Léon Degrelle

Léon Degrelle was born on 15 June 1906 in Bouillon,[1] in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, and baptized five days later as Léon Joseph Marie Ignace Degrelle. He was the fifth child of Marie Boever and Édouard Degrelle. Édouard, who came from the French Ardennes, later claimed that he had emigrated to Belgium as a result of the introduction of secularism in France. He made a career as a brewer and became a naturalized citizen before World War I.[2][3] He was elected to the provincial council of Luxembourg for the first time in 1904 and became a respected conservative politician as a member of the Catholic Party.[4][5] Marie came from a local bourgeois family whose father had been involved in the founding of the newspaper L'Avenir du Luxembourg.[6]

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]

Shortly after his failure at Namur, Degrelle was admitted into the prestigious Catholic University of Leuven, which awarded him a diploma of candidacy in philosophy and literature on 27 July 1927. That year, Degrelle joined Catholic Action for the Belgian Youth (Action catholique de la jeunesse belge, ACJB),[8] a militant clerical youth organization founded by the priest Louis Picard,[9] whom Degrelle had met while studying in Namur. Again preoccupied with activism and reading, Degrelle was a poor student but encountered some professional success as the director of the student newspaper L'Avant-Garde. At this time, Degrelle also began a successful career as a writer and published several books from 1927 to 1930.[8]

Impressed by Degrelle, Picard encouraged him to become involved in journalism within the ACJB from 1927.[10] The next year, Degrelle began writing pro-monarchy, clericalist pamphlets whose wide circulation brought Degrelle to the attention of Abbé Norbert Wallez, another Catholic priest and an admirer of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who worked as a newspaper director. Degrelle accepted an offer from Wallez to become an editor at his newspaper Le XX^e Siècle. In 1929, with Wallez's support, Degrelle traveled to Mexico to report on the Cristero War, a rebellion of Mexican Catholics against the incumbent anti-clerical government.[11][lower-alpha 1] On returning to Belgium, Degrelle dropped out of Leuven after failing to attend the exams for his doctorat de troisième cycle.[16]

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 Christ the King.[18] He accepted, staffed it with young radical Catholic students,[19][20] started publishing mass-circulation magazines, and, having achieved success with these magazines,[5] expanded its catalog with new periodicals over the next three years. In the same period, he popularized a pair of Marian apparitions at Banneux and Beauraing.[10] He produced leaflets and posters for the Catholic Party ahead of the 1932 election,[19][10] earning Christus Rex and Degrelle many conservative allies. From January 1931, with Picard's support as chair of the board of directors, Degrelle and his father purchased controlling stakes in the business.[10] Léon assumed total control of Christus Rex by 1933 and used the platform to attack the leadership of the Catholic Party.[21][22]

After the 1932 election, Degrelle began to refer to Christus Rex as a nationalistic, pro-clerical political movement, which alienated the officially apolitical ACJB.[23] In 1933, the Catholic Party cut its ties with Degrelle,[21] as did the ACJB the following year.[19][23] To avoid insolvency, Degrelle downsized Christus Rex's staff and obeyed a command from the Bishop of Tournai to cancel a rally in Charleroi to avoid further clashes with the Catholic establishment.[23] Over the interwar years, however, Belgian Catholic politics had split between that Catholic establishment and an authoritarian and radically clerical faction of urban, middle class students who viewed the Catholic Party as being weak and complacent.[24] By 1936, Degrelle, who proved to be a charismatic speaker,[1][20] had become highly influential amongst the latter group.[25]

In early 1935, Degrelle morphed Christus Rex into the Rexist Party (Rex),[26] an authoritarian, populist, and strongly clerical faction of francophone Catholic student radicals such as José Streel, Jean Denis, and Raphaël Sindic.[25] Rex's first meeting as a political organization, modeled on Italian fascist meetings, was held on 1 May 1935. There, Degrelle declared that Rex desired to reform the Catholic Party.[26] To that end, on 2 November 1935,[1][23] in an event dubbed the Kortrijk Coup (coup de Courtrai),[27] Degrelle and a party of Rexists interrupted a meeting of Catholic Party leaders at Kortrijk.[27][28] He denounced the party leaders as corrupt and ineffective, and demanded their resignations.[23][27] The party leadership responded by expelling Degrelle from the Catholic Party on 6 November,[29] and on 20 November Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey forbade the fraternization of any Catholic priest with Rex. In response, on 23 February 1936, Degrelle announced that Rex would run in the 1936 Belgian general election, the results of which would be announced on 24 May,[23][29] and on 3 May launched a hastily-organized newspaper, Le Pays Réel, to serve as Rex's mouthpiece.[30]

Rex, which ran on a populist, middle-class, and anti-democratic platform that united several right-wing elements such as anti-communists and war veterans,[32][33][34] won 11.5% of the votes cast and 21 of the 202 seats in the Chamber of Representatives.[32][35] This was a ringing defeat of the Catholic Party,[36] which lost much of its previous constituency to Rex in the form of protest votes.[37] Degrelle sought to capitalize on Rex's victory by establishing a party bureaucracy and holding rallies.[38][39] He also continued to attack the "rotten ones" (pourris) whom he alleged dominated Belgium's political and economic establishment. At the prompting of the dissident Catholic politician Gustave Sap, Degrelle publicly revealed a series of what he termed "politico-financial scandals" (scandales politico-financières), apparently demonstrating collusion between "high finance" and the incumbent government of the former banker Paul Van Zeeland.[40]

