Léon Degrelle

Léon Degrelle
Degrelle during WWII
Leader of the Rexist Party
In office November 2, 1935–1941
Personal details
Born	(1906-06-15)15 June 1906 Bouillon, Belgium
Died	31 March 1994(1994-03-31) (aged 87) Málaga, Spain
Nationality	Belgian (revoked), Spanish
Political party	Rexist Party
Military service
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Branch/service	German Army (1941–43) Waffen-SS (1943–45)
Years of service	1941–45
Rank	Standartenführer
Commands	SS Division Wallonien
Battles/wars	World War II Eastern Front
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves German Cross

Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle (French: [dəgʁɛl]; 15 June 1906 – 31 March 1994) was a Belgian Walloon politician and Nazi collaborator. He rose to prominence in Belgium in the 1930s as the leader of the Rexist Party (Rex). During the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, he enlisted in the German army and fought in the Walloon Legion on the Eastern Front. After the collapse of the Nazi regime, Degrelle escaped and went into exile in Francoist Spain, where he remained a prominent figure in neo-Nazi politics.

Degrelle was raised Catholic and during his years at university became involved in politics through journalism. In the early 1930s, he took control of a Catholic publishing house that morphed under his leadership into the Rexist Party. Rex contested the

Following the

The Degrelle family was highly religious; as a child, Léon attended Mass every day and attended a preschool run by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine of Nancy. He completed secondary schooling at the Institut Saint-Pierre de Bouillon. From there, he enrolled at the Collège Notre-Dame de la Paix, in Namur, where he read and subscribed to the ideas of Léon Bloy, Charles Péguy, Léon Daudet, and especially Charles Maurras. Degrelle next enrolled at the Facultés universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur to study law. There, however, he became active in clericalist political activism to the detriment of his studies, which he abandoned in 1925 after failing his exams that year.^[7]

Journalistic career, 1927–1935

Shortly after his failure at Namur, Degrelle was admitted into the prestigious

In October 1930, Degrelle was asked by the ACJB to take over the management of Christus Rex, a small Catholic publishing house named after the popular youth cult of

In early 1935, Degrelle morphed Christus Rex into the

Following the election, Degrelle formed alliances with far-right francophone Belgian groups,[41] then traveled to Italy to meet representatives of the Italian National Fascist Party and received subsidies from them.^[42] On 26 September 1936, he met with Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler in Germany to establish relations with the Nazi Party.^[41] In October, Degrelle returned to Belgium, met secretly with the Flemish National League (Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond, VNV),^[39] a Flemish nationalist political party,^[32] and agreed to collaborate in the formation of a corporatist state with an autonomous Flanders.^[39] He then announced a march of Rexists on the capital, Brussels, for 25 October, inspired by Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome.^[37][38] The government banned the demonstration on 22 October and, with the erosion of Rex's alliances and image caused by their meetings with the VNV and the Nazis, the march fizzled.^[43]

In March 1937, Alfred Olivier, who had been among the Rexists elected to the Chamber of Representatives, resigned with his staff.

At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Belgium declared its

Degrelle was first imprisoned in Bruges, then was transferred to French custody on 15 May 1940 and interrogated at Dunkirk, and then moved to the Camp Vernet internment camp in southern France as the military situation deteriorated amid the Battle of France. Leopold III surrendered at the head of the Belgian Army on 28 May and became a prisoner of war, while France sought an armistice a month later. In German-occupied Belgium, Degrelle was assumed to have been executed. On 22 July, Rexist journalist Pierre Daye discovered Degrelle in Carcassonne with the assistance of Otto Abetz,^[56] a German diplomat Degrelle had met in 1936. Daye and Degrelle arrived in Paris on 25 July and were invited to dinner with Abetz, with whom Degrelle spoke at length about expanding Belgium at the expense of France and the Netherlands.^[62]

Return to German-occupied Belgium

Degrelle returned to Brussels on 30 July,

On his return to Brussels, Degrelle met with Belgian notables such as Robert Capelle [nl], Leopold III's secretary, Albert Devèze, a former minister, and Maurice Lippens at his residence on the Drève de Lorraine [fr]. He came to no agreement with any of these men, however,^[56][68] and thus could not form a government. This required the support of Leopold III, who disliked Degrelle, and of the Germans,^[69] who were unwilling to delegate any power to Rex,^[65] and had orders from Goebbels to ignore Degrelle. Leopold III refused to meet with Degrelle or consider him for the office of Prime Minister, and summons to meet with Nazi leadership promised by Abetz were not forthcoming. Degrelle also failed to gain support for a government under his leadership from the Belgian Catholic Church.^[70]

