of physical culturists, naturists, and those in the sports movement, whose various techniques and products were sold to the male public on promises of just this sort of physical and moral self-transformation. Certainly, the print and commercial culture of the interwar years was shot through with assumptions about the nature and importance of athletic masculinity. The desirability of slim muscularity was stressed, and the sense of its lack manipulated in the tropes of advertising for both sports-related and general products. It also seems likely, however compromised the nature of the source material, that at least some men also bought into the idea that physical exercise was an instrument of wider collective regeneration. At the same time, memoir literature suggests that men did not generally draw the hard-and-fast distinction between ‘rational’ physical culture and the practice of competitive sports that characterized French body-building. Neither was there—except in the no doubt carefully selected testimonials written by fans of the Desbonnet or hébertiste method and published in their press—a critique of spectator sport or the cult of the sporting hero. One irony in this story is that this cult of champions, so criticized by physical culturists for encouraging laziness among the spectating public and thereby dragging down the physical worth of the nation, functioned as a conduit in the general print media for the same kind of fears, only here it was the failure of French elite athletes to measure up to other national stars that provided the proof of decline. Indeed, it seems clear that, perhaps especially in the 1930s, sports-reporting in the general and sports press suggested not only the neo-Lamarckian conviction that to raise the physical fitness of the individual was somehow tantamount to a biological regeneration of the masses, but that the professed athletic inferiority of the French in relation to the sporting prowess of other nations was a warning about the 190 191

Carden-Coyne, ‘Classical heroism and modern life’, 148. Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, p. 15.

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robustness of national defence. It did not help that sports journalists routinely praised the athletic achievements and supposedly superior athletic cultures produced by Anglophone nations through the public school system or so-called frontier mentality; or by ‘totalitarian’ states such as Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which were held to pose the biggest threat to French national security. The widespread use of martial language to describe sporting exploits only cemented that association of the athletic male body with national grandeur and defence.

4 The Uses of Sport and Physical Culture in Mass Politics Mobilizing the ‘New Man’, 1918–1934 In the 1920s political factions on left and right routinely enlisted the popular genres of sport and physical culture in their desire to mobilize male youth. As a result, physical pursuits found a ready place within the annual calendar of events organized by political movements of many kinds. On one level this was simply a recruitment strategy, since these were increasingly popular activities among the young. On another, the struggle of each movement against its ideological foes (including the state) under the late Third Republic itself required physical fitness. Cinemas, town halls, gymnasia, sports stadia, and the streets were zones of physical conflict. News-vendors had to be kept fit to fend off the attacks of rival factions, shock troops prepared to confront one another in public spaces, and security teams were established to hold order when meeting halls were under threat of invasion by armed enemies. But there was more to it than pragmatic considerations. The world view of these movements was deeply gendered, appealing more to men than to women it would seem, and privileging virtues tagged masculine in the wider culture. Susan Whitney confirms that the communist youth movement was overwhelmingly male until the mid-1930s, even though women could—and in small numbers did—join.1 On the radical right too, where membership was usually open to both sexes, women took part in smaller numbers and often in separate women’s sections— a reflection of the conservative thinking on sex-difference that animated those organizations as well as their masculinist ethos.2 Indeed, the concept of a ‘new man’—a figure at once the embodiment of a given movement’s preferred social vision and a rhetorical counter to the imagined decrepitude of contemporary political elites—was common to fascists and communists alike. His virtues included a muscular physique, martial prowess, and moral attributes such as courage and self-control. There was much overlap across the political spectrum in the imagining of this manly ideal, even if John Hoberman is right that the ‘physical affluvium of the fascist political athlete’ (the cult of the body as a source of political authority

1

Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, pp. 9, 43–4. Cheryl Koos and Daniella Sarnoff, ‘France’, in Kevin Passmore (ed.), Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919–1945 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 168–88. 2

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rather than merely an instrument of struggle) was absent on the left. Karen Fiss goes so far as to argue that Marxism was out-flanked by the radical right in the sense that it ‘was unwilling to engage this “primitive” revolutionary energy’ in its political project.3 This opposition between a body-fetishizing radical right and a rational left, however, to my mind risks confusing the somatic content of idealized masculinity with the radically different political projects that harnessed it. I will argue that many aspects of this cult of virility in fact cut across party lines, at least where radical political formations seeking to mobilize the (young) masses were concerned. If the ideals of masculinity across the elitist conservative middle of French politics privileged a staid paternalism and respectability over the virile dynamism one finds elsewhere, as Geoff Read has rather persuasively argued, I would seek at least to temper that conclusion by pointing to the shared emphasis on the qualities of courage, sang-froid, and self-discipline, and to the particular usefulness of youthful muscularity for movements whose modus operandi was to prepare for direct physical conflict.4 In any case, I hold that the normative masculinities of the movements discussed in this chapter should be explained not only in reference to political ideology, but in terms of their resonance with the cultural concerns encountered in previous chapters.5 These protagonists developed projects for political change not only in relation to the field of high and popular politics, but in relation to overlapping public discourses on hygiene, natural therapies, physical culture, and even, at times, medical science. I will outline how these factions instrumentalized physical exercise to political ends, pointing to differences in the mobilization of the male body as well as similarities, and consider how far they shared the concerns about modern manhood that made the physical culturist elite so anxious. The next chapter will extend the analysis into the period of greater political crisis in the 1930s, where the growth of an anti-fascist backlash against a new upsurge of radical rightist movements brought the fight over male bodies into sharper focus. The proliferation of far-right paramilitary leagues in the mid-1920s was a response to the early success of communism in France and to the success of the socialist left in the 1924 legislative elections. The communist party (PCF) had been formed in 1920 when the socialist SFIO split into reformist and revolutionary factions, initially taking most members with it. Radical rightist movements, often modelled in some way on Mussolini’s Fascists in Italy, made an impact in the streets and even in the Chamber of Deputies in this period. With the important exception of the Action Française—a movement forged in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair at the turn of the century—these groups were neither explicitly royalist nor overtly Catholic, and did more to appeal specifically to workers in an attempt to 3 Karen Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exhibition, and the Cultural Seduction of France (Chicago, 2010), p. 128. 4 Geoff Read, ‘Des hommes et des citoyens: paternalism and masculinity on the republican right in interwar France, 1919–1939’, Historical Reflections, 34, 2 (2008), 88–111. An examination of the ways in which this conservative right mobilized sport or physical culture in a quest to extend its popular reach unfortunately falls outside the scope of this study. 5 John M. Hoberman, Sport and Political Ideology (London, 1984), pp. 70, 108.

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forge a mass movement. Pierre Taittinger (a deputy for the conservative right continuously between 1919 and 1940) formed his ‘blue shirts’, the Jeunesses Patriotes (JPs), in 1924, and by 1929 the movement had more than 100,000 members in addition to twenty-seven fellow-travelling deputies in the French parliament. Similarly, the short-lived Faisceau, founded in 1925 under the leadership of Georges Valois (born Alfred Georges Gressent), could boast 60,000 active members at the peak of its success in late 1926, and published a daily newspaper that sold tens of thousands of copies.6 Like the JPs, the Faisceau was hostile to the Republic, wanted to lure workers away from communism, and promised national reconciliation in place of class conflict. In general, the stabilization of the franc and economic recovery in the late 1920s temporarily took the steam out of such movements; it took economic Depression in the 1930s to rekindle them, although by that time Valois, a former syndicalist, had returned to the political left.7 From left to right these factions had their own views on the proper place of sport and physical culture in French politics and society. Their leaders were aware of state and popular initiatives in the realm of physical education, and often shared contemporary concerns about imagined male bodily (and simultaneously national) decline, pointing out ‘feeble’ army recruits, pot-bellied republican politicians, high rates of tuberculosis, nervous disorders in the population at large, and elite sporting failures. Sectarian groups thus picked up on the same set of issues that animated intellectual and political elites, wide sections of the press, and grassroots societies. However nuanced this appropriation across the spectrum, what was shared was the belief that physical fitness was ‘virilizing’ and could be a force for national regeneration. In terms of mobilizing the masses of sporting youth, it must be said that the left was inarguably more successful than the extreme right, whose sports wings probably numbered only a few hundred serious participants at best. Even if the heyday of leftist youth and sports mobilization was not until the era of the Popular Front in the mid-1930s, the Jeunesse Communiste had as many as 12,000 members in 1925. The communist sports movement, the Fédération Sportive du Travail (FST), counted approximately 15,000 members by the end of the decade.8 M O B I L I Z I N G YO U N G M E N T H RO U G H S P O RT A N D P H Y S I C A L C U LT U R E Faisceau leader Valois, who had moved from syndicalism to fascism via the ultranationalist Action Française, demonstrated a keen interest in athletic masculinity in his personal and political life. Commencing military service as an anti-militarist 6 Police note, 9 January 1926, AN F7 13 208; Allen Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism: Georges Valois against the Third Republic (Berkeley, 1992), p. 126. 7 Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The First Wave, 1924 –1933 (New Haven and London, 1986); Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, pp. 151ff. 8 Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 69; Samuel Kalman, ‘Faisceau visions of physical and moral transformation and the cult of youth in interwar France’, European History Quarterly, 33, 3 (2003), 347.

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anarchist, Valois was seduced by the authority of the officers and the mystique of the army, but his service was shortened by a period of ill health, and Valois was nursed back to health by a grandmother whose Catholic nationalist views played a key role in his political formation. Her greatest fear was that Georges would become an invalid, prevented from being a soldier, and this fusion of bodily fitness and patriot duty Valois internalized.9 In a physical transformation worthy of Edmond Desbonnet himself, Valois in fact became a sportif. When he recounted in the mid-1920s the joy he found climbing mountains (the ‘healthy exertion’ rewarded by the ‘physical and moral rest’ one earned afterwards, splayed out on the ground), his vision was consistent with that put forward in any issue of the periodical press devoted to physical culture.10 The vehicle for Valois’ Faisceau, the newspaper Le Nouveau siècle, featured a regular sports column with commentary on the social and political usefulness of sporting activities.11 It covered mainstream sports events such as French championships for rugby and international boxing matches. International athletics competitions were admired for their displays of beautiful athletes, tennis players René Lacoste and Jean Borotra congratulated for their performances in the Davis Cup, and Charles Rigoulot’s retention of his title as strongest man in the world cheered.12 Such successes served as a welcome counterpoint to ‘so many failures’ in football and boxing.13 Indeed, the Faisceau participated in the wider discourse of sporting failure, complaining that French teams lacked ‘the merits of discipline, the will to win, and the national ideal in the practice of team sports’ that German opponents, for example, displayed.14 French athletes, it was said, lacked ‘love of the flag’ in comparison with other Europeans, and sport met with indifference in French schools and universities, being dropped altogether in some—‘an index of the coming decadence’.15 Certainly, the Faisceau made constant reference to the sporting successes of other nations, before which Frenchmen stood inferior. It used these reputed athletic failures both to attack the ‘unfit’ republican political elite that starved physical exercise of the funds it needed to flourish, and to praise sporting experiments in other places. Sport was thus a medium through which the Faisceau political world view was expressed. Journalists complained that Paris was poorly served by municipal swimming pools in comparison with London, that the public powers 9 Jean-Maurice Duval, Le Faisceau de Georges Valois (Paris, 1979), p. 29. Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, pp. 9–10. Valois’ later war record was exemplary, p. 34. 10 René Herbert, ‘Une interview de Georges Valois sur le sport’, Le Nouveau siècle, 13 February 1927, 4. 11 Le Nouveau siècle, 11 June 1925, AN F7 13 208. The sports coverage remained a constant despite the title’s financial crises and sliding fortunes, yet the newspaper probably never sold more than 50,000 copies of any single issue, and unlike L’Action Française it did not penetrate the public beyond the movement’s own members. Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, pp. 113, 120. 12 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 14 May and 4 June 1925, 6; ‘Au vélodrome d’hiver: Rigoulot bat Cadine’, Le Nouveau siècle, 10 January 1926, 3. 13 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 16 July 1925, 6. 14 ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 20 March 1928, 2. 15 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Toujours le manque d’amour-propre national’, Le Nouveau siècle, 7 August 1927, 4; and ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 15 December 1925, 5.

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had not properly supported the French delegation at the 1928 Olympic Games, and that the French government spent a fraction of what the German regime invested in encouraging sport.16 Its writers were also scornful that flabby French political elites used sports tournaments and the construction of stadia as political capital: ‘Former ministers or under-secretaries of state who, to judge by the size of their bellies, must have devoted hardly any time to football or rugby, seek to regain their political virginity by championing a cause popular with everyone.’17 It was not enough to issue circulars complaining about ‘the harmful propaganda that . . . defeats bring to France’, as the foreign ministry had recently done.18 Action was needed, not words. For one thing the Faisceau wanted army sports to serve ‘the cause of publicity abroad’, blaming parliamentarians for enforcing ‘outdated gymnastics’ at the Ecole de Joinville instead of more useful athletic sports. The way ahead was shown by Germany, where sports were encouraged that ensured ‘health, physical education, discipline, esprit de corps, the national ideal, all warrior virtues’.19 It was customary there—evidently even under the Weimar Republic—to ‘glorify the idea of the Fatherland in all circumstances’, and to use sports victories for that purpose too.20 But even after Valois himself had wobbled on the merits of fascism, Le Novueau siècle reserved its greatest praise for Fascist Italy. Faisceau sports specialist E.-G. Drigny thought that fascist authorities had understood the importance of sport, injecting it with ‘discipline’, ‘national self-esteem’, and ‘the burning will to make their colours triumph’.21 These examples remind us that for the Faisceau one purpose of sport was to provide a form of national defence through the fitter bodies of soldiers. It comes as no surprise, then, that where the Faisceau did praise the French authorities it was for their efforts to increase the pre-military physical training required of young men as compensation for a reduced length of military service: like the Comité National des Sports (CNS), the Faisceau believed that the entire sports movement ought to cooperate in plans that would result in ‘the improvement of the race and national interest’.22 The movement’s sports coverage makes it clear that the Faisceau saw physical exercise and competitive sport as a crucible of manliness. The Tour de France, for example, was celebrated in the same idiom as used in the mainstream sports press, the gruelling physical demands made on the riders a source of admiration rather than a sign of their exploitation by commercial interests. The Faisceau organ praised their ‘hard labour’, journalists believing that sufficient improvements had been made in the sport to avoid the kind of ‘physical and moral collapses’ that had 16 ‘Enfin! Des piscines’, Le Nouveau siècle, 20 March 1928, 2; Jacques Boulenger, ‘Du sport’, Le Nouveau siècle, 11 June 1925, 2; E-G. Drigny, ‘La Préparation olympique à la manière française’, Le Nouveau siècle, 23 January 1927, 4. 17 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports: la fédération communiste’, Le Nouveau siècle, 19 March 1925, 6. 18 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 14 May 1925, 6. 19 ‘Les sports dans l’armée’, Le Nouveau siècle, 27 March 1927, 4. 20 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Mauvaise formule’, Le Nouveau siècle, 20 February 1927, 4. 21 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 28 August 1927, 4. 22 F. M. Haire, ‘La réduction du service militaire par le développement de l’éducation physique’, Le Nouveau siècle, 19 November 1925, 6.

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in the past prompted so many racers to quit.23 The Faisceau reserved a special place for mechanized sports such as motor racing and aviation in a clear celebration of modern metal and manly heroism. It was the ‘great exertion and will of iron’ as well as the technical abilities of drivers that were celebrated.24 Pilots were similarly lauded for their displays of ‘skill, courage, mechanical knowledge’, recognized as pioneers of a new kind of scientific sport.25 Echoing the mainstream sports press, the Faisceau defended the values of manly ‘fair play’, seeing sport as ‘an admirable school of moral discipline’. Thus, through ‘the science of the game’, play ought to be energetic but bound by ‘courtesy and loyalty’, the will to win tempered by the primacy of knowing that even on the losing side one would have the ‘exhilarating satisfaction’ of having played ‘courageously and honestly’. The Faisceau thus condemned displays of violence and disobedience among players on the rugby pitch, although disagreed with those sportifs and physical culturists who wanted to ban such championship competitions altogether.26 Although the Faisceau’s position on professionalization in sport was less moralistic than many others, it viewed amateur sport—representing ‘the old adage’ of ‘an honest mind in the body of an athlete’—as the ideal mode for physical activity.27 At times, the physical violence of rugby and football matches could be attributed to the need of professional players to ‘gagner leur bifteck’28, but in general the Faisceau reserved its attacks for American sports, often criticized as decadent, and linked to alcohol consumption, jazz, and night clubs—all hallmarks of democracy as far as Valois’ movement was concerned, and thus feminized in an attempt to reduce their appeal.29 At some point, probably around the height of its success in the second half of 1926, the Faisceau also created its own sports section, the Cercle Sportif Français de Paris (CSFP), facilitated by member donations of money and sports equipment.30 Its newspaper published the results of its teams’ exploits, principally in football, rugby, swimming, and athletics. Sports groups were also formed in some provincial strongholds—Troyes (whose sections were to include physical culture, athletics, football, and cycling), Reims, and Bordeaux, which boasted former international rugby player Alphonse Bène among its members.31 In Paris, sessions of physical culture were organized every Friday evening, swimming lessons were given by a Faisceau comrade once a week at a municipal pool, and the CSFP also provided fencing lessons to induct its members into ‘the noble art of arms’. The ‘Faisceau sportif ’ held weekly athletics training sessions on Sunday mornings in the Persching 23

E.-G. Drigny, ‘Le Tour de France’, Le Nouveau siècle, 3 July 1927, 4. J.-L. B., ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 7 May 1925, 6. 25 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports: à propos des grands raids aériens’, Le Nouveau siècle, 26 March 1925, 6. 26 ‘À propos de l’esprit sporif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 3 December 1925, 8. 27 ‘Le professionalisme en rugby: serait-ce la rupture?’, Le Nouveau siècle, 13 March 1927, 4. 28 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Brutalité’, Le Nouveau siècle, 20 March 1927, 4. 29 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 13 December 1925, 8. 30 E. Dattiny, president of the CSFP, ‘Le Faisceau sportif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 5 June 1927, 4; ‘Demande de dons’, Le Nouveau siècle, 27 February 1927, 4. 31 ‘Le Faisceau sportif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 23 January 1927, 4; Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, pp. 105, 156. 24

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stadium, overseen by sportif members.32 The less competitive could indulge in ‘cyclotourisme’ outings to scenic places such as Malmaison. There were also ambitions to create an aviation club, engaging members with experience of flying. No doubt this enterprise, whatever its success, had the happy effect of appealing to members’ sense of fun while simultaneously providing them with moral and physical training based on the Faisceau’s preferred model of athletic masculinity. The Faisceau organ also asserted the interconnectedness of physical and moral health, expressing concerns that overlapped with those resonating in the world of physical culture proper. Le Nouveau siècle journalists thought in terms of ‘moral hygiene’, urging depopulated France to ‘glorify, by heroic images and a courageous conception of life, our capital of energy and virility’.33 The publication picked up on the biological dilemmas of civilization by covering sessions of the Academy of Medicine. On one occasion, the ‘nervous after-effects’ of the First World War, which had allegedly resulted in an increase in psychiatric patients, were reported alongside a general castigation of an emotion-fuelled modern life that led to ‘madness’. Journalists echoed medics who argued for the immigration of ‘assimilable races’ so as to compensate for the ‘terrible bloodshed of our race through the war’.34 Hubert Bourgin, the former lycée teacher and war veteran who was a champion of moral and physical education in the Faisceau, made light of claims that intellectual surmenage had created a crisis of ‘anaemia, nervosity, malnutrition’ among teenage boys, but did emphasize that education ought to ‘form mind and character’ and be subject to the ‘laws of hygiene’. He also demanded a ‘refeminization’ of girls’ education, because the ‘fashion’ for female employment had in his view led to a genuine problem of ‘overwork’.35 Indeed, by 1927 the Faisceau’s sports column was encompassed under a larger section entitled ‘Le Corps et l’Esprit’, where a consideration of physical activity was placed alongside a discussion of literature and science in an attempt perhaps to address the ‘whole man’. As far as the Jeunesses Patriotes were concerned, the encouragement of grassroots sporting participation was far more important than pleasing the readership of its newspaper with tales of the exploits of elite sportifs, whether professional or not. Its organ Le National devoted considerable space to physical culture in the 1920s, but coverage of mainstream sport was minimal. Instead it was the exploits of the movement’s homegrown sports association—the Club Athlétique des Jeunesses Parisiennes (CAJP)—that featured, alongside discussion of governmental 32 ‘Le Faisceau sportif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 29 September 1926, 4. AN F7 13 208; ‘Le Faisceau sportif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 29 May 1927, 4, and 10 July 1927, 10. 33 Gaëtan Bernoville, ‘Hygiène nécessaire’, Le Nouveau siècle, 13 February 1927, 4. 34 The views of Dr Bernon and Professor Léon Bernard cited from a session of the Academy of Medicine by Dr Vaudremer, ‘A l’Académie de médecine’, Le Nouveau siècle, 20 January 1926, 6. In 1926 the Faisceau attempted to create a corporation specifically for physicians. ‘Les formations du Faisceau: constitution de l’union corporative des médecins’, Le Nouveau siècle, 16 January 1926, 1, and 17 January 1926, 5. 35 Hubert Bourgin, ‘Le surmenage’, Le Nouveau siècle, 27 February 1927, 2; Kalman, ‘Faisceau visions of physical and moral transformation’, 345, 353–9; Samuel Kalman, The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 154–8; Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, p. 75. Bourgin, the Catholic conservative former socialist, favoured Georges Hébert’s natural method and was a great admirer of the Ecole des Roches.

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and municipal initiatives. Pierre Taittinger asserted that the JP sports section was animated by the same values as the rest of the organization—‘order, hierarchy, discipline’.36 It incorporated such pursuits as fencing, basket-ball, football, rugby, and swimming alongside combat sports such as boxing, wrestling, fencing, and ‘cane’—the weapon of choice for JP street-fighting. The swimming section was particularly active, with weekly training sessions, and members were also urged to join shooting societies where they existed.37 On Sundays the CAJP had the use of the Léopold Bellan stadium in Bry-sur-Marne, just outside Paris, where rugby and football teams were fielded against other sports associations. One match, bizarrely, was played against presumed enemies at the Association sportive de la Préfecture de Police.38 At the inauguration of the stadium in October 1925, Pierre Taittinger certainly reminded the JP faithful of the political usefulness of the CAJP, whose recruits worked at ‘developing their muscles so as to put them at the service of fighting against the parties of disorder’. Although performances of its alleged 400 members (‘athletes of the highest merit’) were celebrated in the JP press in 1928, the success of these initiatives was no doubt rather slim.39 At the movement’s second national congress in 1928 the CAJP vice-president asked delegates to try harder to recruit members, and three years later Le National itself suggested that the sports section had a total of only 125 card-carrying members (male and female combined) in Paris.40 However ailing the fortunes of its own sports movement, the Jeunesses Patriotes in general benefitted from the journalistic services of Armand Massard, who penned a regular column for the JP newspaper alongside his considerable contributions to other press titles. Massard was a successful sportsman (an Olympic swordsman in the 1920s), and in 1933 he would become president of the French Olympic committee—a post he retained until 1967. A member of conservative political party Fédération Républicaine and the Croix de Feu in the 1930s, in the 1920s he served as honorary president of the Jeunesses Patriotes’ sports section.41 Massard also straddled the world of high politics, becoming a long-term municipal councillor for Paris in 1932, and using the position to act as a propagandist for sport and physical education, demanding among other things a full ministry of sports and compulsory fencing in military training.42 Massard wanted to make 36 Pierre Taittinger, cited from an after-dinner speech at the Coquet restaurant in honour of the ‘brigade sportive’, Le National, 17 January 1926, 3. 37 Police report on JP activity, n.d., APP BA 1942. 38 Police report, ‘Au sujet des Jeunesses Patriotes’, September 1926, APP BA 1942; ‘Le Courrier des ligueurs’, Le National, 30 January 1927, 5; the CAJP was soundly beaten by a better trained police team, ‘Sur nos stades’, Le National, 4 March 1928, 4. 39 Police report, 19 November 1925, on the CAJP inauguration of the stadium; ‘Vers la revolution française’, n.d. 1928, AN F7 13 232. 40 Cited in a police report on the congress, 30 November 1928, AN F7 13 232; ‘Sur nos stades’, Le National, 29 November 1931, 4. 41 Police report, 13 October 1942, APP BA 2339. Massard organized a reception in the Léopold Bellan stadium for the CAJP team that won the Paris rugby championship (fourth league) in autumn 1928. ‘Le courage des sportifs du CAJP’, Le National, 4 November 1928, 5. 42 Armand Massard, ‘Le sportif organisé et conscient’, Le National, 1 April 1928, 4; ‘L’utile concours du groupement sportif de la Chambre’, Le National, 23 December 1928, 5.

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space for physical education in schools by reducing the allegedly excessive intellectual toil performed there: while not wishing for ‘the predominance of muscle over intellect’, it was equally important that France, in this climate of low birthrates, avoid being ‘endowed with feeble generations’.43 He supported hébertisme as a system of physical training that was efficient and natural, and reflecting on the organization of the CAJP urged athletic competition based on Hébert’s principles that would help guard against ‘extreme specialization’.44 Massard also extolled the merits of swimming and hydrotherapy. He called out to the ‘timid’, to reassure them that the league was not interested in fashioning ‘aquatic phenomena’, or ‘aces of “crawl”’, but in bringing the benefits of complete physical training to all members.45 In general he celebrated the ‘ancient latin formula’ of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and was happy that French youth appeared to have embraced sporting pursuits so wholeheartedly. Massard hailed members of the JPs as partisans of an ‘educative sport of the body and mind, developing physical strength and glorifying moral beauty’, thus echoing concerns common to interwar physical culturists and in effect serving to popularize their ideas within the framework of JP political action.46 Such echoes are certainly apparent in the treatment of physical exercise within the JPs. To train its athletes for sporting competitions the CAJP organized notionally compulsory weekly physical culture sessions in central Paris, advising all members to take part.47 The Jeunesses Patriotes also paid attention to hygiene, recommending rigorous medical inspection in schools alongside encouragement of sport in order to rectify the fact that too many school children were ‘puny’.48 The movement’s leaders paid attention to the problem of workers’ health, and advocated the provision of colonies de vacances for the young. In fact, the JPs ran a version of such a thing on the Ile de Ré (off the coast of La Rochelle) after 1929 as part of its social programme, catering eventually for the young of both sexes in a so-called ‘préventorium’ designed to protect working-class children from the hereditary ills of alcoholism, and to ‘fortify the race’ in the rude sun and air of the island.49 It was still functioning in the mid-1930s, when the movement claimed to have offered 150,000 days of free hospitalization at the establishment over the period of its existence.50 Support for nudism, however, was at best ambivalent, associated as it was with its most extreme Weimar German form.51 Finally, the 43 Armand Massard, ‘Amalgamons la culture physique intellectuelle et morale’, Le National, 2 March 1929, 5. 44 Armand Massard, ‘Hébertisme’, Le National, 14 July 1929, 4. 45 Armand Massard, ‘Sachons nager’, Le National, 27 November 1927, 4. 46 Armand Massard, ‘Le manque à gagner’, Le National, 2 December 1928, 5. 47 ‘Sur nos stades’, Le National, 4 November 1928, 5; A. Dodet, ‘Club athlétique des Jeunesses Parisiennes’, Le National, 17 January 1926, 3. 48 Police report citing a JP social and political programme, 27 June 1928, AN F7 13 232 49 ‘La Colonie de vacances des JP’, Le National, 26 May 1929, 3; François Mulot, ‘La fête du préventorium’, Le National, 8 September 1929, 2. The movement also organized colonies de vacances in the Savoie and Haute-Savoie for robust teenage boys, Le National, 2 June 1929, 2. 50 ‘Chaque JP se fera un devoir de participer, demain, à la quête du Préventorium’, Le National, 12 October 1935, 1. 51 J.-P. Yvon, ‘Bière, sport, nudisme’, Le National, 19 November 1932, 1–2.

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organization suggested an interest in the ‘whole man’, demanding the ‘means for developing body and mind’ by developing libraries in addition to stadia and sports grounds.52 The Action Française, for its part, had a small Cercle Sportif Saint-Henri based in Paris, which offered free lessons in French and English boxing, physical education, fencing, and jiu-jitsu for members of the Camelots du Roi.53 Its daily newspaper did not devote much coverage to mainstream sports in the 1920s, although the rudiments of horse-racing, cycling, fencing, and the Olympic Games were included. The most vocal commentator on physical culture in the movement, and author of L’Action Française’s occasional ‘Chronique sportive’, was royalist intellectual and activist Lucien Dubech, who saw the guiding principles of the AF reflected in modern sport, to which—unlike many physical culturists—he was rather favourably disposed. Competitive sport taught the ‘lessons of human nature’—virility, camaraderie, solidarity, and above all the fact that life was not about equality but rather hierarchy, selection, and aristocracy. Dubech agreed with AF chief Charles Maurras himself that sport was ‘a weapon of nationalisms’ rather than an instrument of peace: it was human nature to fight. Echoing the views of Georges Hébert, Dubech held that sport helped to develop sang-froid, judgement, and discipline. Conversely, ‘a race not capable of producing athletes’ is ‘suspected of decadence; its blood impoverished . . . it fades towards dusk’.54 He celebrated the ancient Greek model of sporting practice precisely because it was less egalitarian than most of his contemporaries seemed to believe; and he felt that Italian fencers, aviators, and cyclists owed their success entirely to the ‘national grandeur’ encouraged by the Fascist regime.55 In Dubech’s political world view, then, notions of male bodily athleticism mediated his preference for authoritarian rule and social inequality in a parallel aestheticization of politics and a politicization of the male body that was widely shared on the radical right, if not usually so concisely articulated. This rightist mobilization of male youth had its counterpart on the extreme left, where the potential for physical exercise to mould male bodies in the service of ideological warfare was appropriated for quite different ends. Critics on the socialist and communist left, aware of the historical role of the patronat and Catholics in developing grassroots sporting practice, generally expressed fears that mainstream sport depoliticized workers. For the left, such sport compounded assumptions about individual struggle and class cooperation that lay behind capitalism and imperialism and thus blunted the strength of class solidarity. A leftist critique of mass sport as a source of alienation in fact developed in the late nineteenth century alongside a concerted attempt to establish a non-bourgeois workers’ sport (as we saw in Chapter 3).56 By the 1920s and early 1930s, worker sport comprised two 52

Police report, citing JP programme, 22 April 1929, AN F7 13 232. L’Action Française, 28 November 1928, AN F7 13 206. 54 Lucien Dubech, Où va le sport? (Paris, 1930), pp. 11, 30, 43, 58, 210. 55 Lucien Dubech, ‘Le Sport est-il un bienfait?’, La Revue universelle, vol. 29, 1 June 1927, 569; Dubech, Où va le sport?, pp. 110–11, 165. 56 Robert A. Nye, ‘Degeneration, neurasthenia and the culture of sport in Belle Époque France’, Journal of Contemporary History, 17 (1982), 52. 53

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distinct elements—socialist and communist—which until the wider rapprochement of the mid-1930s operated two competing rather than complementary sets of sports associations. Contemporary sources seemed to confirm the depoliticizing effect of mainstream sport on working-class youth, giving further impetus to leftist attempts to mobilize them independently. In the early 1920s, studies of worker leisure and culture agreed that young workers read L’Auto in place of ‘biased newspapers’ and preferred their favourite athletes to ‘agitators’ of any political persuasion. For such commentators it seemed reasonable to assume that a young worker, barred by a lack of education and means from cultivating his brain, might seek success instead through muscle, not least since many boxers and runners had ‘come from the people’.57 Socialist physical culturist Pierre Marie (whom we met in the first chapter) was aware that the socialist party (SFIO) had to compete for the hearts of the working class, and saw a socialist conquest of sport and leisure as a way of ensuring steady recruitment into the party. He held that youth was ripe for the taking, since the young loved exercise and most sportifs were working class anyway: he wanted the support of these worker ‘poussins’ in the leftist sporting cause. As a physical culturist, Marie also blamed the focus on competition in bourgeois sport for preventing the rational bodily education that workers, more affected than any other group from the mechanization of the work-place, needed.58 But he thought sport ought to be practised mainly for the sake of better hygiene and to find respite from one’s bosses: dreaming of becoming a professional oneself would simply create ‘one more déclassé’.59 Marie also worried that spectator sport reduced onlookers to a life of unhealthy passivity. The French, he wrote in 1931, were too often footballers for two seasons and then ‘spectators and readers of the exploits of others for the rest of their existence’.60 As previous chapters have shown, this criticism of spectacle was neither novel nor restricted to the anti-capitalist left. Even in the 1890s physical education theorists had been inclined to think that ‘the vulgar worship of “recordmen” . . . [was] far less valuable to the race than the less dramatic virtues of endurance, equilibrium, and tenacity’.61 For the socialist left in general, spectator sport—whether professional or otherwise—lured workers into a dangerous web of consumerism and physical inactivity. Sporting festivals harnessed to socialist goals, on the other hand, would celebrate the beauty and strength of athletes. In the early 1930s one socialist wanted workers to experience the ‘joy that vigorous muscles and the harmony of movement confers’, since life is a beautiful thing, ‘physical, muscular, and sensual life, without doubt; but also the life of the mind, the integral

57 Jean Beaudemoulin, Enquête sur les loisirs de l’ouvrier français (Paris, 1924), pp. 238–9. In the 1920s and 1930s the majority of cyclists in the Tour de France were working class. Thompson, The Tour de France, pp. 144, 149–54, 267–8. 58 Pierre Marie, Pour le sport ouvrier, avant-propos by Charles Piard and Pierre Sergent (Paris, 1934), n.p., preface, and pp. 10, 14, 18, 19. 59 Piard and Sergent, in Marie, Pour le sport ouvrier, pp. 3, 5. 60 Marie, Pour la santé du sédentaire, p. 7. 61 Nye, ‘Degeneration, neurasthenia and the culture of sport in Belle Époque France’, 61, referring to the opinions of Dr Émile Laurent.

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exercise of the force of the mind, the free and purifying use of reason’. For this commentator, modern socialism was resurrecting the ‘Greek miracle’ of ‘Sports and Reason’ that would help to deliver men from exploitation.62 The language deployed mirrors that of the wider physical culturist press, and perhaps strives to recuperate the ‘irrational’ and ‘narcissistic’ love of the body that John Hoberman associates with the far right, recovering it for Marxist ‘reason’.63 The communist left shared the socialist disdain of commercial sporting spectacles, and for the same reasons. It also engaged in a systematic criticism of the Tour de France for its commercially-driven indifference to cyclists’ safety that led to dangerous physical exertion. The Pélissier affair of 1924, in which a prominent racer withdrew from the race in protest at Desgrange’s rigid rules, cemented this critique.64 But communists were particularly sensitive to the state’s interest in military preparation, holding that these societies, funded by state subsidies, created a warmongering spirit among youth through the lure of sport. The communist youth organ L’Avant-Garde complained that the state had practically always instrumentalized sport and exercise to military ends.65 Indeed, in late 1927 only communist deputies voted against socialist Joseph Paul-Boncour’s Bill on making military preparation compulsory in French schools.66 Aware that popular Germanophobia could easily be channelled by sporting events, the communist daily L’Humanité condemned the ‘bourgeois’ sports press for bragging in jingoistic fashion that a ‘French’ team had beaten a ‘foreign’ team.67 Seeing both military preparation and spectator sport as instruments of the militarization of French youth, the task of the communists was to show the young ‘the consequences of this premilitary instruction and mobilize them to fight it’.68 The socialist and communist left did not only write about sport, however, but forged large movements of their own. As noted above, the ‘class against class’ strategy of the communists meant that the two main leftist strands remained at loggerheads until the turnaround of the mid-1930s, rivals rather than allies. In 1920, with the creation of the PCF, the main leftist youth movement split into rival camps—the Fédération des Jeunesses socialistes voting to rally to the international communist youth movement, leaving the non-revolutionary socialists behind.69 According to its own press, the ‘heroic phalanx’ of the Jeunesse communiste was thus born in France. Its goal was to ‘win over to communism all the working youth of the towns and country’.70 In 1934 its organ complained that the 62

Amédée Dunois, ‘Sport ouvrier et socialisme’, La Jeune Garde, 1 January 1933, 2. Hoberman, Sport and Ideology, pp. 79–82, 114–16. 64 Thompson, The Tour de France, pp. 196–206. 65 Robert Savin, ‘Les organisations sportives bourgeoises’, L’Avant-Garde, 1–15 December 1922, 4. 66 François Billoux, ‘Le dirigeant: feuille à l’usage des Dirigeants du Mouvement communiste d’enfants’, no. 17, November 1927, 6–8, AN F7 13 183. 67 L’Humanité, 7 February 1933, APP BA 1718. 68 ‘À la conquête de la Jeunesse Ouvrière!’ Bureau d’éditions, Saint-Denis, Paris, n.d., 17, 25, AN F7 13 188. 69 David Saint-Pierre, Maurice Laporte, une jeunesse révolutionnaire: du communisme à l’anticommunisme (1916–1945) (Québec, 2006), p. 41. 70 Police report dated May 1927, ‘La Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, citing from the JC congress at St Denis, August 1926, AN F7 13 183. 63

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subsequent creation of the Jeunesse SFIO had been motivated purely by the desire to oppose the ‘revolutionary current’ in youth which the JC had successfully tapped.71 In parallel, the PCF, at its creation in 1920, launched a takeover of the worker sport Fédération sportive du travail (FST), whose members voted some time later to join the international red sports movement (IRS) based in Moscow. Thus in August 1923 the first issue of Sport ouvrier appeared; in 1925 the now communist FST incorporated 129 clubs in the Paris area.72 These youth and sports federations provided the key means by which the communist left used the manly athleticism of sport to reach out to young Frenchmen across the rest of the interwar period. Yet in the early 1920s the Jeunesse Communiste could be dismissive of the whole entreprise of sport and leisure as though such activities were necessarily distractions from the class struggle. The movement’s founder, Maurice Laporte, complained in 1919 that the reformist socialist youth movement was too busy trying to recruit via football and ‘farcical singing’ to participate in the real revolutionary action of the era.73 In its sectarian fight against the SFIO, L’Avant-Garde saw proof of the lameness of the socialist youth movement in its preference for forming sports and dancing groups than with giving its members a solid leftist education. One communist opined contemptuously that, ‘[i]t is not sportsmen, nor dancers, that the Third International wants, but men of action’. He would prefer ‘genuine communists capable of serving as cadres for proletarian youth and not sweet little comrades only knowing how to box and fox-trott’.74 For this commentator at least, leisure pursuits such as these—even boxing—were so much identified with bourgeois interests that they could be conceived of in no other way. As Susan Whitney has pointed out, in the early 1920s the JC leadership self-consciously marked themselves out as more virile than either the socialists or adult communists in the PCF. Thus the sectarian conflict of the era was mediated through notions of manliness, and ironically in the very early days of the JCs, this meant casting aspersions on sport as a ‘feminizing’ product of bourgeois hegemony.75 By summer 1922, however, the FST was fully endorsed. L’Avant-garde called for an enormous effort to popularize the ‘revolutionary influence’ of sport and to fight the powerful appeal of bourgeois clubs and the ‘individualism’ of workers.76 By early 1923, communists were instructed not only to take part in worker sport but to agitate from within bourgeois sporting groups if these were the only ones available.77 In summer 1924, in a push for new recruits, the Jeunesse Communiste of Noisy-le-Sec (north-east Paris) organized an open-air sports festival and concert at which the sports and music clubs of Bobigny performed: clubs of the 71

V. Michaut, ‘Sous le drapeau de la Jeunesse Communiste’, L’Avant-Garde, 2 June 1934, 1. Police report on the FST, November 1925, AN F7 13 137. Maurice Laporte, cited from L’Avant-Garde, n.d., in Saint-Pierre, Maurice Laporte, une jeunesse révolutionnaire, p. 39. 74 P. Paratre, ‘Action, sport et danse’, L’Avant-Garde, 9 October 1920, 7. 75 Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 44. 76 R. D., ‘Réflexions sur le Congrès de la FST’, L’Avant-Garde, 15 August 1922, 2. 77 Robert Savin, L’Avant-Garde, 18–31 March 1923, 2. 72 73

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FST put on a show of group gymnastics and races for an audience of around 300 people.78 A JC recruitment brochure published in the mid-1920s urged ‘the necessity of making healthy, strong, trained men’. Boys should undertake light manual labour and physical culture until adulthood, which would make them both more productive workers and prepare them for the necessary combat against capitalism. Indeed, the pamphlet stressed the need to arm the proletariat—quite literally— for the ‘revolutionary fight’.79 By 1927 the Jeunesse Communiste had a sports commission, which recommended that all JC youth should join either the FST or a worker sport club.80 When the JC pushed for youth questions to be heard at the annual CGTU conference, it did so by urging the importance of sport and physical education: in the words of JC leader Jacques Doriot, such a thing would ‘contribut[e] to the . . . complete physical, intellectual, and moral development’ of worker youth.81 The Jeunesse Communiste was clearly aware of the potential of sport and physical culture to cultivate precisely the ‘men of action’ it wanted. From November 1922 L’Avant-Garde featured a regular sports column, covering the activities of the IRS and FST rather than those of ‘bourgeois’ sports organizations. Taking part in physical exercise, L’Avant-garde asserted, was essential for providing the worker with the kind of pure air otherwise denied him in the ‘city barracks’ of working life.82 Physical education and sporting games also provided the opportunity to ‘offset professional physical deformities’. One should not, however, develop one’s body ‘to become stronger nor more beautiful as an individual, but stronger to serve one’s class’.83 Young communists were told that the forces of capital would not give up without a fight, so the proletariat must ‘transform itself into a strong army’, ‘voluntarily accepting a necessary and rigorous discipline’.84 Indeed, at this time it was the position of the IRS, to which the French FST was soon to be affiliated, that sporting cells were crucial for ‘red’ military preparation, ensuring that once a young man entered his period of compulsory national service, his ‘muscular worth and the military knowledge acquired at the club’ would make him stand out from his ‘soldier comrades’ and make it easier for him to turn the other conscripts away from the grip of the bourgeois army.85 One activist reminded his audience that the physical strength developed in military preparation societies should be geared to the revolutionary struggle: ‘the FST must produce complete athletes to form the cadres of the proletarian army.’86 78 Chef du service des recherches administratives et des jeux to the prefect of police, 18 September 1924, APP BA 1938. 79 ‘Pourquoi tu dois adhérer à la Jeunesse Communiste’, 1926, 7, AN F7 13 182. See also Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 68. 80 Police report dated May 1927, ‘La Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, AN F7 13 183. 81 Jacques Doriot, editorial, La Jeunesse communiste: revue mensuelle illustrée, no. 1, July 1927, 2; Instructions from the Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes leadership in Paris to the secretaries of its groups in the provinces, AN F7 13 183. 82 Robert Savin, ‘Sur le sport’, L’Avant-Garde, 16–30 November 1922, 3. 83 Robert Savin, ‘Fédération sportive ouvrière’, L’Avant-Garde, 16–31 December 1922, 4. 84 J. Calman, ‘Classe contre classe’, L’Avant-Garde, 9 October 1920, 6. 85 Robert Savin, ‘Fédération sportive ouvrière’, L’Avant-Garde, 16–31 December 1922, 4. 86 Dormans, cited from a meeting of the Jeunesse Communiste of the 10th arrondissement of Paris and the Comité sportif of the 20th arrondissement in a police report, 15 January 1924, APP BA 1938.

