Marcel Déat

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Marcel Déat
Déat in 1932
Minister of Air
In office
24 January 1936 – 4 June 1936
Prime MinisterAlbert Sarraut
Preceded byVictor Denain
Succeeded byPierre Cot
Member of the French Chamber of Deputies
In office
1939 – 10 July 1940
ConstituencyCharente
In office
9 May 1932 – 3 May 1936
ConstituencySeine
In office
1926 – 29 April 1928
ConstituencyMarne
Personal details
Born(1894-03-07)7 March 1894
École Normale Supérieure
ProfessionJournalist, writer

Marcel Déat (French pronunciation:

Vichy, before escaping to the Sigmaringen enclave along with Vichy officials after the Allied landings in Normandy. Condemned in absentia
for collaborationism, he died while still in hiding in Italy.

Early life and politics

Marcel Déat was raised in a modest environment, which shared

anti-militarist
book after World War I. The same year, Déat joined the SFIO.

While he attended the ENS and worked to get a philosophy degree, World War I broke out. He joined the

pacifist views, as well as his fascination for collective discipline and war camaraderie. When the war ended in 1918, he finished his studies at the École Normale and passed his agrégation of philosophy, and oriented himself towards sociology under the direction of Célestin Bouglé,[1] a friend of Alain and also member of the Radical Party. In the meanwhile, Déat taught philosophy in Reims
.

During the 1920 Tours Congress in which a majority of the SFIO decided to spin off to found the French Communist Party, Marcel Déat positioned himself at the right wing of the SFIO, taking part in the groupe de la Vie socialiste current, alongside Pierre Renaudel.

Déat was elected municipal counsellor of Rheims in 1925, and then deputy for the Marne during a partial election in 1926. However, he lost his seat after the 1928 elections. In these times, Léon Blum, the leader of the SFIO, tried to favor youths in the party, and decided to name Déat secretary of the SFIO parliamentary group. After having been put in charge of the documentary center of the ENS by Célestin Bouglié, Déat now founded a documentary center for the SFIO deputies.

Neo-Socialist period

Marcel Déat published in 1930 Perspectives socialistes (Socialist Perspectives), a

parliamentarism would be repealed.[2]

During the

1932 elections, he was elected deputy of the 20th arrondissement of Paris, beating the Communist Jacques Duclos — who himself had gained the upper hand against Léon Blum in 1928 in the same electoral district. Déat and other Neosocialists were expelled from the SFIO at the 5 November 1933 Congress, for their revisionist views and disagreements with Léon Blum's policies toward Prime Minister Édouard Herriot, leader of the second Cartel des Gauches (Left-Wing Coalition). The official position of the SFIO was then to support the Cartel without participating in the government, which it considered "bourgeois." The same year, Déat joined the Socialist Party of France – Jean Jaurès Union
(PSdF) created the same year by Planist and Neosocialist elements expelled by the SFIO during the 1933 Congress. The new party's slogan was "Order, Authority and Nation".

The expelled faction was a minority in the SFIO, but represented the majority of the SFIO parliamentary group. They were opposed both by the left wing of the SFIO, represented by Marceau Pivert, and by the SFIO's center, headed by Blum. The Neosocialists wanted to "reinforce the state against the economic crisis", open themselves to the middle classes and participate in non-Socialist governments.

Without the support of the Socialists, Déat lost his seat in the Chamber. Two years later, he joined the Socialist Republican Union (USR). He became Minister of Air in the "bourgeois" government of Albert Sarraut (Radical) but he quickly resigned his post over disputes with the Prime Minister. With the increasing threats represented by Nazi Germany, Déat wanted to maintain peace at any cost.

He returned to the Chamber of Deputies

Why Die for Danzig?, published in the newspaper L'Œuvre, Déat argued that France should no go to war for Poland if the Danzig crisis resulted in war.[3][4] There, 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. Déat would collaborate with L'Œuvre during the entire period of Vichy France
.

Collaborationism

A strong supporter of Germany's occupation of northern France in 1940, Déat took up residence in unoccupied France, and was initially a supporter of Philippe Pétain. He attempted to create a single party to fully realize the aims of the "Révolution nationale", the official, reactionary ideology of Vichy. Thereafter, he founded in February 1941 the National Popular Rally (RNP) which advocated Collaboration with Nazi Germany and antisemitism.[5]

When the

far-right party, the successor of the Cagoule
terrorist group. The merger was a failure and Déat later expelled MSR elements from his party, before trying to form a unified front of Collaborationist parties.

Déat also founded, along with fellow Collaborationists

Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a French unit of the Wehrmacht (later affiliated with the Waffen-SS
).

While reviewing troops from the LVF with former Prime Minister

Minister of Labour and National Solidarity
in Laval's cabinet.

Exile

After the

Roman Catholic religious order in the convent of San Vito, near Turin, where he wrote his memoirs and lived undiscovered until his death in 1955. After the war, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death in absentia.[6]

See also

References

  1. S2CID 159675101
    .
  2. Hachette
    , 1987 (in French)
  3. ISBN 978-1-4128-3404-9
    .
  4. ISBN 978-1-4094-0625-9
    .
  5. JSTOR 40106890
    .
  6. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 7 December 2018.

Works

  • Marcel Déat, Perspectives socialistes (Paris, Valois, 1930)
  • Max Bonnafous – Marcel Déat – Adrien Marquet – Barthélémy Montagnon, Néo-socialisme ? Ordre, autorité, nation, Paris, Grasset, 140 pages, 1933. Speech pronounced at the SFIO Congress of July 1933.
  • Le Plan français : doctrine et plan d'action, Comité du Plan, Paris, Fasquelle, 199 pages, 1936. Preface by Marcel Déat.
  • Marcel Déat, De la fausse collaboration à la vraie révolution, décembre 1941-janvier 1942, Paris,
    Radio-Paris
     (5 January 1942).
  • Marcel Déat, Le Parti unique, Paris, Aux Armes de France, 183 pages, 1943. Articles published in
    L'Œuvre
     (18 July – 4 September 1942).
  • Dominique Sordet (ed.), Le Coup du 13 décembre, Paris, impr. de Guillemot et de Lamothe, 47 pages, 1943. Article by Marcel Déat : "Il faut les chasser".
  • Marcel Déat, Mémoires politiques, Paris, Denoël, 990 pages, 1989. Introduction & notes by Laurent Theis; epilogue by Hélène Déat.
  • Marcel Déat, Discours, articles et témoignages, Coulommiers, Éd. Déterna, " Documents pour l'histoire ", 149 pages, 1999.

Further reading

  • Reinhold Brender, Kollaboration in Frankreich im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Marcel Déat und das Rassemblement National Populaire, (Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, vol. 38), Munich, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 338 pages, 1992.[1]
  • Philippe Burrin, La Dérive fasciste. Doriot, Déat, Bergery 1933–1944, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 530p, 1986 (Pocket edition with a new preface, 2003).
  • Jean-Paul Cointet, Marcel Déat : du socialisme au national-socialisme, Paris, Perrin, 418 pages, 1998.

External links

  1. ^ Review
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