With his other ventures flagging, Degrelle returned to attempting to gain power through popular support. He relaunched Le Pays Réel on 25 August and attempted to transform Rex into a mass movement, beginning with a tour of the country in September and the appointment of Doring and newcomers Félix Francq, Rutger Simoens, and Fernand Rouleau to positions of leadership.^[71] The revitalized Le Pays Réel achieved some success over late 1940, dramatically expanding the Combat Formations,^[72] which began attacking Jewish-owned businesses and engaging in street violence to weaken local governments.^[73][74] Rex remained, however, a minor entity and the disturbances caused by its street violence further angered the German military government, who were collaborating with the Belgian establishment.^[75][76] The Germans ordered the Rexist violence to cease and Rexist leaders complied by the end of 1940.^[77]

Rex's embrace of collaborationism

By 1941, Belgian leaders including Degrelle had realized that the war would be long and that while it was ongoing, the Germans would not delegate any power to the Belgians.^[78] Degrelle became increasingly and publicly pro-Nazi until,^[79][80] on 1 January 1941, in Le Pays Réel, and in a speech on 6 January,^[81] Degrelle declared his support for the German occupation of Belgium.^[65] This new orientation was unpopular within Rex, whose members came to be seen as traitors by most Belgians,^[82] and sparked another exodus of disillusioned members.^[65][83]

Following the January declaration, the German military administration of General Alexander von Falkenhausen remained unimpressed by Degrelle but began subsidizing Rex, appointed members to civil office, and allowed it to freely organize.^[84] In February,^[84][85] it also decided to seek Belgian enlistees in the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, NSKK). Degrelle, who had petitioned the military administration for Rexist units in the German armed forces over late 1940,^[84] began to recruit Walloons for a Rexist brigade in the NSKK. He promised 1,000 drivers, but only recruited 300.^[85][86] At the same time, Degrelle began courting members of the working class and socialist leaders via Le Pays Réel to replenish Rex's membership, but again achieved little.^[87]

By April, Rex was collapsing from a combination of resignations, defections, popular and sometimes violent hostility from other Belgians, and German indifference. When the military administration appointed new, collaborationist civil servants and officials on 1 April, no Rexists were appointed. In response, Degrelle attacked the military administration in Le Pays Réel and was subsequently chastised in person by Eggert Reeder, the head of civil affairs in the military administration.^[88] On 10 April, Degrelle wrote to Hitler to request, without success, permission to enlist in the German military. On 10 May, the VNV,^[81][89] who were favored by the military administration and by Nazi ideology,^[78][90] was ceded Rex's Flemish branch in an agreement that also established Rex and the VNV as the only legitimate parties in German-occupied Belgium. No top-level Rexist leaders, however, were consulted—Rex's Flanders branch had acted independently—and Rex was not given the option of refusing the merger.^[81][91] This opened a rift between Rex and more moderate francophone collaborators, who attacked Rex and Degrelle as being impotent and began forming rival parties. The Germans ignored those rivals, but Rex continued to stagnate over May.^[92]

Barbarossa and the Walloon Legion

On 22 June 1941, Germany launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. Degrelle joined other prominent Rexists in announcing his support of the invasion, which he hoped would stem Rex's decline. He again went to meet with Abetz in Paris. In his absence, Rouleau unsuccessfully requested permission from the military administration to organize volunteer units for the Eastern Front. When Degrelle returned from France, he repeated the request. Likely because of instructions from Berlin,^[93] the military administration granted Rex permission to form a unit of francophone Belgian volunteers.^[94][95] As the Nazis considered Walloons an inferior people to the Flemish, Walloon and Flemish volunteers would be segregated into different units. Walloons would also only be able to enlist in the regular armed forces.^[95]

Degrelle announced the permission to organize a volunteer unit at a meeting of the Combat Formations on 6 July and exhorted Rexists to join.^[81][96] Claiming to have Leopold III's support, Degrelle began energetically promoting and organizing his "Walloon Legion" but achieved little.^[97][98] To bolster this venture, Degrelle announced on 20 July that he would enlist as a foot soldier,^[99] and gave leadership of Rex to Matthys.^[81][100] As a result, the Walloon Legion ballooned to 850 or 860 volunteers, 730 of whom were Rexists.^[100][101] The force departed Belgium for basic training on 8 August,^{[81][100][102]} taking with it much of Rex's provincial leadership.^[103][104] By this time, Degrelle had decided that the Legion was a better political vehicle than Rex,^[105] and strove to totally control it.^[106] In August, believing Rouleau to be plotting to wrest control of the Legion and then Rex from him, Degrelle ousted him from both.^[81][107]