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In 1931 the FST wanted more worker clubs to set up shooting ranges and camping, in which enthusiasts could pass on their skills to other members and thus effect ‘the free revolutionary training of workers’.87 In the mid-1920s the Jeunesse Communiste took the apparently successful decision to ‘lighten the content’ of its organ L’Avant-garde in order to make it more appealing: the result was an increase in sports coverage and the chances that offered to present athletic heroes to its predominantly young and male audience.88 Despite the movement’s own admission that the newspaper had not sold well in Parisian kiosks in late 1925, news-vendors now testified to the fact that the new weekly format was easier to sell on the streets.89 The JCs then moved to a monthly illustrated format in summer 1927 that paid considerable attention to leftist sportifs in pursuits such as non-commercial cycling and swimming.90 The JC organ was struck by the sturdiness of team members at one particular FST swimming event, ‘all strong, strapping lads, well muscled, tanned by the sun. One senses that they’ve lived in the fresh air and are perfectly developped’. The bodies of swimmers—especially Soviet ones—show that they practised a rational physical culture, the basis of all sporting activity and ‘a healthy and regulated life’.91 It is not surprising that the model for sporting mobilization was often the Soviet one.92 Communist youth leaders usually reported on their carefully managed trips to the USSR in glowing terms. One training school for technicians and engineers in Moscow was praised for its application of ‘the principles of methodical and rhythmic movements’, which regulated the posture of students ‘so as to decrease fatigue and augment agility and strength’. If only French youth could follow this example, leaving ‘pleasures dangerous for its morale and health’ behind.93 Details about this idealized life in the USSR were filtered back to grassroots JC members through special evening events. Speakers reported that each factory had a club, rooms for reading, sport, music, and cinema, so as to lure workers away from the cabaret.94 L’Avant-garde gave coverage to sports events in which Soviet teams took part—for example, the football match held in Saint-Denis in early 1926 that pitched a Russian team against a local FST team. As a result of the full physical development encouraged in the USSR, this team displayed ‘rigid discipline’ and ‘absolute sang-froid’ in its play, with not a hint of the brutality that one finds in 87

FST report on the Paris region, December 1931, AN F7 13 137. See the list of resolutions passed at the Congrès de la 4ème Entente des Jeunesses Communistes, 24 July 1926, AN F7 13 182. 89 Communist sources suggest that L’Avant-garde sold 17,000 copies in May 1926—most of them in Paris. ‘Rapport moral du comité national’ for the ‘Ve Congrès national des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, 1926, 7, AN F7 13 181. 90 ‘Le Mois sportif ’, La Jeunesse communiste: revue mensuelle illustrée, no. 1, July 1927, 7. L’Avantgarde was apparently revamped again in response to the success of the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) in working-class areas in 1928, Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 71. 91 ‘Le Mois sportif ’, La Jeunesse communiste: revue mensuelle illustrée, no. 1, July 1927, 10. 92 ‘La Journée Internationale des Jeunes’, L’Avant-Garde, 11 November 1920, 6; Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 68–9. 93 Undated report on Soviet political structures, AN F7 13 188. 94 Police report on a JC meeting held on 15 January 1927, 17 January 1927, AN F7 13 183. 88

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bourgeois sport.95 Soviet athletes were thus routinely held up as manly sporting celebrities in ways designed to bolster support for communist initiatives in France. Sport and sportifs were integrated into political festivals too. In 1925 the Jeunesse Communiste of the Paris region organized an international demonstration in Saint-Denis against the Riff war in Morocco and in defence of the Soviets against the ‘white terror’. Around 2,000 people belonging to the worker athletic clubs of the 18th arrondissement, Saint-Denis, and Montreuil took part.96 A JC event held in Metz, in north-eastern France, as part of the celebrations for international youth week included both political speeches about the martyrs of the Black Sea mutiny and demonstrations of gymnastics.97 And a youth-orientated worker-peasant festival held over three days in spring 1930 saw hundreds of delegates taking part in various sporting events—cycling, running races, basket-ball—held in the municipal stadia of Ivry, Villejuif, St-Maur, Saint-Denis, and Champigny, as well as in the Pershing stadium in Paris itself.98 This sort of fusion of athletic and political landscapes was commonplace on the communist left in these years. But one did not have to belong to the communist youth or sports movement to hear the message. Daily communist newspaper L’Humanité organized cross-country running and cycling races in the 1930s in which hundreds of participants drew audiences in the thousands: such spectacles were then relayed in considerable detail in the communist press. L’Humanité emphasized the physical and moral qualities of the riders taking part in the newspaper’s 1933 cyclist grand prix held in the Saint-Denis velodrome, claiming that sport was an ‘excellent school of endurance and voluntary sacrifice’. Working-class men were showing the way, using their triumph in ‘proletarian sport’ to beat back the pernicious varieties of military, nationalist, police, Catholic, employer, commercial, and fascist sport that lay in wait for the impoverished urban dweller.99 In both its popular press and political festivals, the figure of the disciplined, manly sportif engaged in class struggle on the Soviet model loomed large for communists in the interwar years. In addition, the communist press did at times communciate a hygienist mentality. One journalist complained that if the high commissioner for physical education and sport Henry Paté (also an advocate of compulsory military preparation for male youth) really wanted to ensure public health and achieve ‘the improvement of the race’, he ought to give workers better ventilated workshops; in any case it was only revolutionary sport that had the potential to form ‘healthy minds in healthy bodies’.100 L’Humanité boasted that in the winter ‘cross’ of 1933 in Vitry, a hydrotherapy station, alongside hot drinks and white-hot braziers had been provided to keep competitors warm. These efforts were part of a health service designed 95 ‘Les Travailleurs sportifs russes à Pershing et à Saint-Denis’, L’Avant-Garde, 9 January 1926, 1, AN F7 13 182. 96 Chef du service des recherches administratives et des jeux to the prefect of police, 6 September 1925, APP BA 1851. 97 Central commissioner in Metz to the Directeur des Services Généraux de Police d’Alsace et de Lorraine, 4 September 1927, AN F7 13 181. 98 Police report, 22 April 1930, AN F7 13 181. 99 Marcel Cachin, L’Humanité, 3 July 1933; police report, 29 June 1933, APP BA 1718. 100 Robert Savin, ‘Réflexions d’un sportif ’, L’Avant-Garde, 1–15 March 1924, 2.

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to contrast with the ‘deplorable conditions’ that participants of ‘official’ races endured.101 The organized left certainly bought into the era’s fascination with natural, open-air remedies designed to combat the moral and physical risks associated with living in cities. In the mid-1920s the long-lived communist municipality of Ivry-sur-Seine established colonies de vacances for boys and girls where the emphasis was not only on conventional political instruction but on the therapeutic benefits of fresh air, water, sunshine, and physical exercise, alongside a moral education in the perils of alcohol and tobacco.102 These initiatives were, of course, part of a progressive quest to improve the health of the working classes, but here as elsewhere, the line separating public health from social hygiene could be hazy and illdefined. In fact, one has to look to the ‘individualist’ anarchist left to find the interconnected interest in natural living and social hygiene so common in the world of physical culture proper. In the 1920s, prominent anarchist and sex reformer Eugène Humbert for a short time published a physical culture magazine that encouraged nudism, and his partner Jeanne used photographs of German nudist colonies in one of her novels. Another anarchist figure that supported nudism, E. Armand, thought modesty the product of shame-inducing Christian religion, although he disagreed with naturists who argued that the naked body did not elicit sexual desire. Richard Sonn tells us that many such activists became vegetarians— opening vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Paris—and were simultaneously involved in the social hygiene movement, attacking both alcohol consumption and smoking while advocating nudism, swimming, sunbathing, and gymnastics. Some thought they could ‘improv[e] the fitness of the population through the positive effects of sunshine and outdoor activities’ as well as through the rational application of contraception. There were even anarchist champions of negative eugenics, who spoke in terms of ‘defects’ that could be eliminated by the voluntary sterilization of tuberculosis sufferers, alcoholics, and syphilitics. Strikingly, Eugène Humbert failed to condemn Nazi measures for compulsory sterilization, complaining only that they had been introduced by a militarist state prepared to use its young male citizens as cannon fodder.103 T R A I N I N G A C O M B AT E L I T E There is no doubt that these movements on right and left mobilized sport as a way of reaching out to more young recruits, and in ways that both reflected and reinforced the desire for manly athleticism on the part of its members. But it ought to be acknowledged—as many of the examples cited above themselves suggest—that physical exercise was also deployed by these groups as a way of keeping their young 101

L’Humanité, 13 February 1933. Laura Lee Downs, ‘Municipal communism and the politics of childhood: Ivry-sur-Seine, 1925–1960’, Past and Present (February 2000), 205–41. 103 Richard Sonn, Sex, Violence and the Avant-Garde: Anarchism in Interwar France (Pennsylvania, 2010), pp. 13–14, 16, 111, 118, 121, 130–1. 102

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male supporters fit for the sectarian street-fighting of the period. Underneath the rhetoric of physical aggression in the radical periodical press lay a social reality of frequent physical contact and violence among rival groups. These factions understood that newspaper vendors, press cyclists and security services had to be fit enough to face one another in these daily crises, and at times such movements make explicit how such men were trained. It is not hard to imagine why lessons in physical culture may have been necessary. There was nothing exceptional about the fight that broke out in 1929 in the Place de l’Opéra in central Paris involving over a hundred Camelots du Roi who collectively injured six police agents by inflicting on them several blows with canes and fists.104 The violence committed in the rues Douarnenez and Damrémont in Paris in January and April 1925 respectively was more extreme: in the latter incident, the heavy street-fighting that followed a communist attack on JP members in the 18th arrondissement resulted in three deaths. In the fight in the rue Douarnenez, on the other hand, the rightists were the aggressors, provoking a renewed burst of overt anti-fascist activity among leftist groups such as the Jeunesse Communiste.105 Indeed, in some neighbourhoods meetings, demonstrations, and parades were banned precisely to avoid the violence associated with counter-attacks mounted by ideological enemies.106 The selling of radical newspapers in the streets of French cities—most notably Paris—provided many opportunities for hand-to-hand combat: most of these groups relied upon active members to hawk their publications in public places. Despite the Faisceau’s claim in early 1928 that its newspaper was available only to subscribers, police reports are full of references to the sale of Le Nouveau siècle in the streets of Paris, often by professional criers paid a daily rate.107 These sellers congegrated at the roundabout at the top of the Champs Elysées on Sunday afternoons, and on at least one occasion distributed the paper for free among members of the public enjoying a drink on café terraces near the Gare Saint-Lazare.108 Street sellers of the Jeunesses Patriotes’ title Le National hawked the newspaper around railway stations and among those leaving church mass. It seems clear that conflict was not only an inevitable consequence of such activities, but was at times actively sought. In December 1926 the JP leadership may have complained that hundreds of communists in Vincennes were intent on restaging the violence of the rue Damrémont by handing out their newspapers in a ‘provocative’ manner, but the Paris branch of the Jeunesses Patriotes’ Phalanges Universitaires stationed members in the Latin Quarter deliberately to prevent the sale of leftist newspapers by street vendors and to offer Le National instead.109 Similarly, in 1928 the AF’s Camelots du Roi attacked a band of republican students who were selling their organ, 104

As reported in Le Matin, 20 January 1929, AN F7 13 207. Police dossier on the fatalities in the rue Damrémont, Paris, April 1925; police report, 5 January 1925, on attempts to build a Comité d’unité prolétarienne antifasciste in the wake of the incident in the rue Douarnenez, APP BA 1851. 106 See police report, 1 December 1929, for the banning of a procession in Champigny, APP BA 1851. 107 Le Nouveau siècle, 10 January 1928, 2; police reports, 1 and 25 July 1925, AN F7 13 208. 108 Police notes, 9 and 10 November 1925; 25 June 1926, AN F7 13 208. 109 Police report on the Phalanges Universitaires, January 1929, AN F7 13 232. 105

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L’Université républicaine, outside the law faculty.110 Sellers of the communist youth newspaper L’Avant-Garde frequently came into contact with the vendors of the JP organ Le National or the Maurrassian L’Action Française, and scuffles were accepted as an occupational hazard across the period.111 As a result of this continued violence, all movements turned their attention to the physical safety of news-vendors. In February 1927, members complained that Pierre Lecoeur, general secretary of the national federation of Camelots du Roi, had not sent a sufficient number of men to protect the sellers of L’Action Française after a weekend fight that had broken out in Boulogne with local communists selling L’Avant-garde in the same place.112 The JP explicitly recognised that vente à la criée could ‘lead to incidents with the sellers of opposing newspapers’, and thus it protected street hawkers by using its own specially trained ‘centuries’113 The movement construed communist counter-selling as ‘mobilization exercises’, but was ready to respond: ‘if we are attacked we will defend ourselves and, at that point, if we are not numerous, we will know how to be the more brave’.114 In the late 1920s a special committee was established to increase sales and to protect communists engaged in la vente à la criée from both rightist thugs and the police.115 By the end of 1933 L’Humanité was referring to these defence committees as veritable ‘shock troops.’116 The defence committees sometimes used sport and physical culture to mobilize support for them: in Ivry, Marcel Cachin presented a trophy to the winners of a football match comprised of committee members, encouraging those present ‘in chasing the bourgeois press from the homes of workers’.117 And it was hoped that the ‘red sportsmen’ taking part in a festival to mark the thirtieth anniversary of L’Humanité and its defence committees would ‘glorify the beauty of physical exercise while symbolizing before the thousands of proletarians assembled there, the growing strength and revolutionary faith of working youth’.118 The meetings of each faction were often invaded by ideological enemies as well, making a physically fit and martially trained security service crucial. Dozens of anarchists armed with truncheons tried to disrupt a JP meeting held at Luna-Park in March 1925, but engaged in violence against police instead.119 The security service at JP meetings, designed to ward off such attacks, was generally provided by ‘mobile groups’ dressed in berets and insignia and carrying canes.120 When the 110 ‘Au quartier latin des étudiants républicains sont assaissis par des camelots du roy’, Le Quotidien, 20 January 1928, AN F7 13 206. 111 Police note dated 15 December 1928, APP BA 1910; Le Matin, 18 July 1927 and L’Humanité, 18 July 1927, AN F7 13 206; police report, 15 November 1933, APP BA 1718. 112 Police reports, 20 and 22 February 1927, AN F7 13 206. 113 Cited from a speech on recruitment and training of the JP ‘groupes mobiles’, police note, 24 February 1928, AN F7 13 232. 114 Jeunesses Patriotes eastern region to Fouquet, commissaire de police, Vincennes, 9 December 1926, APP BA 1942. 115 Police report, 14 March 1934; L’Humanité, 4 December 1933, APP BA 1718. 116 L’Humanité, 9 November 1933, APP BA 1718. 117 Marcel Cachin cited in a police report, 13 November 1933, APP BA 1718. 118 Alex Ballu, L’Humanité, 21 April 1933, APP BA 1718. 119 Police reports, 12 and 14 March 1925, APP BA 1851. 120 Police note, 15 February 1929, AN F7 13 232.

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Faisceau conducted its first meeting in Rouen, the leadership feared communist demonstrations, and whisked away the leaders under the protection of armed ‘young men in fascist shirts’. During the meeting there had been more canes and sticks ready for distribution in case of an invasion of the hall.121 In spring 1930 the Action Française organized a surveillance service comprising 900 Camelots du Roi to protect a large gathering in Antony for royalists and their families.122 There could be conflict within leftist and rightist groups too. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the police of Paris intervened on numerous occasions to protect socialist meetings from communist aggression.123 More commonly, as many historians have pointed out, violence broke out among rival groups on the radical right. Faisceau meetings were often interrupted by the Action Française’s Camelots du Roi as well as by communists. Shortly before Christmas 1925 a group of Camelots violently interrupted a meeting organized by the Faisceau’s university section, the Jeunesses fascistes: it began with heckling, and escalated into a rush at the podium in an attempt to gain access to Georges Valois himself, marked by the ‘furious blows’ of canes. In retaliation, Faisceau commander Jacques Arthuys gave the order to his centuries to gang up on the royalists, but to little effect. Firemen were brought in to restore order. As one young man was heard to exclaim on his way out of the meeting, ‘between fascism and the king, the fight is on’.124 It was against this landscape of conflict and violence that leaders of these political movements attempted overtly to train militarized combat troops in which physical exercise played a key role. The Faisceau grouped its elite ‘combatants’ into two separate bodies: the ‘legions’ recruited among men above twenty years of age who had already performed military service, while those aged between sixteen and twenty were organized in the Jeunesses fascistes.125 As historians have pointed out, however, there is little mention of this latter group in police reports, which is probably evidence of its relative lack of involvment in street-fighting. Indeed, the Faisceau desisted from the deliberate street violence of the other rightist leagues.126 Action Française, on the other hand, made Colonel Georges Larpent responsible for honing teams of Camelots du Roi in the Paris region into ‘combat groups’. They were put to good use in November 1926 on the occasion of the return of Aristide Briand from Geneva, when around forty members took part in an antirapprochement demonstration at the Gare de Lyon. Larpent was confident that he could mobilize up to 1,000 men at short notice in the future. Drills for night 121

Commissaire central, Rouen, to the directeur de la sûreté générale, 29 May 1926, AN F7 13 208. Directeur-adjoint, chef du service des renseignements généreux et des jeux, to the prefect of police, 21 May 1930, APP BA 1851. 123 Police report, 2 February 1934, APP BA 1851; police report, 25 July 1924, APP BA 1938. 124 Cited in a police report, 15 December 1925, AN F7 13 208; on AF-Faisceau tension and violence, see Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, ch. 4. 125 ‘Les Jeunesses fascistes’, Le Nouveau siècle, 24 December 1925, AN F7 13 208. Allen Douglas describes the former as ‘mostly mature men with jobs and families’: after November 1927 légionnaires comprised soley war veterans, and a new body, the Gardes bleus, was set up to guard meetings: From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, p. 144. 126 Kalman, The Extreme Right in Interwar France, p. 153; dossier on the Camelots du Roi in the late 1920s, APP BA 1851; Allen Douglas, ‘Violence and fascism: the case of the Faisceau’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19 (1984), 689–712. 122

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mobilizations were carried out in some Parisian arrondissements.127 The AF ‘commissaires’ also functioned as shock troops, securing order at meetings and providing muscle for demonstrations. This route was open to AF members over 18 years of age who possessed ‘drive’ and ‘pluck’, discipline, and courage, and who were ‘sufficiently gifted from the physical point of view’. All this was necessary if one were to act ‘always with tact, energy, discipline, speed, decisiveness, and suppleness’.128 The Jeunesses Patriotes of Pierre Taittinger, for their part, had been formed in December 1924 specifically as anti-communist shock troops for the Ligue des Patriotes, whose members, Taittinger thought, were ‘too old, inactive; incapable of standing in the way of revolutionaries whose boldness was growing each day’.129 He proposed the creation of ‘groups of young men, capable of providing the Ligue with several strong shock batallions, carefully recruited, well-trained, and disciplined’.130 The most elite group was the ‘iron section’: it served as Taittinger’s personal guard and took part in the fight in the rue Damrémont.131 University student members were organized into Phalanges Universitaires (it was claimed there were more than 2,000 members across Paris in 1929), some of which housed special combat formations (‘groupes francs’) used for disrupting the activities of leftist students: canes were often supplied for the purpose.132 Regular members were divided into ‘centuries’ whose elite forces were constituted by ‘mobile groups’—men who had shown a particular zeal and commitment alongside ‘a strict discipline’.133 Chefs of these groups were instructed never to allow their men to enter into physical conflict with the police, to avoid excessive use of the truncheon, and to learn that it would be ‘useless and cowardly to keep going at it’ when one’s opponent had already been taken down.134 They emphasized that young men ought not join such elite combat groups on a whim of enthusiasm or a taste for ‘the battle’: the Jeunesses Patriotes did not seek out conflict, ‘playing Don Quixote and creating fights’. On the contrary, the mobile groups should be ‘serious formations’, ready to be called upon to ‘show the proof of their strength’ and ‘composed of men with sang-froid ’ who could absorb the verbal abuse of enemies without retaliating needlessly. While it was expected that these men had a naturally ‘more decisive temperament’ than normal members, they were obliged to train in sport and physical exercise so as to make themselves ‘ready to receive blows and to give them in return’.135 127

Police report, 13 April 1927, AN F7 13 206. Pierre Lecoeur, general secretary of the Fédération Nationale des Camelots du Roi, on the ‘règlement de commissaries d’action française’, 15 October 1926, AN F7 13 206. 129 Undated police report on the history of the Jeunesses Patriotes, APP BA 1942. 130 Pierre Taittinger’s ideas, paraphrased in a police report on the Phalanges Universitaires, January 1929, AN F7 13 232. 131 Undated police report on the history of the Jeunesses Patriotes, 13, APP BA 1942. 132 Police report on the Phalanges Universitaires, January 1929, AN F7 13 232. 133 Police report, 1 February 1930, APP BA 1942; Pierre Taittinger, ‘Apprenons à agir!’, Le National, 30 January 1927, 1. 134 Jeunesses Patriotes circular to leaders of ‘groupes mobiles’, cited in a police report, 10 June 1933, APP BA 1942. 135 Cited from a speech on recruitment and training of JP ‘groupes mobiles’, police note, 24 February 1928; text on the organization of the ‘centuries’ and ‘groupes mobiles’ of the Paris region, 15 June 1928, AN F7 13 232. 128

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Weekly physical culture lessons were provided, as was shooting practice, at least in Paris, even if it was notionally forbidden for members to carry guns. Indeed, police reports confirm that such weapons were rarely found.136 The most active JP members were thus schooled for extreme purposes in what was actually quite a commonplace cult of virility that placed as much emphasis (here no doubt for practical reasons in addition to ideological preference) on self-discipline as on muscle. On the left one sees a similar fusion of athletic and martial activities in the forging of combat elites. In summer 1927 the Jeune Garde Antifasciste organized a rural sporting outing for its supporters in order to commemorate the June days of 1848. Wearing the usual outfit of beret, khaki jacket, and cane, the members of the Paris sections—including some women wearing a basque beret and a ‘nurse’s armband’—gathered at the Porte de Vincennes and were taken in a convoy of trucks led by a dozen cyclists to the Sénart forest.137 A similar event that took place in Meudon the previous spring had featured football, running, and boxing events.138 In late spring 1928, when the JGA organized a military-style day of operations in Cormeille, north-west of Paris, the general secretary commended the young men on the ‘revolutionary conscience’ that had driven them to engage so energetically in the physical exercises, marching, and encirclement manoeuvres.139 The communist Jeune Garde also planned to stage a fight against fascism through disciplining the bodies of militants. At one of their local meetings in Paris in September 1929, a speaker urged proletarian youth to devote all their activity to the struggle against employers’ organizations, including sports clubs and the Scout movement. All such organizations, the speaker opined, were ‘designed to keep young people under capitalist domination and to prepare them for military service’.140 Instead, the central committee of the Jeune Garde had organized its own ‘physical culture championships’. It was this kind of initiative, in conjunction with weekly physical education lessons, which would enable leftist youth ‘capable of fighting and defending themselves whether against the Jeunesses Patriotes or the police’.141 The young communists of the JC tried to form their own combat groups too.142 In 1923 an attempt was made to create communist ‘centuries’ on the German model, engaged in dangerous work for which members had to be prepared to sacrifice their lives. These ‘centuries’ were to be armed with automatic pistols as well as truncheons, specifically for attacking—or even killing—a Camelot du Roi or other 136 Police report, 19 November 1925; C.F., ‘Le fascisme en France: l’organisation armée des Jeunesses Patriotes’, L’Ère nouvelle, 28 December 1928; police report, May 1925, AN F7 13 232; police report, n.d. on JP activity, APP BA 1942. 137 See police reports dated 16 and 20 June 1927, APP BA 1910. 138 Chef du Services des Renseignements généraux et des Jeux to the Prefect of Police, Paris, 18 April 1927, APP BA 1910. 139 Latour, general secretary of the JGA, paraphrased in a police report dated 7 June 1928, APP BA 1910. 140 Police report of a meeting of the 11th section of the Jeune Garde, 7 September 1929, APP BA 1910. 141 Speaker paraphrased in a police report, 7 September 1929, APP BA 1910. 142 Directeur du cabinet of the prefect of police to the minister of the interior, August 1925, APP BA 1851.

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‘fascist’, and sabotaging their meetings by force.143 In addition, in seeking members of a security service, the communists sought the manly triumvirate of ‘sang-froid, contempt for danger, [and] physical aptitude’.144 Such a quest took place amid recognition of the mobilizing potential, after the 1924 elections, of rightist groups such as the Faisceau and Action Française. Armed attack from the right was expected eventually, and if the ‘fascists’ had gone quiet, it was said, this was because they had learned the lessons of their failure in the street-fighting of the mid-1920s: ‘The next “Douarnenez” will be prepared more carefully and will form a mass movement that will lead to butchery.’145 The men in such communist combat groups, armed with automatic pistols and rubber truncheons, ought to be ‘young, vigourous men capable of the greatest sacrifices, mobilizable at any moment of the day or night’. Those showing ‘a lack of courage’ or indiscipline should be immediately reported. It was recognized that not all comrades would be eligible, since some were occupied entirely by their profession (for example, railway workers) and others were ‘too old or unformed’.146 In 1934, militaire and author of get-fit manuals aimed at civilians, Colonel Arnould, watched with alarm a training camp of the Jeunesse Communiste and FST on the banks of the Marne. Under a prominently displayed red flag he saw young men and women perform various sports and physical exercises designed to develop their bodies while singing revolutionary songs. Arnould was alarmed that ‘isolated young people, families even, wanting to spend their weekends and public holidays in the open air’ should, in satisfying these ‘healthy tastes’, ‘go camp under a red flag and receive the stamp of certain doctrines’, letting themselves be forged into instruments of class struggle.147 The practical uses of sport and physical culture were not lost on the Paris police force either, which after all provided key protagonists in the sectarian conflict of the interwar period.148 The Association sportive de la Préfecture de Police was created in 1913, having grown out of the turn-of-the-century establishment of a police fencing club. In the 1920s sections were added for rugby, cycling, wrestling, football, athletics, boxing, swimming, basket-ball, gymnastics, and rowing, among other activities. As well as providing a focus of sociability for police officers and their families, the ASPP, as it became known, also recognized that exercise provided good training for the physical demands of policing, since daily activities such as making arrests required the exertion of a good deal of physical force and discipline.149

143 Cited from a police report of a meeting of JCs of the 20th arrondissement, 7 September 1923, APP BA 1938. 144 ‘Organisation du service d’ordre’, probably 24 April 1925, AN F7 13 188. 145 ‘La Nouvelle étape du fascisme’, n.d. AN F7 13 188. 146 ‘Chefs de groupes’, communist documents seized by the police from the home of Léon Ilbert in the 1920s, n.d., AN F7 13 188. 147 Colonel Arnould, commander at the École supérieure d’éducation physique at Joinville-le-Pont, to Louis Marin, minister of health and physical education, 27 July 1934, AN 317 AP 222. 148 Chris Millington, ‘Political violence in interwar France’, History Compass, 10, 3 (2012), 253. 149 Booklet on the Association sportive de la Police de Paris, n.d., 4, and article in Liaisons, no. 279, septembre–octobre 1986, APP DB 280.

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There was more to the attitudes expressed towards sport and physical exercise in these quarters than an attempt to boost numbers or to train civilian soldiers for the fight. For left and right, the male body was often the very site on which the new society would be built metaphorically. Particularly on the radical right, the perceived failings of national elites were not infrequently expressed in gendered terms as a failure of either their moral or physical qualities of manliness, contrasted with the courage and sacrifice embodied in the ancien combattant. Conversely, if revirilized the male body could regenerate a nation cast in the movements’ own image. Indeed, it was not unusual for the quest to create combatant elites to be crafted self-consciously in the shadow of the Great War. And on both left and right, the figure of the contemporary conscript was evoked, albeit in different ways, as the conduit of a national future mapped out on his body. This is one way in which, across the political spectrum, the drive for the ‘new man’ could be articulated explicitly in relation to martial as well as athletic values. On the radical right especially, this process was characterized by what Robert Wohl has described as ‘generational rhetoric’—in this case a harnessing of the supposed revolt of a youth disenfranchised and let down by the long-lived political establishment and by effete republican politicians lacking in virility.150 The Jeunesses Patriotes complained that France suffered from a masculine lack. The Third Republican political elite were, to Pierre Taittinger, ‘these men who have done nothing’, needing replacement by ‘new men’ who were not ‘impotent, locked in the Elysée palace’, but men of action.151 The Faisceau leadership saw Third Republican rule as implicitly devirilizing: ‘[i]t’s an institution that creates decreptitude. Men are worth today what they were worth yesterday’, but it is the ‘parliamentary machine’ itself, ‘horribly old-looking’, which corrupts them. It squeaks and cracks and deserves to be put in a museum.152 Charles Maurras unleashed criticism against ‘our physiology professors’ who had taught a generation of youth to privilege intelligence over instinct, developing the mind at the expense of the body and thus producing unmanned political elites.153 Furthermore, the Action Française drew a contrast between ‘comrades’ who had spent 1915 in ‘the frozen ice of the trench’ and the men who were now ministers in the Third Republic. Of the seventeen in the Herriot cabinet, the AF claimed, ten who were mobilizable were never called up, including Edouard Herriot himself from the classe de 92. The ‘heroic’ Camille Chautemps served only as a driver in Tours, 300 km from the front.154 As an AF 150

Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (London, 1980), pp. 38, 340. Pierre Taittinger, speaking at a JP and Légion mass meeting at Luna-Park, 15 November 1925: police report, 19 November 1925, AN F7 13 323. 152 ‘Décrépitude’, Le Nouveau siècle, 9 December 1925, 1. There are shades of Valois’ Sorelianism in this characterization of a system that has prevented the bourgeoisie from recovering its ‘heroic and military virtues’, Douglas, From Fascism to Libertarian Communism, p. 26. 153 Charles Maurras, ‘La Politique’, L’Action Française, 11 December 1926, AN F7 13 207. 154 ‘Aux poilus d’il y a dix ans’, in a dossier of tracts from 1925–6, AN F7 13 207. 151

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propaganda flyer put it, ‘the men and the concepts of democracy are completely worn out’: the masses should rise up under a chef in its own army of combatants to wrest the state away from ‘the impotent hands of demagogues’.155 In a book published shortly before the Faisceau was established, future leader Jacques Arthuys tried to harness the political strength of war veterans themselves by appealing to the imagined gulf between their heroism and capacity for bodily endurance, and the ‘mediocre and the cowards who make up democratic governments’.156 By this logic, the war dead and anciens combattants became the manly sacrifice of a democratic style of rule that was at once intellectualized, unpatriotic, and cowardly. Faisceau chief Georges Valois was clear from the beginning about what was needed. ‘We want real leaders, who will owe their power not to intrigue and corruption, but to their work’, men who ‘will constantly give the proof ’ of their capacity to rule through their actions.157 The Faisceau’s légionnaires must succeed in wresting the control of the state away from the ‘hands of the elderly of the defeat and shirkers’ in whose hands the victory of 1918 rang hollow: underneath the corruption of the gerontocracy ‘France is healthy and strong’, with half a million ‘combatants who clench their fists’ ready for ‘perilous missions’.158 The leadership of the Faisceau clearly thought that sport was a terrain on which this dual bodily and national regeneration could be forged. It was claimed that football and rugby had captured the imagination of the sporting public ‘because its practice physically improves the race and it is from a strong, sturdy, hardened youth that we can hope for the complete renaissance of France’.159 Valois thought that sport provided a good antidote to a nation that was ‘too intellectualized’, shunning action. It was ‘one of the forms of activity that restores achievers and creators. A good sportsman, when he listens to speeches, must say to the speaker: “What have you done, and what will you do?”’ In this sense, Valois’ own enthusiastic alpinisme led the way, and Le Nouveau siècle’s coverage of Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole provided more celebration of just the kind of physical and moral conquest over self and nature that the movement required.160 In an issue of Le Nouveau siècle given over almost entirely to the memory of war veterans, the sports chronicle remembered ‘great French champions’—the runner Jean Bouin, the cyclists Léon Comès and Léon Hourlier, the rugby player and aviator Maurice Boyau—who had died facing the enemy on the battlefield. It was held that one cause of recent French sporting failure was precisely that the nation ‘is paying the price of the heroism of the war veterans, the consequence of the great slaughter’. And it was in the name of such fallen warrior-athletes that members of the coming generation, ‘those who have not suffered in their flesh’, needed to give France the position she deserved in ‘all sports competitions’.161 155

‘Aux patriotes républicains et royalistes’, n.d., in a dossier of AF tracts from 1925–26, AN F7 13 207. Jacques Arthuys, Les Combattants (Paris, 1924), p. 20. Georges Valois, ‘Légionnaires’, Le Nouveau siècle, 2 April 1925, 2. 158 Georges Valois, ‘Mobilisation’, Le Nouveau siècle, 16 April 1925, 3. 159 E.-G. Drigny, ‘Coupe et championnat’, Le Nouveau siècle, 6 February 1927, 4. 160 René Herbert, ‘Une interview de Georges Valois sur le Sport’, Le Nouveau siècle, 13 February 1927, 4; ‘Le Faisceau sportif ’, Le Nouveau siècle, 28 May 1925, 4, AN F7 13 208. 161 J.-L. B., ‘Les sports’, Le Nouveau siècle, 16 April 1925, 6. 156 157

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It was important to these movements that the young bodies of the post-war generation inherit the athletic and martial heroism of the poilu rather than the feminized flabbiness of the republican politician. The Jeunesses Patriotes appealed to young men who were adolescents during the Great War, playing with toy soldiers and full of admiration for their elders in the trenches. This male youth— the so-called ‘third’ war generation written about by Robert Wohl—had, in the eyes of the Jeunesses Patriotes, recognized that the poilu’s sacrifice had not been honoured by post-war governments who had ‘deluded’ the older generation with a myth of universal peace.162 While Pierre Taittinger thought it was important to spare the young the ‘horrors of the War’, he wanted them to understand the great moral appeal of the ‘strength’ and ‘discipline’ of the armed forces.163 Veterans, one contributor to Valois’ Le Nouveau siècle argued, constituted a ‘new aristocracy’ in France and commanded the respect of those who had not known combat, and the Faisceau’s university section, the Jeunesses fascistes, was created to bridge the gap between these veterans and the younger generation who were invoked as their heirs.164 Contemporary conscripts were sometimes addressed directly in this project— no surprise, given the systematic attempt of the communist left to win over their political loyalities. Action Française organized banquets for the ‘departure of the class’, inviting members of the AF student wing, Camelots, and ligueurs on the cusp of departing for the regiment to attend.165 Jeunesses Patriotes members on military service were told to ‘lift the morale of our comrades in the regiment who, embittered by life in the barracks and the fatigues of military life would be seduced by communist doctrines’.166 The anthem of the Faisceau, sung to the tune of a ‘chant du départ’, addressed a ‘youth that rises up, hope of the nation’, who would somehow make good the as yet pointless sacrifice of men in the war.167 The more experienced men—‘ceux qui ont fait la guerre’—would provide the best guides for these raw recruits, having learned above all ‘a constant victory over oneself ’. They would communicate ‘the will to act’ and how to sacrifice themselves for the nation, the need for a chef and for discipline.168 The rooky conscript was invited, in this way, to emulate the manly qualities of his elders and to atone for the devirilized political elite. Through a matrix of athleticism and martial valour, it was both the poilus and their younger brothers who had not yet seen military service who were mobilized by the Faisceau in their appeal to build the ‘new order’.169 Perhaps because the target of such movements’ recruitment campaigns was often war 162

Pighetti de Rivasso, ‘Phalanges Universitaires’, Le National, 4 March 1928, 4. Pierre Taittinger, cited from a speech at a private meeting in Nantes by the prefect of the LoireInférieure in a letter to the minister of the interior, 25 June 1925, AN F7 13 208. 164 De Barral, ‘Disciplines’, Le Nouveau siècle, 30 April 1925, 3; Le Nouveau siècle, 3 December 1925, 3. 165 See the invitation in L’Action Française, 3 November 1928, AN F7 13 206. 166 Police report on Jeunesses Patriotes activity, n.d. APP BA 1942. 167 ‘L’Hymne du Faisceau’, lyrics by Jean Suberville, Le Nouveau siècle, 23 January 1927, 1. 168 ‘Les Légions’ and ‘Les Jeunesses fascistes’, Le Nouveau siècle, 24 December 1925. 169 ‘Les Combattants ont sauvé la France pour y vivre librement’, Le Nouveau siècle, 11 September 1927, 3. 163

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veterans themselves, or because, in their eyes, armed service was so intimately connected with patriotism, it was unusual for those on the radical right to engage in the kind of ritual pillorying of the failed conscript that one sees across the world of physical culture. Bodily failure for these commentators was enacted in the Chamber of Deputies much more than at the conseils de révision. Concerns about male bodily weakness were obviously not just the preserve of the radical right. We have seen in the first chapter how socialist Pierre Marie urged a ‘bodily revalorization’ of French youth through sporting activity that would hopefully result in a wider social transformation. He dwelled on the physical decline of French men more than most on the left, at least until the mid-1930s, opining in 1931 that France was a nation ‘physically among the least vigorous of the old continent’.170 It was no surprise to him that 52 per cent of prospective conscripts in the Orne and Pas-de-Calais departments were found unfit for service in that year.171 Yet the experience of the First World War, Marie wrote, had shown that without physical strength and health a citizen could not fulfil his responsibilities of productive and reproductive work. In his view, no state initiative had yet achieved the necessary shift in popular attitudes to bodily movement: ‘[t]he automobile, the elevator, the chaise-longue replace all physical exertion’.172 For him the state had done nothing about the poor quality of French manhood, and he specifically criticized the conseils de révision for their lack of a re-educative function— correcting round backs, expanding chests, strengthening hearts, building muscles. Those who failed were offered no means of remedying their ‘physical and degenerate defects’.173 We have seen that the left, too, cultivated a ‘new man’ with both athletic and martial qualities. The pedagogical project outlined by the socialist student youth organization of the Hérault department involved not only ‘the conquest of youth’, but the emancipation of the proletariat by revolutionary action undertaken by university students: ‘we must be men of action, because we are young, impassioned, and strong’.174 The Jeunesse Communiste, for its part, wanted a ‘new man’ who would follow the imagined Soviet lead by abstaining from alcohol and sculpting his body into a muscular engine of revolution. In seeking to legitimize the affirmation of revolutionary principles in the break from the socialist SFIO in 1920, its youth organ asserted that a new generation, inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, was rising up. ‘New men gather the weapons fallen from feeble hands and reform ranks.’ The youth were to be the foundation on which ‘our hopes of social regeneration’ rested, literally an avant-garde, a ‘legion of the best combatants’ in the proletarian defence.175 In the words of a popular rebel song, 170

