French Communist Party leader Léon Blum in 1937 (Studio Piaz)
Well, that's going to stick in my craw.
Blum was a socialist from the SFIO. He was the one who held it together after the Congress of Tours where the split happened. He was never a communist. Ever, ever, ever. The Communists were briefly allied to him in 1936-38 for the Front Populaire, but they stopped at confidence and supply along with electoral alliance.
Another is to have La Rocque’s French Social Party win the 1936 election, which I prefer, as it would mirror Hitler’s democratic rise to power in Germany.
Ah, yes, that political juggernaut, with their six deputés and three more through by-elections. Whose progression in the polls in 38-39 came from deradicalization rather than going farther right which the PPF did... without success.
Also, I won't say much positive about La Roque, but the man had the opportunity for turning a hostile march into a coup and didn't, denounced totalitarianism and racism, and in so far as he was for war, it was because he didn't think Hitler's aggression should be taken lying down. And even he endorsed Munich.
Really, the article answers its own question within the first few lines. France would not have started WWII, because it couldn't. It would have lost 1870-71 and WWI. It would have lost its allies. Germany would be stronger. Even in WWI, despite not being exactly reluctant and giving some assurances to Russia, France was not the most energetic of movers towards war. And it had patiently built an alliance which could win against Germany and its allies. It would have not that and it certainly couldn't count on central European states to be their ersatz Russia, since those can only exist through a Central Powers defeat or as client states in a Mitteleuropa setup.
The tendency for a fascist or proto-fascist France was one which was a concern in the 1880s, at the height of revanchism, with the weird phenomenon that was Boulangisme and several war scare engineered by Boulanger. In the end, despite protesting an enormous indemnity, which it paid ahead of time, and an annexation of regions whose population considered itself French for the most part, France decided it would not go to war alone against Germany in another guaranteed losing round and made the necessary compromises to attract allies while Germany under Wilhelm II made its level best to alienate the whole world.