[1] It opposed the left-wing Popular Front (in office, June 1936 to 1938) and used violence to promote its activities in the final years of the Third Republic and into the Vichy Regime.

La Cagoule committed assassinations, and undertook bombings, sabotage of armaments, and other violent activities, some intended to cast suspicion on communists through false flag operations and to add to political instability.

The group was founded in 1936 or 1937 by Eugène Deloncle and enjoyed privileged relations within industrial circles (National Federation of Ratepayers, Lesieur, L'Oréal etc).

[3] An important member was Joseph Darnand, who later founded the Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), the forerunner of the Milice, the collaborationist paramilitary of the Vichy regime.

[4] Dr. Henri Martin was a physician suspected of having forged the Pacte synarchique and worked for the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) after World War II.

[5] Mohammed El Maadi, the head of La Cagoule for French Algeria, started the antisemitic newspaper Er Rachid and organised the North-African Brigade, known as SS-Mohammed, in 1944.

It attempted to assassinate French Prime Minister Léon Blum, trained men in terrorism, built underground prisons and "ran guns in Belgium, Switzerland and Italy".

[4] La Cagoule directed its members in various actions aimed at creating suspicions of communists to destabilise and to destroy the French Republic.

[7] To ease its obtaining arms from Fascist Italy, on 9 June 1937, the group assassinated two Italian antifascists, the Rosselli brothers, who were refugees in France.

On 11 September 1937, the Cagoule blew up two buildings owned by the Comité des Forges (Ironmasters Association) to create the impression of a communist conspiracy.

On 15 November 1937, Marx Dormoy, Minister of the Interior and the highest officer of law enforcement, denounced its plot and ordered wide arrests of members.

[citation needed] The journalists of Time magazine likened La Cagoule to the American Ku Klux Klan, a right-wing group that had a widespread revival from 1915 and reached its peak of influence in 1925, with members elected to political office in midwestern cities and states as well as the South.

The "street fighting" handbook was titled Secret Rules of the Communist Party to avoid revealing the Cagoule in case the booklet was found by the police.

Some of them joined various Fascist movements; Schueller and Deloncle founded the Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire, which conducted various activities for Nazi Germany in occupied France.