Pierre Marie, Pour la santé du sédentaire (Paris, 1931), n.p., preface, p. 6. Pierre Marie, ‘Quelques rēflexions sur la querelle Hébert-Joinville’, La Culture physique, June 1931, 179–80. 172 Pierre Marie, ‘Les Pouvoirs publics et l’éducation physique’, La Culture physique, November 1929, 332–3. 173 Pierre Marie, ‘L’Etat coupable’, La Culture physique, June 1930, 167. 174 La Jeune Garde, ‘Notre but’, 1, and E. Laurent, ‘Les Étudiants socialistes’, 3, La Jeune Garde, 15 December 1932. 175 Varine, ‘À l’Avant-Garde!’, L’Avant-Garde, 25 September 1920, 1. 171

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La Jeune Garde, whose lyrics were often published in the communist youth press, young workers ought to realize that ‘we are men and not dogs’.176 Although sharing in the martial ideal, the PCF carried out a sustained campaign against military service and military preparation of the conventional statesanctioned kind, seeking to create an alternative fighting force of men of action. In the 1920s its campaigns against conventional militarism were widespread, and the party’s activists and newspapers—especially the youth wing—were frequently subject to legal action (including prison sentences) on account of them. In September 1934 the communists were still under governmental scrutiny for ‘inciting soldiers to disobey their leaders’ and sabotaging mobilization.177 Unsurprisingly, the JC was opposed to the introduction of compulsory premilitary training of the kind demanded by deputy Adolphe Chéron and others, and the PCF was critical of governmental proposals to compensate for the ‘service of one year’ by extending compulsory military preparation for adolescents.178 In the late 1920s a communist propaganda flyer protested the attempt to enforce compulsory military preparation in schools as part of this reduction.179 In opposition to the ‘Painlevé projects’ of 1927, JC general secretary François Billoux had suggested that military preparation would be acceptable only if children learned ‘good methods of fighting’, not targeted against their family members, ‘but to fight against their own bourgeosie’. Such military preparation, in his view, ought to be provided in ‘organizations of proletarian childhood’ rather than sports federations.180 L’Humanité warned that thousands of gymnasts and sportifs took part in military preparation without even being aware of it, since they were enrolled in bourgeois federations who peddled it ‘under the cover of physical education’.181 It celebrated members of a workers’ sports club in Saint-Denis who attempted to subvert their local military preparation society from within by loudly advertising their commitment to worker sport and threatening to leave when the gymnastics instructors complained about their ‘seditious’ propaganda.182 In the early 1930s the JCs encouraged ‘red sportsmen’ to infiltrate bourgois federations in this way, seeking to turn young workers against the leaders before they entered military service.183 In trying to reach as many conscripts as possible with these messages, the JC issued a publication called Le Conscrit twice a year when new contingents were called up to military service. According to communist sources, 30,000 copies were distributed in May and November 1925, and 40,000 in April 1926.184 176

L’Avant-Garde, 31 July 1922, 2. Citing justice minister Henry Chéron in a circular to public prosecutors in frontier regions, L’Humanité, 29 September 1934, APP BA 1718. 178 Le Conscrit, October 1934. 179 ‘Une manifestation pour la paix? Non!’; chef du service des renseignements généreux et des jeux to the prefect of police, 1 December 1929, APP BA 1851. 180 F. Billoux, ‘Le dirigeant: feuille à l’usage des Dirigeants du Mouvement communiste d’enfants’, no. 17, November 1927, AN F7 13 183. 181 L’Humanité, 7 September 1931, AN F7 13 137. 182 L’Humanité, 13 March 1933, APP BA 1718. 183 La Jeunesse Communiste en lutte: pour la conquête des masses (Paris, 1934), 6, 11, 15. 184 ‘Rapport moral du comité national’ for the ‘Ve Congrès national des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, 1926, 7, AN F7 13 181; Saint-Pierre, Maurice Laporte, une jeunesse révolutionnaire, estimates 30 000, 48. 177

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It addressed the young conscript directly with a good deal of tutoiement, leaving him in no uncertain terms that he was about to be ripped from his home to be trained as a guard-dog of capitalism. The publication urged class solidarity between urban workers and peasants, between metropolitan conscripts and colonial ones, and saw German worker-conscripts as fellow victims of international capitalism.185 The JCs also conducted a census of ‘red conscripts’ belonging to the FST, and tried to organize solidarity among leftists in the barracks by encouraging them to join JC ‘amicales’ set up specifically for the purpose.186 Vins d’adieu were organized for departing conscripts in addition to various anti-militarist balls where PCF leaders such as Paul Vaillant-Couturier and Jacques Doriot sometimes spoke. Communist sources suggest that in the Paris region in October 1925, some seventy such occasions were held, around half of them organized within factories.187 The communist youth organization thus attempted to monopolize the rites and rituals around the departure of conscripts that had existed in urban and rural France since at least the late nineteenth century, and which were designed to mark the passage to manhood of these young men while assuaging their anxieties about separation from family.188 The JC press played a key role in this attempt to ‘disorganize the bourgeois army’ from within.189 Communist youth publications, while ostensibly instructing young recruits to obey orders and specifically not to desert, celebrated examples of military disobedience and reminded the conscript that his physical strength could be an instrument of revolution. The new recruit should smile to himself in the knowledge that ‘you feel in yourself a new power that gives your muscles a bit more strength for anti-militarist blows.’190 This instruction not to forget one’s class identity—and the political potential of one’s athletic body—was a mainstay of the communist press aimed at conscripts (see Fig. 4.1).191 The message was reinforced through a series of cultural events that were often organized in conjunction with sports organizations. For example, in February 1927 an amateur theatre night in Clichy involving the Jeunesse Communiste de la Proletarienne Sportive reminded its audience that soldiers and workers were ‘brothers in misery’ and ought to fraternize.192 But the Jeunesse Communiste also underscored the vulnerability of the bodies of conscripts—bodies about to suffer the physical privations as well as the ideological dangers of the barracks. It was their opinion that in the army excessive training 185

Comité National des Jeunesses Communistes, ‘Manifeste aux conscrits’, Le Conscrit, October

1923. 186

Police report dated May 1927, ‘La Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, AN F7 13 183. 187 ‘Rapport moral du comité national’ for the ‘Ve Congrès national des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, 1926, 8, AN F7 13 181. 188 Roynette, “Bons pour le service”, 211–17. 189 Jacques Doriot, editorial, La Jeunesse communiste: revue mensuelle illustrée, no. 1, July 1927, 2. 190 Marcel Joubert, ‘L’armée est désagrégeable’, Le Conscrit, October 1923; ‘Gloire aux marins de la Mer Noire’ : Le Conscrit, April 1924. 191 Comité National des Jeunesses Communistes, ‘Manifeste aux conscrits’, Le Conscrit, October 1923. 192 Police report, 4 February 1927, AN F7 13 183.

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Fig. 4.1. ‘Never forget!’ Le Conscrit, February 1927, AN F7 13 183. (By permission of the Archives Nationales, Paris.)

and long marches ‘cause the deaths of soldiers in their hundreds’.193 Indeed, the loneliness and fear of barracks life was addressed head on.194 The publication complained that the democratic right to good hygiene was lacking in the barracks: one must be able to wash properly in the morning, eat when hungry, and sleep well enough.195 Yet the bodies of these veritable slaves were kept in a state of submission by inadequate diet and living conditions, while army officers themselves lived like gluttons—a point made visually in cartoons depicting officers drinking and eating copious amounts.196 At a meeting of the Jeunesse Communiste in 1927 the speaker warned his audience that the exploitative regime of the factory would soon be 193 La Jeunesse Communiste en lutte: pour la conquête des masses (Paris: Les Publications Révolutionnaires, 1934), 6, 11, 15. 194 R. Arcos, ‘Le premier soir’, Le Conscrit, April 1924, 4. 195 ‘Où en sommes-nous?’, Le Conscrit, October 1924, 3. 196 Le Conscrit, April 1924, 4.

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replicated in the barracks through ‘fascist officers’, bad food, and ‘ridiculous punishments’.197 One communist activist called upon the newly incorporated to ‘clench your fists . . . and hide your tears’, safe in the knowledge that the rifles would be turned on the officers when the order came from Central Committee.198 The JC recognized that bodies would bend to the discipline of exercise but that the spirit should never submit under the exhaustion of military life. On the inside you will quietly be ‘“the armed proletarian”, silent enemy of the bourgeois class’.199 In fact, the PCF embarked on a lengthy campaign in the interwar period to improve the pay and conditions of conscripts. A pervasive concern was to preserve the impartiality of the second medical examination faced by new recruits, making sure that a civil doctor and one representing a worker organization took part alongside the military doctor. There were persistent calls to improve diet and hygiene too, including the demand for ‘unlimited bread’. Conscripts should also have the right to wear a beard and long hair, and to belong to the sports federation of their choice.200 In 1931 Le Conscrit complained that in addition to not being able to read L’Humanité freely in the barracks, the soldier’s life was ‘doubly threatened by surmenage and by war’.201 Cartoons in Le Conscrit illustrated the physical depravity of barracks life. Men were shown on their hands and knees scrubbing floors with flimsy equipment in an effort to keep the barracks clean, eating meagre portions of vegetables for dinner, or lying in bare cells with rats on the floor and a blanket failing to cover their feet.202 Indeed, by the early 1930s the publication was more strident in its attempt to whip up revolutionary fervour among conscripts, now urging recruits to ‘form your combat bloc in the barracks’ and to organize demonstrations during ‘marches and exercises’, to engage in a ‘courageous struggle’.203 The actions of rebellious conscripts around the country were held up as examples to follow—for example, those in Metz and Montpellier who had recently demonstrated against inadequate food.204 Communist anti-militarists often singled out the conseil de révision for special attention, seeing it as a symbol of class hypocrisy and using it as a hook on which to hang their generally critical attitude towards the physical treatment of new recruits. The vulnerability of the young worker was nowhere more evident than in the fragility of his naked body being evaluated in the ‘little markets of human meat’ that constituted these examinations. They were at times likened to the slave markets of the ancient world—examples of a ‘horrible commerce’ where ‘potbellied men’ eyed up lines of young blacks of all ages. While political elites were smug for having abolished slavery and having inherited a ‘civilized regime’, the 197 Address to a ‘comrade conscrit’, published by the Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes in Ivry, 12 January 1927, APP BA 1938. 198 Lapologne cited in a police report on the JC meeting in Boulogne-Billancourt, 17 February 1921, APP BA 1938. 199 Comité National des Jeunesses Communistes, ‘Manifeste aux conscrits’, Le Conscrit, October 1923. 200 ‘Pour les soldats’, Le Conscrit, March 1926. 201 Un ancien, ‘Bloc de combat contre le régime du “March ou crève”’, Le Conscrit, September 1931. 202 ‘Les “Gauches” avaient promis . . .’, Le Conscrit, October 1933, 4. 203 Un ancien, ‘Bloc de combat contre le régime du “Marche ou crève”’, Le Conscrit, September 1931. 204 Le Conscrit, September 1931, 3.

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communist press asserted that the system had not changed all that much. Now the slaves were ‘treated like favourite sons’, kept amused and distracted by the ‘toy’ of patriotism. This false consciousness was deadly: ‘The slaves are now . . . promoted to the rank of hero, slaughtering or being slaughtered’.205 As JC leader Maurice Laporte put it, you will be submitted ‘like merchandise, your naked body showing its assets and imperfections’. You will be judged ‘fit for service’ by a myopic major, and wrenched from the comfort of your family life. Indeed, in the ‘corruption’ of the barracks, ‘[y]ou will no longer be a man, but an instrument’, required to give ‘passive obedience and automatic execution’ to any order, without being asked to think or understand, and ‘this iron discipline’ is designed to train you to kill in the name of bourgeois capitalism.206 This critique was communicated in a striking visual register. Cartoons in Le Conscrit and L’Avant-garde depicted the contrast between fat officers and thin, malnourished conscripts. (Indeed, contemporary police reports recognized that communist publications such as La Caserne often used the tactic of ridiculing officers.207) One depicted a naked, hunched, and thin young man being examined by much older, corpulent officers who twisted the unfavourable diagnosis of the civilian doctor in order to pass this physically inadequate candidate. Another showed a slim conscript of the class of 1926 standing naked before two elderly, uniformed, and large officers (see Fig. 4.2). After being judged ‘bon pour le service’ he must leave his sweetheart for a barracks room depicted as a prison cell, where he would be able to sit contemplating the broken promises of the Bloc des Gauches, if he did not get killed and picked clean by vultures in Morocco or Syria first.208 In a different strip, one young man congratulates another who has just failed the medical examination, saying, ‘[y]ou’re lucky, having a wooden leg!!!’ Such cartoons suggest that communist youth organizations were at times deploying the notion of honourable bodily failure: this physically inadequate or vulnerable male youth does not resemble the virile ‘new man’ of communist fantasy, but his exposed body proved highly effective in allowing communists to whip up opposition against the threats that factory life, urban living, and the army collectively posed to workers’ liberty and health. In the mid-1920s Le Conscrit promoted a rude song in honour of the conseil de révision, whereby its very humiliations were ‘queered’ in order to foster a sense of solidarity among the downtrodden. Standing naked, his height measured by an instrument that descends on the head like a guillotine and rudely felt up by the examiner, the protagonist feels like an animal being prodded by a veterinary surgeon. The protagonist engages in an internal rebellion, fantasizing about saying out loud, ‘[i]f you haven’t seen my arse, here it is!’209 Indeed, in his puny physique, his scrawny and potentially tubercular body, and his infantilized

205

Jules Rivet, ‘Le conseil de révision’, Le Conscrit, April 1924, 4. Maurice Laporte, L’Avant-Garde, 11 December 1920, 1. 207 Police report, May 1927, ‘La Fédération des Jeunesses Communistes de France’, AN F7 13 183. 208 L’Avant-Garde, 6 February 1926, 1, AN F7 13 182. 209 Gaston Couté, ‘Le Conseil de révision’, Le Conscrit, April 1925. 206

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Fig. 4.2. Cartoon of the conseil de révision. L’Avant-garde, Feburary 1926, AN F7 13 182. (By permission of the Archives Nationales, Paris.)

state of fear or false consciousness, the figure of the conscript was presented as a kind of anti-hero. Driven to exhaustion by the inequities of capitalism, and victimized by the bourgeois-imperialist regime of military service, he could nonetheless be redeemed by the revolutionary designs of the Jeunesse Communiste. Such rhetorical strategies may stand in ironic contrast to the serious campaign elsewhere to build a virile ‘new man’ for the utopia of the revolutionary future, but they arguably do just as much to underscore the importance of the very physical and moral qualities of manliness that the conscript lacks. C O N C LU S I O N What I have tried to show in this chapter is how in the 1920s and early 1930s the realm of sport and physical culture held great appeal for various political factions on left and right, and for a range of reasons. On one level these factions no doubt used sport and physical culture as a strategy to boost popular support and to increase the readership of their newspapers. The significant increase in the column inches devoted to sport in the mainstream press in the 1920s suggests an almost insatiable public appetite for such things, just as the rise in the membership of sports associations evokes a lively culture around the popular practice of sporting activities. Mobilizing the bodies of real men in their own sports associations had

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the double benefit of bestowing upon them a morally improving physical training and a political education alongside it that would build solidarity in the cause. These factions’ support of grassroots sporting practice suggests that we ought to see their initiatives not only in terms of the scholarly debates about fascism, crisis, and political violence in this period, but also in terms of the history of associational life. They also enlisted an element of physical training in order to keep the bodies of their combat troops fit for the fight, in ways that endorsed a similar kind of martial manhood as that desired by the state—the creation of citizen-soldiers—even if the idealized combatant was fighting for revolutionary or counter-revolutionary ends rather than in the French army. The material presented also suggests something of how these politically sectarian voices were engaging in the same cultural conversation about the moral and national benefits of physical exercise and physical education that animated the sports and physical culturist press, as well as high political fora. The sense that some groups of French men—whether political elites, conscripts, or the mass of the population—were in physical decline, and that a sportif ‘new man’, young, muscular and physically fit, could regenerate society on a metaphorical and material plane was common currency. Indeed, if there were differences in the deployment of virility across the political spectrum, that appears to be a reflection of the varying rhetorical–political uses to which it was put rather than an expression of fundamental disagreement about the preferred model for the ideal ‘new man’, at least where the extreme ends of the spectrum are concerned. This confluence illustrates how entrenched was the virtue of athleticism (as well as self-control) in the shared vocabulary of manliness of the period, and how fundamentally political ideology itself was gendered, inflected by a valorization of prevailing masculine norms. Despite the political polarization and lack of consensus on so many issues in this period, then, there were many shared assumptions in the patterns of thinking and in the practices around sport and physical exercise.

5 Mass Culture and Mass Politics, 1934–1940 The sectarian uses of sport and physical culture encountered in the previous chapter continued into the 1930s amid an increased rhetorical insistence on crisis in many quarters—the ‘crisis’ of political extremism and imminent civil war, the ‘crisis’ of French military insecurity vis-à-vis a rearming German state, the ‘crisis’ of depopulation and family life, and the ‘crisis’ of immigration and its supposed dangers for the quality of French culture and breeding stock. Whatever the empirical basis for this crisis, the belief in its existence and its rhetorical mobilization in public debates developed an agency of its own, fuelling political conflict.1 The sense of crisis entered the sporting domain, too: spaces of sport became politicized on a literal level as stadia and gymnasia in towns and cities were used for mass rallies. When the minister of the interior banned a far-right Croix de Feu/Parti Social Français (CF/PSF) meeting organized for the indoor cycling venue Vélodrome d’Hiver in central Paris in October 1936, its followers planned a retaliatory occupation of the Parc des Princes stadium in the west of the city where a communist meeting was scheduled to take place. However, 50,000 communists arrived early to bar the way, and the resultant clashes led to some 20,000 police converging in south-west Paris while police aeroplanes circled overhead.2 Sometimes this kind of street violence was fatal, most notably in the notorious riots of February 1934—the bloodiest civil unrest in France since the Paris Commune of 1871—and in clashes between leftists and members of the CF/PSF in the working-class Paris suburb of Clichy in March 1937.3 A number of contextual factors conditioned the shape of popular politics in 1930s France. They include the onset of economic depression in 1931, the election of a leftist government in 1932, and the so-called ‘Stavisky’ riots, when on the night of 6 February 1934 a huge street protest and an assault on the Chamber of Deputies involving some 40,000 members of rightist paramilitary leagues and veterans’ groups took place, driven by popular anger at the alleged government coverup of a financial scandal and the dismissal of league-friendly Paris Prefect of Police 1 For a penetrating discussion of the historiographical significance of ‘crisis’ in this period, see K. Passmore, ‘The Construction of crisis in interwar France’, in B. Jenkins (ed.), France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French Authoritarian Right (New York and Oxford, 2005), pp. 151–99. 2 Alexander Werth, The Twilight of France (London, 1942), pp. 120–1; police reports, 4 October 1936, APP BA 1863; Lewis, ‘A Civic tool of modern times’, 155–9. 3 Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 116–17; Jessica Wardhaugh, ‘In Pursuit of the People’: Political Culture in France, 1934 –39 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 188–91.

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Jean Chiappe. In this context, the activities of Action Française and Jeunesses Patriotes were given renewed impetus, and new groups on the radical right emerged such as Solidarité Française, whose membership boomed briefly in the wake of the February riots. In the language around this assault on the republican system, much was made on the right of the supposed need to counter the current ‘cowardly’ parliamentary elite of ‘tired old men’ with something younger, more robust, and more virile.4 In response to this increased rightist activity amid a period of economic crisis, the communist left abandoned its ‘class against class’ strategy to engineer a common front against the rise of ‘fascism’. This new strategy culminated in the election of the Popular Front coalition of Radicals, socialists, and communists in the spring 1936 legislative elections—a development that prompted a further rightist backlash and the creation of new movements such as the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) under former communist Jacques Doriot. Against this background of violence, the lines between political and cultural activities—including sporting ones—were becoming even more blurred.5 This chapter explores how the uses of sport and physical culture altered in the 1930s for Action Française, Jeunesses Patriotes, and for the communist left, and how the new movements on the radical right—principally the Croix de Feu/PSF and PPF— utilized them for their own ends. Certainly, the CF/PSF was not alone in attempting ‘to fuse sporting culture with mass politics’ in this period.6 I will also probe how these movements demonstrated a concern with male bodily decline and renovation, exploring how far such fears were mapped out against contemporary anxieties about military strength, depopulation, and social hygiene. In what sense were such disparate organizations and movements involved in the shared conversation about degeneration and regeneration that engulfed the municipal and state officials, physical culturists, and the leaders of the sports movement encountered in the previous chapters? As Jessica Wardhaugh’s recent study of French political culture in this period suggests, if one looks beyond the overt political polarization of the decade there are surprising similarities across competing factions, not only in the use of mass spectacle and new technologies of communication (cinema) and movement (cars and aeroplanes) in the mobilization of the masses, but in their formulation of the social problems facing France in the first place—high rates of tuberculosis, dénatalité, the alienation wrought by technological modernity, and ‘physical degeneration’.7 Looked at in this light, the era of the Popular Front appears less like a battle of opposites and more like political rivalry: the solutions offered could be radically different—something that ought to be stressed—but the diagnosis of the country’s ills was often, although not always, remarkably likeminded. I hold that these factions were not only borrowing from each other—and from Nazi and Soviet models—but from the expansive world of physical culture. 4

Cited in L’Incorruptible, ‘organe de la seconde révolution française’, 11 February 1934, APP BA 1855. Danièle Tartakowsky, ‘Manifestations, fêtes et rassemblements à Paris (juin 1936-november 1938)’, Vingtième siècle, 27 (1999), 43–53. 6 Sean Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français, 1927–1945 (Montreal and Kingston, 2007), p. 220. 7 Wardhaugh, ‘In Pursuit of the people’, pp. 99–100, 232. 5

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THE RIGHTIST LEAGUES In the 1930s the rightist leagues continued to mobilize fit male youth in their use of ‘shock troops’ to secure meetings, parades, and rallies, and their efforts were still subject to counter-violence on the part of communists.8 Indeed, leftists still complained about the Jeunesses Patriotes as ‘fascists’ who operated in ‘militarized teams’ to attack their street newspaper-sellers.9 In terms of engagement with sport, the press of the Jeunesses Patriotes, in contrast with the 1920s, now bowed to mainstream popular culture in featuring elite, even professional, sporting events that involved mass spectatorship.10 But it still complained that elite sport in France was impoverished vis-à-vis other nations, and still encouraged young men to undertake military preparation certificates.11 The JPs’ own sports section offered tennis, fencing, basket-ball, football, camping, and physical culture lessons for members, and was not alone on the radical right in emulating the initiatives undertaken by the leftist Popular Front governments of the mid-1930s, fostering interest in aviation and attempting to democratize skiing through its own winter sports centre in the Haute-Savoie.12 The views of physical culturists themselves were channelled through to JP members in a series of articles published in Le National in 1937 by former French university sports champion and instructor at the JP sports club, T.-O. German. His aim was to help young men ‘perfect your training and improve your physical condition’, avoiding the danger of ‘physical surmenage’. He recommended choosing a gymnasium carefully and avoiding those run by ‘greedy traders’ seeking to maximize profits: beware those who promise ‘sudden and abnormal increase in biceps or pectoral muscles’ at the expense of cardiac health. German’s nutritional advice prescribed ‘grills accompanied by salad’, green vegetables, and fruits, with beef-steak eaten only once a week, while alcohol and coffee were best avoided. He recommended working out next to an open window first thing in the morning, and undertaking various movements to aid flexibility and strength training, followed by a cold shower and vigorous rubdown with a coarse brush. Once a week this session should be replaced with open-air exercise and a short run.13 One new if short-lived force on the radical right, Solidarité Française, funded by perfume manufacturer François Coty (serial funder of the interwar right) and led by ex-army officer Jean Renaud, sought to mobilize young men in a clearly martial enterprise14 The movement’s press appeared the day after the February riots, demanding a radical reform of the state: its chef asserted that by ‘natural law’ 8 Questionnaires on new recruits for the JP ‘chefs mobiles’ stressed the importance of physical strength, 23 May 1935, APP BA 1942. 9 Police report, 2 November 1936, APP BA 1719; ‘Jeunesses Patriotes: Taittinger, député de Paris, organisateur de combats de rue’, L’Humanité, 20 October 1935; ‘Les troupes de choc des Jeunesses Patriotes’, Le Populaire, 1 January 1935, APP BA 1942. 10 Michel, ‘Les sports’, Le National, 3 and 10 September 1938. 11 Le National, 29 May 1938, 4, and 9 October 1937, 4. 12 Le National, 16 and 30 January 1937; ‘Courrier des ailes’, 29 May 1937, 4. 13 Le National, 6 February 1937, 6; T-O. German, ‘La préparation au record’, Le National, 13 February 1937, 6; ‘L’entraînement’, 20 February 1937, 6. 14 Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp. 59–60.

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the strongest would emerge victorious through ‘combat’.15 The SF hoped to appeal to youth angry at the wasted sacrifices of fallen soldiers, whose deaths would be avenged by the ‘awakening of a generation’ ready to fight back with ‘ativistic chivalrous sentiments’.16 The movement called for ‘all virile forces’ to enrol in its youth wing, the Jeunesses de la Solidarité Française, providing ‘phalanxes of future glory’ in the shape of a ‘permanent army of good sense and National Revolution’.17 The youth column of the SF organ demanded that their militants be manly, in contrast to their enemies who were cowardly and coarse: SF youth should be ‘tenacious’ and ‘courageous’, maintaining self-control and ‘sang-froid’ in the face of conflict.18 The SF youth wing was certainly put to the test in Paris in the mid-1930s. In May 1934 an SF meeting in a cinema south of Paris, where Action Française and JP members were also in attendance, was secured by a uniformed guard, while up to 500 communists gathered in nearby cafés, throwing stones at SF motorcars and hurling chairs at the young security guards.19 This youth element needed some kind of training, and by autumn 1934 the movement was in the process of forming its own sports section that would provide boxing, fencing, and gymnastics, all funded through member donations.20 Indeed, according to the communist press the SF lured unemployed Algerians into the ranks of its shock troops by offering them clothes, money, and cigarettes: ‘[t]hey make them do physical education and provoke them against Jews and foreigners’.21 No doubt SF newspaper coverage of mainstream—even professional—sport (which included cycling, football, hockey, rugby, boxing, tennis, and basket-ball) helped to cement the importance of patriotic and athletic manliness for its followers. The SF organ even hailed a French football defeat as ‘glorious’ because the national team showed ‘pluck’ and ‘will’.22 In a way reminiscent of the Faisceau, the beauty, technology, and heroism of motor-racing was celebrated, while journalists complained that in neighbouring countries governments had understood the ‘national interest’ at stake in the ‘triumph of their colours’ better than in France.23 The SF press also echoed the sentiments of Louis Marin, the minister of public health, who, when unveiling a statue in honour of sports leader Franz Reichel, spoke warmly of one who had been concerned with ‘the future of the race’.24 In other words, SF members and sympathizers were led to see the value of sport and 15

Jean Renaud, ‘La Nouvelle croisade’, Solidarité Française, 7 February 1934. J. F., ‘La voix d’un jeune’, Solidarité Française, 26 February 1934, 4; Vial, ‘Le réveil d’une génération’, Solidarité Française, 26 February 1934, 4. 17 Josset, Solidarité Française, 28 April 1934, 4; Josset, cited in ‘L’activité de la Solidarité Française’, L’Ami du peuple, 13 November 1933, AN F7 13 238. 18 Jean F., ‘Le coin des jeunesses’, Solidarité Française, 12 March 1934, 4. 19 Police report, 24 May 1934, AN F7 13 238. 20 ‘Gymnastiques et sports’, Solidarité Française, 20 October 1934, 3. See the reference to SF youth training camps, Jean Renaud, ‘Nos jeunesses’, Solidarité Française, 14 July 1934, 3, AN F7 13 238. 21 Algerian correspondent in L’Humanité, cited in a police report on the SF, May 1934, AN F7 13 238; on the recruitment of Africans see Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp. 65–6. 22 ‘Chronique sportive’, Solidarité Française, 2 June 1934, AN F7 13 238. 23 Henri Miville, ‘Chronique sportive’, Solidarité Française, 14 July 1934, 6, AN F7 13 238. 24 Jacques Pauliac citing Louis Marin in L’Ami du peuple, 25 March 1934, 2. 16

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physical exercise in ways reminiscent of the physical culturists—as a crucible for manliness and an index of national grandeur—with the added extra of the endorsement of spectator sport. A similar emphasis on the martial and athletic male body is evident in the minor political project of Marcel Bucard, former member of the Faisceau, Action Française, and Croix de Feu; and friend of François Coty, the man whose fortune had helped to launch Bucard’s own failed attempt at building a Front National in the 1920s.25 In 1933 Bucard founded the Franciste movement, hoping for a spiritual revolution analogous to that forged during the First World War when humble men ‘obey[ed] the law of blood and the call of the soil’, preparing to die for the nation.26 France would be saved only through a revolt of the working masses— men ‘who were waiting only for a virile impulse to let go of the vile exploiters of the bloody and stupid stranglehold of Karl Marx and to give back to the country its traditions of honesty, courage, equilibrium, and salutary strength.’27 In order to wean young men away from communism, a social section (the Oeuvres Sociales du Franciste) was set up, encompassing a holiday camp for the young and lessons in physical education and fencing.28 The Francistes were certainly aware of the advances made in the 1930s on the left to conquer the working classes through sport, and it was hoped that the communist sports movement would weaken once poor urban enthusiasts of boxing, athletics, cycling, and football realized that the organization peddled ‘Bolshevik dogmas’.29 The movement stalled from lack of funding, but was in any case dissolved shortly after the Popular Front victory in 1936 on the grounds that it was fundamentally a ‘private militia’.30 THE SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST LEFT These rightist initiatives were overtaken decisively by developments on the left. The position of the communist sports movement (the FST) was a function of broader PCF policy, therefore the ‘common front’ of the mid-1930s, which brought a rapprochement between the communist and socialist left, led to the merger of the FST with the socialist sports movement: the combined Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail (FSGT) was created in December 1934.31 The organized left began to engage more closely with the world of mainstream sport in a bid to compete for 25 Police reports, June 1928 and March 1929, AN F7 14 818; Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp. 38–40. 26 Marcel Bucard, ‘Philosphie du Francisme’, Le Francisme, November 1933, police report, 31 October 1933, AN F7 14 818; ‘La jeunesse et le “francisme”’, Notre temps, 21 June 1934. 27 ‘Et vous, les Jeunes?’, Le Francisme, 3 February 1934, AN F7 14 818. 28 ‘Aux ‘Amis du Francisme’, Le Francisme, 21 November 1937, 3; ‘Vive des cadets francistes’, Le Francisme, 29 July 1934, 1, F7 14 818. 29 Marc Pobanz, ‘Sport et politique’, Le Francisme, 29 July 1934, 4, AN F7 14 818. 30 ‘La dissolution du “Parti franciste”, Le Temps, 20 June 1936, AN F7 14 818. 31 Jackson, The Popular Front in France, p. 136; André Gounot, ‘Entre exigences révolutionnaires et nécessités diplomatiques. Les rapports du sport soviétique avec le sport ouvrier et le sport bourgeois en Europe, 1920–1937’, in Pierre Arnaud and James Riordan (eds.) Sport et relations internationales (Paris, 1998), p. 269; Sport, 15 May 1938.

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the affection of workers. In summer 1934, now fighting L’Auto on its own ground, the FST newspaper Sport sent special envoys to cover the Tour de France, ostensibly educating its readership about ‘one of the most famous commercial and nationalist exploitations’ in the world of organized sport.32 The communist press insisted that its purpose here was to reveal the sordid truth about the race to its worker-readers, but no doubt the coverage appealed for other reasons.33 The fortunes of worker sport rose dramatically with the advent of the Popular Front government in June 1936, when the FSGT forged stronger links with mainstream sport.34 It was reported in the communist press early in 1937 that the FSGT controlled 1,076 clubs with 80,000 members: by 1938 it boasted more than 100,000.35 The membership of the communist youth movement (the Jeunesse Communiste) also rose rapidly, growing from 90,000 to 288,000 throughout 1936 alone; the socialist youth movement (Jeunesses Socialistes) reached perhaps 40,000 by late 1936.36 Efforts were stepped up to bring sport to the masses, whether through popular races that were heavily covered in the leftist press or through sporting elements incorporated into mass political rallies, themselves often held in sports stadiums after the middle of the decade. In spring 1935, socialist physical culturist Pierre Marie celebrated the first socialist–communist Paris-Roubaix worker cycle race and its 200 participants.37 Annual cross-country running events were founded by L’Humanité in 1933 and by Le Populaire in 1937, the latter sponsored by the municipality of Lebas.38 The significantly increased circulation of both these leftist newspapers during the Popular Front era meant that such exploits were brought to a considerably larger audience.39 L’Humanité’s summer festivals held in the Bois des Garches (Seine-et-Oise) attracted up to 200,000 people, no doubt drawn by entertainments that included sports events and jeux de massacre in which punters threw objects at mock-ups of Paris Prefect of Police Jean Chiappe, Croix de Feu leader François de la Rocque, Hitler, and Mussolini.40 At a festival jointly organized by L’Humanité and the FSGT in March 1936 for more than 1,000 people, L’Humanité 32

Sport, 27 June 1934, 1. Paul Vaillant-Couturier, L’Humanité, 4 July 1935, APP BA 1719; Thompson, The Tour de France, pp. 206, 211–12. 34 Marianne Lassus, ‘La “création” du Sous-Secrétariat d’Etat à l’organisation des Loisirs et des Sports le 5 juin 1936: les perceptions de l’identité politique du sport en France dans les années 30’, in Serge Fauché, Jean-Paul Callède, Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot, Jean-Paul Laplagne (eds.) Sport et identités (Paris, 2000), p. 425. 35 P.-A. Durier, ‘“La bataille que nous menons, c’est la bataille de la jeunesse”, déclare Léo Lagrange’, L’Avant-garde, 2 January 1937, 6; Jackson, The Popular Front in France, p. 136; Sport claimed 140,000 FSGT members in June 1938; Suzanne Trist suggested 160,000, ‘Le Patronat face à la question des loisirs ouvriers: avant 1936 et après’, Mouvement social, 150 (1990), 54. 36 Jackson, The Popular Front in France, pp. 219–20. Sales of JC newspaper L’Avant-garde peaked at 130,000 in May 1938. ‘La vie de notre journal’, Notre jeunesse, February–March 1939, 24; Whitney, Mobilizing Youth, p. 181. 37 Pierre Marie, ‘Petite étude sur la presse sportive et sur celle dite d’information’, Le Populaire, 16 April 1935, APP BA 1719. 38 Ory, La Belle Illusion, p. 726. 39 Henri Noguères, En France au temps du Front Populaire, 1935–1938 (Paris, 1977), p. 197. 40 Cross, ‘Vacations for all’, 610; police report, 2 September 1935; Directeur des Renseignements Généreux et des Jeux to the prefect of police, 28 August 1936, and police report, 31 August 1936, APP BA 1719. 33

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editor Paul Vaillant-Couturier pronounced that sport ‘must give to workers the strength and energy necessary for undertaking the struggle against the bourgeoisie and capitalism’. He also underlined the importance of wrenching French aviation from the hands of the Croix de Feu and other ‘fascists’.41 It is clear that in the mid1930s sport was fully mobilized as a tool of political mobilization on the left, knitted into the fabric of political festivals. Girls and women too were mobilized in such festivals, whether as audience members or performing athletes, and typically as gymnasts or dancers.42 Female athletes also participated alongside male in the various communist elite sports meetings organized inside and outside France in the 1920s and 1930s.43 Women similarly took part in communist youth activities, although they did so in relatively small numbers, and after mid-decade were mobilized in a separate organization (the Union des Jeunes Filles de France, or UJFF) that replicated ‘bourgeois’ ideas about sex-difference and mixité, channelling girls into swimming and rhythmic dancing rather than team sports.44 Contemporary observers of the enormous leftist Bastille Day parade held in Paris in 1936 tended to stress women’s allegorical role: dressed in virginal white, or the red or tricolour flag, they appeared as symbols rather than agents. This reading resonates with Rémi Dalisson’s conclusions about nineteenthcentury public festivals in general, in which women were in fact squeezed out by the increasing place devoted to athletic and sporting activities dominated by men.45 At any rate, it was the notion of a muscular ‘new man’ that dominated visually on the communist left—a being whose physical fitness functioned as a symbol and sign of his political and revolutionary aptitude. There was, as in the 1920s, a clear suggestion that the practice of both physical culture and sport made one manly. The FSGT organ even promoted boules as a game that required ‘muscular exertion, sang-froid, coup d’oeil, skill’: it was not just a sport for old men.46 The cult of the heroic aviator was entrenched: Soviet record-breaking airmen were celebrated, praised as pioneers of Soviet science and industry as much as for their manly valour and the handsome, chiselled features beneath their flying caps.47 Front-cover illustrations of the JC monthly organ in the late 1930s suggest an idealized sportif worker-combatant—angular and young, with small waist and large shoulders.48 41

Cited in a police report, 23 March 1936, APP BA 1719. See the PCF mass festival held in the Parc des Sports, police reports dated 12 and 13 June 1938, APP BA 1720. 43 Gounot, ‘Sport or political organisation?’, 264–5. 44 Susan B. Whitney, ‘Embracing the status quo: French communists, young women and the Popular Front’, Journal of Social History, 30 (1996), 29–53; Reynolds, France between the Wars, p. 52; Danielle Casanova, Jeanette Vermeersch, and Claudine Chomat, L’Union des jeunes filles de France, reports from the founding congress, 26–27 December 1936, 46. Whitney suggests a membership of 20,000 for the UJFF by late 1937: Mobilizing Youth, p. 200. 45 Alexander Werth, The Destiny of France (London, 1937), p. 359; Whitney, ‘Embracing the status quo’, 43; Rémi Dalisson, ‘Asserting male values: nineteenth-century fêtes, games and masculinity— a French case study’, European Sports History Review, 2 (2000), 46. 46 A. Martin, ‘Le Sport bouliste’, Sport, 15 June 1938, 9. 47 Jean Lévy-Besombes, ‘Les ailes soviétiques au service du progrès et de la paix’, L’Avant-garde, 24 July 1937, 1. 48 Notre jeunesse, February–March 1939. 42

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The PCF, JCs, and FSGT maintained elements of their former anti-militarism (the public authorities were certainly still concerned about communist antimilitarist activity), although its nature changed across the decade.49 The appeal to solidarity in the barracks and the evocation of the physical vulnerability of conscripts remained key parts of communist anti-militarism in the early to mid-1930s. In 1934, Sport was angry that the government dressed up military preparation as sport, ‘militarizing youth for the preparation of imperialist war’.50 It reserved particular disdain for deputy Adolphe Chéron, whose efforts to ‘improve the race’, it was reported, involved lengthening the period of military service.51 The question, asked one communist journalist, is: what kind of man are you trying to build? Man ought not to be a robot, taught by those immersed in military training. We do not want to return to the ‘belle époque’ of the bataillons scolaires.52 One man’s military service experiences were chronicled in Le Conscrit, evoking the thousands of bodies whose weight had given the barracks’ benches their contours over time. His uniform fitted poorly, was smelly and ugly, the trousers too wide, the jacket too short, the helmet too tight. He was forbidden from buying L’Humanité while all around him were reading Action Française. Like the others, he testified: ‘I came here against my will. They train us for war, they work us to death, waste our money, when thousands of unemployed are without bread. And into the bargain they give us crap to eat.’53 After the ‘patriotic turn’ of the PCF in the mid-1930s, however, L’Humanité somewhat moderated its anti-militarist propaganda regarding the army proper, and accordingly its critique of soldiers as the ‘victims of surmenage’ lessened.54 Instead, the FSGT argued that sport should play a bigger role in the life of the barracks. L’Avant-garde embraced the possibility that improved physical education would result in ‘giving the army young men who are physically stronger and as a result better soldiers’. The publication even argued that improved living conditions for conscripts would result in a stronger army. Thus the PCF was able to manoeuvre into a position of accepting—even endorsing—military service, while upholding its traditional critique of the material conditions within the barracks.55 By the late 1930s the Jeunesse Communiste was willing to prepare followers for a war against Germany.56 Le Conscrit appealed to JC members as the ‘descendants’ of those who had stormed the Bastille in 1789 and as ‘heirs’ of the soldiers of Year II who ‘made the tyrants tremble’. Civilians were now ‘soldiers of liberty’ who 49 The views of the minister of war, reproduced in a confidential report, 15 April 1935, APP BA 1719. 50 G. Marrane, Sport, 13 June 1934, 1–2. 51 Sport, 13 June 1934, 6. 52 ‘Nous ne voulons pas de gendarmes, ni de gardes mobiles pour faire l’éducation physique des écoliers’, L’Avant-Garde, 5 October 1935, 6. 53 Pierre Bochot, ‘Soldats 1934’, Le Conscrit, October 1934, 3. 54 Police report, 29 May 1935, APP BA 1719; Jessica Wardhaugh, ‘Fighting for the Unknown Soldier: the contested territory of the French nation in 1934–1938’, M&CF, vol. 15, 2, 2007, 198. 55 Raymond Guyot, 9th JC congress, L’Avant-garde, 24 July 1937, 3. 56 ‘Jeunesse’ by Paul Vaillant-Couturier, Le Conscrit, August–September 1938, 1; ‘Pour les conscrits et les soldats’, Notre jeunesse, February–March 1939, 11.

