Marcel Déat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marcel Déat (March 7, 1894, Guerigny—January 5, 1955, near Turin, Italy) was a French Socialist and then Fascist politician prior to and during World War II.

[edit] Early life and politics

Déat became a member of the French Socialist Party in 1914. While he attended the École Normale Supérieure (entered in 1914) and worked to get a philosophy degree, World War I broke out. He joined the French Army as a private and saw active duty, winning the Legion d'Honneur and five bravery citations. By the war’s end, Déat had achieved the rank of captain. When the war ended in 1918, he finished his studies at the École Normale, and went to teach philosophy in Rheims.

Déat entered politics in 1926, and got elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a Socialist delegate from Marne. He broke away from the party in 1932 due to disagreements with Léon Blum’s policies toward Prime Minister Édouard Herriot, and as such was officially expelled from the party in 1933. Without the support of the Socialists, Déat lost his seat in the Chamber, but continued to stay active in Socialist politics as a neo-socialist, and founded the Parti Socialiste de France, whose slogan was "Order, Authority and Nation". Two years later, he joined the Union Socialiste et Republicaine, and returned to the Chamber of Deputies in 1936 as a delegate from Angoulême. In the same year, he became Minister of Air in the government of Albert Sarraut, but he quickly resigned his post over disputes with the Prime Minister. He consequently lost his seat in the Chamber.

[edit] Fascism and collaboration

Thoroughly disillusioned with Socialism, Déat turned to Fascism and soon became a fervent advocate of ultra-nationalist politics. He called for France’s government to remodel itself along Fascist lines, and when it appeared as if France would go to war to Nazi Germany in 1938, Déat published the article Why Die for Danzig? in the newspaper L'Oeuvre. In the article, he argued that France should avoid war with Germany if the latter seized Poland - the publication caused a widespread controversy, and propelled Déat to national fame.

A strong supporter of Germany’s occupation of northern France in 1940, Déat took up residence in Vichy France, and was initially a supporter of Philippe Pétain. When conservative Vichy did not become the Fascist state Déat had in mind, he moved to occupied Paris and was funded by the Germans. In February of 1941, he founded the Rassemblement National Populaire, a collaborationist political party which espoused Anti-Semitism and totalitarianism. He also founded, along with fellow Fascists Jacques Doriot and Marcel Bucard, the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a French unit of the Wehrmacht (later affiliated with the Waffen-SS).

While reviewing troops from the LVF with Vichy figure Pierre Laval in Versailles on August 27, 1941, Déat was wounded in an assassination attempt - carried out by French Resistance member Paul Collette. After recovering, he became a supporter of Laval, and in 1944 was made Minister of Labor and National Solidarity in Laval's cabinet (Laval became Prime Minister of Vichy France in 1942).

[edit] Exile

After the Allied landings at Normandy and the fall of the Vichy government, Déat fled to Germany and became an official of the Vichy government in exile at Sigmaringen. With the fall of Germany in 1945, Déat fled to Italy and assumed a new name, temporarily teaching in Milan and Turin. He was later taken in and hidden by a religious order in a monastery near Turin, where he wrote his memoirs and lived undiscovered until his death in 1955. After the war, he had been convicted of treason and sentenced to death in absentia by a French court.