Not Mobilizing the Masses: French Radio and the People, 1936–40

Longstanding fears of dictatorship in France had prohibited government leaders from using the radio to rally constituencies or attack enemies until the mid-1930s. Germany’s militarization of the Rhineland in March 1936, however, forced the French political class to begin addressing the nation on the radio during diplomatic crises. Council President Albert Sarraut’s laconic, didactic radio response to Hitler’s violation of the Locarno treaty began the struggle to confront international threats and mobilize a divided nation through political communication on the radio. Ineffective use of the airwaves by France’s political class was no secret. Hitler timed troop movements so that French radio, not the written press, would be first to the story. Until Charles de Gaulle’s wartime broadcasts from London, no charismatic or galvanizing voices on French radio managed to provide a counter model to fascist visions of national destiny.

Political speech on French radio emerged from distinctly French rhetorical traditions developed on the campaign trail, in parliamentary debate, and in courtrooms. The default “bourgeois” voice of the French political elite featured soaring and vibrated vocal flourishes, complex historical contextualization, and often more effeminate vocal qualities. The Munich Crisis of October 1938 brought military men into the government and thus to the airwaves. Their clipped, authoritative style, echoed by late 1930s sports announcing and popular programming, competed with and eventually replaced prewar vocal and rhetorical practices; at the Liberation, the older style provoked associations with defeat and collaboration. Basing my analysis on extensive listening of broadcasts between 1936 and 1940, my paper explains France’s prewar failure to adapt political speech to the imperatives of radio’s national audience in the run-up to the Second World War.