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knew the importance of ‘an army of republican spirit’ for the fight against fascism.57 Rather than castigate the army for its support of a capitalist–imperialist system, communists now wanted to send young men to the barracks as revolutionary republicans who would ‘accomplish with courage their métier of soldier’.58 It was to fulfil this task that the soldier ought to be well nourished and well equipped. Conscripts of 1938 and 1939 were thus told to pay attention to their bodily hygiene and not waste their leisure time, to get fresh air and play sport rather than spend Sundays ‘locked in the seedy dives of garrison towns’.59 FSGT athletics, football, basket-ball, swimming, and cycling came much recommended.60 Once civil war in Spain had broken out, Le Conscrit claimed that Spanish workers had recognized the importance of physical culture in military preparation, and although socialist Pierre Marie was glad that the 1936 legislative elections had booted ‘military preparationist’ Adolphe Chéron from his long-held seat, he did appreciate the value of ‘forming a robust youth, healthy, and trained in athletic exercises’ before they arrived at the barracks: in his opinion the physical worth of the French was falling by the day. Marie cited the views of a Czech physical education inspector who wanted to build ‘good animals’ out of young men, creating ‘virile qualities’ such as presence of mind, courage, decisiveness, sang-froid, and self-confidence.61 The turnaround in the attitudes of the left to the prospect of conventional war was thus articulated on the discursive ground provided by the fit male body. Attitudes such as these are hardly surprising, given that the communist left at any rate had always subscribed to a model of martial manhood—not only valuing the virtues of the warrior, but seeking to build their own manly revolutionary combatants through physical and moral education. The communist press also engaged directly with physical culturist ideas, both before and after the victory of the Popular Front, although not always approvingly. Early in 1936 the FSGT organ endorsed the medical benefits of massage in helping to recuperate the hard-working sportif through ‘muscular and nervous stimulation’, arguing that such medically therapeutic measures should not be practised only by ‘quacks’ and ‘empiricals’.62 It was the ‘natural method’ of Georges Hébert that was endorsed, since it was tailored to the physiological and psychological temperament of each individual and thought to be genuinely pedagogical. The Soviets were blamed by at least one author for taking the ‘science’ of physical exercise too far, engaging in speculative and unhelpful laboratory experiments that were removed from practical application—an error not made by Hébert. Readers were reminded of Jean Jaurès’ favourable comments about Hébert’s famous display of pupils at the international congress of physical education held in Reims in 1913, and the latter 57

Le Conscrit, August–September 1939, 1, APP BA 2445. Marcel Gitton, vice-president of the Commission de l’Armée, Le Conscrit, August–September 1939, 1. 59 ‘Conseils pratiques à celui qui part . . .’, Le Conscrit, August–September 1939, 3–4, APP BA 2445. 60 Maurice Lechaux, ‘Conseils pratiques à ceux qui partent’, Le Conscrit, August–September 1938, 4. 61 Pierre Marie, ‘Pas d’exercices militaires avant la caserne’, Le Populaire, 25 May 1936, dossier on ‘Préparation militaire et éducation physique’, SHD-DAT 5N 584; Sport, 15 May 1938, 20. 62 Charles Desevre, ‘Sport et médecine’, Sport, 1 January 1936, 4. ‘Empirical’ here means ‘unscientific’ rather than ‘materialist’. 58

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was routinely congratulated for being untouched by commerce, caring about nothing but ‘the health and harmony’ of his protégés.63 On the other hand, communists occasionally poked fun at ‘Hercules’ Edmond Desbonnet, ridiculing his ‘physical culture of the organs’ and accusing him of excessive commercial—thus ‘fascist’—self-interest.64 Jean Guimier lamented from the pages of the FSGT organ that Desbonnet’s method was not properly educative either. He was contradicted, however, by a reader from the south-west of Paris who wrote in exasperatedly to say that if Guimier bothered to try Desbonnet’s exercises he would discover their superiority over other methods.65 But Guimier held firm, retorting that physical education should develop general physical aptitudes rather than ‘the methodical exaggeration of muscles’, accusing Desbonnet of making false promises for commercial gain, and he doubted in any case whether exercising with heavy weights would induce healthy muscle growth. This was doubly ironic, since Desbonnet ostensibly shared this concern about excessive musculature, and it was Desbonnet’s protégé Ruffier’s methods that Guimier now endorsed—in particular his preference for physical culture lessons that created suppleness and a hygienic sweating out of toxins, rather than brute strength. He congratulated Ruffier on disavowing methods involving multiple repetitions, which were deemed unfit for ‘the overworked men that most of us are.’66 Proclaiming that the FSGT stood up for all those with ‘a weakened physical life’, Guimier exclaimed that ‘[t]he cause of the working class . . . is much dearer to us than all the Desbonnets in the world!’ Certainly, while the results of the FFCP’s annual male beauty contest were acknowledged in 1937 with a large photograph of the muscled winner, this news item was accompanied by an advertisement for a naturist programme of outdoor physical exercise that stressed that bedroom gymnastics were insufficient for building a healthy body.67 The opinions of physical culturists on the decline of French bodies were nonetheless endorsed in the communist press. In autumn 1935 L’Avant-garde published the views of Dr Bellin du Coteau, former international 400-metre running champion, medical expert on the physiology of sports injuries, and member of the French Olympic committee and national sports council. Engaging the discourse of French sporting and physical failure, Bellin lamented ‘our defeats in athletics, defeats that we deplore more than anybody, because they are for us the concrete expression of the deplorable physical state of young Frenchmen’. For him, evidence that military preparation made a soldier, not a man, could be found in the poor results of the conseils de révision.68 Bellin wanted to 63 The views of Jean Jaurès cited from L’Humanité, 28 April 1913, by J.G., ‘Education physique’, Sport, 29 January 1936, 6. 64 Jean Guimier, ‘Ce que nous en pensons’, L’Avant-Garde, 14 March 1936, 6. 65 Jean Guimier, ‘La “Méthode” Desbonnet n’est pas éducative’, Sport, 5 February 1936, 5. 66 Dr Ruffier cited from L’Echo des sports, 24 December 1935, by Guimier, ‘La “Méthode” Desbonnet’. 67 Alex Elyas, ‘Pour acquérir et conserver la santé il faut respecter quelques règles naturelles’, L’Avant-garde, 25 September 1937, 7. 68 Dr Bellin du Coteau, ‘Pour sauver la jeunesse de la dégénérescence physique’, L’Avant-garde, 19 October 1935, 1.

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give the body a greater place in the school curriculum. As it was, he felt that teachers’ attention was spread so thinly that they could not further the pedagogical work needed for improving ‘the health of the masses’.69 To boot, the standard of living was so low for the working classes that one could scarcely ask working men and women to engage in demanding physical culture. These views echoed throughout the communist press. Early in 1936 the FSGT organ itself regretted recent French athletic and sporting failures against Germany and the Netherlands, commenting that the problem stemmed from the commercialization of sport. The ministerial inquiry set up to investigate the defeat would thus merely have the effect of cauterizing a wooden leg.70 In an open letter to the minister responsible for physical education, Sport proclaimed the urgency of the problem of ‘the stagnation of the life forces of the country’.71 Another journalist pointed out that the left had for some time argued that the lack of good nutrition and insufficient light and air were ‘the basis of the physical degeneration of today’s youth’.72 L’Avant-garde joined with Jean Zay in complaining that physical education teachers were not paid enough, and it declared that collaboration between physician and educator was necessary to save ‘youth from physical decline’.73 Communists, driven by concerns about the high rates of malnutrition among working-class children and the relative decline in the budget for physical education, decried the lack of state investment in the bodies of the young and the intellectual surmenage that pupils faced in the school system. One writer uncritically echoed claims that the ‘French race was inferior’ and that it was ‘degenerating physically’. He lauded the attempts of the Popular Front to remedy this situation, seeing it as the ‘veritable regenerator of the country’.74 Writers in the FSGT organ berated the French for being years behind a country such as Russia, ‘which has put the physical, virile, and moral education of youth to the foreground’.75 Early in 1937 L’Avant-garde featured a profile of scientist and junior minister Irène Joliot-Curie, who herself complained about French sporting and physical failures, noting the poor form of French men and women who partook in skiing in comparison with their ‘foreign comrades’. She asserted that physical education was ‘one of the essential concerns of the leaders of youth’, claiming that both the USSR and fascist countries had overtaken the French in this regard.76 In 1938 the FSGT printed the opinion that as Frenchmen ‘we are ugly and deformed’, the percentage of ‘normal’ people in 69

Cited in J. G., ‘Une interview du Docteur Bellin du Coteau’, L’Avant-Garde, 19 October 1935, 6. ‘Des enquêteurs non qualifiés’, Sport, 22 January 1936, 1. 71 P.C.C., ‘Lettre ouverte à Monsieur Nicolle, ministre de l’Education physique’, Sport, 29 January 1936, 1. 72 ‘Cette semaine, un peu de tout . . .’, L’Avant-Garde, 21 March 1936, 6. 73 Jean Guimier, ‘Il faut former des éducateurs’, L’Avant-Garde, 7 March 1936, 6. 74 Auguste Delaune, secretary of the FSGT, ‘La jeunesse que vous voulons former: saine, forte et joyeuse’, L’Avant-garde, 6 March 1937, 6. 75 Alex Elyas, technical commission of the FSGT, in Sport, 21 November 1936, cited in ‘Pour une France forte’, review of the press, in L’Education physique, January–March 1937, 75. 76 R. M., ‘Irène Joliot-Curie nous parle d’éducation physique’, L’Avant-garde, 27 February 1937, 1. 70

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the population being alarmingly low—‘obese, fallen shoulders, sunken chests, jowly, flushed faces’, the French were not sound physical specimens in either health or looks.77 In the months before the Popular Front victory, L’Avant-garde ran a series of articles under the rubric ‘youth must be saved from physical decline!’ Too often, Jean Guimier wrote, politicians had good will in this area (he cited Edouard Herriot who in the late 1920s had tried to increase physical education for both sexes and Henry Paté who had promised to lighten the school curriculum, improve sports grounds and introduce a system of medical control), but the results were lacking.78 He shared the view of many contemporary commentators that there was indeed a problem of the ‘physical decline of youth’ in France, and agreed with the Director of the ENEP, the national training school for physical education teachers, that the reasons for it included alcoholism, slums, malnourishment of children, the over-stuffing of the school curriculum with academic subjects at the expense of physical education, and the ‘abuse’ of non-supervised sport. Guimier did not want ‘beautiful stadiums’ but numerous small-scale sports grounds and the teaching of swimming to all. He admitted that Swedish gymnastics (which succeeded only in boring pupils) had had its day, preferring the ‘synthetic method’ that would encourage the child to develop ‘according to his strength, his constitution, his psychology’. Guimier wanted the FSGT to address ‘the very serious problem of the physical degeneration of the youth of our country’, and used the words of Jacques Duclos to argue that ‘our current sporting failures are a result only of the physical degeneration of individuals, a result of the politics of the enemy of the people’.79 Drawing a link between biological degeneration and the practice of sport, he made a connection between the small number of sports grounds in Paris and high French mortality rates. Certainly, the FSGT thought sport a ‘factor in the regeneration and independence of our race’.80 Anxieties about social problems were thus sometimes cast on the left in the language of biological decline so common among physical culturists. The interest in social hygiene was there too, interweaving with concerns about public health. For a start, the PCF was just as sensitive to the issue of depopulation as were other political parties and movements, and L’Avant-garde campaigned for loans for young married couples in the hope that it would raise the birth-rate.81 Communists urged the protection of ‘the health of youth’, demanding a health record for each child, free medical examinations, and the proper application of physical education in the school system.82 William Schneider has seen the demand for a health card as eugenicist in inspiration, despite the fact that it had no real bite when it was 77 Marius Borne, ‘L’éducation physique et la rééducation de notre race’, Sport, 15 November 1938, 16–17. 78 Jean Guimier, ‘Il faut organiser réellement l’éducation physique’, L’Avant-garde, 1 February 1936, 6. 79 Duclos cited from L’Avenir de la jeunesse française by Guimier, ‘Il faut organiser réellement l’éducation physique’. 80 A. Deschamps, Sport, 17 June 1936, 1. 81 Notre jeunesse, February–March 1939, 13. 82 ‘Programme d’action de la Jeunesse Communiste’, Notre jeunesse, April–May 1939, 10–13.

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established by the government in 1939.83 Indeed, as Suzanne Trist points out, a practically eugenicist notion of leisure and sport could be found on the left in the years of the Popular Front, and she cites Gustave Bonvoisin’s hopes for the improvement of the race under Léo Lagrange’s policies as evidence.84 Since Pierre Marie was technical adviser to Léo Lagrange, it is perhaps not surprising that some kind of positive eugenicist language and assumptions should mark leftist rhetoric and policy in this era.85 At the same time, one must note that L’Humanité, alongside other leftist titles, did not fall to the seductive charm of Alexis Carrel’s Man, the Unknown when it was published in autumn 1935, instead branding it as ignorant, absurd, and a defence of capitalist interests.86 C RO I X D E F E U / PA RT I S O C I A L F R A N Ç A I S  P S F  The most significant new movement on the radical right was by 1934 overtly attempting to harness the revolt of youth, despite its origins as a veterans’ movement. By the end of the 1930s Colonel François de la Rocque’s Croix de Feu was the largest French political party, with as many as 1 million members. The Popular Front ban on paramilitary leagues in 1936 had merely resulted in the movement registering itself as a formal political party under the name of the Parti Social Français (PSF). All CF/PSF initiatives in the realm of youth were infused with the movement’s world view, including the desire for ‘a distinctive, disciplined virility and moral purity’, which the movement shared with much of the nationalist and radical right. Yet Sean Kennedy stresses that the CF/PSF did not emphasize the ‘new fascist man’ in the way that rightist intellectuals such as Robert Brasillach and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle did.87 While it is true that the CF/PSF did not make a fetish of this ideal in the manner of some others, its rhetoric and action nonetheless suggest the centrality of virility to its vision of national renewal. For a start, the opinions of virility guru Pierre Drieu La Rochelle were published in the movement’s newspaper Le Flambeau. No wonder France had the worst rates in Europe for syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer and alcoholism, and was crippled by dénatalité, he wrote: ‘all must be remade in France to save the body of the Frenchman’.88 That remaking could be achieved through physical exercise. There is no doubt that Drieu la Rochelle represents the fascist voice par excellence on these matters, but it is worth pointing out that comments like these evoke (if in more pointed form) a critique of male bodily decline that had in fact become quite generalized, and which as we have seen also resonated on the left.

83

Schneider, Quality and Quantity, p. 172. Trist, ‘Le Patronat face à la question des loisirs ouvriers’, 56. 85 Henri Noguères, En France au temps du Front Popuulaire, 1935–1938 (Paris, 1977), p. 161. 86 Alain Drouard, Alexis Carrel (1873–1944): de la mémoire à l’histoire (Paris, 2005), p. 185. 87 Sean Kennedy cites 300,000 members in January 1935, 700,000 in early 1936, and 1 million by the spring elections: Reconciling France against Democracy, pp. 86, 81, 95, 102, 109, 117. 88 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Pour sauver la peau des Français’, Le Flambeau, 27 June 1936, 1. 84

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Such synergies operated in the realm of sporting practice too, where they fuelled—rather than mitigated against—political conflict, as the movement fought for political space in a crowded arena. After summer 1936 the Croix de Feu newspaper Le Flambeau featured a ‘sport and leisure’ column—covering water polo, wrestling, and football—whose views echoed those of the Popular Front.89 Indeed, Colonel de la Rocque’s opinions on sport and leisure were prominently displayed in a blatant attempt to rival the contemporary programmes of the new government.90 In August 1936 the publication outlined the plans of Pierre Marie, as adviser to Léo Lagrange, which included the establishment of a statute for physical education teachers, a modification of school programmes to allow sufficient time for exercise, and an improvement of sports installations available to schools—all ideas also supported by the Croix de Feu.91 Le Flambeau proclaimed that the ‘rational’ use of sport and leisure, construed as ‘the first duty of man towards himself’, was a factor in the ‘preservation of the race’. Sport was a healthy ‘method of living’ that would counteract the effects of over-crowded cities and breathing noxious air: it should ‘enter into our lifestyle in the same way as eating and drinking, supplanting the bistro and its adulterated booze’.92 At the same time, much criticism was directed at leftist sporting organizations. One of the movement’s key physical education commentators, the newly qualified physician and sports journalist Dr Philippe Encausse, complained that the FSGT was mobilizing its forces against ‘fascists’ such as the CF/PSF.93 In a statement remarkably free of irony, he declared that only for the ‘hateful’ left was sport ‘an instrument of political struggle’. In words reminiscent of the physical culturists, Encausse claimed that ‘[f ]or us, sport is a means of strengthening the body, improving the race’ and ‘creating health, invigorating a people—especially workers— whose strength is threatened by the frenzy of the modern age’.94 Such views did not go unnoticed. In attack mode, socialist Pierre Marie published an open letter to Encausse in Le Populaire, accusing him of involvement in an episode of CF/PSF street violence during which members had thrown stones at passing taxis and injured several pedestrians. Was this action too, Marie wanted to know, taken for ‘the reconciliation of Frenchmen?’95 The tug-of-war over the political allegiances of the working classes could thus enmesh the theme of sport in very public ways. In a bid to win this fight the CF/PSF invested enormous resources in the development of its own social and physical culture programmes, which until recently have passed under the radar of historians.96 In 1936 it created the Société 89

P. Paternot, ‘Water-polo’, Le Flambeau, 26 September 1936, 5. François de la Rocque, cited in Le Flambeau, 4 July 1936, 5. 91 Dr Philippe Encausse, ‘À propos de l’éducation physique scolaire’, Le Flambeau, 22 August 1936, 7. 92 L. Pierrat, ‘Vie du sport’, Le Flambeau, 4 July 1936, 5. 93 Michel Dupont, Dictionnaire historique des médecins dans et hors de la médecine (Paris, 1999), pp. 225–6. 94 Dr Philippe Encausse, ‘La FSGT s’est trahie: voici des documents qui la montrent sous son vrai jour’, Le Flambeau, 7 November 1936, 5. 95 Pierre Marie cited by Dr Philippe Encausse, ‘Sport . . . et politique!’, Le Flambeau, 17 October 1936, 5. 96 Jacques Nobécourt deliberately overlooked the movement’s social programme in his mammoth study, Le Colonel de la Rocque, 1885–1946, ou les pièges du nationalisme chrétien (Paris, 1996), p. 1143. 90

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de Préparation et d’Éducation Sportive (SPES) to popularize ‘the taste for physical exercises’ among the young of both sexes, if in markedly sex-segregated ways.97 One did not have to be a PSF member to take part in SPES activities, and the society’s founding articles forbade any overt political discussion in local branches. At the same time it was obvious that SPES activities were couched within an intellectual and pedagogical rationale that was infused with the Croix de Feu world view. As Sean Kennedy suggests, it was designed self-consciously as ‘an “antidote” to the left’s sporting initiatives’ in the era of the Popular Front.98 It was expected that the enterprise would run in close connection with the considerable array of CF/PSF social services, including tourism and initiatives for youth, through them publicizing its various activities.99 Indeed, SPES had a clear parallel in the extensive system of colonies de vacances established by the Croix de Feu after 1931, and which by the late 1930s provided coastal or countryside holidays for at least 15,000 children.100 SPES president was Jean de Mierry (b. 1909), the son of a military general who trained at the Ecole de Cavalerie in Saumur, and who had a particular grudge against spectator sport.101 The physical activities of SPES were designed to develop such values as discipline, order, altruism, team spirit, courage, virility, dedication, and responsibility through an ‘education of the body’. Thus, despite the significant female element in SPES leadership and membership, much of the movement’s rhetoric situated the quest for national unity and renewal on the site of the male body. In the words of one leader, ‘our essential goal is before all else not to seek to create champions, but much more healthily and usefully to create men’.102 SPES opened branches all over the country, so that by the end of 1938 there were departmental societies declared in well over a dozen departments, including areas where the Croix de Feu had considerable support, such as the Nord and Pas de Calais, the Gironde and Meurthe et Moselle, the Somme, and the Isère.103 Fullyfledged SPES groups existed in at least two dozen towns all over the hexagon, from Arras to Cahors, Rennes to Grenoble, Bordeaux to Nancy, Pau to Strasbourg, and Lille to Lyon.104 The four Paris sections, including one opened in the affluent western suburb of St-Germain en Laye, were particularly active, with sports halls offering several physical culture sessions every week alongside such sports as football,

97 ‘Bulletin d’adhésion’, n.d., in AN 451 AP 151. Despite its entrenched notions of sex-difference, female members played key leadership roles in Croix de Feu social programmes. See Kevin Passmore, ‘“Planting the tricolor in the citadels of communism”: women’s social action in the Croix de Feu and Parti Social Français’, Journal of Modern History, 71 (1999), 814–51. 98 Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy, p. 216. 99 ‘Note sur le but et le programme des SPES’, 15 June 1938, AN 451 AP 151; ‘Qu’est-ce que SPES?’, n.d., late 1930s, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 100 Downs, ‘“Each and every one of you must become a chef ”, 9–16. The figure includes those children sent by the CF Travail et loisirs association, established in late 1936 to cater for non-members. 101 CV for Jean de Mierry, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 102 ‘Réunion de travail pour les moniteurs sportifs SPES’, n.d., AN 451 AP 151. 103 William D. Irvine, ‘Fascism in France and the strange case of the Croix de Feu’, Journal of Modern History, 63, 2 (1991), 282. 104 ‘Résultats de l’année 1937–1938’, AN 451 AP 154.

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boxing, and ping-pong.105 Indeed, a number of sports teams for adults were quickly created, especially for football and basket-ball, with fencing, horse-riding, boxing, tennis, and skiing to follow where the provision would not impinge on the society’s core programme for the physical education of children. By the end of 1937, SPES had reportedly set up ten football and twenty-six basket-ball teams in Paris— notionally only for those who undertook regular physical training in the SPES centres.106 Eventually, SPES also coordinated outdoor activities for enthusiasts of camping, cycling, and auto, organizing weekend trips outside the French capital and package trips for winter sports.107 By the end of 1938 its activity encompassed twelve Paris centres for physical education, giving 10,000 lessons a month (as many as 100,000 over the whole year).108 Indeed, the movement initially laid special emphasis on teaching children how to swim, not only for ‘hygienic’ reasons but to prevent drowning.109 In Paris, SPES oversaw a swimming scheme that started in the 1935–36 school year: in 1937–38 more than 30,000 lessons were given by 400 male and female swimming instructors, and more than 500 swimming certificates were awarded. Similar activities went on in Rouen, Lyon, and Troyes.110 The person who emerges as the most important ideologue behind the SPES vision of physical education was its Director of physical education Gaëtan Maire.111 The society’s model of physical culture for older children and youth was inspired by hébertisme, although one can also detect the influence of Dr Philippe Tissié (the French exponent of Swedish gymnastics) and Dr James-Edward Ruffier, whose published work on physiology heavily informed Maire’s own treatises on physical culture.112 In particular, the notion of corrective gymnastics (to build the strength and capacity of heart and lungs for ‘deficient children’) was deemed a vital prerequisite for the more demanding natural method developed by Georges Hébert.113 In short, Ling provided the initial ‘corrective’ gymnastics, Ruffier ‘analytical’ gymnastics, and Hébert advanced ‘synthetic’ gymnastics.114 In keeping with such methods, SPES leaders counselled that sport must come only at the end of a process of harmonious physical development.115 The views of Hébert were also popularized within the pages of the Croix de Feu organ Le Flambeau, where his warnings about 105 ‘Note sur le but et le programme des SPES’; questionnaire, 1 February 1939; G.A. Marie, ‘Les Quatres groupes SPES’, 2 November 1937, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 106 ‘Note sur le but et le programme des SPES’. 107 Questionnaire, 1 February 1939; Informations SPES, no. 1, December 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 108 ‘Résultats de l’année 1937–1938’, AN 451 AP 154. 109 Faust, ‘Rapport pour le service propagande’, 27 March 1936, AN 451 AP 151; ‘La natation’, Le Flambeau, 18 July 1936, 5. 110 Note to Jean de Mierry, 28 January 1937, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 111 Gaëtan A. Maire, speech given at a SPES meeting on 8 March 1939, AN 451 AP 151. 112 70-page brochure, by G. A. Maire, n.d., probably 1938, with dozens of pages devoted to Ruffier’s physiological work, AN 451 AP 152. 113 70-page brochure by Maire; G. A. Maire, SPES, un programme d’éducation physique, March 1940, AN 451 AP 156. 114 G. A. Maire to Jean de Mierry, 6 May 1937; ‘Qu’est-ce que SPES?’, n.d. late 1930s, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 115 ‘Réunion de travail pour les moniteurs sportifs SPES’.

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the ‘dangers of sport’ and his dictum ‘Be strong to be useful’ were reproduced. Readers were reminded of the importance of developing muscular power, endurance, and speed, but that these were nothing without the parallel development of the explicitly virile qualities of ‘will and courage’, skill, ‘sang-froid’, decisiveness, perseverance, and tenacity. Such virtues were needed to beat fatigue and to overcome pain and physical collapse. It was stressed that these qualities were accessible to all adults: just walk for 15 minutes on your daily rounds instead of experiencing ‘stagnation in the métro’.116 Thus, despite its clear hébertiste language, the SPES physical education programme was deliberately ecumenical. Its literature insisted that there was no single right method for physical culture, as all had flaws; what was important was to ‘make healthy and vigorous men, to improve the average of the great mass of the weak, to create a vast reservoir of sturdy men’ out of which the odd champion may emerge.117 While Ling’s Swedish method was easy to apply, it was boring, and failed to address the role of the nervous system in bodily development. ‘Culturist methods’, on the other hand (those specifically devised to develop the musculature of an individual through ‘analytical exercises’ and resistance through the use of weights), had the advantage of paying attention to the nervous system—for example, through the process (advocated by many physical culturists) by which voluntary movements with weights could become automatic acts. Yet like communist journalists Maire pointed out that this system was open to the abuse of excess, the volume and appearance of muscles becoming an end in itself, the heart and lungs neglected.118 Another criticism of the ‘culturist method’ was advanced by the chief instructor of the SPES, Thevenet, who likened the physical culturist to an incompetent and accident-prone motorist whose prime concern was to have ‘a nicelooking fast car’. Instead, a practitioner of physical education should understand their vehicle profoundly, enjoying a smoother time on the road.119 Maire also noted that it was difficult to apply, not to mention dangerous when practised by the young and weak, who should undertake corrective gymnastics instead.120 At the same time, Maire was a paid-up member of the Groupement Hébertiste in the late 1930s.121 He was in touch with David Strohl, Director of Hébert’s organ L’Education physique, and through him arranged visits to hébertiste training centres to observe the methods used there.122 Strohl was adamant that the CF/PSF should employ the most up-to-date version of Hébert’s natural method in their own programmes, and arranged for complimentary copies of his most recent work to be 116 J.-J. Breittmayer, ‘Etre fort pour être utile’, Le Flambeau, 7 November, 5, and 5 December 1936, 8. 117 Unsigned document, 5 July 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 118 G. A. Maire, n.d., probably 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 119 Thevenet, ‘Cours de pédagogie à l’usage des moniteurs d’Education physique’ for the Rhône SPES, AN 451 AP 156. 120 G. A. Maire, n.d., probably 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 121 Correspondence between Maire and the secretary general of the Groupement Hébertiste, 22 July 1938, 13 June 1939, and 24 July 1939, AN 451 AP 155. 122 Maire to Bertier (Director of the Ecole des Roches), 20 April 1937; Strohl to Maire, 22 March 1937; Maire to Strohl, 31 March 1937, AN 451 AP 155.

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sent to SPES headquarters.123 Maire also had contacts elsewhere. An instructor at the Desbonnet Ecole de Culture Physique in the rue du faubourg Poissonnière, Louis Bourbier, wrote to Maire, his apparent friend, in late 1937 to pass on information about physical education methods he had learned on a recent trip to Germany.124 The PSF organ Le Petit journal also covered the French physical culture federation’s annual male beauty contest without criticism in 1937, and featured a large photograph of the finalists.125 Presumably as a result of these influences, SPES physical education lessons took place in the open air where possible, with Hébert’s preferred form of dress observed: SPES preached ‘a decent nakedness’ unless subjects suffered from the cold.126 Individuals were divided according to age, sex, and physical aptitude, with fit pupils aiding the instructor. Another trait shared by SPES leaders and key physical culturists was the drive to medicalize physical education: a medical examination, in part to determine the exercises for which each young member was physiologically suited, was a mandatory condition of membership.127 Such arrangements actually appear to have been followed in the SPES centres, and fairly extensive information was recorded, including not only the height, weight, and measurements of each individual, but comments on their nervous system and reflexes, and their teeth, urine, and medical history.128 This rigour extended to the training of physical education instructors. A monthly SPES bulletin encouraged local leaders to find male and female ‘comrades’ who might be interested in becoming swimming, basket-ball, and football instructors.129 In order to gain a placement in a SPES centre, each candidate had to undergo a three-week training programme in Paris.130 Individuals sometimes sent unsolicited letters to the SPES leadership, complete with curriculum vitae, to offer themselves for this training, which may well have been in response to calls published in the ‘À nos sportifs’ column of Le Flambeau.131 One man, for example, wrote to Dr Philippe Encausse in spring 1937, claiming to be the son of a sports champion and an amateur practitioner of many physical activities (including athletics, gymnastics, and cycling) over a period of twenty-five years. He sold himself as a life-long enthusiast of physical culture, using both the Ruffier and Hébert systems.132 In spring 1938 a 28-year-old man wrote to Gaëtan Maire, admitting that he had no official diploma to qualify him for the task of instructor but had 123

Strohl to Maire, 5 March 1937, AN 451 AP 155. Correspondence between Louis Bourbier and Maire, 4 and 19 November 1937, AN 451 AP 154. 125 ‘Le concours du plus bel athlète’, Le Petit journal, 17 September 1937, 8. 126 ‘Cours d’information: centre hébertiste, Ecole Normale d’Education Physique’, 22 January 1938, AN 451 AP 153 bis; ‘Plan schématique de leçon en pleine nature’, 26 April 1937, AN 451 AP 155; document on the ‘natural method’, n.d., AN 451 AP 151. 127 Maire and Encausse, report on SPES, 8 June 1937, AN 451 AP 152. 128 Fiches in SPES dossier, AN 451 AP 155; ‘Hygiène dans les services de culture physique’, n.d. AN 451 AP 152. 129 Informations SPES, no. 1, December 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 130 ‘Education physique, Règlement’, n.d. AN 451 AP 153 bis. 131 Mme Hellstern to Maire, offering her services as a teacher of girls’ and women’s physical culture, 27 May 1937; Maurice Portet to Philippe Encausse, in response to the column in Le Flambeau, 23 April 1937, AN 451 AP 154. 132 Brecy to Encausse, 12 April 1937, and Maire to Brecy, 16 April 1937, AN 451 AP 154. 124

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several years of active exercise in boxing and good political credentials, being a PSF supporter.133 It would seem that SPES leaders considered the suitability of these candidates seriously: when Mademoiselle Bordeaux of Vincennes wanted to sit the examination to become a physical education instructor, she was told that the SPES leaders doubted she had attended physical education classes regularly enough to qualify.134 It is inescapable that SPES shared with the world of physical culture and the wider sports movement adherence to the cult of virility, whatever the importance of the female demographic for its organizers. Physical education was a way of forming the much heralded new elite, building discipline, order, and community in ways that resonated with the Croix de Feu project as a whole.135 The leadership wanted not only to develop a ‘virile culture’, under medical surveillance, that would build ‘energy and all the other qualities of action’, but a ‘moral culture’ where each man ‘put his muscles and his will at the service of the social good’. Instructors needed to show by example—to be ‘determined, tireless and bold. One only becomes virile by working hard and developing the taste for exertion and risk.’ In a nutshell, virility was not constituted by brute strength alone, but through a combination of physical and moral qualities.136 The cult of virility was most obviously ritualized in the orchestrated hero worship of pilot and prominent Croix de Feu member Jean Mermoz, ‘the French equivalent of Lindbergh’, who in the early 1930s had risen to fame due to his extraordinary exploits on the Aéropostale mail run to South America—a man with dashing good looks who had survived kidnap in Africa and a crash in the Andes. When he was killed in an aeroplane accident in late 1936 it was arguably as ‘the most famous man in France’.137 In the Croix de Feu as elsewhere the aviator was hailed as a manly pioneer whose mastery of self and the environment made him somewhat superhuman—an ‘archangel’ straddling the worlds of nature and technology.138 In March 1936, Mermoz’ appearance boosted a Croix de Feu event hosted in the Salle Wagram, his courage signalled by the organizers to great applause.139 He also spoke at an evening gala at which Maire directed group gymnastics on the part of Croix de Feu youth: Mermoz pronounced that sports were essential for ‘the complete equilibrium of the individual’, and for creating ‘a strong and healthy youth to save the race’.140 The CF/PSF harnessed the vogue for flying in other ways too. In a bid to compete with the Popular Front’s attempt to democratize aviation, François de la Rocque wanted to give young French people a ‘taste for the air’ as a way of presenting France to the world as ‘a 133

M. Harroue to Maire, 19 May 1938, AN 451 AP 154. Bureau d’études to Bordeaux, 9 December 1937, AN 451 AP 154. 135 G. A. Maire, note on physical education, 22 July 1938, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 136 Document on the ‘natural method’, n.d. AN 451 AP 151. 137 Wohl, The Spectacle of Flight, pp. 187–8. 138 ‘Traînards, en avant!’, L’Étudiant Lorrain, organ of the student wing of the PSF, May 1937, 4; Sean Kennedy, ‘The Croix de Feu, the Parti Social Français, and the politics of aviation, 1931–1939’, French Historical Studies, 23 no. 2 (2000), 282–4. 139 Police report, 31 March 1936, APP BA 1901. 140 Jean Mermoz cited in a police report on a Croix de Feu meeting for 2,500 people in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, 8 March 1936, APP BA 1901. 134

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young nation’.141 The Croix de Feu also used aeroplanes in its rallies and parades until the Popular Front ban on paramilitary leagues forbade such a thing.142 One wonders how far the PSF’s Jean Mermoz Federation, which by mid-1938 boasted 4,500 student members involved in ‘model-building, gliding, and powered flight’, lived up to the movement’s hyperbole around flying.143 Nonetheless, the rhetoric of the virile and athletic pilot abounded, not only for the CF/PSF and others on the radical right but, as we have seen, also for those on the left.144 SPES also endorsed Hébert’s ‘primitive’ model of health and beauty and the concomitant critique of ‘civilized’ lifestyles. SPES chief instructor Thevenet suggested that the French needed a programme for physical development only because they were civilized: ‘Negroes don’t need physical culture to run or jump, but we, we are organic degenerates’.That is why, he explained, men like Hébert based their methods on the natural exercises performed by ‘savage or half-savage populations’.145 In emphasizing that it was in ‘natural’ work that a human being found vitality, the SPES leadership asserted that ‘ignorance of this fundamental truth and this law of health, strength, and beauty is the underlying reason for almost all of our ills and equally of our inferiority in physical strength and organic resistance . . . [and] cosmetic ugliness’.146 The power of the primitive was harnessed in the advertising of the Croix de Feu press too. Le Flambeau plugged an alleged vitamin-rich remedy for fatigue and anaemia derived from a Madagascan plant: a white man in a safari suit was shown being advised by a dark-skinned and partially dressed native who claimed never to be ill on account of this substance.147 The idea that modern civilization had led to the physical decline of the Frenchman was widespread within the SPES leadership. According to Gaëtan Maire, cabaret, alcohol, and sedentary lifestyles had spoiled the bodies of men. A lack of adequate physical education for the young compounded the problem, making whole nations ‘lazy and soft’: the only remedy was physical education and ‘the practice of virilizing sports’.148 A critique of both competitive and spectator sport was folded into this broader concern about the apparent physiological vulnerability of French men. On the one hand, the SPES physical education director felt that competitive sport over-taxed the physiological system of those whom medical examinations had deemed insufficiently robust, leading to the fatigue of physical surmenage.149 Of course, for those who were fit enough, the ‘idea of struggle, of sustained effort, of performance’, which comprised the ‘very essence of sport’, was 141

François de la Rocque, cited in ‘L’aviation et les jeunes’, L’Étudiant Lorrain, March 1937, no. 1, 4. Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy, pp. 110–12, 217; Wardhaugh, ‘In Pursuit of the people’, p. 87. 143 Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy, p. 220. 144 Jacques Doriot, ‘Mermoz: héros français du vingtième siècle’, L’Emancipation nationale, 12 December 1936, 8. 145 Thevenet, ‘moniteur-chef ’, ‘Cours de pédagogie à l’usage des moniteurs d’Education physique’ for the Rhône SPES, AN 451 AP 156. 146 Document on the ‘natural method’. 147 Advertisement for Vin de Frileuse, Le Flambeau, 12 October 1935, 6. 148 G. A. Maire, ‘Les SPES et leur programme’, October 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 149 Maire, speech of 8 March 1939. 142

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in keeping with the kinds of virile qualities that SPES wanted to develop in its male members.150 But if weak bodies over-stretched themselves, the consequences rippled more widely, causing a devirilization among French men. (It should be noted however, that unlike the practice in CF/PSF colonies de vacances, there was no routine rejection of the physically unfit from SPES activities: instead they were to be trained gently.151) On the other hand, Croix de Feu ideologues also demonized spectator sport, which in Maire’s view had sacrificed ‘the masses and the weak’ for ‘the triumph and fleeting glory’ of the few. He suggested that the cult of sporting spectacle had prevented physical exercise from fulfilling its potential to solve such problems as alcoholism and tuberculosis: insufficient physical exercise was just as devirilizing as an excess of it. To add insult to injury, elite sportifs in France did not even win medals in international competitions.152 Like many physical culturists, Maire wanted to have his cake and eat it too: while arguing that only rational physical exercise practised en masse could improve corporeal weakness, he also read French athletic failure at the level of elite competitive sport as an index of the decline of all French bodies. More evidence of physical failure was found in the allegedly high rejection rates of military conscripts. Gaëtan Maire shared the prevailing sense among physical culturists that other European countries had somehow managed to develop physical education programmes for their youth much more effectively than had France. As a result, ‘[a]s there exist more lazy men than active ones, young men left to their own devices reach the age of military service often insufficiently developed, and the failure rates at the conseils de révision are edifying.’153 In late 1936 Le Flambeau sounded a cry of alarm in reporting that the proportion of young men declared unfit for service had reached 54 per cent, citing the statistic as proof that a hébertiste programme was needed, and asserting that governments in neighbouring countries had already adopted such a thing (see Fig. 5.1). The source of this information appears to have been General Prételat, head of the inter-ministerial commission charged with making physical education compulsory, whose statements were picked up across the press.154 A SPES instructor in the Rhône department declared that children grew up lazy, without expressing their ‘physical instincts’, and thus men reached the age of military service ‘insufficiently developed, feeble, without courage, without will, but with an imposing intellectual baggage’: the ‘dregs’ presented in military medical examinations were ‘terrifying’. The goal of physical education should instead be to find ways of ‘renovating our 150

‘Réunion de travail pour les moniteurs sportifs SPES’, n.d., AN 451 AP 151. See Laura Downs on the ‘eugenic’ rejection of the sickly or defective for CF/PSF Travail et loisirs holiday camps, especially after 1940, ‘Each and every one of you must become a chef ’, 30–1: SPES selection meant categorization rather than rejection, although I have not had access to Occupation-era records that might signal a post-defeat change of policy. 152 Maire, ‘Les SPES et leur programme’; Dr Philippe Encausse, ‘Les propos d’un sportif ’, Le Flambeau, 26 September 1936, 5, outlines a similar critique. 153 Maire, n.d., probably 1938, AN 451 AP 152. 154 Dr Philippe Encausse, Le Flambeau, 5 December 1936, cited in ‘Pour une France forte’, review of the press, in L’Education physique, January–March 1937, 75. 151

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race’, making both men and women solid and robust for the task.155 These examples show that while the state of female bodies was on Croix de Feu leaders’ radar, they were always drawn back to conceiving of physical decline in terms of virility. Intellectual surmenage was identified as another cause of bodily decline—a phenomenon doubly offensive to the Croix de Feu leadership, because for them it not only weakened bodies but republicanized minds. Like Marshall Lyautey, Philippe Pétain, and Maxim Weygand, the movement’s leaders shared the contemporary grudge against the over-emphasis on intellectual training in schools and universities.156 In their eyes, too many teachers were ‘subversives’, the most ‘heroic’ among them having been mowed down on the battlefields of the First World War. They also worried that formal education in France had become too formulaic, producing conformist citizens rather than men.157 The CF/PSF newspaper cited surveys of young teenagers in which both boys and girls complained that they barely had enough time to eat and sleep in addition to their studies.158 Dr Philippe Encausse argued that in his role as physician at the PTT he had been able to conduct observational experiments on employees that supported his view that expert medical control of physical activity at a stroke prevented surmenage, revirilized French

Fig. 5.1. Illustration of a conseil de révision. Le Flambeau, 5 December 1936, p. 8. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.)