Beginning in November 1941, the Legion was assigned to anti-partisan operations in occupied Soviet territory. In February 1942 it was attached to the 100th Jäger Division and moved to the frontline,^[102] where it engaged in combat with regular Soviet forces for the first time on 28 February. By the end of 1942, the Legion was reduced by attrition to 150 men and would have to rely on new recruitment drives to sustain itself. The Legion's battlefield performance was of great value to Degrelle,^[108] who came to be appreciated by German officers.^[81][109] In May, he was made an officer and awarded the Iron Cross, First Class,^[110] for his conduct in battle.^[81][109]

Overtures to the SS

As early as September 1941, Degrelle had taken an interest in the

On 17 January 1943, Degrelle gave a speech at an assembly of Rexists in Brussels in which he declared that Walloons were a Germanic people forced to adopt the French language.

pan-German state.^[81][116] Following the speech, Streel and much of Rex's old guard left the party,^[117][118] Walloon competitors to Rex for German favor evaporated,^[112][119] and Degrelle definitively turned his attentions away from Rex and towards the SS. Over the rest of January and February 1943, Degrelle met with Nazi functionaries in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris to gain influence in the Nazi Party.^[120]

Incorporation in the Waffen-SS

On 23–24 May 1943, Degrelle met with Himmler near Rastenburg (

Bishop of Namur on 19 August 1943.^[119] Degrelle successfully appealed to the Legion's chaplain and the German military chaplain service to have his excommunication overturned.^[126]

In October and again in November, Degrelle met with Berger, and at his direction wrote to Hitler to denounce the military administration in Belgium and request an SS-run government, only a few days after sending a letter of praise to Reeder. Reeder was made aware of the letter to Hitler and wrote to German field marshal

Cherkassy pocket.^[119] The Legion was savaged in the subsequent fighting, being reduced to 632 men by the time the encirclement was broken in mid-February.^[128][129] Among the casualties were the Legion's commanding officer, Lucien Lippert, who was killed, and Degrelle himself, who had been injured. Degrelle was promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) to replace Lippert, but effective control of the Legion was given to another German SS officer.^[119]

Degrelle was flown to Berlin and became,[130] according to historian Nico Wouters, "the poster boy for all European collaborators."^[131] On 20 February, Degrelle was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Hitler. Two days later Degrelle was sent to Brussels to recuperate and was met there by Matthys and Richard Jungclaus, head of the SS in Belgium. Degrelle was received by collaborators in Brussels on 27 February and in Paris on 5 March, and on 2 April the surviving members of the Legion paraded through Charleroi. Degrelle, however, could not translate his military service into political aggrandizement, as the SS desired for him to remain an instrument of propaganda.^[119][132] While on leave, Degrelle tried to make connections with collaborators in Paris and Flanders without success.^[133] On 8 July, Degrelle's brother Edouard, who had had no role in Rex but was sympathetic to the party and the German occupation, was shot and killed in his pharmacy in their hometown.^[134][135] In response, German authorities arrested 46 men and Rexist militants murdered another pharmacist. Returning from a speaking tour in Germany, Degrelle arrived in Bouillon on 10 July to demand reprisals. He wrote to Himmler to request the retaliatory killing of 100 Belgian civilians^[136] and was ignored, but on 21 July Rexists attached to the Sicherheitspolizei murdered three hostages near Bouillon.^[137][138]

On 22 or 23 July 1944, Degrelle returned to the Legion as it was engaged in the Battle of Narva in Estonia.^[137][139] The Legion was depleted by the fighting and after the battle returned to Germany,^[129] where Degrelle was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves on 25 August.^[137] On 18 September the Legion was expanded and renamed the 28th Waffen-SS Division and placed under Degrelle's acting command.^[129][131] To staff the Division, Degrelle now made service in the Legion mandatory for all Rexists,^[131] many of whom were fleeing the then-ongoing liberation of Belgium,^[129][137] and recruited French collaborators who had fled to Sigmaringen and the Spanish volunteers of the defunct Blue Legion.^[137][140] In December, the Legion was assigned an armored unit was moved back to the front in January 1945. It was destroyed in battle by the Red Army at the Battle of the Oder–Neisse in April.^[141]

