[1] The PPF centered initially around the town of Saint-Denis, where it was founded and of which Doriot was mayor (as a Communist) from 1930 to 1934, and drew its support from the large working class population in the area.

Despite the Communist origins of much of its leadership (which retained the name Politburo), the party was virulently anti-Marxist, which it came to regard as a Jewish pseudo-socialism which was not working for real improvements to the situation of the French working-classes.

According to the private diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law: "Doriot's right-hand-man has asked me to continue to pay subsidies and provide weapons.

These funds from the Italian Fascists and French banking and business interests were used to purchase a number of newspapers, including La Liberté, which became the official party organ.

Intellectuals who are often viewed as fascists, notably Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Ramón Fernandez, Alexis Carrel, Paul Chack, and Bertrand de Jouvenel, were members of the PPF at various times.

As the PPF tended more towards fascism, and especially after the French defeat and the establishment of Vichy France, anti-Semitism became much more a central feature of party policy.

Despite this, the PPF was financially supported by employers and French businessmen which sought to encourage a popular nationalist anti-Communist force and experienced rapid growth in its membership, particularly from the middle classes.

[7][4] After the French defeat in the Battle of France and the establishment of the regime of Philippe Pétain at Vichy, the PPF received additional support from Germany and increased its activities.

The PPF increasingly placed anti-Semitism at its core as it collaborated with units of the Gestapo and the Milice, the French paramilitary organization led by Joseph Darnand, in violently rounding up Jews for deportation to concentration camps.

[9] Other groups linked to the PPF by common membership had less humanitarian motives: in Lyon a Mouvement national anti-terroriste was established to combat the Resistance by fighting "terror with terror"; other PPF members joined the Gardes Françaises set up by German police authorities as a counterweight to the Milice, which was deemed too French, or the Groupes d'action pour la justice sociale which hunted down French youth who went into hiding rather than do the mandatory labour work under the STO programme.

Doriot's biographers differ on the subject: Jean-Paul Brunet argues that the PPF did fight against the Allied invasion while Dieter Wolf denies any such action occurred.

[12] In 1941, Doriot urged PPF members to join the newly formed Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF) to fight on the eastern front.

On 8 January 1943 a group of PPF militants originally from Maghreb, Germans and sympathetic Tunisians were parachuted into Southern Tunisia to conduct sabotage - but were arrested almost immediately.

The PPF based itself in Mainau, set up its own radio station, Radio-Patrie, at Bad Mergentheim and published its own paper Le Petit Parisien.

[17] On 22 February 1945, Doriot, attired in his SS uniform and being driven in a Nazi officer's car, was killed by Allied strafers near Mengen, Württemberg, Germany, while en route from Mainau to Sigmaringen.