155 Thevenet, ‘moniteur-chef ’, ‘Cours de pédagogie à l’usage des moniteurs d’Education physique’ for the Rhône SPES, AN 451 AP 156. 156 Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy, p. 101. 157 François de la Rocque, ‘Le problème de l’Education’, Le Flambeau, 23 May 1936, 1. 158 Dr Philippe Encausse, ‘L’Ennemi public no. 1’, Le Flambeau, 18 July 1936, 5.

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youth, and worked for the cause of national renewal.159 François de la Rocque himself spoke about the necessity of assuring the ‘moral and physical training of youth’ in tandem with the rehabilitation of ‘spiritual values’.160 Here a Catholic attack on materialism combined with a rightist denigration of republican democracy and the physical culturist assertion of the virile benefits of exercise. Gaëtan Maire’s grudge against sedentary and over-intellectual ‘civilized peoples who neglected body culture’ was also that this state of affairs led to the literal ‘physical degeneration’ of the French. Educators should consider the child as ‘the seed of a country’ rather than merely a future elector, he wrote. The failure of the state to develop the bodies of the young was construed by Maire as ‘a veritable physical sin’ against society, and—as we have already heard—he held that the aim of physical education should be the ‘regeneration of the race’.161 These ideas were shared by Dr Philippe Encausse, who urged a popularization of the ‘natural method’ in France, as in neighbouring countries, because Hébert was a man capable of ‘saving our sporting youth and our race’.162 Maire was indeed a eugenicist, wanting to improve the breeding stock of the French, yet he was practically unique among the physical culturists of his day in explicitly rejecting neo-Lamarckian assumptions about heredity. In the material he prepared for use in the training programme for SPES physical education instructors, Maire offered Mendelism instead, asserting that ‘contrary to certain old prejudices’, male and female parents have an equal ‘hereditary force’ on the offspring, and, moreover, that the genetic inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible. As he put it, ‘when journalists claim that sport must improve the race, and suggest the beneficial action of exercise on human chromosomes, they are in absolute contradiction with the laws of biology’. It was not through methodical training of one’s ‘muscular system’ or the development of one’s brain through ‘rational culture’ that individuals became more capable of ‘giving birth to children disposed to sport or intellectual work’: chromosomes are ‘ineducable’.163 He acknowledged that human ‘moral’ diversity—the way that mankind included athletes and weaklings, geniuses and crooks, good men and rascals—was a product both of heredity and of environment, but insisted on a clear distinction between these two different shapers of human material.164 Maire also rejected the idea, espoused at various times by such thinkers as Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and even Charles Darwin, that human evolution was the result of adaptations to the environment: only random mutations could alter genetic material. Maire specifically refused the scientific basis of the notion that there was a genetic component to what he termed ‘social progress’, reiterating that ‘all that man adds to himself through knowledge, 159 ‘Le Contrôle médical des jeunes’, Education générale et sports: revue officielle du Comissariat général. Supplément, 11 February 1942, 1; Encausse, Education physique et sous-alimentation (Paris, 1944), pp. 51–3. 160 François de la Rocque, ‘Effort social’, Le Flambeau, 5 October 1935, 1. 161 Maire, ‘Les SPES et leur programme’; G. A. Maire, speech of 8 March 1939. 162 Aux Ecoutes cited by Dr Philippe Encausse, Le Flambeau, 5 December 1936, cited in turn in ‘Pour une France forte’, in L’Education physique, January–March 1937, 75. 163 Maire, ‘La variation humaine’, in the training course on ‘Biologie élémentaire’. 164 Maire, ‘Les lois de l’hérédité’, in ‘Biologie élémentaire’.

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reflection, discipline is only exterior and superficial’; it cannot alter his genetic make-up. Yet Maire did share contemporary anxieties about the biological—rather than merely physiological—basis of the decline he observed all around him. In ‘modern life’, the effect on the species of natural selection had been eroded by the advances in medicine, hygiene, and welfare systems that permitted the weak to reach reproductive age. In addition, the most brave and robust human specimens were often mowed down through war. Furthermore, according to Maire ‘the fertility of idiots’ was far greater than that of ‘normal individuals’. Thus ‘[t]he preservation of the least fit . . . is paid for by the diminution of the race’. Maire thought this situation alarming, since the ‘effect of civilization’ was therefore ‘decadence’, and he asserted that it was imperative to ‘protect energetically the genetic capital built up over the course of barbaric periods against the perils of civilization’. That, as he put it, was the ‘serious question’ that modern eugenics attempted to solve.165 Maire devoted his final training lecture to the topic of eugenics and human selection. It was the role of science, he argued, to explain the consequences of unions between unfit individuals and to show that it was a ‘veritable crime’ to reproduce when ‘unhealthy fertility propagates diseases destructive of the race’.166 Maire described the mandatory sterilization programmes already in existence in Switzerland, Finland, Germany, and the USA, and criticized them only for being ineffective. As Maire explained, some defects show up only after an individual has reached reproductive age, and the ‘worst defects’ such as ‘mental debility’ involved recessive genes that could be passed on by ‘normal people’. In principle, Maire supported the ‘positive eugenics’ of artificial selection to remedy the problem of the decline of the human species. Humanity had to choose between ‘the politics of indifference’ that would lead slowly to ‘biological ruin’, or the ‘rational control’ of reproduction that would avoid ‘decline’ and allow us to become ‘master of our destiny’.167 Such views were also broadcast in the CF/PSF press. In early 1936 Le Flambeau endorsed the words of an Italian demographer who argued that in ‘western civilization’ a selfish individualism had led Europeans to restrict their birthrate, thus ‘compromis[ing] the vitality and the strength of future generations’ who would ‘undergo the fate of the weak’ and be overtaken by more ‘prolific . . . barbaric peoples.’168 Thus, what distinguished Maire from many of his contemporaries in the world of physical culture was not his eugenics but his rejection of neo-Lamarckian notions of heredity. Ironically, that refusal did not stop him from using a language of ‘improving the race’ through rational physical education that was virtually indistinguishable from those physical culturists who did believe in the heredity of acquired characteristics. Laura Downs may well be correct that the emphasis on an overtly eugenicist ‘sociobiological regeneration’ was stronger in the CF/PSF than on the left, but much of its vocabulary and mind-set was widely shared.169 165

Maire, ‘L’homme et la civilisation’, ‘Origine et évolution de l’homme’, in ‘Biologie élémentaire’. Maire, ‘L’Eugénique et la sélection humaine’, in ‘Biologie élémentaire’. 167 Maire, ‘L’homme et la civilisation’. 168 Franco Savorgan, cited from Le Mois in ‘La Dénatalité en Europe’, Le Flambeau, 11 January 1936, 5. 169 Downs, ‘Each and every one of you must become a chef ’, 31–2. 166

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PA RT I P O P U L A I R E F R A N Ç A I S  P P F  The ‘fascist’ PPF set up in June 1936 by renegade communist and independent deputy for Saint-Denis, Jacques Doriot, exhibited a similar insistence on renovating the nation through remaking the male body. This industrial northern suburb of Paris was something of a personal fiefdom for Jacques Doriot. A communist deputy since 1924, Doriot assumed the additional mantle of mayor of Saint-Denis for the communist left in 1931 (until his expulsion from the PCF in mid-1934), and then (until his dismissal in May 1937) as an independent.170 As Robert Soucy puts it, under Doriot’s leadership Saint-Denis had been transformed into a ‘Communist showplace’, with new municipal swimming facilities, a sports stadium, municipal library, crèche facilities, and free vacations for working-class children. In fact, Doriot had long been involved in the leadership of communist youth and sports organizations, from his role in the establishment of international ‘red sport’ (through the IRS) in 1921, to his position as secretary general of the Jeunesse Communiste from 1923 to 1926. Indeed, Doriot was also president of the communist FST at the time of his break with the communist party in 1934.171 After his political transformation Doriot wanted to provide a populist alternative to the PCF for young workers, and the issues of health, leisure, and exercise were still on the agenda. Despite also targeting women in its endeavours, the PPF couched its rationale for physical exercise overtly in the language of virility. Indeed, no leader on the extreme right in interwar France exemplifies the fascist-style ‘physical effluvium of manhood’ more than Doriot, despite the fact that he ran to fat after the demise of his political career as deputy and mayor in 1937.172 As we shall see, however, while the PPF arguably did more than the CF/PSF to instil a cult of the muscular and athletic ‘new man’, it engaged much less overtly with eugenicist ideas in doing so.173 One of the movement’s idées fixes was that French political elites were less virile than those in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It harnessed a range of intellectuals and writers as ideologues to popularize the notion that France was not only suffering decline, but that this slide into mediocrity was cause and effect of a devirilization of Frenchmen.174 The cult of virility endorsed by the PPF leadership and these fellow travellers thus channelled a gendered critique of contemporary politics while suggesting what kind of system should supersede republican democracy. Doriot enlisted the intellectual authority of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle—the party’s chief 170 Doriot was dismissed by the minister of the interior for administrative irregularities. ‘Fiches biographiques des maires de Saint-Denis’, Archives municipales de Saint-Denis (AMS-D); ‘Enfin, Doriot est révoqué’, L’Humanité, 27 May 1937, APP BA 1945. 171 Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, pp. 209, 205–6; police report on Doriot’s speeches made at a JC meeting, 28 August 1926, AN F7 13 182; ‘Doriot fait ses adieux à la Jeunesse Communiste’, L’Humanité, 19 August 1926, AN F7 13 181; André Gounot, ‘Les Spartakiades internationales, manifestations sportives et politiques du communisme’, Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique, 88, 2002, published online, 1 July 2005, 59–75. 172 Hoberman, Sport and Ideology, 115; Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, p. 214. 173 Jacques Doriot, Refaire la France (Paris, 1938), p. 10. 174 For example, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Bernand de Jouvenel, Paul Guitard, Jean Fontenoy, and Claude Jeantet. Jeunesse de France, 31 October 1937, 1.

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ideologue in the early period of its existence—in this task, and the latter’s articles were a regular feature of L’Emancipation nationale throughout 1936 and 1937. Drieu wrote that France had to be strong to speak to Hitler and Mussolini in ‘the virile tone’ they shared.175 For Drieu, the qualities of the ‘real leader’ were ‘courage’, ‘decisiveness’, and ‘action’: he was a ‘complete man’, able to look himself in the mirror in the middle of the night, and ask, ‘do I really have an unwavering flame deep in my eyes?’176 To Drieu, Karl Marx had been a ‘sickly and bearded homme de cabinet’ who neglected the importance of the physiological condition of man, while Doriot was ‘a profoundly healthy and vigorous man’ giving physical health back to the French.177 This cult of virility was overtly deployed in the battle to take political enemies down a peg. In summer 1937 a cartoon appeared in L’Emancipation nationale that depicted communist leader Jacques Duclos sitting naked in a well (see Fig 5.2). Not only middle-aged, balding, bespectacled, and

Fig. 5.2. Illustration by M. Thiérry. Stéphane Baron, ‘Un lecteur de “l’Huma” vous parle’. L’Emancipation nationale, 17 September 1937, p. 8. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.) 175 176 177

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Réponse à une femme’, L’Emancipation nationale, 5 December 1936, 8. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Être un chef ’, L’Emancipation nationale, 27 May 1937, 2. Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Le Parti de la santé’.

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paunchy, Duclos was also feminized by being drawn with prominent breasts. He reclines, looking at himself seemingly admiringly in a mirror labelled L’Huma, the object of his own gaze. As Chris Forth points out in his work on the gendered manipulation of images during the Dreyfus affair, wells and mirrors functioned in such political caricature as metaphors for truth.178 There is surely an ironic parallel intended here between the alleged communist (mis-)reading of the world and ‘female’ vanity. Duclos is not only vain (a trait tagged as feminine) but self-deluded, duped by his own ideological blinkers into seeing his emasculated and feminized body as one full of manly virtue, just as he sees the world distorted through the lens of communist ideology and himself through the flattery of the communist press. PPF voices tangled up the decline of the nation and its unmanned ruling elite with the physiological failure of its bodies. The movement’s principal newspaper held that ‘the physical quality of the French’ was inferior to that of neighbouring countries such as Germany, where life expectancy was higher, rates of tuberculosis lower, and the birth-rate far more robust. In the words of one author, ‘France is dying’, its ‘decline’ pronounced more and more each year.179 Poor sporting performances were read as an index of this decline. Party ideologue Paul Marion complained that France not only suffered from an influx of foreigners, a neglected empire, and the most sluggish economy in Europe, but its youth was also the least sporty.180 One article in the PPF youth press illustrated a French athletics defeat against Germany (itself a sign of ‘the decline of a youth and a race’) with a still from Leni Riefensthal’s film Olympia.181 In late 1938 a PPF journalist lamented that soon French national sides would triumph only against Andorra and Albania: sports leaders should remember that athletes are ‘the ambassadors of their countries’, so sports, like military preparation, ought to be compulsory.182 Another complained that the First World War had ignited a passion for sport in defeated countries such as Germany, Italy, and Russia, where populations had turned to physical exercise to ‘dress their wounds’ and rebuild. What was required was a German-style ‘national and anti-capitalist sport’, designed ‘to strengthen the entire race’ rather than to create a physical elite.183 The ‘sad display’ of the French delegation at the Olympic Games and the poor quality of elite sportsmen generally (never in any case ‘complete athletes’ but narrow specialists) reinforced the fact that the majority of the French were ‘tired beings, too often defective, whose physical dynamism was fading by the day’.184 For the PPF, sport and physical exercise provided the key to solving the problem of the French ‘race’, giving man back ‘pride in his body’.185 178 Chirstopher E. Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (Baltimore, 2004), p. 166. Such devirilization of political enemies was commonplace in the 1930s. See Surkis, ‘Enemies within’, 114–15. 179 J.-M. Aimot, ‘“Au secours de la jeunesse”: la reconstitution d’une communauté française vivante et fraternelle sera l’oeuvre des jeunes’, L’Emancipation nationale, 24 October 1936, 2. 180 Paul Marion, Programme du Parti Populaire Français (Paris, 1938), p. 9. 181 Jeunesse de France, 9 July 1938, 1. 182 René Massart, ‘La vie sportive de l’UPJF’, Jeunesse de France, 5 November 1938, 4. 183 Jean-Pierre Luce, ‘Du pain sur la planche: il faut “organiser” le sport’, L’Emancipation nationale, 18 July 1936, 7. 184 Docteur J. M., ‘Sport et santé’, L’Emancipation nationale, 22 August 1936, 6. 185 Marion, Programme du Parti Populaire Français, p. 91.

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The PPF press featured regular articles on the mainstream practice of sports such as boxing, rugby, tennis, and fencing, all presented in such a way as to reinforce the heroism of athletic manliness. Boxers were courageous and honourable, engaged in a mutually respectful and properly codified combat.186 The athletic and popular success of strongman and champion weight-lifter Charles Rigoulot was duly noted, including his triumph at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.187 The Italians—playing like ‘Roman gladiators from a heroic era’—were congratulated on winning the football World Cup in 1938 through their self-belief and perfect physical condition.188 Jean Mermoz, the pilot hero of the Croix de Feu, was almost deified, Doriot announcing the aviator’s disappearance at the end of 1936 with ‘inexpressible emotion’.189 The PPF leader himself wanted to bask in the reflected glory of air travel, and was photographed for his newspaper on the airport tarmac at Le Bourget having just touched down from a tour of North Africa.190 Drieu La Rochelle suggested that Doriot descended from the skies—‘the young machine of SaintDenis’—like a man come to rescue the French revolutionary tradition.191 The PPF youth newspaper also featured autobiographical pieces, social commentary, and fiction whose themes underlined the virilizing potential of sport and physical exercise.192 It also published historical tales that celebrated the qualities of risk, courage, and physical prowess commonly found in boys’ adventure stories.193 Yet aviatrixes were praised too, and elite tennis player Suzanne Lenglen, who died after a short illness in summer 1938, was mourned as ‘a model of will and perseverance’, which shows that the masculinist PPF was capable of acknowledging the achievements of women without always reducing them to their imagined feminine qualities.194 Doriot’s PPF contained two youth organizations—one specifically for the practice of sport—whose purpose was both to aid recruitment to the party and to effect the revirilization of French youth that party ideologues demanded. It was patently obvious that these bodies were modelled along the lines of Popular Front initiatives and an attempt to counter communist influence on male working youth. Indeed, although membership numbers remained small and each organization was beset by financial problems, it does seem that some young men and women were won over 186 André Margot, ‘Edouard Tenet: le triomphe du muscle français!’, Jeunesse de France, 7 May 1938, 6. 187 André Margot, ‘Charles Rigoulot et l’Allemand Manger’, Jeunesse de France, 28 November 1937, 6, and ‘Florent et Bugnicourt sont nos seuls espoirs’, Jeunesse de France, 9 January 1938, 2. 188 R.-G. Massart, ‘La Coupe du monde aux Italiens pour la deuxième fois’, Jeunesse de France, 25 June 1938, 6. 189 Jacques Doriot, ‘Mermoz: héros français du vingtième siècle’, L’Emancipation nationale, 12 December 1936, 8. 190 ‘Retour d’Empire’, Jeunesse de France, 28 May 1938, 1. 191 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Ça décolle!’, L’Emancipation nationale, 17 October 1936, 8. 192 Armand Lanoux, ‘Pour ou contre? Les courses de taureaux’, Jeunesse de France, 10 October 1937, 5. 193 For example, Jean Vellave, ‘Pirates: filibustiers, boucaniers’, Jeunesse de France, 11 June, 9 July 1938. 194 Aviatrix Madeleine Charnaux was an honorary member of the UJSF technical committee for aviation: Henri Courbières, ‘Les Ailes’, Jeunesse de France, 25 June 1938, 6; Kennedy, ‘The Croix de Feu, the Parti Social Français, and the politics of aviation’, 395; G. G., ‘Suzanne Lenglen n’est plus!’, Jeunesse de France, 9 July 1938, 1.

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from the communists.195 The Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française (UPJF), eventually led by Georges Deshaires, was founded in Saint-Denis in spring 1936, before the birth of the PPF itself. It was designed to ‘complete the project of the protection of the child’ already started in Saint-Denis. Before long, sections had been established in Bordeaux, Marseilles, Toulouse, Béziers, Metz, and Nancy, as well as the French capital.196 The PPF press claimed that the UPJF comprised 20,000 young men and women in spring 1937, and 35,000 by the outbreak of war in September 1939—around a fifth of them former communists.197 The UPJF set about the organization of leisure—country outings, theatrical evenings, balls, camping—and encouraged ‘sports in all their forms’.198 By March 1937 most of its groups had sports and camping sections, and later in the year a permanent summer camp opened on private property in La Ferté-Milon, north-east of Paris.199 According to the seemingly ubiquitous formula of the interwar period, the UPJF wanted ‘a healthy soul in a healthy body’, and it claimed to be ‘the union of all young and virile forces of the nation’.200 In summer 1937 the creation of a dedicated sports and physical education movement for all PPF and UPJF members was announced.201 The Union des Jeunesses Sportives Françaises (UJSF) catered for all healthy young of the ‘French race’ aged between 15 and 36, and was run by celebrated breast-stroke champion and sports journalist Jacques Cartonnet, who was also a sports columnist for another PPF organ, La Liberté.202 For him, the struggle between body and water in swimming built courage, overcame laziness, and led to ‘physical perfection’. Cartonnet said that he swam for ‘our leader’ Doriot, rising above the divisive internecine quarrels of French sport, just as the PPF sought to rise above the divisive partypolitical squabbles of republican politics.203 In 1938 he urged members to take their arm bands and insignia on summer vacation to spread the word about the PPF sporting phalanges.204 In February of that year the UJSF, overseeing football, rugby, basket-ball, and water-polo matches, as well as cycling, athletics, fencing, and general physical training (it promised free weekly physical culture lessons to its 195 There were repeated appeals for financial aid. See ‘L’action de l’UPJF’, L’Emancipation nationale, 20 February 1937, 6. 196 ‘Deuxième sortie des Phalanges de Paris-Banlieue’, Jeunesse de France, 7 May 1938, 6; J.-M. Aimot, ‘L’Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française frappe à la porte’, L’Emanciption nationale, 7 November 1936, 7; F.-Maurice Gorjux, Qu’est-ce que l’UPJF (Paris, 1941), 2. 197 H. Barbe, ‘Le journal des jeunes: vive Jeunesse de France’, L’Emancipation nationale, 10 April 1937, 6; R. Grandjean, ‘Nos 30,000 adhérents doivent dénier 30,000 lecteurs’, Jeunesse de France, 10 October 1937, 3; Georges Deshaires, Jeunesse de France, 2 January 1938, 1; ‘Notes sur l’Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française’, reproduced in a police report, 2 January 1941, APP BA 2033. 198 ‘Union Populaire de la jeunesse française’. 199 ‘L’action de l’UPJF’, L’Emancipation nationale, 13 March and 31 July 1937, 6. 200 Gorjux, Qu’est-ce que l’UPJF, 4–5. 201 H. Barbe to UPJF leaders, ‘Pour un groupe national sportif et d’éducation physique du PPF et de l’UPJF’, L’Emancipation nationale, 12 June 1937, 6. 202 Doriot, Refaire la France, p. 120; L’Emancipation Nationale, March 1938. 203 Jacques Cartonnet, Nages (Paris: Gallimard, 1935), p. 9; Jacques Cartonnet, ‘Pour l’UJSF et l’UPJF je rélève le défi de Boitchenko’, Jeunesse de France, 2 January 1938, 6. 204 Jacques Cartonnet, ‘Au long des routes de France, phalangiste, profite des vacances et propage l’idée UJSF’, Jeunesse de France, 30 July 1938, 6.

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school-age members in Paris), claimed to have twenty-two sports sections operating in the Paris region, and by May the movement claimed thousands of members all helping to work towards ‘an improvement of the race’.205 UJSF propagandists spoke in terms of ‘putting a stop to . . . degeneration’ and contributing to a redressement of ‘physical virtues’.206 Several high-profile athletes became active members: for example, cyclist Robert ‘Toto’ Grassin, swimmers René Philippot and Pierre Trinquecoste, runner Désiré Leriche, and Cartonnet’s friend, Olympic swimmer Emile Poussard, who was happy to serve in the ‘gigantic work of recovery of French muscular capital’.207 In keeping with the views of many contemporaries, the PPF youth and sports wings saw physical culture as a necessary, ‘rational’ foundation for bodily transformation, and sport as a finishing school for virility. Thus in UPJF camps, 45 minutes of physical culture and athletics were de rigueur first thing in the morning.208 And while the sporting endeavours of boxer George Carpentier were praised (he was a ‘magnificent ambassador of French muscle abroad’), so was the fact that he reportedly prepared for his matches with half an hour of physical culture every day.209 Yet the treatment of physical culture per se was sometimes rather disparaging, despite the clear endorsement of its alleged virilizing effects. There was apparent concern that the strong man (wrestlers in particular) had to dress up and play to the crowd. Hercules’ and Samson’s undoing by female wiles was noted, and one story related a case of an athlete whose estranged wife complained that her husband had localized all force in his arms and pectoral muscles, leaving none for amorous pursuits.210 An author of the women’s column, reflecting on the craze for get-fit exercises, playfully surmized that the various instructions for this ‘morning chore’ made women hypersensitive to their ‘flaws’ and ‘defects’, and necessitated the practice of dozens of different exercises.211 But another journalist cited Dr James-Edward Ruffier’s claim that muscles gave the body its shape, beauty, and internal strength, advising women that physical culture would save them from both obesity and neurasthenia.212 The PPF press advertised the Dynam Institute in Paris, which promised to change men from thin weaklings into strong men with ‘Olympic muscles’. Just a few minutes of exercise each morning will be enough: when you look in the mirror you will see a different man, full of joie de vivre, your musculature transformed and 205 ‘Aussi rallie-toi à l’Union sportive des Jeunesses françaises’; ‘La vie de l’UJSF’, Jeunesse de France, 21 May 1938, 6; ‘La vie de l’Union sportive des jeunesses françaises’, Jeunesses de France, 7 May 1938, 6. 206 Paul Guitard, ‘Pourquoi l’Union Sportive des Jeunesses Françaises?’, Jeunesse de France, 23 January 1938, 6. 207 ‘17 décembre’, Jeunesse de France, 5 December 1937, 4; ‘Le premier congrès de la Fédération Paris-Nord’, Jeunesse de France, 28 November 1937, 4; Jeunesse de France, 2 January 1938, 4; Emile Poussard cited in Jeunesse de France, 7 May 1938, 6. 208 J.-M. Aimot, ‘Camps-écoles, camps permanents et saisonniers s’ouvrent et vont s’ouvrir pour permettre à nos camarades de pratiquer le camping’, L’Emancipation nationale, 23 April 1937, 7. 209 Jack Bruneau, ‘Gens et choses de France’, Jeunesse de France, 7 November 1937, 3. 210 Jacques Arnault, ‘Au pays des gros biceps’, Jeunesse de France, 7 November, 5, and 5 December 1937, 6. 211 Denise, ‘Mesdemoiselles, ce coin est à vous!’, Jeunesse de France, 31 October 1937, 5. 212 Monique, ‘Belles de France’, Jeunesse de France, 13 March 1938, 5.

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internal organs developed.213 There were many advertisements for Guaracol—a product supposedly derived from an exotic tropical plant, which promised to cure debilitating physical and nervous conditions such as ‘a lack of vital power, surmenage, depression’ (see Fig 5.3). One featured a classical nude sculpture in the familiar pose of Discobolus; another, also depicting a muscular and naked white man, explained that missionaries and explorers had been astonished by the ‘vitality’ and ‘resistance’ of the native ‘races’ who ingested the plant.214

Fig. 5.3. Advertisement. L’Emancipation nationale, 12 September 1936, p. 6. (By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Paris.) 213

L’Emancipation nationale, 12 September 1936, 7.

214

L’Emancipation nationale, 25 July 1936, 7.

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Echoing a whole generation of physical culturists, the UJSF held that it was important to develop ‘[m]ens sana in corpore sano’, and to fight the effect on both body and soul of excessive intellectual labour.215 The UJSF encouraged camping as an hygienic ‘fresh-air therapy’ that was also an effective remedy or ‘detox’ for factory- and office-workers.216 The PPF youth press reminded readers that while not everyone could be a Jean Taris or Jean Borotra or Jules Ladoumègue, a few hours spent in the fresh air every week would protect against intellectual surmenage.217 French scholastic long-jump champion Paul Lecourt sympathized with Jeunesse de France readers suffering from this ailment: ‘[y]our tired body’ needs leisure activities to fill your lungs with fresh air and ‘chase from your mind the dread of the exam’. This was how the physical failures of French male youth could be reversed.218 L’Emancipation nationale demanded that medical students take a humanities baccalauréat instead of a scientific one to make them culturally well-rounded doctors, and for medical studies to be commenced only after military service, in order to alleviate the intellectual surmenage of formal education. But in the barracks these budding medics should receive intensive physical training and selection, the weak being eliminated.219 After all, the medical corps of the future would be ‘trainers of the race’.220 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle too, saw in sun, air, and physical exercise the potential to transform French minds, souls, and bodies. He complained that teachers were ‘readily materialist’ and had thus ‘maintained the mass of the French population in physical stagnation’.221 For him, the recent popular embrace of sport and the outdoors was proof that modern man had recognized that the modern ‘machine’ had ‘locked him in the factory, in the office, in the slums’, and was destroying him physically.222 But there was an imperial cast to Drieu’s anxieties, since he saw French decline not only in its dwindling birth-rates but in the high proportion of the French army comprised of colonial troops from Africa and Asia—in his view, a ‘supreme symptom of decadence’.223 Indeed, Drieu echoed the familiar critique of civilization—that the very mechanisms by which white men had secured mastery over the environment and other ‘races’ now threatened to erode it by having conferred on Europeans a comfortable, sedentary, and thus physically diminishing life.224 One PPF writer held that the recent vogue for camping was similar to the 215 216 217 218

‘La vie de l’Union Sportive des Jeunesses Françaises’, Jeunesse de France, 10 April 1938, 6. André Moréal, ‘Le camping: sport, détente, repos’, Jeunesse de France, 23 April 1938, 2. A. Vologes, ‘Sports scolaires’, Jeunesse de France, 10 October 1937, 6. Paul Lecourt cited in Cartonnet, ‘Jeune scolaire en dehors et au-dessus des Fédérations viens au

sport’. 219

Docteur J.M., ‘Sport et santé’, L’Emancipation nationale, 22 August 1936, 6. Jean-Pierre Luce, ‘Du pain sur la planche: il faut “organiser” le sport’, L’Emancipation nationale, 18 July 1936, 7. 221 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Le Parti de la santé: le PPF assurera le sauvetage physique de l’homme’, L’Emancipation nationale, 20 August 1937, 2. 222 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘L’esprit du PPF: le parti de la santé’, L’Emancipation nationale, 13 August 1937, 2. 223 Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Pour sauver le sang de la France il faut prendre des mesures bouleversantes’, L’Emancipation nationale, 27 August 1937, 2. 224 Drieu La Rochelle, ‘Le Parti de la santé’. 220

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Enlightenment ‘return to nature’—a reaction against ‘the excessive refinement of a decadent civilization’. But camping was also in keeping with the PPF’s desire for blood-and-soil nationalism. Evoking the works of Maurice Barrès, one journalist suggested that ‘to go camping is also a physical way of connecting with one’s country’, ‘recovering contact with eternal realities’ through touching the most direct of all elements—the earth.225 The revolt against materialism to be found amongst PPF ideologues was indeed a radicalized version of that evident in French naturist and physical culturist circles. This is hardly surprising, given that scholars have long recognized the appeal of the radical right as a spiritual rebellion against both rationalism and Marxist materialism. The PPF certainly took an interest in the ‘whole man’. The work of Alexis Carrel was not explicitly mentioned in the PPF press, but the viewpoints put forward are reminiscent of the critique of materialism in Man, the Unknown. Indeed, Carrel appeared at the rallies of the PSF and PPF in the late 1930s (the PPF probably erroneously claimed that he was a member), and his wife was an activist in the Croix de Feu.226 Going further than mainstream exercise gurus—and indeed Carrel himself—in putting forward a gendered and anti-republican critique of democracy, one journalist reflected on the work of Catholic writer Henri Daniel-Rops by criticizing republican universalism as emasculating because it had ‘invented a theoretical being, without family, without nation, without traditions: indeed, this being is not a man’.227 Ironically, the whole PPF programme—not least that involving sports and physical education—was shaped in the shadow of the Popular Front. In 1936 the PPF announced a social programme for workers that included the organization of leisure and sports—what it termed ‘the rational organization of leisure for the working classes’.228 The party wanted the construction of more sports grounds, more youth groups and youth hostels, more colonies de vacances, camps and resorts for the health of the young, and more travel and cultural excursions.229 It also campaigned for the creation of a full-blown ministry of sport all the better to save the ‘race’.230 In summer 1936 L’Emancipation nationale reported that Doriot had provided in Saint-Denis a magnificent swimming pool, several nurseries, a new school, and a well-equipped orphanage. In good weather, ‘all the children of Saint-Denis’ could play tennis and football in the local stadium.231 Its insistence on the importance of a healthy mind in a healthy body, the democratization of aviation and 225 J.-M. Aimot, ‘Le camping au PPF: le peuple doyen de l’Europe retrouver sa jeunesse sous la tente’, L’Emancipation nationale, 3 April 1937, 7; J.-M. Aimot, ‘Nos grandes tâches: profitons de l’hiver pour créer nos sections d’art et nos équipes de camping’, L’Emancipation nationale, 9 January 1937, 7. 226 Andres H. Reggiani, ‘Alexis Carrel, the unknown: eugenics and population research under Vichy’, French Historical Studies, 25 no. 2 (2002), 331–56; Alain Drouard, Alexis Carrel (1873–1944): de la mémoire à l’histoire (Paris, 2005), p. 151. 227 Henri Nancroix, ‘Appel à l’homme!’, L’Emancipation nationale, 3 April 1937, 2. 228 ‘Manifeste du Parti Populaire Français’, Parti Populaire Français, tracts politiques 1932–1938, n.d. Bibliothèque nationale de France. 229 Emancipation Nationale, 19 March 1938, 10. 230 Paul Marion, ‘Le Programme du PPF’, Emancipation Nationale, 26 March 1938, 6. 231 Jeanne Vaillant, ‘Pour les enfants de Saint-Denis’, L’Emancipation nationale, August 1936, 6.

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skiing, and the sense that the breeding stock would be enhanced by building a physically fit population, all echoed Popular Front positions. Also similar was the blurring of mass politics and mass culture by bringing the movement’s youth and sports organizations squarely into the calendar of PPF political rallies and events, such as the outdoors festival held in summer 1937 at Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, featuring sports events, sack races, and jeux de massacre; and the first anniversary celebration of the PPF held in La Ferté-Milon, complete with sports and games for children.232 Unsurprisingly, violence with leftists was commonplace within the world of PPF sports. UPJF meetings were frequently sabotaged by communists, and members were advised to ‘maintain the greatest sang-froid’ when confronting them.233 The PPF press consistently criticized the leftist FSGT, accusing it of a dangerous ‘infiltration’ of the sporting scene.234 A few months after the fall of the Popular Front, PPF journalist Jean Vellave even demanded that Jean Zay dissolve the 140,000-strong organization.235 After all, the FSGT competed directly for members with the PPF, which lost no time in boasting whenever it managed to win over male or female youth from communism.236 In November 1937 it claimed that among the politically engaged youth newspapers only L’Avant-Garde and JOC had a higher circulation.237 And the PPF press reached out deliberately to conscript members in a deliberate parallel with the communists.238 A regular column in its youth press, ‘Nos soldats’, claimed to provide a defence of young men at a vulnerable period in their lives. The UPJF also sent parcels to barracks: one recipient wrote in gratitude for the sausages, jam, and champagne that brightened up his bleak, draughty, dormitory existence. Apparently, conscripts who dismissed the publication as ‘that journal of Doriot’s’ changed their tune when they set eyes on the contents of these packages.239 Jean Vellave celebrated military preparation courses for ensuring that young Frenchmen arrived at the barracks capable of undertaking basic military training without ‘unhealthy fatigue’.240 And another UJSF ideologue invited PPF sporting youth to ‘improve our physical qualities’ and ‘swear to lead the supreme combat for the country and for civilization with a virile heart in a body of steel.’241 232 L’Emancipation Nationale, 27 August 1937, 6; advertisement for the fête, L’Emancipation nationale, 19 June 1937, 6; flyer of the Section d’Ermont-Eaubonne St Prix, 23 June 1937, 59 ac 10, AMSD; and J.-M. Aimot, ‘Retour de la Ferté-Milon’, L’Emancipation nationale, 6 August 1937, 3; Henri Lebvre, ‘Au camp de vacances de la Ferté-Milon: Doriot chez les enfants’, L’Emancipation nationale, 27 August 1937, 8; police report, 27 June 1937, APP BA 1946. 233 ‘Communistes assommeurs de mutilés et de jeunes’, L’Emancipation nationale, 17 July 1937, 6. 234 Jean Vellave, ‘Jeunes Français prenez garde!’, Jeunesse de France, 8 October 1938, 4. 235 Jean Vellave, ‘La vie sportive de l’UPJF’, Jeunesse de France, 29 October 1938, 4. 236 Henri Barbé, ‘Le journal des jeunes: vive Jeunesse de France’, L’Emancipation nationale, 10 April 1937, 6; Georges Deshaires, Jeunesse de France, 2 January 1938, 1; police note, n.d. APP BA 2033. 237 ‘Hardi, les jeunes en avant!’, Jeunesse de France, 7 November 1937, 5. 238 ‘L’activité de l’UPJF’, L’Emancipation nationale, 10 July 1937, 6. 239 R. G. of the 168e R. I. F dated 27 December 1937, ‘Des voix qui viennent de l’Est’, Jeunesse de France, 2 January 1938, 1. 240 Jean Vellave, ‘La préparation militaire’, Jeunesse de France, 15 October 1938, 4. 241 Paul Guitard, ‘Pourquoi l’Union Sportive des Jeunesses Françaises?’, Jeunesse de France, 23 January 1938, 6.

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F RO N T D E L A J E U N E S S E This gendering of both the diagnosis of French ills and their supposed remedy was also a feature of the small political movement founded in December 1937 by disgraced barrister Jean-Charles Legrand.242 Legrand had been president of the youth wing of the Alliance Démocratique for a short time in 1937, but was frustrated by the party’s republican ethos (perhaps the staid paternalism of the conservative right did not sit well with him either).243 Having failed to find backing within the CF/ PSF, Legrand launched his own ‘youth front’.244 Men and women under the age of forty were admitted in an attempt to rejuvenate political life in France: Legrand hoped to pick up disillusioned followers of communism and the Action Française, united only in their sense that contemporary French youth was ‘impotent’ and disenfranchised.245 This anti-republican and anti-Semitic movement was almost certainly unsuccessful in mobilizing mass support: the socialist press joked that Legrand was ‘the founder, treasurer, sole member, and only enthusiastic spectator’ of the new movement.246 There were enough militants to form a security service, however, which the Paris police feared was armed with revolvers and truncheons. Its members were expected to know how to box, as well as to be able to handle their weapons.247 Indeed, FJ meetings were occasionally the site of physical conflict with leftist or Jewish groups, and were often banned by the authorities for the risk they posed to public order.248 Legrand believed that youth had been let down by the Republic, and that republican deputies were cowards who ‘got down on their knees’ before Hitler.249 Although the FJ was of mixed sex, Legrand was adamant that ‘the new France will be made by new men’.250 The movement deployed codes of manliness in mobilizing youth, ordering an overcoming of manly lack in its readers. ‘You must become a new man: a hero. You must conquer yourself. You must know your weaknesses, your vile tendencies, the ugly recesses of yourself, and you must clean yourself up . . . You must improve yourself, bring out what is good, dominate what is dubious; you must sculpt your own statue . . . It is thus that you will acquire will and become a leader. Courage is not only about dodging bullets: it is to overcome oneself, with only one’s conscience, without a fuss; it is an obscure courage, but fruitful . . . You must, constantly, prove yourself worthy of it: you must not be rude,

242 Police note, April 1938; ‘Me J.-Charles Legrand suspendu pour un an par le Conseil de l’Ordre’, L’Epoque, 21 July 1937, AN F7 14 819. 243 ‘M. Jean-Charles Legrand présidera les Jeunesses de l’Alliance démocratique’, L’Echo de Paris, 2 December 1937; police note dated 11 August 1937, AN F7 14 819. 244 Le Temps, 8 December 1937, AN F 44 37; police note, 24 December 1937; Legrand to P.-E. Flandin, in ‘Le Front de la Jeunesse’, L’Epoque, 7 December 1937, AN F7 14 819. 245 Police report, 27 January 1938, APP BA 2494; police note, April 1938, AN F7 14 819; manifesto of the ‘Front des Français’, Le Défi, 5 June 1938, 3. 246 ‘N’est pas jeune qui veut’, Le Populaire, 8 December 1937, AN F7 14 819. 247 Police reports, 26 October and 5 December 1938, APP BA 2494. 248 Police reports dated 22 and 23 March, 26 April, 27 October, and 5 November 1938, APP BA 2494. 249 Jean-Charles Legrand, ‘Sadowa . . .’, Le Défi, 20 February 1938, 1. 250 Jean-Charles Legrand, Le Défi, 20 March 1928, 1.

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sloppy, vulgar.’251 It would seem that the publication drew here on the works of naturist Dr Marcel Viard, whose latest tome promising practical help in achieving ‘mastery over oneself ’ was advertised in autumn 1938.252 The FJ press and propaganda expressed this ideal ‘new man’ in a visual register: at times he was a fresh youth (see Fig 5.4), and at others a muscular armed crusader.253 Physical exercise and ‘the construction of a healthy and strong race through sport and the reform of education’ was at the heart of the imagined process of individual and collective

Fig. 5.4. Front de la Jeunesse postcard. ‘Un parti nouveau? Non, mais un élan nouveau vers une République neuve, propre, fière. Adhérez!’, police file, 24 November 1938, APP BA 2494. (By permission of the Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris.)

251 253

‘Les lois FJ’, Le Défi, 11 June 1939, 3. Le Défi, 5 February 1939, 2.

252

Le Défi, 30 October 1938, 2.