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.[41] Degrelle ran in the snap election in Brussels to determine his replacement, hoping to spark a chain of by-elections until he could force King Leopold III to call for another general election.[44] The rhetoric and aftermath of the 1936 campaign had, however, inspired Belgian politics to form a united front against Rex to defend democracy.[41][45] In the election, held on 11 April 1937,[46] Van Zeeland personally ran against Degrelle as the candidate of the governing center-left coalition and defeated him with 76% of the votes cast.[33][47][48] Degrelle's momentum was decisively broken, and though he provoked Van Zeeland's resignation in October 1937 after accusing him of receiving financial support from the National Bank of Belgium, Rex's membership withered and its fortunes at the polls continued to decline;[49] in the 1939 general election, Rex received only 4.4% of the popular vote.[50][51] As the 1930s drew to a close, Rex rapidly transformed into a fascist movement[52][53] and included increasingly antisemitic rhetoric in its publications.[17]

At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Belgium declared its neutrality,[54] which Rex vociferously supported. Degrelle additionally blamed the war on Britain, France, and "the occult forces of Freemasonry and the Jewish finance",[55] precipitating a further decay of Rex's membership and reputation. In January 1940, Degrelle secretly and unsuccessfully requested German funding for a new, pro-neutrality newspaper.[56][57] Amid the German invasion of Belgium on 10 May 1940,[58] Degrelle was detained by the Belgian government,[59][60] as were other Rexist leaders not enlisted in the Belgian Army such as Victor Matthys and Serge Doring.[61]

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]

Incorporation in the Waffen-SS

Propaganda poster of the SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonia, featuring Degrelle's likeness.

On 23–24 May 1943, Degrelle met with Himmler near Rastenburg (Kętrzyn) to discuss the transfer of the Walloon Legion from the German Army to the Waffen-SS.[121] On 1 June 1943, the Legion was integrated into the Waffen-SS as the SS-Sturmbrigade Wallonien.[112][122] Degrelle spent the rest of mid-1943 enriching himself and his family with assets seized by the Germans in Belgium and France,[119] and recruiting for the Legion.[123] He purchased a seized Jewish-owned perfume company,[123][124] and on 29 July 1943 launched a newspaper named L'Avenir that, devoid of the sensational tone and polemics of Le Pays Réel, found immediate financial success. Also in July, Degrelle attended Mass in his hometown in SS uniform and was refused the sacraments per standing orders from the Belgian bishops. In response, Degrelle and his bodyguards apprehended the offending priest and imprisoned him in Degrelle's home,[125] provoking his excommunication by the 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 Wilhelm Keitel, then the commander of the regular German armed forces, to denounce Degrelle. Degrelle rejoined the Legion on 2 November,[127] and nine days later arrived in Ukraine with the unit, now numbering about 2,000 men.[112] On 28 January 1944, the Legion was trapped by the Red Army in the 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]

The wreckage of the Heinkel 111 in which Degrelle escaped to Spain, May 1945

In November 1944, Degrelle was given the title "Volksführer of the Walloons" by Hitler, and in December was promised control of any Belgian territory that the German armed forces retook in the upcoming Ardennes offensive. Degrelle arrived at the Western Front on 1 January 1945 with a staff of 55. The offensive was a failure,[137] and Degrelle began to plan for an Allied victory. On 30 March, he met with Matthys and Louis Collard, another Rexist leader, and dissolved Rex. In late April, Degrelle abandoned the remains of the Legion near Berlin and headed north.[142] On 2 May, he encountered Himmler near Lübeck and attempted to gain a guarantee of safety for his family from Himmler. He was instead promoted to Oberführer.[137] Degrelle boarded a German naval vessel bound for occupied Norway where, on 7 May, the day of Norway's liberation, Josef Terboven, former Reichskommissar of Norway, put Degrelle and five other men on a Heinkel 111 bound for Francoist Spain and then South America.[143] The next day, the plane crashed on the Beach of La Concha, at 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 in absentia in 1944[153][154] and revoked his citizenship on 29 December 1945.[155] With the assistance of the Spanish government,[149][151] Degrelle went into hiding in the southern Spanish Province of Málaga and was kept informed about Belgian agents posing as tourists visiting the region to locate him. In 1954, Degrelle was adopted by a local woman he had befriended, Matilde Ramírez Reina,[156] and thereby gained 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]

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]

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 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 neo-Nazis.[189] He established connections with neo-Nazis such as the Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe (Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa, CEDADE),[155][190] which networked with neo-Nazi groups throughout Europe through Degrelle and Skorzeny.[191] In the 1960s, a portrait of Degrelle appeared in a work by Werner Haupt for the HIAG, a Waffen-SS veterans' lobbyist group. He continued to make appearances in German-language, neo-Nazi publications into the 1990s.[192] Degrelle also found friends in the post-Francoist People's Alliance (Alianza Popular, AP),[173] and in Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the far-right National Front party in France,[182][193] and Michael Kühnen, a leader of the German neo-Nazi movement of the later 20th century.[194]