Exile in Spain, 1945–1994

In November 1944, Degrelle was given the title "Volksführer^[

San Sebastián, Spain.^[144] Degrelle, who had amongst other injuries sustained a broken leg, was hospitalized and detained.^[145]

On 15 May, the Spanish government contacted the British government about deporting Degrelle, but not back to Belgium. In response, Belgium, which made Degrelle's repatriation and prosecution a top priority, asked for British and American support in talks with Spain. America and Britain were ambivalent about the matter as Degrelle had not been named a

war criminal by the United Nations War Crimes Commission, but were moved into an active role in June by Belgian protests. The British and Americans decided that, since Degrelle had entered Spain as a member of the German armed forces, he should be taken into Allied custody with 30 other German exiles via an American ship, and communicated this desire to Spain. The Spanish government decided it could not extract diplomatic recognition from Belgium in exchange for Degrelle,^[146] and instead justified its reluctance to repatriate Degrelle on human rights grounds.^[147][148] On the night of 21–22 August 1946,^[149][150] Degrelle disappeared from the hospital in which he was recuperating.^[151] The Spanish government announced that he had left the country and that his location was unknown,^[149][151] and promised to repatriate Degrelle to Belgium if he returned.^[152]

The Belgian government had sentenced Degrelle to death

Spanish citizenship under the name José León Ramírez Reina.^[156][157] Degrelle made his first public appearance since the war on 15 December 1954 at a ceremony held to honor Spanish volunteers in the German military.^[158][159] This, and a letter Degrelle wrote to the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique offering to stand trial in Belgium if the trial was publicized, provoked a diplomatic breach between Spain and Belgium.^[160]

By the 1960s, the Belgian government was content with Degrelle remaining in exile in Spain as long as he remained unprovocative.[161] Degrelle became an increasingly public figure in the 1960s^[162] and was frequently discussed by French and Belgian media.^[161] He openly associated with other Nazi exiles such as Otto Skorzeny,^[163][164] and wore his SS uniform to his daughter's wedding in 1969, an event reported widely in the Spanish press.^[162] On 3 December 1964, Belgium passed a law,^[165] named the Lex Degrelliana,^[166][167] that extended the statute of limitations for death sentences issued for offenses against the Belgian state committed between 1940 and 1945 from 20 years to 30.^[165] In 1969, Degrelle began a media campaign to be allowed to return to Belgium. At Belgium's request, an arrest warrant for Degrelle was filed the next year by Spanish police but not served, putting an end to the campaign.^[168] By the 1980s, Degrelle was living comfortably, having profited from running a construction company that helped build American airbases in Spain, and under his original name.^[153] On 31 March 1994, Degrelle died of cardiac arrest in a hospital in Málaga.^[154][169] Belgium definitively blocked Degrelle's return in 1983^[170] and subsequently forbade the repatriation of his remains.^[166]

Holocaust denial and lawsuit

After World War II, Degrelle joined other Nazi exiles in

and Dresden.^[171]

In its July–August 1985 issue,

Shlomo Ben Ami.^[176]

The lawsuit went to court in Madrid on 7 November 1985 and was based on the

freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution of Spain. According to Trías, the case influenced Spanish law about genocide denial, racism, and xenophobia.^[178]

Personal life

Degrelle married Marie Lemay, the daughter of a French industrialist, on 27 March 1932. The couple had five children.[10] Their marriage became strained during the war as Degrelle kept mistresses in Brussels and Paris, and Lemay had an open affair with an officer of the Luftwaffe until she ended the affair in March 1943 and informed Degrelle of it. The officer, unwilling to end the affair, was found shot in the head and heart near the Degrelle residence on 12 April 1943. Degrelle was cleared of any wrongdoing by Nazi authorities and news of the officer's death was suppressed.^[179] Lemay was imprisoned by Belgian authorities and chose not to join Degrelle in Spain.^[180] She died in Nice on 29 January 1984.^[167] On 15 June 1984, Degrelle married Jeanne Brevet Charbonneau, niece of Joseph Darnand, former commander of the Vichy French paramilitary Milice.^[181]