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transformation.254 Dr Charry, appointed to the movement’s Service de Défense de la Race, wanted schools to counter the intellectual labours of study with a ‘rational body culture’ including gymnastics designed to correct ‘physical deficiency’, and he thought that stadia ought to provide hydrotherapy.255 Indeed, in May 1938 the FJ announced the creation of its own sporting section, inviting comrades to take part in athletics, boxing, football, swimming, physical culture, and camping weekends.256 In early 1939 it announced that it wanted to ‘form future combatants’ in the defence of ‘the physical and moral health of the race and of French youth’.257 The movement organized outings ‘au grand air’ as part of this endeavour, touring the countryside on bicycles and motorcycles in a way that was probably intended also as an act of intimidation towards communists and Jews.258 The FJ organ Le Défi expressed a disdain for spectator sport, where the greed of self-interested sports leaders pushed athletes to extremes in ‘the traffic in muscle’. This was not the kind of activity that would lead to the ‘improvement of the race’.259 Regular columnist Colonna opined that what was needed in schools was not sport but physical culture—a work-out that would result in the slow development of ‘a harmonious and strong musculature’, providing a complete athlete rather than premature specialist in ‘violent sports’.260 Legrand specifically wanted to remake the biology of each man, who was asked to correct any inherited defects. In his view, youth formed the ‘granary of the race’, and the FJ wanted ‘magnificent bodies’ with ‘curved chests’ and a ‘blood rich in red cells’. Such specimens would make the French ‘race’ ‘more just, more wise, more liberal, more loyal, and more courageous’.261 Perhaps to warn its young readership of the decrepitude that lay ahead—in their bodies and in the nation—if they did not heed Legrand’s call, the publication’s sports column often featured an illustration of a balding middle-aged man doing squats in front of a mirror in his bedroom wardrobe.262 C O N C LU S I O N What emerges from the examples discussed in this chapter is first of all the clear sense that sport and physical exercise was taken seriously by a range of radical political actors in 1930s France. The reach of the médecins-culturistes was considerable—perhaps most obviously on the left due to the influence that Pierre Marie exerted within the Popular Front governments, and on the right in the way that the CF/PSF’s sporting enterprise was nourished by the ideas of Georges Hébert and Dr James-Edward Ruffier. The preference for ‘rational’ physical culture as a 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262

Front de la Jeunesse tract, ‘Qu’est-ce que le FJ?’, police file, 5 December 1938, APP BA 2494. Dr Charry, ‘Service de défense de la race’, Le Défi, 16 October 1938, 4. Le Défi, 29 May 1938, 2. Jean-Charles Legrand, ‘Notre combat’, Le Défi, 12 February 1939, 1. As reported in Le Défi, 2 April 1939, 2. F. Colonna, ‘Le Sport à l’ancan’, Le Défi, 9 January 1938, AN F7 14 819. F. Colonna, ‘Le sport à l’école’, Le Défi, 8 May 1938, 2. Jean-Charles Legrand, ‘Défense de la race française’, Le Défi, 9 October 1938, 3. F. Colonna, ‘Le Muscle’, Le Défi, 6 February 1938, 4.

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foundation for health and virility, and an aversion to spectator sport, was unmistakeable. There are clear indicators that the leaders (if not the followers) of these movements addressed the problems of modern life—its materialism, its pressures, and its emasculating potential—in the terms used by the physical culturists discussed in previous chapters. The conviction of biological degeneration was also there, and many argued for some kind of medicalized, even eugenicist, solution to France’s imagined decline. That applied especially for the CF/PSF’s Gaëtan Maire, who was nonetheless seemingly alone in overtly rejecting the neo-Lamarckian assumptions behind so much ‘social hygiene’ in this period. The core programme of the Popular Front was endorsed by all factions, at least if detached from its party political objectives. Ironically, the radical right fell over itself to emulate Léo Lagrange’s vision for mass sport and leisure, which was itself an adaptation of socalled totalitarian models imported from Italy and Germany. As Karen Fiss puts it, ‘[a]larmed by the power that fascist demonstrations seemed to exert over the masses, the Popular Front deliberately tried to tap these same affective forces.’263 The fit body in motion provided an engaging popular spectacle that may well have helped to sell newspapers and increase attendance at rallies; it was a figure whose physique, skill, and well-being could be emulated through participation in these movements’ own sports organizations, and it functioned as a gendered metaphor for national vitality. Although all of these organizations addressed a female audience as well as a male one, their membership remained overwhelming masculine and their ethos strikingly masculinist: there was an insistence that the quality most needed by France and the French was ‘virility’, and also that this virtue was at risk of being lost. On left and right the desired ‘new man’ was an athletic warrior with all the physical and moral qualities of martial manhood: if the cult of this figure was most intense on the radical right rather than the left, it should be remembered that the rightist CF/PSF was less inclined to his celebration than the PPF and FJ, showing that nuances need not map neatly onto conventional political cleavages. In any case, across the board, to lack these qualities was to risk ridicule and charges of unpatriotic status, although at times—as in the communist defence of the conscript weakling—the failure could be recuperated in an honourable martyrdom. Indeed, the shared characteristics of the ‘new man’ touted by all factions seem to outweigh the differences. Ambivalence to the potentially narcissistic and theatrical display of body-building muscle can be found across the board. All sides preferred an athletic man of action who may have developed his physical core through systematic exercise, but who proved his worth through sporting struggle in the stadium and in the streets.

263

Fiss, Grand illusion, 161.

6 The Defeat of French Manhood and the Vichy Imagination For many observers the devastating military defeat of June 1940 provided proof of the failures—both physical and moral—of French manhood. For interwar physical culturists, of course, it was a collapse that had been anticipated for some time. It was hardly surprising that during the ‘phoney war’ Dr Ruffier should be worried by the state of the French troops he saw guarding the Italian border on his many long-distance bicycle rides in the south-east: ‘they seemed to me frightfully to lack not only enthusiasm, but vigour and training; they struggle excessively over the few kilometres they have to travel; marching, our natural exercise, seems to them, even to the country lads, an intolerable chore.’ This to Ruffier was the work of the ‘automobile-psychosis’ into which ‘the ancient physical courage of the French has sunk’. In his professional opinion the French military offered a sorry contrast to the ‘athleticized’ German army.1 Georges Hébert too was concerned about the chances of the French in battle. In early 1940 he reflected that war was a test of the physical, moral, and virile strength that the French had failed to develop.2 The military defeat, when it came in June 1940, served only to deepen this pessimism. When Hébert witnessed tanned and athletic Wehrmacht soldiers on French soil he felt he had wasted forty years urging his compatriots to build their bodies while the Germans alone had benefitted from his advice.3 Writing in the conservative La Revue des deux mondes, Maurice Coste similarly lamented that the French had missed the opportunity to forge a ‘mens sana in corpore sano’: he thought a lack of physical training was to blame for ‘our present misfortunes’. Observations of poor male physique routinely functioned not only as an explanation for military defeat but as a rationale for a certain model of national renewal. Coste supported the plans of the Vichy regime to transform sport, making it at once amateur, compulsory, and ‘rational’, arguing that ‘a race is not physically superior because it has produced a few champions’. For him, this shift should provide the ‘social and national hygiene’ necessary to fend off decrepitude in both individual and nation.4 Accounts like these ultimately had the effect of justifying the new regime’s quest for 1 Dr James-Edward Ruffier, Cinquante ans de cyclisme, memoirs first serialized in Le Cycliste, April 1947, 60. 2 Georges Hébert, ‘Réflexions d’actualité’, L’Education physique, April 1940, 4–6. 3 J. Defarges recalling the words of Hébert in 1958, cited in Delaplace, Georges Hébert, p. 341. 4 Maurice Coste, ‘Le Sport et la régénération de la race’, La Revue des deux mondes, 1 August 1940, 235–8.

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bodily and thereby—in the common slippage of the era—national regeneration. The policy-makers of the semi-autonomous Etat Français, based in the spa town of Vichy after July, in fact needed no convincing that the route to national salvation lay in the physical and moral transformation of the Frenchman. Even those whose political ideology made them immune from Vichyist political fantasies often complained, as did former Popular Front air minister Pierre Cot in 1941, that ‘the soldiers of 1939 were not worth those of 1914’.5 Given the purchase of this view it is hardly surprising that an ‘appeal to virility’ was part of everyday life during the years of Occupation, haunting the political rhetoric and visual culture of both Vichy France and the world of the ultracollaborationists in Paris, and infusing the outlaw culture of Resistance as well.6 As this chapter illustrates, the concerns of the interwar physical culturists discussed in this book animated the Vichy project of physical education in a number of ways. It was their model of muscular virility and their conception of medical control that was adopted by the state after 1940, and it was their anxieties about national decline, the dangers of fatigue, and the need to protect the ‘whole man’ that resonated among Vichy-era elites of various kinds, including the eugenicists working at the foundation established by Alexis Carrel in 1941. This apparent influence is unsurprising given that several interwar protagonists took on key administrative roles after 1940. Ironically, however, the Vichy state did not adopt the language of the ‘regeneration of the race’ as politicians in the late Third Republic had done, despite the overt racism of the Pétainist regime and the fact that the world of Occupationera physical culture continued to be saturated with it. This chapter traces the fate of a pattern of thinking in which concerns about the bodies of French men in effect mediated and were mediated by anxieties about national strength, ‘racial’ health, surmenage, and the supposedly damaging effects of modern life. P H Y S I C A L E D U C AT I O N A N D T H E P RO J E C T O F M A S C U L I N E R E N E WA L U N D E R V I C H Y Nowhere was the Vichy state’s desire to remake French manhood as obvious as in the realm of sport and physical education, and it built on interwar methods and institutions in order to do so. In many ways extending Popular Front initiatives, the Vichy experiment was better funded: the budget of its commissioner for sport was initially twenty times that of Léo Lagrange—some 1.9 billion francs.7 And despite the deterioration in Vichy’s resources over the period of Occupation, this financial commitment was maintained between 1940 and 1944.8 Jean-Louis 5 Pierre Cot, ‘Morale in France during the war’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, November 1941, 446–7; on Vichy’s quest for masculine renewal in general see Limore Yagil, ‘L’homme nouveau’ et la révolution nationale de Vichy (1940–1944) (Paris, 1997). 6 Luc Capdevila, ‘The Quest for masculinity in a defeated France, 1940–1945’, Contemporary European History, 10, 3 (2001), 427. 7 Hubscher et al. L’Histoire en mouvements, p. 192; Jackson, France: The Dark Years, p. 338. 8 Henri Mavit, ‘Education physique et sports’, Revue d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale, 56 (1964), 100.

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Gay-Lescot points out that there was nothing particularly novel in Vichy’s attempt to forge a physical renovation of French men after the humiliating defeat of 1940: the initiatives of the Third Republic in the realm of physical education in the 1880s had similar roots.9 To that end, a Commissariat for General and Sports Education (CGEGS) was created under the direction of former Wimbledon tennis champion, war veteran, and graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, Jean Borotra, known in the interwar period as the ‘Bounding Basque’.10 On taking up his appointment Borotra suggested that Germany’s 50,000 sports fields and lower proportion of medically unfit conscripts held the key to the French defeat.11 In late 1940 he introduced nine hours per week of general and sports education (EGS) in primary and secondary schools, and three afternoons of it per week in higher education.12 To keep the young masses physically fit, the regime kept Lagrange’s brevet sportif populaire more or less intact, simply changing its name to the brevet sportif national: in 1943 it was claimed that some 178,000 males and females were awarded the certificate in the Paris region.13 Over the first year of Occupation more than a thousand administrative posts were created across the country to carry through the policies of the CGEGS—in particular, to oversee the physical instruction of future elites. As we shall see, it is here that one finds a good number of interwar physical culturists seeking to shape the Vichy project. Training took place across a range of new and existing institutions whose functions somewhat overlapped. Regional training centres (CREGS), which produced general education teachers, were scattered across both the occupied and unoccupied zones, often located in university towns that already had a regional institute of physical education (IREP). Normally attached to university faculties of medicine, the fifteen IREP still functioning at the time of the defeat were to train physical education professors in lycées by bringing medicine and physical education together.14 The national training school for physical and sports education (ENEPS) founded in 1933 was also used for this purpose. Finally, the Vichy regime established elite training institutions in the form of the national centre for instructors and athletes (CNMA) in the southern town of Antibes, and the system of Ecoles des cadres—the most illustrious being the ‘Uriage’ school near Grenoble.15 All of this training was about professionalizing physical education provision, of course, but it was also about forging physically robust and overwhelmingly male national elites at both practical and symbolic levels. 9

Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy (1940–1944) (Lyon, 1991), pp. 192–3. Jean-Michel Faure, ‘National identity and the sporting champion’, pp. 86, 90; Yagil, ‘L’homme nouveau’ et la révolution nationale de Vichy, pp. 181–6. 11 Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 189. 12 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, pp. 47–8. 13 According to Dr Philippe Encausse, Education physique et sous-alimentation (Paris, 1944), pp. 42–3. 14 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, pp. 12, 42, 43, 160. 15 Marianne Amar and Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot, ‘Le sport dans le tourmente, de Vichy à la Libération’, in ed. Philippe Tétart, Histoire du sport en France du second empire au régime de Vichy (Paris, 2007), pp. 378–81. 10

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In general, for all the immense efforts of the CGEGS, its effectiveness crumbled after the German invasion of the southern zone at the end of 1942. Borotra’s favourable public statements about Léo Lagrange warranted his dismissal on Pierre Laval’s return to power in spring 1942.16 Indeed the Germans, suspicious about Borotra’s political intentions, deported him to a concentration camp.17 Key institutions such as the southern regional training centres (CREGS) and the training college at Antibes were closed down, and in the latter case moved to the Ecole de Joinville outside Paris.18 In his resignation letter Borotra claimed that both sport and the notion of a ‘complete education’ had taken root in France under his guidance, and expressed confidence that his successor— a former rugby player and militaire—would continue in the task of ‘remaking a sturdy youth’.19 In general, the autonomy of this second commissioner for sports and general education, Colonel Pascot, was far less marked than that of his predecessor. In many ways this Vichy experiment built on the assumptions that underpinned the world of interwar physical culture. For a start, it was animated by a deeply entrenched notion of sex-difference that limited the scale of physical activities allowed to girls in the school curriculum. It was not so much that Vichy authorities thought that girls and women were less important in the national redressement promised through the ‘National Revolution’, nor that females did not participate in the physical education or other training provided by the state. On the contrary, they too were subjected to increased hours of EGS in the school curriculum, voluntarily took the brevet sportif national, and underwent training programmes at the CNMA in Antibes and even the elite training school at Uriage: it was just that they were always assigned the role of nurturer rather than chef. One might argue that the novelty of these Vichy experiments instead lay precisely in the emphasis placed on the importance of forming male leaders through physical education. In 1942, one application for the post of lecturer at the national training school for physical and sports education (ENEPS) included outlines for a lecture on the ‘principle of authority’ in which the goal was to train not only men but chefs of the future.20 There is an appeal to authoritarianism that is quite common in such sources that was not prevalent in mainstream physical culturist discourses before 1940. The continuities were perhaps most obvious in the ubiquitous use of the language of virility—which was hardly surprising, given that Vichy policy-makers drew overtly on hébertisme in their model of physical education. Although Georges Hébert himself, always critical of the bricolage of the official ‘French method’, remained estranged from the regime, his supporters earned key positions of influence.21 Hébertistes in the CGEGS included Robert Lafitte, general inspector of 16 Police report on the Clichy meeting of the Croix de Feu, 29 February 1936, where Borotra spoke, APP BA 1901. 17 Amar and Gay-Lescot, ‘Le sport dans le tourmente, de Vichy à la Libération’, 379–82, 384. 18 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 164. 19 Borotra to the CGEGS, 20 April 1942, AN F17 14462. 20 Dossier provided by M. Pech for the CGEGS, n.d., presumably September 1942, AN F44 38. 21 His organ L’Education physique appeared only once during the Occupation (July 1942), and although the groupement hébertiste was active after April 1941, becoming part of the official French federation of physical education (FFEP) in 1943, Hébert himself was not involved. Delaplace, Georges Hébert, pp. 360, 365–7, 391.

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EGS by December 1940, and Ernest Loisel, who continued in his role as director of the ENEP.22 References to Hébert’s publications in official texts were frequent, and his leçon-type followed to the letter, including the recommendation to perform exercises naked from the waist up and in the fresh air. This would develop the standard virile repertoire—pluck, courage, tenacity, perseverance, daring, will, and the taste for exertion.23 Applicants for training posts were keen to show that they understood Hébert’s teachings, reproducing his views on virility and the perils of spectator sport and the ‘pursuit of performance’.24 The writings of Dr Maurice Boigey and Dr Marcel Bellin du Coteau were also cited in such sources, strengthening the sense in which Occupation-era enthusiasts sought to build on the expertise of interwar knowledge-makers in this realm of activity.25 The activities of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse—a form of compulsory national service for twenty-year old men by the end of 1940—were saturated with a virilizing hébertisme. The men spent a quarter of their time in physical training to foster the moral qualities of discipline and obedience; and group leaders, during their formation in the CREGS system, at Uriage or Antibes, endured daily physical education lessons based squarely on Hébert’s teachings.26 Some kind of semi-naked vigorous physical work-out (‘décrassage’) was a ubiquitous part of the programme for all.27 Testimony and memoir suggest that this morning routine, alongside the long marches conducted every week, was imprinted on the memories of those who experienced it. If some recalled ‘a manly and sporting atmosphere’,28 others resented the relentless exertion required of them in all weathers.29 Paul Huot, who belonged to a Chantier in the Haute-Savoie in summer 1943, remembered a half-hour of limbering up shortly after waking at 6 am, conducted without breakfast and often in pouring rain.30 Historian Christophe Picout concludes that this morning work-out was in fact so unpopular in the Chantiers that some groups wholly abandoned it, regardless of the views of the movement’s leaders.31 ‘Virile development’ through physical education was also order of the day at Uriage. John Hellman describes this institution as ‘the most innovative and prestigious 22

Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 53. ‘Ton développement physique’, text prepared for insertion in L’Almanach des jeunes de France, n.d., AN F44 37, which cites Hébert’s Le Code de la Force. 24 Dossier supplied by Pierre Lehalle to the CGEGS, 29 September 1942, AN F44 38. 25 Applications for the post of lecturer at the CNEGS by Louvet and Mathiotte, n.d., AN F44 38. 26 ‘Extraits de la Note sur l’instruction remises aux cadres le 1er mars concernant l’instruction des Jeunes à convoquer en 1941’, in General de la Porte du Theil, Un an de commandement des Chantiers de la Jeunesse (Paris, 1941), pp. 190, 202–5. 27 Pierre-Etienne Devys, in André Souyris-Rolland (ed.), Histoire des Chantiers de la Jeunesse racontée par des témoins (Arcueil, 1992), 50; Robert Vaucher, Par nous la France . . . ceux des Chantiers de la Jeunesse (Paris, 1942), p. 17. 28 André Souyris-Rolland, ‘Quelques éléments pour la compréhension d’une organisation paramilitaire sous l’Occupation allemande, 1940–1944’, in Souyris-Rolland, p. 28. 29 Delaplace interviews his own father Raymond in this respect, 20 July 2000, Georges Hébert, pp. 356–8. 30 Paul Huot, J’avais 20 ans en 1943 (Atlantica, 2001), pp. 19–29. 31 Christophe Pecout, Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse et la revitalisation physique et morale de la jeunesse française (1940–1944) (Paris, 2007), pp. 171, 193. 23

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think-tank of the National Revolution’.32 It started life as a training school for the leaders of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, but as early as October 1940 its remit was widened to encompass general training for the new chefs required by the regime. Law professor Jean-Jacques Chevallier, himself a former national athletics champion, presented influential lectures there, speaking of a country ‘stripped bare by the defeat’,33 of the need to build a ‘virile order’ through the training of character, and physical pursuits such as alpinism and the natural method. For him, the infamous morning décrassage was an assault on passivity and the best way of arousing the most virile part of each man.34 The early-morning sessions, followed immediately by mass, were led by the rather dictatorial EGS inspector Roger Vuillemin—a close follower of Hébert who was also involved in the training centre in Antibes: he apparently shouted incessantly at the men to make them push themselves harder.35 This emphasis on virility also found expression in the regime’s perpetuation of classical models of male beauty. In 1942 an applicant for the post of lecturer at the ENEPS not only set out the hébertiste method in some detail, with lecture plans on ‘primitive’ and ‘natural’ life, but emphasized the social importance of heredity and plastic beauty, in which the harmony of proportions of classical models was invoked alongside the instruction for men to ‘sculpt their statue’.36 In addition, the CGEGS was furnished with a well-funded information bureau that had six sub-divisions: Maurice Pourchet’s work in the Paris-based arts service engaged sculptors who produced works reminiscent of ancient Greek statuary.37 And the incorporation of the so-called ‘athlete’s oath’ in the rituals of elite amateur sporting contests under the Occupation was a visual reminder of a more general borrowing from the ancient Greeks.38 One must not forget, however, that Vichy’s project for renewal took the spirit into account as well as the body, and in this sense it echoed the interwar physical culturists’ emphasis on the ‘whole man’. Indeed, reforms to the school curriculum after 1940 were driven in part by an attack on the bookish head-stuffing that had allegedly gone on under the Third Republic at the expense of building virility. In summer 1940 Pétain pronounced that ‘we are setting out to destroy the fateful prestige of a purely bookish pseudo-culture, guide to idleness, and generator of uselessness . . . The development of a sporting youth will address part of this problem’. He wanted ‘to give back to the French race health, courage, discipline.’39 Accordingly, the altered school and university curriculum was not only to include more hours of physical education but so-called general education, although 32 John Hellman, The Knight-Monks of Vichy France: Uriage, 1940–1945 (Montreal and Kingston, 1993), pp. 9, 24. 33 Jean-Jacques Chevallier cited from ‘L’ordre viril et l’efficacité dans l’action’, Le Chef et ses jeunes, Ecole nationale des cadres d’Uriage, no. 7, 48, in Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, 28. 34 Chevallier cited from ‘L’ordre viril et l’efficacité dans l’action’ by Delaplace, Georges Hébert, p. 357. 35 Hellman, The Knight-Monks of Vichy France, pp. 49–50, 71. 36 Lafarge, deputy inspector at the EGS, to the commissioner, in application for the post of lecturer at the ENEPS, 18 September 1942, Marseille, AN F44 38. 37 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, 125. 38 Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 192; ‘La cérémonie de la prestation du “Serment de l’athlète”’, Education générale et sport: revue officielle du Commissariat général. Supplément, 1 July 1943, AN F44 43. 39 Philippe Pétain, 15 August 1940, La Revue des deux mondes, in Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 23.

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CGEGS leaders were clear that the two elements were mutually reinforcing and emphasized that its teachers had to lead by manly example: ‘[t]he child must feel that his master has a physical life, that he’s not timid.’40 Pupils were encouraged to dance and sing and to take part in art and theatre; each school and university was to employ a ‘master of general education’ to make these reforms work.41 In Vichy’s backlash against the alleged intellectualism of the school curriculum, then, one might say that interwar culturist ‘holism’ intersected with rightist anti-republicanism. The reforms certainly sat well with the new regime’s reactionary desire for a ‘return’ to regional cultures embedded in the land. Not all voices were in favour of this attempt to increase the proportion of school and university programmes devoted to physical and general elements, however. Quite apart from the resistance to these measures shown by lecturers in higher education, journalists, intellectuals, and prefects alike expressed their anxieties about the excesses of Vichy anti-intellectualism through a series of articles published in Le Temps during 1942.42 One journalist lamented there that ‘the regime of muscle is not desirable’, while the Academy of Medicine, on the other hand, was concerned that the increase in physical and sports activities was inadvisable given the under-nourishment of the young under the Occupation.43 Parents too were worried about the physical surmenage of their children. A survey conducted in Paris in 1942 suggested that 68 per cent of parents expressed the view that school study hours should not be reduced to make way for EGS, in large part because they feared that doing so would cause fatigue.44 Vichy’s curricular innovation was thus attacked from both ends—criticized at once for demanding too much physically, and not enough intellectually, from pupils—and in a way that suggests interwar physical culturist fears about ‘overwork’ lingered into the era of Occupation, exacerbated by new concerns over the physiological effects of rationing on the young. In light of the material difficulties encountered in the implementation of the new curriculum, in fact, the weekly hours for EGS were reduced. By October 1941, EGS in higher education was cut from three afternoons to a single afternoon per week; and in the same month a new circular reduced primary and secondary education’s focus on general education to three hours a week for boys and two for girls, although in at least some cases it appears that the pupils were disappointed by this decision.45 Jean Borotra’s successor Colonel Pascot himself pointed out that these changes meant that French school children did less physical exercise under the Vichy regime than in 40 ‘Stage des maîtres d’éducation générale : conférence de Monsieur Bousquet’, 31 August (year not specified), AN F44 42. 41 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, pp. 76–7. 42 Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, pp. 199–202. 43 Cited by Pierre Giolitto, Histoire de la jeunesse sous Vichy (1991), by Delaplace, Georges Hébert, p. 353. 44 Jacques Dourdin, ‘Etude de l’état d’esprit de la population parisienne à l’égard de la pratique de l’éducation physique et des sports’, January-May 1942, 3 vols., INSEP, cited in Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 132. 45 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 77; the views of the prefect of the Loiret, 4 December 1941, cited in ‘Extrait des rapports des prefets concernant l’éducation physique’, 4 February 1942, AN F17 14464.

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1902, 1923, or 1939.46 On his appointment to the role of commissioner in 1942 he chose to reinstate the original hours decreed in 1940, despite the widely recognized physical impediments to their implementation, and rather perversely defended this move by claiming that the extra activity and fresh air would help tired and malnourished children to avoid surmenage of the intellectual kind.47 No doubt he hoped that virilizing physical exercise would give back what fatigue took away. The CGEGS instigated a quite thorough system of medical control in primary schools which was designed to counter the effects of this overwork. Its medical service encompassed 7,660 doctors, and 4.5 million children had been examined by the end of 1943.48 Its leadership included Dr Philippe Encausse, former university sports champion and regular contributor to the Croix de Feu/PSF press on physical education, and political fellow-traveller Dr Marcel Collet, also a doctor at the ENEP from 1933 to 1944.49 In late 1941 the prefect of the Loiret asserted that 75 per cent of sports societies in his department too had enlisted a medical doctor.50 In the Chantiers de la Jeunesse a preliminary medical examination divided men according to their physical constitution, and the weak were grouped together in camps where the climate was mild.51 The movement’s leader General de la Porte du Theil may have claimed that in some camps doctors too easily dismissed the ‘delicate’ from physical activity, thus preventing the weakest specimens from improving their physique,52 but the movement’s own records tell a narrative of medical success with almost two thirds of recruits putting on weight.53 In echoes of the médecins-culturistes of the 1920s and 1930s the men’s enlarged chest measurements in particular were read as an index of their general bodily improvement.54 E U G E N I C S A N D R E G E N E R AT I O N U N D E R T H E O C C U PAT I O N Vichy’s project for bodily and moral renovation through sport and physical education was thus saturated with interwar concerns, but there was one apparent 46 ‘Programme du Lt-col. Pascot, Commissaire Général aux Sports’, Revue EGS, no. 1, January– April 1942, cited in Delaplace, Georges Hébert, 352. 47 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 146. 48 Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 162–3. 49 Jacques Defrance, ‘Construction sociale d’une “compétence médico-sportive”, entre holisme et spécialisation (années 1910–1950)’, Regards sociologiques, no. 29 (2004), 88–91. 50 Prefect of the Loiret, 4 December 1941, ‘Extrait des rapports des prefets’. 51 ‘Extraits de la Note sur l’instruction remises aux cadres le 1er mars concernant l’instruction des Jeunes à convoquer en 1941’, in la Porte du Theil, Un an de commandement des Chantiers de la Jeunesse, pp. 190, 202–5. 52 ‘Education physique: travail’, Bulletin, no. 37, 1 May 1941, in la Porte du Theil, Un an de commandement des Chantiers de la Jeunesse, 245–8. 53 Paul Malapert, ‘commissaire assistant au Gt 4 puis au Commissariat général des CJF’, ‘Ce que furent les Chantiers de la Jeunesse’, in Souyris-Rolland (ed.), Histoire des Chantiers de la Jeunesse racontée par des témoins, p. 23, citing the report by Dr Bénazet published in March 1945; Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 202. 54 ‘Le Commissaire général parle . . . aux jeunes qui s’en vont’, Bulletin no. 22, 16 January 1941, in la Porte du Theil, Un an de commandement des Chantiers de la Jeunesse, p. 123.

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exception. References to ‘improving the race’ were surprisingly minimal, although not entirely absent, from the language of the regime’s political elite in this area. As W. D. Halls has noted, this particular kind of rhetorical appeal was missing from the writings and speeches of Jean Borotra during his tenure as commissioner. It was also largely absent from the official statements of General de la Porte du Theil, and his pronouncements about attending to the ‘souls’ of young men were equally not couched in the Catholic anti-materialism of Alexis Carrel. Indeed, Vichy political leaders, not only in the realm of sport and physical education, were more likely to use terms such as rénovation, renouvellement, and redressement than the biologically inflected régénération. Does this mean that the widespread eugenicist zeal of the interwar physical culturists was ironically diffused at precisely the moment that a regime, hell bent on national transformation and committed from the start to authoritarian and persecutory policies, came to power? As the following examples suggest, the medical model of decline, alongside eugenicist thought and practice, did continue under the Occupation and did echo interwar voices in important ways, but it was almost inexplicably absent from the language of political elites in the realm of physical education. For one thing, the language of saving the ‘race’ through a revirilization of men was endemic among the médecins-culturistes whose careers continued into the period of Occupation, and it was especially pronounced within the sphere of medicalized physical education training.55 Interwar naturist physician Dr Marcel Didier wholly endorsed the need for rational and medically controlled physical education after 1940, not least as a way to build a ‘knighthood’ of remade men to lift France off her knees. Delivering a lecture on youth employment at a workshop in Lyon in mid-1941, he complained that physical education was necessary to ‘fortify the race’: the defeat was caused by the ‘sinking into mediocrity’ of French elites. The poor physical state of young men on the streets (‘stooped backs, hollow chests, narrow shoulders’) suggested that a mighty effort of physical and moral rebuilding was needed to achieve national security.56 And Dr Reynaud of the Ecole des BeauxArts (also a hospital surgeon) complained to the Academy of Nîmes that local sports facilities were not sufficiently used by mature men, so that sport was not doing its proper job of the ‘regenerating of the race’. Adult men, he explained, ran to fat and an early physical decline. Since a man’s thirties were generally his prime reproductive years, it was imperative to make him fit: ‘if we want to save our sons from atheroma, arteriosclerosis, and all the miseries of mature and old age, we must without delay give a different impetus to physical culture’. Indeed, the problem was cast in terms of the heredity of the ‘defects’ that inactive men acquired over time: Reynaud found men’s physical inactivity ‘curious’ in a ‘eugenic age’ in which livestock were given special diets before breeding so as to render them in 55 See the language of M. Lontrade, applicant for a GCEGS post in general and physical education at the Centre National d’Education Générale et Sportive, 21 September 1942, AN F44 38. 56 Dr Marcel Didier, ‘Les Jeunes face au travail’, Lyon, 9 June 1941, delivered at the Journée d’Etudes des services sociaux des industries des métaux, and forwarded to the Secrétariat général de la jeunesse, AN F17 14464.

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their best physical condition.57 Actors right at the heart of Vichy’s drive to medicalize physical education provision and pedagogical training, such as Dr Philippe Encausse, Dr Marcel Collet, and Dr Pierre Le Go, all held that properly supervised physical exercise would not only help to preserve ‘the human motor’ through controlling the expenditure of energy, but in doing so would build new men unafraid of struggle, suffering, and combat, guaranteeing a ‘French renaissance through virile education’ and thus the ‘future of the race’.58 If a positive eugenicist way of seeing lingered in the worlds of medicine and physical education, eugenicist inflections were to be found elsewhere too. Most destructively, eugenicist racial theories nourished the bureaucratic measures of anti-Jewish persecution under the General Commission on Jewish Affairs (CGQJ), where interwar racist Georges Montandon was employed as ethnologist after December 1941. Montandon also took over the Revue anthropologique, which had functioned for several years as the periodical press of the French eugenics society, a body which appears to have collapsed shortly after the defeat.59 René Martial, another of the foremost racist eugenicists of the 1930s, also found himself enlisted by the CGQJ and Director of that body’s Institute of Anthropo-sociology founded in December 1942, providing ‘eugenic justifications for anti-Semitism’.60 Martial also developed connections with an organization that emerged as the most wellknown eugenicist institution in Occupation-era France: the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems (FFEPH)—a body which would be reconfigured as the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) after the Liberation, and which from late 1941 was funded by the Vichy government and functioned under the leadership of Alexis Carrel.61 The mission of the FFEPH was to study ‘the most appropriate measures to safeguard, improve, and develop the French population’. Its sixteen research teams were devoted, among other things, to the biology of heredity, birth-rate, adolescence, nutrition, bio-typology, psychophysiology, and industrial hygiene.62 Its world view was plainly holist and anti-materialist as well as eugenicist, and was fixated on the problem of biological decline in ways reminiscent of the interwar physical culturists. Yet historian Andrés Reggiani stresses that the involvement in the Foundation of overt racists such as Martial was exceptional, and he claims that there were no direct links between the FFEPH and either the French Eugenics Society (SFE) or the Ecole d’Anthropologie.63 Ironically, the FFEPH never 57 Report by Dr Reynaud, Professor of Anatomy at the Ecole des Beaux-arts and Chirurgien des Hôpitaux, ‘L’Education athlétique et la régéneration de la race. Négligence de la culture physique à Nîmes: moyens d’y remédier’, June 1941, 12 pp., AN F 44 37. 58 Dr Pierre Le Go cited from the preface to Encausse, Education physique et sous-alimentation, n.p. 59 Gwen Terrenoire, ‘Eugenics in France before 1945’, in ‘Cloning, Gene Therapy, Human Behaviour, Eugenics’, booklet published on the occasion of the International Conference of the NGOs, UNESCO, Paris, 14, 15,16 December 2005, 14. 60 Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham and London, 2009), p. 158; Schneider, Quality and Quanitity, p. 261; Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel féminin, p. 353. 61 Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist, p. 112. 62 63 Schneider,Quality and Quantity, pp. 277–8. Reggiani,God’s Eugenicist, p. 137.

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advocated the kind of negative eugenics with which Carrel had been associated since the mid-1930s,64 although its regular bulletin did cite the works of Vichy-era racists such as Montandon and Martial in its bibliographical supplements, and articles in its official organ complained that immigration had introduced human specimens into the population who were undesirable ‘from the biological point of view’.65 It is not really known what kind of role if any the Foundation played in facilitating the only clearly eugenicist decree law introduced by the Vichy regime (16 December 1942), which required a mandatory premarital medical examination of both intended spouses. Anne Carol claims that the signatories of the law included no member of the SFE or the FFEPH, nor any physician drawn from the world of medical eugenics, although the text of the law made clear its novelty as ‘the first time a eugenic measure appears in French legislation’.66 Furthermore, it would seem from articles published in the medical and mainstream press that the origins of the law went back at least to January 1941 when Carrel was still in the USA. In any case, the law had no teeth as a negative eugenicist measure, since there was no requirement on the part of the civil dignitaries who conducted marriage ceremonies to prevent any union on health grounds. Instead, the law was left to function pedagogically as a positive eugenicist measure, in educating men and women about the wise choice of spouse.67 At any rate, many interwar eugenicists welcomed Vichy initiatives in the sphere of sport and physical education on the grounds that they would help to preserve the ‘race’.68 Henri Briand, a leading member of the SFE and Ecole d’anthropologie before the defeat, was, according to William Schneider, one of the most active eugenicists after 1940.69 For Briand the evolutionary importance of physical exercise was in part that it forged the manly qualities such as courage, initiative, effort, discipline, and risk-taking, so important for children—‘the future of the race’—to develop.70 Indeed, Briand had seen depopulation, alongside the decline of French manhood, as justification for the armistice in 1940, as to carry on fighting would have been ‘a terrible ordeal’ for ‘our race’.71 Carrel’s foundation was also interested in questions of physical education, especially since food shortages posed a direct threat to the physical development of children and adolescents. Medical studies submitted to the authorities under the Occupation warned of increased levels of disease and mortality amongst the young; 64

Schneider,Quality and Quantity, pp. 279–80. Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel féminin, p. 351; ‘Le problème de l’enfant’, CFFEPH, no. 1, 1943, 19–21. 66 Schneider, Quality and Quanitity, p. 269. 67 Carol, Histoire de l’eugénisme en France, pp. 329–2; Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 269–71. 68 Henri Briand, ‘Education physique et sauvegarde de la race’, Revue anthropologique, January– March 1941, 8–15. 69 Schneider, Quality and Quantity, pp. 257–9. 70 Henri Briand, ‘Les progrès de l’eugénique et de la génétique en France au cours des dernières années: publications récentes’, Revue anthropologique, July–September 1938, 13, 14. 71 Briand, ‘Education physique et sauvegarde de la race’, 10. 65

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rickets and polio were making a comeback.72 The Foundation also concerned itself with the apparent ‘lack of virility’ among adolescent males.73 Early in 1943 the education section of the FFEPH liaised with leaders of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse so that its men could provide subjects for studies into health and physical fitness methods, ideally to show the merits of hébertisme, and in autumn 1943 Dr Binois experimented on a group of fifty twenty-year-olds.74 But the Foundation hoped to carry out research into the physical state of the entire population: the childhood development team examined 1,820 Parisian school children of both sexes, finding their chest measurements deficient in comparison with cohorts from the mid1930s; spinal deformation and dental problems were also rife. The study of the ‘sporting aptitude’ of the children showed that many lacked flexibility or did not know how to walk or run.75 In 1943 an even bigger interdisciplinary study of sportifs was undertaken at the Stade Lacretelle with the authorization of the Academy of Paris and Director of the IREP based there, Dr Chailley-Bert. The adolescence team undertook the medical examination of the subjects; the population team took anthropometric measurements; the biotypology team worked on ‘morphopsychological’ examinations; and the social psychology team was responsible for the intellectual examination of the subjects, who were also systematically photographed. This snapshot of elite youth could then be compared to a sample of ‘normal’ youth drawn from a survey of 20,000 boys and girls in urban and rural schools and factories. The results would hopefully allow educators to determine the deficiencies among youth and direct their ‘corrective efforts’ accordingly.76 The physician who headed the Foundation’s biology of adolescence team was Jean Chappert, an expert in sports medicine whose views echoed those of many interwar médecins-culturistes.77 In commenting on a study carried out among male and female youth in 1943–44, he expressed concerns about their physical failings: flawed carriage, round backs, slack posture—all signs of ‘a physical sloppiness’ and also moral deficiency. This ‘painful impression’ was confirmed by the military examinations of new recruits, by ‘the spectacle of the streets, of the school gates, of factories, and even by the posture of a lot of athletes in the stadium’. As far as Chappert was concerned the phenomenon corresponded to the ‘collapse in national sporting results’ in European and global competitions, just as French sporting leaders themselves had been quick to point out at the time of the 1936 Olympics. For Chappert, the problem was a failure to produce enough healthy sportifs from which champion elite athletes could be drawn or descended. He blamed nutritional problems for the scale of the problem, alongside the ‘hereditary defects’ of syphilis, tuberculosis, and alcoholism, hoping that the rational application of physical exercise, in particular ‘orthopedic gymnastics’, would fix this physical failure. If the 72

Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, pp. 209–10. Unsigned article on adolescence, CFFEPH, October 1944, no. 2, 56–7. 74 Pecout, pp. 89–90. 75 Unsigned, ‘Le problème de l’enfant’, CFFEPH, 15 February 1943, 19–23. 76 CFFEPH, October 1944, no. 2, 56–7. 77 Chappert became general secretary of the National Committee of Sports Medicine in 1941 by Vichy appointment. Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist, p. 143. 73

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agricultural budget could arrange for the ‘improvement of breeds of horses’, why could there not be ‘a matching policy to assure the better physical development of men’? Chappert also wanted to enlist sport and physical education to improve the ‘physique and bodily beauty’ of each individual. Indeed, the photographic evidence in the study suggests that ‘averages’ were enlisted instead as aesthetic ideals in order to differentiate success and failure among subjects. Furthermore, for Chappert physical exercise would develop the ‘whole individual’, helping to achieve ‘equilibrium’ in psychological and emotional ways. In this respect his ideas were in keeping with the spiritualist emphasis both inside Carrel’s Foundation and among many interwar physical culturists.78 The interest that FFEPH staff expressed in the allegedly failing bodies of French (especially male) youth suggests at once a reasonable response to the nutritional deficit of life under Occupation and the persistence of pre-1940 conflations of health, beauty, virility, and national (even ‘racial’) strength. P H Y S I C A L C U LT U R I S T S U N D E R T H E O C C U PAT I O N Not all interwar physical culturists provided services for the Vichy regime, of course. The outbreak of war in September 1939 and the ensuing military defeat of June 1940 interrupted their lives and led them in disparate directions, whether they were physicians, deputies, journalists, political activists, entrepreneurs, or elite sportifs. Popular Front under-secretary for sport and leisure, Léo Lagrange, was killed in the battle for France, while his colleague Jean Zay was hounded by the anti-Semitic Vichy authorities, imprisoned, and eventually executed.79 Many others were mobilized and taken prisoner, such as renowned strongman Charles Rigoulot, whose weight-lifting flair had made him a bankable spectacle for decades;80 and leader of the Croix de Feu/PSF sports and physical education society Jean de Mierry, who was captured and remained a prisoner-of-war in a German camp until 1945.81 Unsurprisingly, Jacques Doriot’s UJSF continued its existence as a radical rightist alternative to mainstream physical exercise activities, now as an overtly collaborationist enterprise. Others, such as Dr Henri Diffre and Dr James-Edward Ruffier, took on roles within the Vichy administration of physical education similar to those of Croix de Feu/PSF member Dr Philippe Encausse. Some, such as body-building champion Marcel Rouet, seemed to continue their commercial activities unabated. There were those too who took part in Resistance activity: for example, the FSGT’s Auguste Delaune, who was killed under torture by the Gestapo in 1943.82 Former under-secretary of state for physical education Adolphe Chéron joined the FFI despite being in his seventies, and remained president of 78 Jean Chappert, ‘Les attitudes corporelles défectueuses chez les jeunes’, CFFEPH, November 1945, no. 4, 65–74. 79 Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944, p. 579. 80 As reported in La Culture physique, September 1941, 121. 81 CV for Jean de Mierry, AN 451 AP 153 bis. 82 Amar and Gay-Lescot, ‘Le sport dans le tourmente, de Vichy à la Libération’, 450.