Legacy

Degrelle had a great influence in the post-war resurgence of fascism.^{[80][182][183]} Beginning in 1949,^[150][184] Degrelle began to publish books and give interviews in which he praised the Nazis,^[162] denied the Holocaust,^[185] attempted to distort the historical record,^[151][185] and aggrandize himself.^[186] Degrelle's work formed a large amount of the 20th century, French-language historiography of Belgium during the war until it was refuted by Belgian historian Albert de Jonghe [nl] in the 1970s.^[186] Degrelle was also influential among post-war far-right groups in Belgium and West Germany, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.^[187] In the 2010s, Italian journalist Alessandro Orsini embedded himself with neo-fascist militias in Italy and reported that Degrelle's writings were required reading among them.^[188]

Degrelle's estate in Málaga became a port of call for

National Front party in France,^[182][193] and Michael Kühnen, a leader of the German neo-Nazi movement of the later 20th century.^[194]

References

1. comic strips back to Le XX^e Siècle's offices in Belgium, where the cartoonist Georges Remi (Hergé) worked for the paper. These factors led Degrelle to claim, after Hergé's death in 1983, that he was the inspiration for Tintin, Hergé's signature character.^[12][13] Although Hergé provided illustrations for one of Degrelle's books,^[14] the two fell out after Degrelle rushed a political poster of Hergé's design to printers without his permission.^[15]

Citations

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176. ^ ^{a b} Trías 2017, p. 51.
177. ^ Barromi 1995, pp. 153–54.
178. ^ Trías 2017, pp. 52–53.
179. ^ Conway 1993, pp. 190–91.
180. ^ Frérotte 1987, p. 215.
181. ^ Conway 1994, p. 304.
182. ^ ^{a b} Conway 1993, p. 281.
183. ^ Böhler & Gerwarth 2017, pp. 56–57.
184. ^ Brüll 2014, p. 44.
185. ^ ^{a b} Trimbur 2015, pp. 54–55.
186. ^ ^{a b} Huyse et al. 2020, p. 47.
187. ^ Brüll 2014, pp. 47–50.
188. ^ Orsini 2017, pp. 24–25, 31–33.
189. ^ Lee 2000, p. 203.
190. ^ Rodríguez 1995, p. 59.
191. ^ Rodríguez 1995, p. 63.
192. ^ Brüll 2014, pp. 46–47.
193. ^ Lee 2000, p. 368.
194. ^ Brüll 2014, pp. 50–51.

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• Brüll, Christoph (2014). "Léon Degrelle comme référence des droites radicales allemandes après 1945". In Dard, Olivier (ed.). Références et thèmes des droites radicales au XX e siècle (Europe/Amériques) (in French).
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• Colignon, Alain (2001). "DEGRELLE, Léon" (PDF).
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• Conway, Martin (1993). Collaboration in Belgium: Leon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940–1944.
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• Conway, Martin (1994). Degrelle : les années de collaboration : 1940-1944 : le rexisme de guerre (in French). Quorum.
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• Di Muro, Giovanni F. (2005). Léon Degrelle et l'aventure rexiste (1927–1940). Editions Luc Pire.
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• Epstein, Jonathan A. (2014). Belgium's Dilemma: The Formation of Belgian Defense Policy 1932-1940.
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• Frérotte, Jean–Marie (1987). Léon Degrelle, le dernier fasciste (in French). Paul Legrain.
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• Cerón Torreblanca, Cristian (2008). "Fugitivos nazis en la Costa del Sol". Andalucía en la historia (in Spanish) (20).
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• del Hierro, Pablo (2021). "The End of the Affair: The International Dispute over the Deportation of Degrelle from Spain to Belgium, 1945–1946".
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• Huyse, Luc; Dhondt, Steven; De Wever, Bruno; Aerts, Koen; Lagrou, Pieter (2020). "La répression des collaborations, 1942-1952. Nouveaux regards sur un passé toujours présent". Courriers Hedomadaires (in French). 24–25 (2469–2470). Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques: 5–66.
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• Rodríguez, Jose L. (1995). "Neo-nazism in Spain".
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• Trías Sagnier, Jorge (2017). "La negación del holocausto: El caso de Violeta Friedman contra León Degrelle". Revista de Derecho, Empresa y Sociedad (REDS) (in Spanish) (10). University of La Rioja: 48–55.
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• Willequet, Jacques (April 1967). "Les Fascismes Belges et la Seconde Guerre Mondiale". Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (in French). 17 (66).
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