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the USEPPSM until he died in 1951. Body-builder and male beauty contestant André Rolet ended the Occupation as head of a Resistance network, becoming lieutenant-commandant for a group of corps franc in liaison with Leclerc’s second armoured division.83 Thus not all physical culturists became active collaborators in the Vichy project, and not all those who did offer their services—or approval—to the regime are easily placed on the radical right. Edmond Desbonnet’s La Culture physique received authorization to reappear in Paris after the defeat, and was published until September 1943, routinely advertising correspondence courses in physical culture offered by Georges Rouhet. The elderly Desbonnet gave way as principal editor to Emile Valtier, who remained at the helm until his death in 1950. Practical difficulties amid the circumstances of Occupation led to the postponement of the 1941 competition to find ‘le plus bel athlète’ in France—an event now sponsored not only by L’Auto and Paris-sport, but by one of the lesser sports newspapers published in occupied Paris, L’Echo des sports—a title partially controlled since 1939 by FFCP president Pierre Bardel.84 The FFCP’s long-held positions on professional sport, the decline of the ‘race’, the fight against tuberculosis, and the need for a complete, rational physical education that also had a moral component resonated deeply with Vichy’s own project of moral and physical renewal.85 Albert Surier cited the impressions of a French prisoner-of-war of the ‘magnificent physical humanity’ of both sexes he had observed while still in Germany—something that contrasted depressingly with ‘the shameful selection process of our conseils de révision’. The Germans, Surier concurred, had a ‘physical potential’ greater than the French: what the military defeat thus offered him was the ‘bitter satisfaction’ of having been proved right.86 In 1941 the later résistant André Rolet commented that it was through champion weight-lifters that the French ‘race’ would be raised and the world shown that the country was not decadent.87 Readers were still encouraged to sculpt themselves according to the aesthetic ideals of classical statuary, and the critique of civilization lingered.88 The publication perhaps most obviously showed the synergies between its world view and Vichy authoritarianism by reporting, in response to the execution of female abortionist Marie-Louise Giraud in 1943, that the death penalty for ‘anti-conception activities’ was long overdue.89 Marcel Rouet’s career flourished under the Occupation, and he continued to market his brand of body culture on the strength of his credentials as a prizewinning interwar male beauty. Indeed, Rouet went on to win the FFCP competition 83 George Dardenne cited from ‘Historique de la culture physique’ in Le Joinvillais, bulletin de la Fédération Nationale des Joinvillais, 1988, 38–9. 84 L’Echo des sports sold fewer than 20,000 copies per issue, 1941–42, AN AJ 40 1013; Edmond Desbonnet, ‘Pierre Bardel est promu officier de la Légion d’Honneur’, La Culture physique, September 1952, 3. 85 Dr Pierre Chevillet, ‘Est-ce une profession?’, La Culture physique, September 1941, 113. 86 Albert Surier, ‘Refaire la France’, La Culture physique, September 1941, 119–20. 87 André Rolet cited in Pierre Marchesseau, ‘Chronique de la force: Baril, le champion inconnu’, La Culture physique, September 1941, 115–16. 88 Dr Pierre Chevillet, ‘Les Déficients des poumons’, La Culture physique, September 1943, 74–5. 89 ‘Revue de la Presse’, La Culture physique, September 1943, 6.

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again in both 1943 and 1944.90 He operated a training establishment called Physical-culture (later termed the Institut Marcel Rouet) in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, offering both on-site tuition and correspondence courses. The leadership of the CGEGS were sufficiently impressed by Rouet’s potential contribution to the ‘physical and moral rebuilding’ of France that they intervened on his behalf when Rouet was remobilized in the Paris regiment of firemen in mid-1943, claiming to need ‘the best educators we possess’ to give ‘our fellow young citizens more strength and vigour’.91 Indeed, Rouet and fellow culturist Yves Mazelié sought CGEGS support in that year for the creation of a national network of private physical culture clubs that would, under strict professional and medical control, attend to the sedentary bodies of adults in the name of ‘national renovation’, while state initiatives took care of the young. In their view, the defeat had underlined the urgency of the need to ‘raise the physical level of the population’, and only trained specialists such as themselves had sufficient expertise for the task.92 By this time Rouet had tailored his physical culture regime to incorporate more athletic exercises, believing that a mere 10 minutes of daily physical culture was not enough ‘to offset the harmful effects of the deficiency of movement inherent in our existence as civilized people’. He still recommended that men sculpt their bodies according to the ideals embodied in classical sculpture, and suggested that striking these ‘plastic poses’ (performed in front of a mirror for the purposes of self-correction) should constitute part of the work-out.93 In his view, modern men were still cursed by corporeal failure: ‘in front of the mirror, confronted with his nudity, the man who scorns or neglects culturist practices . . . is invaded by a feeling of shame’. Rouet justified this emphasis on appearances by enlisting the words of Alexis Carrel from Man, the Unknown: ‘Man is an indivisible whole of extreme complexity’—a being of body and mind, matter and spirit, whose physical and moral elements are indistinguishable. Even in 1946 Rouet congratulated the Vichy-era CGEGS for its immense propaganda effort that had done so much to ‘give the French the taste for effort and to regenerate a race bastardized by physical laziness and the excesses of competitive sports’.94 Meanwhile, Dr Henri Diffre, the médecin-culturiste and arch-defender of military preparation with connections to political elites, already held an established position within state institutions by 1940. In autumn 1940 he was based in the Vichy headquarters of the youth secretariat, officially representing the CGEGS and overseeing the creation of a regional physical education training centre in Pau.95 He appears to have become head of the medical service in the CGEGS by 90 Marcel Rouet, Méthode culturiste: méthode complète de culture physique élémentaire et athlétique (Paris, 1946), cover details. 91 Yves Mazelié, professor at the Ecole normale de culture physique, to Henri Marty, director of the Institut national d’éducation générale et sportive, 28 June 1943; Marty to Colonel Cornet, commandant du régiment des sapeurs-pompiers, Paris, 30 June 1943, AN F44 40. 92 Marcel Rouet and Yves Mazelié, ‘Projet des professeurs de culture physique’, n.d. (probably after September 1943), AN F44 43. 93 Marcel Rouet, La Culture physique athlétique (Paris, 1942), pp. 3–4, 45–6. 94 Rouet, Méthode culturiste, pp. 3–6. 95 Correspondence between Diffre and the Pau authorities, September–November 1940, AN F44 40.

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spring 1941.96 By the following year, Diffre was Director of the Academy of Montpellier, attempting to influence how and where physical education instructors were trained in the national method, stressing the responsibility of gymnastics instructors in correcting the deficient posture of their pupils.97 Diffre also provided text for daily physical education radio broadcasts during the Occupation.98 His early morning physical culture lessons for Radio-Paris comprised a series of 15-minute exercises designed for both sexes and all ages. Diffre wanted the entire population to build a ‘muscular and physiological daily toilette’ in order to care for the exterior of their bodies and ensure ‘the good internal functioning of the human machine’.99 Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot tells us that men like Diffre, whose positions in the IREP system dated back to the 1930s, were rather cut out of policy decisions in the CGEGS despite this general cultural influence, but it seems clear that where the administration of CGEGS was concerned Diffre played an important role. When war broke out, médecin-culturiste Dr James-Edward Ruffier—by this time a man in his sixties—was enjoying a life of semi-retirement at his rest and rehabilitation establishment in Cannes. He admitted that it was business as usual for a few months, his coastal haven a draw for those, including some young wives of mobilized soldiers, ‘desperate to live under the beautiful Mediterranean sky in complete peace and quiet’.100 It would appear that Ruffier managed to keep this therapy centre, ‘Le Bocage’, afloat until food and other shortages began to bite.101 Concerned about the state of his physical culture school in Paris, however, Ruffier made a visit to the capital in February 1940. There he was relieved to find the boarded-up premises cold, damp, and dusty, but otherwise intact, and he made the decision to wait out the war in the sunshine of Cannes.102 The day after the armistice was signed, Ruffier, in his diary, commented on the devastating turn of events, ‘attributing to the physical degeneration of our race the fundamental responsibility for our crushing defeat’ and declaring war on ‘physical laziness’. In December 1940 he became médecin-chef at the CNMA in Antibes. Ruffier made the daily 12-km journey by bicycle, the exercise apparently building a physique that was admired even by the young boarders.103 During this period Ruffier was filmed for the Vichy short documentary La Cité du muscle (1941)—an official showcase for the work of the college as part of the France en Marche series, and shown in cinemas in both main zones of occupation.104 We see Ruffier 96 Dr Ruffier, médecin-chef at the CNMA in Antibes, reporting to Dr Henri Diffre, 22 April 1941, on the institution’s training programme, AN F44 42. 97 Dr Diffre, regional Director of the Académie de Montpellier, report dated 7 August 1942, AN F44 37. 98 Hubscher et al., L’Histoire en mouvements, p. 193; Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, pp. 111, 179. 99 Dr Henri Diffre, Leçons journalières de culture physique, tome 1, 7th edn., n.d., sold directly from the premises of Radio-Paris. 100 Dr J.-E. Ruffier, Cinquante ans de cyclisme, serialized memoirs which first appeared in Le Cycliste, April 1947, 59–60. 101 Ruffier, Le Cycliste, 1948; Souvenirs et voyage à bicyclette, published online by Gilbert Jaccon, January 2004, 68–9. 102 Ruffier, Le Cycliste, June 1947. 103 Ruffier, ‘Au Collège d’Athlètes d’Antibes’, Le Cycliste, May 1948. 104 See Brett Bowles, ‘Newsreels, ideology, and public opinion under Vichy: the case of La France en Marche’, French Historical Studies, 27 no. 2 (2004), 419–63.

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measuring the height, chest, and lung capacity of new arrivals, and in the full flow of one of his biology lectures (see Fig. 6.1). College Director Colonel Beaupuis, for his part, is filmed giving male stagiaires a lecture on the importance of building a robust, supple, and strong body, resistant to fatigue, as part of their ‘virile development’.105 All the same it frustrated Ruffier that his position involved only medical control and lecturing rather than the physical training of the stagiaires. To make matters worse he did not approve of the ‘national method’ of physical education employed there, which in his view did not do enough to incorporate corrective gymnastics for deficient bodies.106 His role in medical control at the Collège de Cannes only confirmed his opinion that most school children were poorly developed, ill, and lacked strength.107 Training young doctors in physical education at the CREGS in Hyères in July 1942, he witnessed pupils tiring themselves out through official methods, when weights, an iron bar, and a bicycle would suffice. Despite this selfdepiction as an outsider, Ruffier’s exercise system was endorsed in the mainstream press: in an amused swipe at the utilitarian emphasis within Georges Hébert’s system of exercise, one journalist declared that ‘[w]e don’t live in the bush and we

Fig. 6.1. Ruffier measuring pupils in the film ‘La Cité du muscle’, 1941. (Etablissement de Communication et de Production de la Défense (Ivry-sur-Seine).)

105 ‘La Cité du muscle’, film held by the Etablissement de Communication et de Production de la Défense (Ivry-sur-Seine). I would like to thank Brett Bowles for alerting me to this source. 106 ‘Note du Docteur Ruffier’ for the CGEGS, 12 July 1941; see also Ruffier to Diffre, 22 April 1941, AN F44 42. 107 Ruffier, ‘Du sport avec les douze de Nice’, Le Cycliste, August 1948.

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chase cottontail rabbits with a gun not a javelin’, claiming that Dr Ruffier had shown the superior merits of ‘analytical physical culture’.108 Some time after he was forcibly retired from the CNMA in Antibes in summer 1941, Ruffier returned to Paris, glad that the new conditions made cycling in the capital a joy.109 He set about popularizing corrective gymnastics, and aired ideas for a ‘certificate of physical aptitude for study’, which he wanted to implement as a kind of conseil de révision for entry to university so as to ensure that future social elites were ‘normally built’ and possessed of sufficient ‘bodily vigour’.110 He complained in L’Auto of the general physical weakness of the young, declaring that, ‘[t]o explain—and excuse—this degeneration by the current dietary restrictions is to hide from ourselves the truth of our past mistakes’. The young had inherited from their parents the ‘congenital defects’ caused by alcoholism and physical laziness, but corrective gymnastics could slow this decline.111 In March 1943, with the unqualified support of Colonel Beaupuis, Ruffier offered his services to the CGEGS, especially the resources of his well-equipped physical culture school in Paris, in which he gave free evening lectures, and which he wanted to devote to curing deficient children through gymnastic exercise. Ruffier presented himself as a good example, full of ‘physical vigour’ despite advanced age, through the constant practice of physical exercise and sports.112 The regime was happy for him to play a public role, since Ruffier’s approach was essentially the same as that of Léo Lagrange, and his career had been less concerned with generating personal wealth than with the ‘science’ and ‘art’ of physical culture.113 Ruffier thus ended the Occupation as a CGEGS technical advisor and propagandist, taking part in such ventures as the Paris conference organized by the LFEP, whose president urged the athletic revirilization of the Frenchman for the sake of national grandeur.114 P H Y S I C A L C U LT U R E O N T H E R A D I C A L R I G H T After 1940 other physical culturists disappeared from view—not least Pierre Marie, the prominent socialist body-builder and champion of the ‘regeneration of the 108

‘Les Espagnols participeront au concours’, Le Figaro, Lyon ed., 4 February 1942, 3. Ruffier, Le Cycliste, 1948; Souvenirs et voyage à bicyclette, 68–71. Dr Ruffier, ‘C’est la vigueur qui doit être obligatoire pour la jeunesse’, 5 December 1942, and ‘On ne devrait pas pouvoir instruire des enfants aux dépens de leur développement corporel’, 14 January 1943, L’Auto, AN F44 43. 111 Dr Ruffier, ‘Pourquoi la gymnastique collective est nécessaire à nos enfants et jeunes gens’, L’Auto, 16 January 1943, AN F44 42. 112 Dr Ruffier to Jacques Bousquet, ‘Conférences du Docteur Ruffier’, n.d. (envelope marked March 1943). See also his correspondence with Jean Borotra, 14 March and 2 April 1942; and with Pascot, 1 May 1942, AN F44 42. 113 ‘Etude relative à la demande de réintégration présentée par le Docteur Ruffier’, n.d. Colonel Beaupuis wrote to the CGEGS in Ruffier’s favour, 21 March 1942, saying he was one of the best of two or three experts on physical education in France, AN F44 42. 114 Dr R. Fournié’s lecture, ‘L’Education physique et le redressement national’ and the programme for the ‘Congrès de Paris de la Ligue Française d’Education physique’, 16–20 September 1943, AN F44 42. 109 110

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race’ through physical exercise. Indeed, the above-ground efforts of the political left to effect a revirilization of male bodies through physical exercise were by necessity cut short by the creation of the Vichy regime, although it is clear that both the Gaullist and communist Resistance nurtured a cult of virility, in part through its rhetorical privileging of a muscular and explicitly martial manhood, and through the importance to some movements of physical training.115 The mainstream authorized press, including the sports dailies and weeklies, continued in its celebration of virile sporting champions, seeing in their athletic accomplishments and physical bearing hope for a transformed national future.116 It is unsurprising, then, that the radical right also continued to push its get-fit endeavours after 1940. After the defeat the Croix de Feu/PSF leadership relocated to the ‘free zone’, receiving authorization for its activities as the Progrès Social Français. Despite la Rocque’s lingering suspicion of collaboration, he fully endorsed Pétain’s ‘National Revolution’ in public, espousing an enthusiastic maréchalisme throughout the early years of the Vichy regime.117 The SPES relocated to Clermont-Ferrand and operated under a revised constitution authorized by the CGEGS in October 1941.118 In the occupied zone, however, the former PSF, alongside its physical education wing, was banned by the German authorities as a paramilitary threat.119 It is difficult to gauge the success of the post-defeat SPES programme, but in September 1940 its physical education expert Gaëtan Maire reiterated that the ‘only AIM’ of physical education ‘must be the regeneration of the race’. It was ‘the improvement of the masses’ that mattered, not the celebration of exceptional performances that engendered pride and vanity alongside surmenage and sporting accidents. The SPES programme was to provide analytical physical culture to normalize the weak and ‘sub-standard’, with Hébert’s natural method reserved for the more advanced. The programme was as ecumenical and ‘eclectic’ as always, drawing on the various works of Tissié, Boigey, and Ruffier, as well as Hébert.120 Associative life within Doriot’s overtly collaborationist PPF also continued after the defeat. Its youth wing, the UPJF, claimed a no doubt exaggerated membership for the occupied zone of 15,000 early in 1941, although the party itself was only authorized there in October.121 Physical education and outdoor activities such as camping were arranged, alongside cultural excursions; and the sports wing ran 115 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 40–1; Chris Pearson, Scarred Landscapes: War and Nature in Vichy France (Basingstoke, 2008), p. 108; Luc Capdevila et al., Hommes et femmes dans la France en guerre (1914–1945) (Paris, 2003), pp. 85–9. 116 ‘Ce que toute personne doit savoir sur la culture physique’, L’Effort, 2 January 1943, AN F44 43. 117 Sean Kennedy, ‘Accompanying the Marshal: la Rocque and the Progrès Social Français under Vichy’, French History, 15 no. 2 (2001), 186–213; ‘La Rocque à Saint-Etienne’, Le Flambeau, Clermont-Ferrand, 6 April 1941, 9. 118 Letter signed by the SPES Comité de Direction, Clermont-Ferrand, n.d., AN 451 AP 153. 119 Kennedy, ‘Accompanying the Marshal’, 208–9; Jacques Nobécourt, Le Colonel de la Rocque, 1885–1946, ou les pièges du nationalisme Chrétien (Paris, 1996), pp. 290, 797, 1093, 1095. Correspondence in AN 451 AP 153, however, suggests that SPES instructors were still involved in physical education training in the occupied zone. 120 G. A. Maire, ‘Doctrine et programme’, 20 September 1940, AN 451 AP 153. 121 Police note, 2 January 1941, APP BA 2033; Jean-Paul Brunet, Jacques Doriot: du communisme au fascisme (Paris, 1986), 335.

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physical education in tandem with individual and team sports, although one source suggests that by June 1943 it had only 700 members.122 In July 1941 the UPJF asked for authorization to organize colonies de vacances for male and female youth as well as young children.123 It continued to demand the construction of sports grounds for workers, and insisted on a formal role in schools for all those who influenced the development of the young, including gym teachers, doctors, hygienists, and military preparation instructors, alongside parents and priests.124 The UPJF was active in the south too: in June 1941 it claimed 5,000 members in the unoccupied zone and North Africa.125 A delegation of UPJF leaders reportedly visited Vichy, hoping for some kind of collaboration with the youth secretariat in an effort to rally young workers to the regime.126 Its ideas of sex-difference matched those of the Etat français: while women members were reminded of their maternal destiny and encouraged to be obedient, they were also encouraged to undertake regular physical culture on the hébertiste model, and even sports—at least those deemed appropriate for women, such as basket-ball, swimming, and cyclotourisme.127 Yet the PPF press condemned those who confused a sports-like appearance with one that was ‘garçonnière’, and it reminded young women to steer a course between the ‘little well turned out doll, fragile, tiny, having neither will nor courage’ and the woman ‘in trousers, topped with a sports cap, a cigarette at her lips’.128 The moral crusade of the UPJF was racialized as well as gendered: it railed against alcohol and prostitution in the same breath, blaming the erosion of the ‘qualities of the race’ on Jews.129 Of course, the sports and political activities of the PPF overlapped in practical ways. In Toulouse, champion swimmer and PPF sports leader Jacques Cartonnet later joined the Milice, drawing on the appeal of sport to ‘regenerate the race’ in his efforts to recruit new members, alongside urging locals to deface Jewish businesses under cover of night.130 It was rumoured that he denounced his old Jewish swimming rival, Alfred Nakache, resulting in the latter’s deportation to Auschwitz.131 The cult of muscular virility was evoked as a means of salvation: French youth needed ‘lungs to breathe deeply and powerful muscles for action’.132 Writing for the PPF press in January 1942, soon-to-be Vichy minister of education Abel Bonnard suggested how the failed Frenchman could be surpassed: ‘[t]o his sloppy 122 ‘Notes sur l’Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française’, 2 January 1941, APP BA 2033; note on the PPF in the ZO/ZNO, n.d. 1943–4, ministry of the interior, AN F1a 3846. 123 UPJF note to its federation secretaries in the occupied zone, 28 July 1941, APP BA 2033. 124 Police report, n.d., APP BA 2033. 125 UPJF report, ‘Note aux cadres’, 12 June 1941, APP BA 2033. 126 ‘M. Lamirand encourage l’UPJF’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 8 March 1941, 8. 127 Police note, 29 October 1940, APP BA 2033. 128 Carmen Clouzier, ‘Féminité’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 10 January 1942, 11. 129 F. Maurice Gorjux, ‘Une âme saine dans un corps sain’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 8 March 1941, 8. 130 Fieschi, Histoire du sport français de 1870 à nos jours, p. 102. 131 Denis Baud, Alfred Nakache, le nageur d’Auschwitz (Portet-sur-Garonne, 2009), pp. 68, 76, 92, 95–6. 132 L.M. Cazals, ‘La France a retrouvé sa jeunesse!’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 7 June 1941, 1.

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vanity you will oppose your cleanliness, to his rudeness your good manners, to his softness your firmness, and when necessary your hardness.’ Disciplining the body would ensure a ‘hierarchical fraternity’ among Frenchmen, where individual and common effort would be indistinguishable.133 Vichy’s EGS enterprise was celebrated as the cornerstone of the ‘National Revolution’, and PPF journalists endorsed the early-morning hébertiste exercise routines of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, the armistice army, and the athletic college in Antibes. In their mind, sickly children, apprentices, and young workers alike needed salutary intervention of gymnastics to maintain ‘a harmonious balance’.134 The world view of the movement continued to echo the interwar physical culturists in other ways too. The UPJF wanted to give youth ‘the means of building up its muscles’ through the creation of more stadia and physical culture halls, but also espoused the kind of holism commonly found in the 1930s, demanding a ‘double education’ of body and soul.135 In the school-room, the compulsory nature of EGS constituted for the PPF a welcome upheaval in methods of education by relieving children from the burden of a fatiguing intellectualism. General education provided a sanctuary for deficient children made strong by the implementation of fresh air and regular exercise.136 In language reminiscent of social hygienists, UPJF leader F.-M. Gorjux claimed that ‘one stadium more is a sanitorium less’. The organization also demanded the sort of pre-nuptial medical examination that had been sought for many years by a growing number of French eugenicists.137 However extreme the political rhetoric and activity of the PPF, its thinking about the value of physical exercise was found in similar form among mainstream physical culturists both before and after the defeat of 1940. C O N C LU S I O N This chapter has demonstrated that while the prominent physical culturists of the interwar period were somewhat removed from policy-making within the Vichy regime’s substantial programme of physical education, their fundamental concerns were nonetheless shared by the political elites of the Occupation era. As we have seen, many of them endorsed the regime’s quest for bodily and national renewal, although it was the ideas of Georges Hébert in absentia that ironically provided the most direct influence. This confluence of thinking manifested itself in Vichy leaders’ disdain of professional sport, their drive for the medical control of physical education, their concerns about the effects of fatigue on the human organism, their 133 Abel Bonnard, ‘Forces de la jeunesse’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 24 January 1942, 5. 134 Pierre Delumeau, ‘Demi-journée de sports: le samedi après-midi’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 2 January 1942, 9. 135 Gorjux, ‘Une âme saine dans un corps sain’. 136 Marc de Fontbrune, ‘Une innovation dans l’enseignement’, L’Emancipation nationale, Marseilles edn., 20 September 1941, 12. 137 Gorjux, Qu’est-ce que l’UPJF, pp. 6–7, 8–9, 5.

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‘holism’, the ready conflation of bodily health with national vitality, and their deployment of the same notions of sex-difference and virility that underpinned pre-defeat views about physical exercise. Indeed, it seems inescapable that the roots of Vichy’s plan for ‘remaking man’ between 1940 and 1944 lay in the entrenchment of these ideas in French institutions and discourses rather than in the influence of the Nazi occupiers. As Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot has pointed out, the Liberation-era authorities were mistaken to see Jean Borotra’s mission at the CGEGS as one of ‘Nazifying youth’. Instead, the work of Borotra’s commissariat was ‘absolutely hexagonal’.138 The examples presented in this chapter from the world of physical exercise and eugenics serve to remind us that not all aspects of Vichy rule can be meaningfully reduced to the problem of collaboration, whatever the similarities with Nazi ideology and practice may have been. Vichy’s investment in both institutional racism (most obviously in the systematic persecution of Jews) and eugenics (whether through that anti-Semitic enterprise or in the realm of marriage control or physical education) ran in parallel to the motives and actions of the occupiers rather than being a direct consequence of their pressures. And if Vichy’s insistence on masculine renewal echoed Nazi ideals in many ways that is testament less to any slavish imitation than to the genuinely transnational nature of the cult of virility.

138

Gay-Lescot, Sport et éducation sous Vichy, p. 194.

Conclusion

The web of networks and cross-references that have been traced in this study reveal how the most serious physical culturists of the era—perhaps James-Edward Ruffier, Edmond Desbonnet, and Georges Hébert above all others—managed to popularize their ideas within a surprisingly large demographic. This is not to say that their views or practices were always endorsed or emulated (there was a widespread disdain of ‘excessive’ musculature, although this was ironically also present within body-building circles themselves), but that their work constituted a body of knowledge that was widely recognized in the public life of interwar and Vichy-era France. Ideas about the virile and athletic male body circulated easily around this field: its visual and behavioural features were in fact so widely iterated that the direction of influence is hard to determine, and nuances can be difficult to distinguish despite the contrasting ideological formulations in which these features were deployed for diverse political purposes. Physical culturists’ critique of spectator sport was also surprisingly widely shared (even if commentators varied in the strength of their conviction to resist its appeal). Certainly, it was much more commonplace than the fierce attack often mounted against competitive sport tout court by physical culturist experts afraid of the physiological effects of specialization. The reluctance to criticize this competitive manifestation of physical activity on behalf of mainstream print and popular culture is hardly surprising, given how appealing the fun of team games (codified sports such as football, rugby, and basket-ball among many others) must have been to their interwar audience, and how straightforwardly they seemed to offer lessons in a manliness whose purchase was very broad indeed. The replication of stock muscular and athletic motifs in the advertising of the era would seem to confirm it. My intention in this study has not primarily been to map out the different ways in which muscular manhood was idealized across the political spectrum, but to explore the synergies that existed across disparate circles of interest and expertise where the imagined link between virility and national vitality was concerned. In short, I hope to have shown how a set of interwar and Vichy-era public conversations were quite often marked by a conviction in biological degeneration—a process whose chief manifestation was a supposedly ailing manhood whose decline could be reversed through the ‘virilizing’ potential of physical exercise. (And it is striking how often this specimen was a conscript on military service or one who had failed to prove himself ‘fit for service’ at the conseil de révision: thus was individual athletic

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and muscular lack transposed into national vulnerability.) This hope was often (if not always) underpinned by the neo-Lamarckian logic of the heredity of acquired characteristics such as physical fitness. The growing popular appeal of all facets of physical culture—get-fit guides, home gym equipment, natural therapies to beautify the body, sports coverage and associative life, beach and camping holidays, the Olympic Games—meant that the views of various kinds of expert in this regard were exposed to an enormous audience, thus providing conduits by which a sense of the aesthetic, political, and biological value of muscularity travelled. I am aware that this study has indeed stressed convergence rather than differentiation in the ways in which the concerns around athletic masculinity and its perceived lack were expressed from the 1920s to the 1940s. I have thus inevitably left for others a fuller exploration of the nuances of appropriation and reworking that one may find by looking deeper at the areas touched on only peripherally in this book or not at all—for example, social Catholicism, the moderate and conservative right, Zionist culture, and different factions within the French resistance after 1940. While not wishing to dismiss the reality of such nuances, I hope to have presented in this book a corrective to the reductionist view that idealized athletic ‘virile’ muscularity is necessarily a product or unique feature of the radical right. It undeniably flourished there, but also seemingly took root with surprisingly similar purchase – if harnessed to radically different agendas – across the political spectrum. It is true that there were personal connections between professional physical culturists and the radical right. For example, the Croix de Feu/PSF’s Gaëtan Maire appeared to be plugged into the hébertiste and Desbonnet networks, and Dr Ruffier, Dr Diffre, and Marcel Rouet all offered their services enthusiastically to the Vichy regime on seemingly ideological grounds. But a figure like Pierre Marie—Socialist party propagandist who became technical advisor to Léo Lagrange in 1936 and who operated in the same physical culturist circles—complicates the picture. Yet, perhaps especially in the scholarship that assesses the nature of Vichy rule and the meaning of Occupation between 1940 and 1944, the association of muscular manhood (and the cult of virility for which it has served as the most visually striking emblem) with the radical—indeed ‘fascist’ and often specifically Nazi— right has been most enduring. That is not so say that scholars have conflated the Nazi German and Vichy models. In her systematic study of ideas about sexdifference under the Occupation, Francine Muel-Dreyfus, for example, opposes the Nazi cult of virility to that which animated the sedate, conservative ‘National Revolution’ in Vichy France.1 And Miranda Pollard, in her fine analysis of Vichy’s gendered script contrasts the regime’s ‘nostalgic agenda’, ‘Catholic, patriarchal, and pre-modernist’, building on a French tradition in which eugenics could be linked with natalism; with a racially purist Nazi vision based on the ‘“virile” energy’ of ‘domination and its masculinist desires’.2 Rather, the point I am seeking to make 1 Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel féminin: contribution à une sociologie politique de l’ordre des corps (Paris, 1996), p. 333. 2 Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France (Chicago and London, 1998), p. 56.

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here is that the formal differences between the two models of masculinity ought not to be overstated, nor used as a proxy for the contrasting regimes that deployed them. It is true that the Nazi cult of virility focused on martial conquest and selfsacrifice in a way that the French version quite simply did not. Indeed, John Hoberman asserts that it was the warrior rather than the athlete that provided the official masculinist model under National Socialism.3 But there was nonetheless a widely articulated indigenous French discourse that placed emphasis on similar tropes—muscularity, athleticism, heroism, courage, fearlessness, will, and selfdiscipline—as a study of the rhetoric of instruction at Uriage, Antibes, and the Chantiers de la Jeunesse demonstrates. Conversely, the Nazis too placed emphasis on the control of the sexual self. What is largely if not entirely missing from the official discourses around physical education in Vichy France is not the language of virility but that of race, and this is to my mind not, as W. D. Halls suggested many years ago, because there is something essentially ‘un-French’ about such preoccupations.4 As we have seen, the appeal to ‘improve the race’ was ubiquitous in the 1920s and 1930s (sometimes even by way of a ‘negative’ eugenics), and continued to be so among groups of physical culturists under the Occupation. It functioned at once as a cliché, a common sense, and a fantasy of the age. It is also painfully apparent that Vichy legislators were only too willing and exceedingly quick to use the language of race when it came to their policies of exclusion, most notably in the systematic persecution of Jews. The incontrovertible fact that there was no French quest for racial purity equivalent to the Nazi German tradition should not be read as a sign either that French protagonists were not eugenicists or that they shied away from articulating a cult of nation-building virility based on muscularity and martial prowess. Seeing the Vichy French cult of virility in relation to the Nazi German one at all, however carefully the similarities and differences are weighed, to my mind risks obfuscating the roots of the former in discourses, practices, and institutions that were at once French and transnational. It makes sense to read Vichy-era initiatives instead in relation to those of the 1920s and 1930s, and to recognize that Nazi attitudes to male athleticism were themselves a particular expression or appropriation of currents of thinking that permeated policymaking in a number of European and other countries, and which drew on the popular construction of scientific knowledge about the intersection of the human body with social problems. Indeed, it is important to recognize that the cult of virility and the quest for masculine bodily regeneration as a remedy for imagined national decline was not inherently nor exclusively a product of the (radical) right at all. Acceptance of this fact has not prevented scholars from being somehow pulled back to the connection seemingly for want of an alternative framework for exploring the problem. The result is that they appear wedded to the presumptive link between virility and totalitarian, if not outright ‘fascist’ 3 John Hoberman, ‘Primacy of performance: superman not superathlete’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 16, 2 (1999), 71. 4 Halls, The Youth of Vichy France, p. 190.

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movements and regimes, despite acknowledging that the relationship is not mutually exclusive.5 André Rauch’s discussion of the ‘virile order’ in his synthetic work on twentieth-century masculinity, for example, suggests a widespread recognition of ‘the perverse effects built up by a bourgeois culture’ whose antidote could be found in the reassertion of masculine bodily dominance through physical exercise. Rauch acknowledges that the professed need to ‘improve the race’ by remaking the male body as a muscular and moral engine of fortitude was not confined to the extreme right (he cites socialist Léo Lagrange and conservative Paul Carton as examples). But the analysis is subsequently drawn primarily to a consideration of the literary works of ‘fascists’ Robert Brasillach and Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, and to Vichy-era ideologues such as Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac, head of the training school at Uriage.6 Seeing the cult of virility principally in relation to the politics of the radical right (however important the story of that relationship) is to miss a set of highly significant connections. It was arguably the médecins-culturistes of the physical culture schools, merchandising industry, and periodical press of the 1920s and 1930s who nourished far-right fantasies of muscular male authority, rather than the other way around. In many other western nations—certainly Germany, Australia, the UK, and the USA, as research discussed in this book has shown— a similar set of interlocking concerns about the male body, health, and the strength of the nation or ‘race’ found considerable political and popular purchase in the same period. If physical culture has an inherent politics, I would venture that it lies in the naturalization and perpetuation of the myths about sex-difference and ‘race’ on which it always in this period seemed to depend. Perhaps too, as sociologist Brian Pronger has suggested, there is arguably something self-limiting in the way that the cult of the athletic body co-opts individual men and women in the implicit consumerist and ageist logic often at work in the discursive and material fields around the stadium, swimming pool, and gymnasium.7 The broad and deep purchase of the interconnecting ideas explored in this book makes it unsurprising that even after the discrediting of the collaborationist regime at the Liberation, one finds continued official use of the interwar physical culturist language of manliness and its intersections with national vitality. After all, these discourses lay at the heart of Resistance narratives as well as Vichy and collaborationist ones. As Julian Jackson expresses it, ‘[t]he language of virility was omnipresent in 1945’, notably put to pointed use in attacks on collaborationists who were often deemed guilty of lèse-sexualité as well as treason.8 Two years after the Liberation, administrators in the army outlined their intention to ‘create men harmonious in their physical state’, to banish fatigue, and to fix those who fell short of the 5 The essays in Pierre Milza and Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, L’Homme nouveau dans l’Europe fasciste (1922–1945): entre dictature et totalitarisme (Paris, 2004) provide a case in point. 6 André Rauch, L’Identité masculine à l’ombre des femmes: de la grande guerre à la Gay Pride (Paris, 2004), esp. pp. [, 82. 7 Brian Pronger, Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness (Toronto, 1992). 8 Jackson, Living in Arcadia, pp. 40–1.

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required physical standard with a dose of corrective gymnastics.9 The envisaged moral and physical development of each man would ‘forge complete combatants’: the soul would be elevated through contact with fresh air, sun, and nature, and the body trained through Swedish gymnastics and Hébert’s natural method performed in the open air, torse nu, with a carefully modulated session designed to avoid surmenage. Sports—especially in the fields of boxing, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu—would in addition build the moral qualities of courage, pluck, team spirit, and sang-froid, and thus explicitly ‘virilize’ soldiers in defence of the nation.10 It is hardly surprising that the armed forces of the state should have continued to reap the historic dividend afforded them by the purchase among ordinary men of the connection between muscular athleticism, manliness, and patriotism, especially in the immediate aftermath of war and Occupation.11 Furthermore, as Andrés Reggiani has pointed out, the scientific and moral legitimacy even of eugenics was underscored immediately after the Liberation by the transformation of Alexis Carrel’s Foundation into the state research institute INED. Not only did scientists within this organization continue to demonstrate similar ideas about heredity, the birth-rate, the ‘race’, and the assimilability of various groups of immigrant, but Catholic scientists rehabilitated Carrel’s reputation and rescued his legacy from being uniquely identified with the defeated Vichy cause by stressing his credentials as a spiritualist thinker driven by a holistic interest in humanity.12 INED devoted a study to the subject of eugenics in the 1950s, and Man, the Unknown continued to sell hundreds of thousands of copies per year in France.13 The continuation of interest in Carrel’s work is demonstrated by a proTissié (LFEP) physical education teacher in Sens, south-east of Paris, who evoked the scientist’s concern with the way in which man had been studied as though wrenched free of his spiritual dimension. Borrowing from Carrel, this author argued that more importance ought to be placed on ‘human typology’, on eugenics and ‘the modelling of man through environmental physical, moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and religious factors’. He hoped for a new kind of post-war physical education that would lead to ‘the full individual development’ of each subject and be adapted to the different ‘psychic stages’ of the pupil. A proper understanding of the complexity of the human nervous system would allow physical culturists to harness the power of the human self, as the Yogis had done, achieving bodily harmony, and 9 Chef de l’Etat-Major de l’Armée de Terre, Ministère des Armées, ‘Instruction relative à la surveillance médicale de l’Education physique dans l’armée’, 3e bureau, Paris, 20 May 1946, 2; and annexe, 7, 5. 10 République Française, Ministère des Armées, Memento de l’entraînement physique militaire (Paris, Limoges, and Nancy, 1946), pp. 9, 13, 14, 227, 44, 93. 11 The notion that codes of manliness have been instruments of social control for the modern nation state in this way is discussed by Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, p. 217. 12 Reggiani, God’s Eugenicist, pp. 160–79. 13 Drouard, Alexis Carrel, pp. 14, 175. Sports journalist Jacques Goddet, who had taken over from Henri Desgrange as editor of the successful daily sports newspaper L’Auto in the late 1930s, openly endorsed the application of eugenics to sport from the pages of L’Equipe in 1948. Michael Attali and Jean Saint-Martin, ‘A View from the 1948 London Olympics from across the Channel: an analysis of the French press’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 27, 6 (2010), 1059.

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allowing the adolescent to become a master of his emotions.14 It is not clear how long it took after the Liberation for new frameworks of understanding to replace such familiar intellectual habits, but it is intriguing nonetheless to consider how far these patterns of thinking—which managed to reinforce the necessity of muscles to manliness while simultaneously accepting the fragility of masculinity, all in an antimaterialist and eugenicist idiom—persisted into a new post-war period.

14 Fernand Vinot, ‘Pédagogie de l’éducation physique de formation’, Cahiers de la Ligue Française de l’Education Physique (Bordeaux, 1946), pp. 1–2, 4–5, 11. Carrel’s lessons about how ‘rational muscular training’ could save civilized man from physical degeneration were endorsed by others in the world of post-war physical education. Pierre Benoist, ‘Education physique et éducation morale’, Cahiers de pédagogie moderne: l’enseignement du premier degré (Paris, 1948), pp. 62–6.

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Index Academy of Medicine 26, 58, 117, 139, 211 Academy of Montpellier 220 Academy of Paris 216 ACJF 124 Action Française 134, 142, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 158, 168, 170 advertising 22–3, 35, 112–13, 131, 186 ageing 8, 21, 28, 63, 82, 120, 125 alcohol abstaining from 159, 169 in advertising 113 (effects of ) alcoholism 46, 47, 50, 61, 67, 71, 73, 74, 83, 119, 141, 178, 179, 187, 216, 222 excessive consumption of 39, 45, 59, 65, 138, 149, 186, 224 Alliance Démocratique 201 Alliance Nationale 48 alternative health 21–2 Amar, Jules 40, 49, 50, 55, 123 Amis des Sports 117 Amoros, Colonel 18, 60 anarchists 127, 149, 151 anciens combattants 3, 157–9 anti-intellectualism 211 anti-materialism 6, 19, 52, 55, 78, 213, 214 and ‘spiritual turn’ 6, 19, 27, 42–3, 52–3, 199, 217, 231 anti-militarism 160–4, 174 anti-Semitism 7, 170, 203, 224, 226, 229 and CGQJ (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives) 214 Apollo 35, 38, 61, 113, 114, 115 Armand, E. 149 army, see entries under military Arnould, Commandant Henri 61, 155 arteriosclerosis 213 Arthuys, Jacques 152, 157 Association sportive de la Préfecture de Police 140, 155 atheroma 213 athletics and Alexis Carrel 52 elite failures in 176 federation 51, 64, 88, 99–100, 102, 109, 117 on left 103, 175 and manliness 32 as physically taxing 75 popular practice of 103, 128, 155 on radical right 136, 138, 171, 184, 193, 195, 196, 203 under Vichy 210

Australia 36, 44, 130–1, 210 L’Auto 65, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 115–16, 117–19, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 143, 218, 222 automobiles 2, 4, 39, 126, 159, 205 as metaphor for the body 183 see also motor-racing L’Avant-garde 128, 144, 145–7, 151, 164, 174, 176, 177, 178, 200 aviation 4, 79, 107, 138–9, 169, 173, 185–6, 199 Aéropostale 185 Aviators 108, 120, 142, 173, 185 Le Bourget airport 194 see also Mermoz, Jean baccalauréat 5, 78, 198 Balland, Dr Henri 41, 38n. Bardel, Pierre 84–5, 86, 114, 218 Barrès, Maurice 18, 199 basket-ball federation 99, 100 on the left 148, 175 and manliness 105–6 and popular practice 128 on the radical right 140, 155, 169, 170, 182, 184, 195, 224 and women 101 Bastille Day 173, 174 bataillons scolaires 57, 58, 174 Beaupuis, Colonel 221, 222 beauty beauty contests 1, 43, 51, 84, 114–16, 117, 176, 184, 218–19 emphasized in physical culture 17, 33, 37, 61, 66–7, 129–30, 141, 143, 151, 186, 196 and eugenics/regeneration 7, 66, 69, 89, 91 lack of 38, 70, 83 norms of 20, 35, 36, 37, 43, 217 ‘primitive’ 5, 186 see also classical ideals of beauty Bellin du Coteau, Dr Marcel 5, 21, 28, 40, 59, 64, 74, 76–7, 81, 84, 113, 123, 176–7, 209 Ben Barek, Larbi 110 Bénazet, Paul 68, 73, 106 Bène, Alphonse 138 Bérard, Léon 75 Bérard, Victor 77–8 Billoux, François 160, 144n. Binois, Dr 216 Biotypology 92, 214, 216

248 Black Sea mutiny 148 Blum, Léon 79, 81 Le Bocage cure centre 220 body culture 23, 24, 82, 99, 131, 189, 203 body-building 4, 11, 36, 43–4, 53, 55, 95–9, 100, 114–16, 117, 130–1, 204, 217 Boigey, Dr Maurice 5, 21, 40, 59, 64, 66–8, 74, 119, 121, 209, 223 Boncour, Dr Paul 77 Bonnard, Abel 224–5 Bonnet, Emile 115 Bonvoisin, Gustave 179 Borne, Marius 178n. Borotra, Jean and 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84, 85 as tennis champion 108, 111, 136 in CGEGS under Vichy 198, 207–8, 211, 213, 226 Bouin, Jean 82, 128, 157 Boulangism 58 boules 78, 102, 173 Bourbier, Louis 184 La Bourboule 20, 64–5 Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 55, 105n. Bourgin, Hubert 139 boxing 20, 21 champions 32, 117 as ‘complete’ sport 49, 110 and class 111 federation 100–1, 117, 136 on left 145, 154 and manliness 31–2, 111, 231 popular practice 103, 155 in popular press, 107, 109 on radical right 136, 140, 142, 170, 171, 182, 185, 194, 203 and violence 110 Boyau, Maurice 157 Brallion, General 61, 71 Brancaccio, Henri 43 Brasillach, Robert 127, 179, 230 bread 26, 163 brevet sportif populaire 79, 207 Briand, Aristide 152 Briand, Henri 215 Britain 9, 22, 24, 49 Bucard, Marcel 171 Buzy, Dr 109 cabaret 73, 104, 147, 186 Cachin, Marcel 148n., 151 CAJP (Club Athlétique des Jeunesses Parisiennes) 139–40, 141 Calme et santé 28, 52 Cambier, Maurice 39 Camelots du Roi 142, 150, 151, 152 camping 87, 129, 147, 169, 182, 195, 198–9, 203, 223, 228 cancer 27, 92, 179

Index canoeing 21, 29 Carnot, Professor Paul 117 Carol, Anne 44, 48, 215 Carpentier, Georges 32, 65, 82, 108, 109, 110, 196 Carrel, Dr Alexis 55 reception of Man, the unknown 52–3, 124, 179, 199, 219, 231 under Vichy 206, 213, 214, 215, 217 Carton, Dr Paul 26–8, 29, 45, 47 Cartonnet, Jacques 195, 196, 224, 230 Catholic sport 102, 106–7, 124, 128, 142, 148 see also FGSPF Cazal-Gamelsy, Dr 81 Cercle Sportif Saint-Henri 142 Cerdan, Marcel 108 CGEGS (Commissariat Général à l’Education Générale et Sportive) 207, 208, 210–12, 219, 220, 222, 223, 226 Chailley-Bert, Dr Paul 80, 84, 216 Chantiers de la Jeunesse 209, 210, 212, 216, 225, 229 and décrassage (morning work-outs) 209, 210 Chappert, Jean 216–17 Charry, Dr 203 Chautemps, Camille 83, 156 Chéron, Adolphe 60, 69–70, 175 and compulsory military preparation 73–4, 160, 174 and FFCP beauty contest 115 in FFI 217 and 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84, 86, 87, 89, 91 and USEPPSM 64 Chéron, Henry 72 Chevallier, Jean-Jacques 210 Chiappe, Jean 168, 172 chronophotography 5, 63 citizenship 4, 10, 70, 104 Citroën 103 civilization crisis of 44, 139, 190 critique of 1–2, 17, 19, 27, 36–7, 52, 54, 66, 92, 121–2, 124, 186, 198–9, 218 class 1, 142, 144, 145 and physical exercise 26, 30–1, 32–3 and sporting practice 72, 79, 95, 102–5, 108–9, 111, 128, 143 and social tensions 12–14, 30–1, 55–6, 71, 111, 114, 117, 130 see also entries under communism classical ideals of beauty 34–6, 37, 43–4, 52–3, 89, 113, 115, 210 classical statuary 7, 35, 43–4, 61, 66, 115, 131, 197, 218, 219 Clemenceau, Georges 125 Clichy riots 167 CNMA (Collège National des Moniteurs et

Index Athlètes) 207, 208, 209, 210, 220, 222, 225, 229 coffee 26, 169 Collège de Cannes 221 Collet, Dr Marcel 212, 214 colonies de vacances 76, 92, 103, 141, 149 and Croix de Feu/PSF 181, 187 and PPF 199, 224 Colonna, F. 203 Comès, Léon 157 Comité National des Sports (CNS) 62, 81, 100, 137 communism 134, 135, 142, 150, 151–3, 154–5, 167, 169, 170, 174–9 anti-communism 151–2, 153, 171, 201 communist sport 103–4, 135, 142–3, 144–9, 171–3, 177–8 Marxism 134, 144 PCF 15, 82, 134, 168 see also Jeunesse Communiste ; antimilitarism Compagnie des Forges 103 Comte, Auguste 189 conseil de révision (medical examination for military service) 9, 10, 38, 40, 49, 51, 53, 64, 66, 68, 70–2, 82, 83, 130, 163–4, 222 see also military service consumer culture 17, 99, 107–9 correspondence courses 218, 219 Coste, Maurice 205 Cot, Pierre 206 Cottier, Pierre 115 Coty, François 169, 171 Coubertin, Pierre de 86, 122, 126 Courson, Léon 81 CREGS (Centres Régionaux d’Education Générale et Sportive) 207, 208, 209, 221 crime 71 Croix de Feu/PSF 140, 167, 168, 171, 173, 179–90, 194, 199, 201, 203–4, 212, 217, 223 SPES (Société de Préparation et d’Éducation Sportive) 181–90, 223 CSFP (Cercle Sportif Français de Paris) 138–9 La Culture physique 20 and 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84, 114, 116 and beauty 43 and the conseil de révision 38 merchandise advertised in 22–5 under the Occupation 218 and ‘primitivism’ 36–8 readers of 95, 129 and social hygiene 46, 50, 51, 52 anti-sport discourse in 38–9 and the sports world 117–18 and surmenage 40–1, 110 cycling in advertising 113

249 champions 106, 108, 110, 117, 157, 196 and class 111 for factory workers 53 federation 99–100 on the left 144, 147, 148, 154, 175 popular practice of 102–3, 129, 155 in the popular press 111, 108, 116 on the radical right 138, 142, 170, 171, 182, 184, 195 and Ruffier 20, 118, 222 and women 101 see also Tour de France

dance 115, 145, 173, 211 Daniel-Rops, Henri 199 Darwin, Charles 89 see also social Darwinism Darwin, Leonard 68 decline 54–5, 213, 227 biological 3, 6, 7, 9, 19, 44–5, 47, 59, 84, 92, 121, 178–9, 190, 214, 218 bodily 2, 11, 13, 15, 17, 38, 40, 65, 70, 119, 131, 135, 159, 166, 168, 176–8, 179, 186–9, 193, 213, 215 moral 27 national 57, 99, 117, 191, 193, 198, 204, 206 Le Défi 203 Defrance, Jacques 54, 123 degeneration causes of 6, 19, 40, 45, 47, 49, 59, 71, 177–8, 222 as cause of 1940 military defeat 220 and ‘crisis of civilization’ 44, 52, 62, 189 and eugenics 50, 83, 123–4 fears of 3–4, 57, 83–4, 168, 178 lectures on 46 in the popular press 120–3 and ‘race’ 44, 66 reversal through physical exercise 4, 93, 129, 196, 227 Delaunay, Henry 84, 104 Delaune, Auguste 84, 217 Démeny, Georges 5, 33, 60, 62–3 depopulation (dénatalité) 3, 8, 43, 50, 51, 167, 168, 178, 215 Desbonnet, Edmond 20, 227, 228 criticism of 36, 176 as entrepreneur 22–5, 28, 184 and eugenics 40–1, 45, 51 method of exercise 21 and the military 64 under Occupation 218 and photography 5, 33, 43 self-transformation 29, 130 and the sports world 117–18 see also La Culture physique Desgrange, Henri 11, 84, 108, 118, 121, 126, 144 Deshaires, Georges 195

250

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Dézarnaulds, Dr Pierre 64, 80, 81, 86 diabetes 45 Diagne, Raoul 110 Didier, Dr Marcel 130, 213 diet 2, 19, 24, 26, 40, 83, 109, 116, 162, 163, 213, 222 Diffre, Dr Henri 5, 16, 20, 28, 38, 45, 59, 64, 66–71, 91, 119, 217, 219, 220 Dine, Philip 100 Discobolus 116, 197 disease, see entries under specific diseases Doriot, Jacques 16, 146, 161, 168, 191, 192, 194, 195, 199, 200, 217, 223 Dorvaux, Dr 123 Doumergue, Gaston 125 Dreyfus Affair 13, 134, 193 Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre 126, 179, 191, 194, 198, 230 Dubarbié Dumaine, Jeanne 102 Dubech, Lucien 142 Duclos, Jacques 82, 178, 192–3 Ducos, Hippolyte 75 Duhamel, Georges 121 Dunoyer de Segonzac, Pierre 230 Durville, Drs André and Gaston 28, 26n. Dynam Institute 196 Ecole d’Athropologie 214, 215 Ecole de Cavalerie 181 Ecole de Joinville 63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 74, 85, 105, 115, 117, 119, 137, 208 Ecole des Roches 103 Ecole Polytechnique 111, 207 Ecoles des Cadres 207 L’Education physique 20, 36, 41, 45, 183 EGS (Éducation Générale et Sportive) 207, 208, 209, 210–11, 225 L’Emancipation nationale 192, 198, 199 empire, see imperialism Encausse, Dr Philippe 180, 184, 188, 189, 212, 214, 217 ENEP(S)École Nationale d’Éducation Physique (et Sportive) 64, 75, 81, 178, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212 eugenics 3, 11, 15, 48–51, 55, 57, 66, 67, 68 and 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84, 87–93 and Alexis Carrel 52–3 and anarchism 149 and Liberation-era 231 and the popular press 123–4 ‘positive’ 6, 48–51, 54 and pre-marital medical exam 48, 50–1, 215, 225 and SFE (Société Française d’Eugénisme) 46n., 48, 91, 214, 215 and SPES 190 and Vichy 212–17, 226, 288–9 L’Echo des sports 85, 116, 117, 123, 218

Faisceau 14, 135–9, 150, 151–2, 155, 156–8, 171 fascism 27n., 135, 152, 155, 158, 166, 191 admiration for regimes elsewhere 3–4, 11, 79, 133, 137, 142, 177, 191, 204 anti-fascism 134, 148, 150, 154, 155, 163, 168, 169, 173, 175, 176, 180, 204 cult of virility in 126–7, 228–30 and ‘new man’ 132, 179 fashion 11, 38–9, 61, 113–14, 119–20 dress reform 120 fatigue causes of 27, 186 and degeneration 3, 6, 45, 55, 76–7 management of 5, 17–19, 33, 60, 62, 63, 72, 120, 147, 186, 230 and manliness 58, 67, 83, 89, 130, 183 in the military 158, 200 and tuberculosis 27, 47n. under Vichy 211–12, 221 see also surmenage Fédération des Jeunesses Socialistes 144, 172 Fédération Républicaine 91, 126, 140 fencing 21, 49, 85, 99, 102, 117, 138, 140, 142, 155, 169, 170, 171, 182, 194, 195 La Ferté-Milon 195, 200 FFA (Fédération Française d’Athlétisme) 51, 64, 88, 99, 109, 117 FFB (Fédération Française de Basket-Ball) 100, 113 FFCP (Fédération Française de Culture Physique) 1, 46, 84, 85, 100, 101, 114–16, 176, 218 FFEPH (Fondation Française pour l’Étude des Problèmes Humains) 214–17, 231 FGSPF (Fédération Gymnastique et Sportive des Patronages de France) 86, 100, 101, 102, 106–7 Figuères, Léopold 128 Finland 82, 190 fishing 102, 120 Fiss, Karen 134, 204 Fleury, Dr Maurice de 26, 42 football in 1937 Paris World’s Fair 86 in advertising 113 champions 64, 110, 115, 117 and criticism of sport 78 elite failures in 136 federation 99–100, 104, 117, 121 on left 143, 145, 147, 151, 154, 175 and manliness 31–2, 53, 66, 107, 121 as a method of exercise 21, 49, 101 and popular practice 102–3, 125, 126, 155 in the popular press 111, 116 on radical right 138, 140, 157, 169, 170, 171, 180, 181, 182, 184, 194, 195, 199, 203 and women 62, 101

Index Forth, Christopher 1, 13, 17, 19, 193 Foucault, Michel 10 Fougerat de Lastours, Dr 46 Foussarigues 111 Francisme 171 Franco-Prussian War 10, 58 Frossard, Ludovic-Oscar 103 Front de la Jeunesse 201–3 Frumusan, Dr Jean 8, 21, 29, 38, 39, 42, 45, 46, 47, 50 FSGT (Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail) 84, 86, 104, 171–8, 180, 200, 217 FST (Fédération Sportive du Travail) 104, 135, 145–8, 155, 161, 171, 172, 191 Galton, Francis 50 Gaucher, Julie 110 Gay-Lescot, Jean-Louis 207, 220, 226 German, T.-O. 169 Germany 7, 22, 67, 106, 144, 154, 174, 184, 191, 193, 208, 217, 223 in 1937 Paris World’s Fair 90 eugenics 84, 190 fears of invasion by 3, 9, 93, 132, 205 German naturism 24, 27–8, 141, 149 German soldiers 59, 161, 205 investment in physical fitness 11, 49, 65, 68, 73, 75, 76, 82, 83, 85, 93, 137, 177, 193, 204, 205, 207 life reform movement 30, 37, 42, 131 sporting manliness 108, 111, 136, 218 and virility 228–30 get-fit manuals 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 17, 22, 29–33, 43, 55, 62, 228 get-fit merchandise 22–3 Giraud, Marie-Louise 218 Giraudoux, Jean 127 Gobert, André 105 Goddet, Jacques 231n. golf 32, 105, 120 Gosselin, Louis 128 Grassin, Robert 196 Grégoire, Herman 124 Grenoble 207 Groeninger, Fabien 106 Groupement hébertiste 183, 208n. centres hébertistes 28, 130 Guennebaud, Lieutenant Louis 59 Guérin, Daniel 127–8 Guimier, Jean 176, 178 gymnasiums 22, 100, 130–1, 133, 167, 169, 230 in the home 30 see also physical culture gymnastics 4, 5, 11, 20, 22, 30, 43, 47, 58, 61, 69, 82, 86, 87, 95, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 107, 123, 124, 129, 149, 155, 170, 184, 225

251 analytical 182 corrective 182, 183, 203, 220, 221, 222, 231 group 85, 86, 146, 148, 185 gymnastique de chambre 29, 61, 70, 112, 118, 126, 176 medical 81 military 18, 60–1, 137 of organs 20, 21, 51, 64 orthopaedic 216 rhythmic 102 Swedish 20, 21, 26, 60, 64, 74, 75, 178, 182, 231 Synthetic 178, 182

Halls, W.D. 213 Hansenne, Marcel 128 Hare, Geoff 102 Hau, Michael 30, 37, 42, 55, 131 Hébert, Georges 5, 16, 20–1, 26, 27, 37, 64, 73, 76, 81, 142, 182, 189, 205, 208, 209, 210, 223, 225, 227 see also L’Education physique; ‘natural method’; ‘primitivism’ Hebrard, François 86n., 107n. heliotherapy (sun therapy) 22, 26, 28, 119n., 231 Hellman, John 209 Hercules 22, 35, 36, 116, 128, 176, 196 heredity 46, 210, 213, 214, 231 Mendelism 7, 92, 189–90 neo-Lamarckism 3, 9, 46–50, 53, 189–90, 228 see also eugenics Herriot, Edouard 69, 156, 178 Hoberman, John 12, 133, 144, 229 Hockey 62, 84, 100, 105, 170 Holt, Richard 99 homeopathy 21, 27 homoeroticism 43–4, 55, 108–9, 127–8 homosexuality 12–13, 43–4, 55, 127–8 horse-riding 21, 102, 182 Hourlier, Léon 157 Hugo, Victor 125 L’Humanité 127, 128, 144, 148, 151, 160, 163, 172, 174, 179 Humbert, Eugène and Jeanne 149 hunting 26, 126 Hunziker, Paul 78 Huot, Paul 209 hydrotherapy 20, 22, 28, 46, 109, 130, 141, 148, 203 Ile de Ré 141 immigration 7, 8, 44, 65, 139, 167, 215, 231 imperialism 13, 15, 37, 41, 103, 112, 142, 165, 174, 175, 193, 198 INED (Institut National d’Études Démographiques) 214, 231 Institut Marcel Rouet (formerly PhysicalCulture) 219

252

Index

Institute of Anthropo-Sociology 214 IREP (Institut Régional d’Éducation Physique) 74, 80, 81, 207, 216, 220 Italy 11, 66, 76, 79, 82, 85, 132, 134, 137, 191, 193, 204 Jaurès, Jean 175 Jensen, Erik 108, 111 Jeudon, Dr Robert 89 Jeune Garde 154 La Jeune Garde 160 Jeune Garde Antifasciste 154 Jeunesse Communiste 128, 135, 144–8, 154–5, 159–61, 163–5, 172–4, 191 Jeunesse SFIO 145 Jeunesses de la Solidarité Française 170 Jeunesses fascistes 152, 158 Jeunesses Patriotes 14, 135, 139–42, 150, 151, 153–4, 156, 158, 168, 169, 170 Jews 7, 12, 170, 201, 203, 224 see also anti-Semitism170, 203, 214, 224, 226, 229 jiu-jitsu 21, 142, 231 Jobert, Timothée 110 Joliot-Curie, Irène 177 Joly, Andrée 87 Kienné de Mongeot, Marcel 27–8, 29, 52 Labbé, Edmond 85, 89, 92 Labbé, Professor Marcel 64 Lacoste, René 108, 111, 136 Lacretelle stadium 216 Ladoumègue, Jules 82, 198 Lafitte, Robert 208–9 Lagrange, Dr Fernand 67 Lagrange, Léo 79–80, 83, 85, 124, 125–6, 179, 180, 204, 206, 207, 208, 217, 222, 228, 230 Langlois, Professor J.P. 63 Lapébie, Roger 108 Laporte, Maurice 145, 164 Larpent, Colonel Georges 152 Latarjet, Professor A. 87 Laugier, Professor Henri 92 Laval, Pierre 208 Lavererie, Raymond de 129–30 Le Go, Dr Pierre 214 Lecoeur, Pierre 151 Lecourt, Paul 198 Legrand, Jean-Charles 201–3 Legros, Colonel 50, 84, 115 leisure 11, 20, 32, 39, 71, 76, 79, 87, 95, 101, 102, 103, 120, 124, 128, 143, 145, 175, 179, 180, 191, 195, 198, 199, 204 Lemarchand, Georges 76 Lenglen, Suzanne 194 Léopold Bellan stadium 140 Leriche, Désiré 196

LGEP (Ligue Girondine d’Éducation Physique) 99 La Liberté 195 Ligue de la santé 42 Ligue des Patriotes 153 Lindbergh, Charles 185 Ling, Per Henrik 60, 64 see also Swedish gymnastics Loisel, Ernest 209 Lyautey, Marshall 71, 188 machines 52, 53, 122, 198 machine age 62 body as 5, 12, 18–19, 92, 119, 120, 121, 194, 220 Maire, Gaëtan 182–4, 185, 186–7, 189–90, 204, 223, 228 Malraux, André 80 manliness, see masculinity March, Lucien 7 Marchand, Philippe 58 Marey, Etienne-Jules 5, 33, 49, 63 Marie, Pierre 30, 34, 35, 38, 50, 118, 125, 143, 159, 172, 175, 179, 180, 203, 222, 228 Marin, Louis 75, 91, 105, 126, 170 Marion, Paul 193 Martial, René 7, 48, 214–5 Martin, Léon 83 masculinity 1, 4, 12, 17, 230, 231n. athletic 12, 13, 108–9, 110, 111, 135, 137, 139, 166, 170, 194, 228 codes of manliness 4, 14, 31, 40, 43, 53, 78, 104, 109, 133, 201, 227 fears about 18, 37, 67, 156 fragility of 2, 10, 55, 165, 232 frontier 41 hegemonic 12, 14 martial 15, 55, 58, 105–7, 117, 127, 132, 156, 158–60, 166, 171, 175, 204 muscular 8, 11, 12–16, 17, 19, 30, 37, 55, 104–5, 111–14, 128, 131, 223, 232 normative 10, 13, 55, 105–6, 110, 111, 116 and subjectivity 124–31 tensions within 55, 106–7, 128, 134, 145, 228–9 see also muscularity; virility Massard, Armand 76, 86, 121, 140–1 masturbation 127 Maurras, Charles 142, 156 Mazelié, Yves 219 Mazière, Christian de la 127 measurement 6, 18, 21, 33, 34, 49, 60, 63, 80–1, 130, 131, 164, 184, 212, 216, 221 medicine 4, 20, 21, 33, 37, 54, 66, 74, 84, 92, 109, 115, 130, 134, 190 Academy of 26, 58, 117, 139, 211 congresses in 49, 91, 117 constitutional 47

Index critique of empirical 6, 19, 21, 42, 175 Faculties of 18, 46, 53, 63, 64, 76, 81, 91, 115, 130, 207 holism 6, 19, 21, 42 Hindu 27, 42 médecins-culturistes 5, 46, 62, 63, 64, 203, 212, 213, 216, 230 medical control 20, 32, 66, 74, 80–2, 119, 141, 178, 184, 185, 186, 188, 206, 212, 214, 216, 219, 221 medicalization of society 1, 7, 8, 21–2, 60 model of crisis 3, 44, 54, 69, 204, 213 naturist 27 ‘rational’ 6 role in decline of species 66, 190 sports medicine 20, 21, 64, 76, 81, 216 training in 5, 18, 20, 21, 198 see also eugenics Mendelism, see heredity Mercier, Ernst 111 Mermoz, Jean 108, 185–6, 194 Meyer, Gaston 128 Meynard, Jean 53, 55 Michelin 103 Mierry, Jean de 181, 217 Milice 224 military defeat 15, 16, 205, 217, 218 military preparation certificates 61–2, 101, 106, 123, 169 compulsory 66, 69, 72–3, 148, 193 critique of 75, 80, 144, 146, 148, 160, 174 failure to make men 176 linked to physical education and fitness 59, 175, 200 and public powers 69–70, 72–4, 75 societies 64–8, 72, 101, 105, 109, 112 see also anti-militarism; USEPPSM military service and citizienship 10, 105 criticism of 154, 160–5, 174 Georges Valois 135–6 and manliness 58, 59 and popular politics 152, 158 preparing youth for 74, 75, 106, 120, 137, 198 reduction in length of 59, 69, 72–4, 93 rejection rates for 38, 59, 64, 71–2, 93 screening for 49, 71 mirrors 33, 70, 129, 131, 192, 193, 196, 203, 219 Montandon, Georges 214–5 Montherlant, Henry de 126, 127 Morinaud, Emile 85 motor-racing 32, 103, 138, 170 Müller, Jørgen Peter 8 Muscularity 1–2, 4, 18, 20, 69, 196, 202, 229–31 building 22, 31, 32, 35, 53, 61, 183, 220

253

excessive 35, 36, 53, 116–17, 176, 228 value of 11, 43–4, 47, 49, 52, 56, 62, 106, 121, 123, 125, 130, 134, 146, 159, 166, 183, 197, 228 see also masculinity; virility music hall 33, 39, 115 Nakache, Alfred 224 Le National 139, 140, 150, 151, 169 natalism 44, 48, 228 ‘natural method’ 36, 37 attitudes towards 21, 26, 60, 64, 70, 75, 182, 189 components of 20, 21 influence of 103, 175, 183, 210, 223, 231 in the school system 80, 103 natural remedies 19, 22, 24, 66 naturism 27–8 and anti-materialism 19 and degeneration 45, 46, 47, 50, 52, 213 and medicine 6, 27 and physical culture 24, 29, 36, 40, 176 and political positions 12, 149, 202 and popular practice 26n., 129–30 as transnational 8–9 Nazism 11, 65, 79, 80, 127, 132, 149, 168, 191, 226, 228–9 neo-Lamarckism, see heredity neurasthenia 3, 6, 26, 40, 41, 45, 58, 61, 67, 129, 130, 196 ‘new man’ 14, 133, 156, 159, 164, 165, 166, 173, 191, 201, 202, 204 Le Nouveau siècle 136, 139, 150, 157, 158 nutrition 46, 72, 73, 120, 139, 169, 177, 214, 216, 217 Nye, Robert 2, 6, 58 obesity 19, 38, 40, 45, 113, 118, 124, 130, 178, 196 Oeuvres Sociales du Franciste 171 Office du Sport Universitaire 86 Olympia 193 Olympics 193, 196, 228 1924 Paris Games 118, 121, 122, 194 1928 Amsterdam Games 50 1936 Berlin Games 52, 85, 109, 123, 216 1948 London Games 231n. French committee 176 open-air schools 30, 75–7, 92 organization (work science) 6, 18–19, 53–4 Osmont, Edmond 30–1 pacifism 73, 105, 127 Pagès, Dr C.C. 5, 33 Painlevé, Paul 73, 160 Palais de la Découverte 92, 93 Palais des sports (Vélodrome d’Hiver) 85, 116, 167 Parc des Princes 63, 86, 167

254

Index

Paris-sport 218 Pascot, Colonel 208, 211 Paté, Henry 69, 76, 84, 125, 148, 178 Paul-Boncour, Joseph 144 Pélissier, Henri 108, 144 Péri, Gabriel 128 Pétain, Marshall Philippe 105, 188, 206, 210, 223 Le Petit journal 184 Peugeot 103 Phalanges Universitaires 150, 153 Philippot, René 196 photography 5, 22, 28, 30, 33, 35, 43–4, 61, 63, 95, 108, 131, 216–17 physical culture methods of 20–1, 26, 60–1, 64, 75, 103, 118, 176, 183, 206, 221, 223 ‘rational’ 5–7, 12, 16, 18–19, 21, 29, 31, 40, 45, 47, 51, 53, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68, 82, 89, 93, 107, 117, 130, 131, 143, 147, 180, 187, 190, 196 schools of 17, 22, 33, 112, 114, 127, 220, 222, 230 see also body-building; gymnastics; sport physical education in 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84–7 in army 5, 59–62, 64–06, 72–4, 101, 115, 123 in classical society 35, 36 Desgrange’s views on 118, 121 on the left 143, 146, 154, 160, 174, 175–6, 177, 178 after the Liberation 231–2 medicalization of 5, 20, 49, 53, 63–4, 74–5, 81, 91, 109, 117, 212, 214 on the radical right 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 170, 171, 180, 182–90, 195, 199, 223–4 and regeneration 45, 68–70, 89, 91, 123–4, 189, 213, 215, 217 in schools 57–8, 59–60, 74, 75–7, 80–83 in sports societies 100–1, 103, 106 and surmenage commission 77–8 training of teachers in 178, 180 under Vichy 206–212 physicians 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 12, 20, 21, 42, 46, 54, 81, 83, 109, 177 see also medicine Pierrefeu, Jean de 122 Pinard, Adolphe 7, 48, 49, 51, 55, 68 ping-pong 4, 128, 182 Pitet, Jean 115 Popular Front 15, 30, 57, 87, 168, 169, 172, 177–81, 185, 194, 199, 200, 204, 206 and ban on paramilitary leagues 171, 179, 186 and health 81–2, 83–4 and leisure 79–80 and physical education 80–1, 82–3 Porte du Theil, General Paul de la 212, 213

Pourchet, Maurice 210 Poussard, Emile 196 PPF (Parti Populaire Français) 16, 168, 191–200, 204, 223–5 Pranotherapy 42 Prételat, General 123, 187 Préventorium 141 ‘primitivism’ 5, 35–7, 61, 110, 141, 186, 210 print culture 8, 11, 95, 107–16 Progrès Social Français 223 see also Croix de Feu/PSF Pronger, Brian 230 psychotherapy 42 puericulture 48, 50, 90, 109 Rabinbach, Anson 6, 17, 18, 55, 58 ‘race’ 4, 7, 11 fetishization of black athletes 14, 36, 52, 109–10 racial hierarchies 1, 12, 37–8, 230 racial purity 7–8, 55, 214–15, 228, 229 see also decline; degeneration; regeneration radio 20, 48, 70, 83, 91, 104, 109, 123, 128, 220 Redressement Français 111 regeneration 42, 117, 159, 206, 229 and beauty contests 114 biological 8, 44, 51, 65, 69, 73, 74, 83, 92, 120–1, 129, 131, 190, 212–17 through physical exercise 28, 46, 53, 62, 81, 93, 127, 135, 157, 178, 189, 223 Reichel, Frantz 104, 122, 123, 170 Renaud, Jean 169 Renault 103 Resistance (under Occupation, 1940–44) 206, 217–18, 223, 228, 230 revolution Marxist 61, 134, 145–6, 153, 159, 161, 163 spiritual 171, 189, 199 National (under Vichy) 170, 208, 210, 223, 225, 228 tradition of 1789 45, 175, 194 thermodynamic 5 Revue anthropologique 51, 214 La Revue des deux mondes 120, 205 Rey-Golliet, Adrien 63, 76 Reynaud, Dr 213 Richard, Dr G.-A. 63 Richer, Paul 33 Richet, Charles 7, 8, 48, 49, 50, 55, 63 Riefensthal, Leni 193 Riff War 148 Rigoulot, Charles 111, 113, 116, 136, 194, 217 Rimet, Jules 84 Rochu-Méry, Dr 49, 91 Rocque, Colonel François de la 172, 179, 180, 185, 189, 223 Rolet, André 115, 117–18, 218 Rostand, Jean 92

Index Rouet, Marcel 1–2, 20 and beauty pageants 1, 115–16, 219 on civilization 39 on classical models 34–5 on diet 26 as eugenicist 51, 219 and methods of exercise 4, 21, 32, 219 under Vichy 217, 218–19, 228 Rouhet, Dr Georges 5, 20, 21, 22, 25–6, 29, 45, 51, 115, 129, 130, 218 Rowing 103, 117, 155 Royet, Commandant 62 Roynette, Odile 71 Ruffier, Dr James-Edward on 1940 defeat 205, 220 critique of sport 38 as entrepreneur 22, 220 as eugenicist 50 and methods of exercise 21, 28, 29–30, 115, 176, 182, 184, 196, 223 as physician 5, 20, 63, 64, 227, 228 on surmenage 67 and Vichy regime 217, 220–2 rugby 49, 99, 107, 116, 127, 155, 208 champions 104, 111, 117, 125 federations 100 and manliness 31–2, 66, 107, 113 popular practice 100, 103 on radical right 136, 137, 138, 140, 157, 170, 194, 195 and women 101 Saint-Denis 76, 147, 148, 160, 191, 194, 195, 199 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine 108 Saint-Martin, Jean 73, 79, 80 sanatoria 51, 81 see also préventorium Schmeling, Max 108 Schneider, William 15, 48, 178, 215 Schreiber, Dr Georges 48 sedentarity, see civilization selective breeding, see eugenics Sellier, Dr Henri 81, 83, 92 Sellier, Louis 84, 92–3 Service de la Défense de la Race 203 sex-difference 2, 12, 13, 58, 102, 104–5, 117, 133, 173, 208, 224, 226, 230 see also masculinity; women shooting 21, 58, 126, 140, 147, 154 and STIR 105 Sicard de Pluzoles, Just 48, 123 Simon, Jules 58, 64 skating 32, 120 skiing 21, 32, 79, 100, 103, 117, 126, 169, 177, 182, 200 social Darwinism 7, 41n., 109 social hygiene 6–8, 44–54, 67–9, 74, 81, 82, 84, 89, 92, 109, 119, 149, 178, 204 see also eugenics

255

socialism 14, 30, 59, 79, 83, 92, 152, 168, 201, 228, 230 SFIO 134, 143, 145, 159 and youth 144–5, 159 and sport 103–4, 142–5, 159, 171–2 Le Soldat de demain 65, 91 Solidarité Française 168, 169–71 Spencer, Herbert 189 Sport 145, 172, 174, 177 sport in 1937 Paris World’s Fair 84–7, 89–93, 116 champions 70, 82, 108, 109–10, 113, 117 and eugenics 49–50, 123–4, 179, 189, 213 failure at elite level 82, 121–3, 136, 177, 178, 187, 193 federations 62, 86, 95, 99–103 and manliness 31–3, 43, 55, 67, 104–7, 109, 113, 120, 126–31, 137–8, 141–2, 145, 171, 173, 185–6, 196, 231 and the military 60–1, 65–7, 72, 74 patronal (employer-based) 103 and the popular press 11, 35, 95, 107–116, 117–24, 223 and the public powers 63–4, 68, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79–83 and (critique of ) spectatorship 11, 12, 18, 32, 55, 66, 100, 103, 106, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121, 131, 143–4, 171, 187, 203, 227 under Vichy 205, 206–12, 213, 216–17, 225 and women 62, 102–3, 173 see also entries for specific sports and political movements; worker sport Sport et santé 47, 52 Stadium Colombes 85 and bodily decline 67, 122, 178, 216 and leisure 79, 103, 130 Léopold Bellan 140 and mass politics 15, 133, 172 Parc des Princes 86, 167 Persching 138, 148 Porte de Saint-Cloud 86–7, 89, 91 and regeneration 68, 82, 83, 89, 118, 203, 225 in Saint-Denis 191, 199 Stavisky riots 15, 167 Sterilization, see eugenics Strohl, David 81, 183 strongmen 29, 33, 99, 111, 113, 114, 194, 217 see also body-building; Rigoulot Surier, Albert 13, 32, 40, 46, 64, 65, 66, 70, 71, 218 surmenage (overwork) 6, 18, 27, 46, 60, 75, 80, 83 commission of 1929–30, 77–8 intellectual 40, 41, 42, 57–8, 59, 77, 119, 120, 121, 129, 130, 139, 177, 188, 197, 198 physical 25, 40, 59, 61, 62, 67, 68, 110, 118, 129, 163, 169, 174, 186, 211–12, 223, 231

256

Index

swimming 20, 28, 37, 49, 53, 61, 62, 69, 119, 130, 136, 155, 230 in industry 103 federation 99, 100, 117 female practice 101–2 and homosexuality 127 on the left 147, 149, 173, 175, 178 on the radical right 136, 138, 140, 141, 182, 184, 191, 195, 199, 203, 224 Switzerland 22, 76, 85, 86, 190 syphilis 45, 47, 59, 71, 73, 82, 84, 92, 179, 216 table tennis 100 see also ping-pong Taittinger, Pierre 135, 140, 153, 156, 158 see also Jeunesses Patriotes Taris, Jean 198 Taylorism 6, 18, 19, 53, 54–5 Le Temps 71, 211 tennis 21, 49, 53, 64, 78, 86, 107 champions 15, 108, 111, 136, 207 and class 32, 79, 102, 103, 108, 120 federation 99, 100, 117 and gender 32, 62, 102, 105, 194 on the radical right 169, 170, 182, 194, 199 thermal spas 20, 23 see also La Bourboule Thooris, Dr A. 51, 63, 88 Thorez, Maurice 82 Tissié, Philippe 35, 45, 63, 64, 67, 75, 99, 119, 182, 223, 231 Torrès, Pierre 52–3 totalitarianism 11, 80, 123, 132, 204, 229 Tour de France 11, 85, 106, 108, 113, 137, 144, 172 transnationalism 8, 9, 16, 226 Trinquecoste, Pierre 196 tuberculosis 3, 47, 135, 179, 193, 218 pre-tubercular state 27, 67, 76 self-cure from 20 and social hygiene 46, 51, 71, 81, 82, 92, 149, 187, 216 and surmenage 78 UJSF (Union des Jeunesses Sportives Françaises) 195–6, 198, 217 UPJF (Union Populaire de la Jeunesse Française) 195, 196, 200, 223–5 Uriage 207, 208, 209, 229, 230 USA 109, 115, 215, 230 American athletic prowess 5, 37, 41, 82, 109, 115, 122 and eugenics 49, 83, 190 USEPPSM 64–8, 70, 84, 86, 87, 101, 109, 218

USFSA (Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques) 101, 102 USSR 69, 83, 86, 147, 168, 177 and Soviet athleticism 147–8, 159, 173, 175 Vaillant-Couturier, Paul 82, 128, 161, 173 Valois, Georges 135–6, 137, 138, 152, 157, 158 Valtier, Dr Emile 5, 20, 40, 51, 53, 84, 85, 125, 218 Varma, Yogi 42 vegetarianism 12, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 129, 149 Vellave, Jean 200 Vernes, Arthur 83 Viard, Dr Marcel 28, 40, 52, 202 Vichy regime 15, 205–14, 219–22, 223, 224, 225–6, 228–30 Vidal, Gaston 63, 68–9, 76 violence political violence and street fighting 14, 150–55, 166, 167, 168, 169, 180, 200 in sport 55, 110, 111, 138 virility components of 4, 32n., 58, 61, 78 cult of 7, 16, 27, 106, 134, 139, 142, 154, 166, 179, 181, 185, 191, 192, 196, 204, 206, 208–10, 223, 224–5, 227–30 fears of devirilization 4, 10, 43, 58, 83, 156, 188, 216–7 Vivre 27, 28, 129 volley-ball 62, 100 Vuillemin, Roger 210 war veterans, see anciens combattants Wardhaugh, Jessica 14, 168 water-polo 180, 195 Wehrheim, Professor 112 weight-lifting 85, 95, 100, 116 weight-loss 8, 19, 21, 22, 46 Weisz, George 6, 22, 46 Weygand, Maxim 188 Whitney, Susan 86, 106, 133, 145 ‘whole man’ 6, 19, 21, 42, 54, 78, 107, 139, 142, 199, 206, 210 see also anti-materialism will therapy 41–3, 201–2 Wohl, Robert 156, 158 women 22, 27, 57, 62, 83, 93 and attraction to muscles 130 FSFSF 101 and hygienic dress 120 and sex-difference 13–14, 101–2, 133 UJFF (Union des Jeunes Filles de France) 173 and reproduction 49, 51, 59, 67, 68, 70, 82, 188, 215, 224 in sport and physical exercise 62, 95, 101–2, 105, 177, 191, 194, 196, 230 worker sport, see communism; socialism

Index World War I physical impact of 3, 45, 54, 59, 65, 73, 74, 77–8, 121–2, 139, 188, 193 service in 20, 128, 156–8, 171 World’s Fair, Paris 1937 wrestling 20, 21, 85, 140, 155, 180, 231 yachting 32, 108 youth 68, 80, 89, 92 Catholic 102, 106–7, 128 harnessing 14, 133, 135, 142–3, 169 hostels 87, 79, 101

257 physical failure of 38, 70, 71, 73, 82, 92, 105, 122, 130, 177, 178 and revolt 127, 156–9, 170, 179 training of 62, 73, 78, 82, 93, 104, 175 under Vichy 15, 208, 210, 213, 216, 217, 219, 226 see also anti-militarism ; Croix de Feu/PSF ; Front de la Jeunesse ; Jeune Garde ; Jeunesse Communiste; Jeunesses Patriotes; PPF ; socialism and youth ; UPJF

Zay, Jean 79, 80, 177, 200, 217