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EUROPEAN UNITY AND THE DISCOURSE OF COLLABORATION:

FRANCE AND FRANCOPHONE BELGIUM: 1938- 1945

David Charles Lewis

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of History

University of Toronto

O Copyright by David Charles Lewis 1996

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ABSTRACT

Title of Dissertation: European Unity and the Discourse of Collaboration: France and Francophone Belgium:

1938- 1945

David Charles Lewis, Doctor of Philosophy,

1996
Dissertation directed by: Michael R. Marms, Professor

Department of History, University of Toronto

The discourse of pro-Axis collaboration in France and francophone Belgium between

1938 and 1945 centered around the conception of European unity. The collaborators. as well

their European visions were quite varied, but could be grouped into three general categories of Europeanist. nationalist, and fascist collaborators, reflecting ideological tendencies inherited from the interwar period.

Europeanist

collaborators like Marcel Deat . Jean Luchaire, and

Raymond

De Becker were usually former European federalists who hoped Hitler would create a supranational European order embodying many of their prewar socialist ideals. Nationalist collaborators like Marshal

Petain.

Alexandre

Galopin. and Robert

PouIet

viewed collaboration with Germany in terms of the national interest in a manner that minimized European sentiments. regarding the New Order as an alliance of sovereign fatherlands. Fascist collaborators like Jacques

Doriot

and Leon Degrelle conceived of European unity in terms of solidarity among fascist and Nazi states, each one of which embraced its own variant of what Jose

Streel

described as the fascist Revolution of the Twentieth Century. The discourse of collaboration altered along with the course of the war itself. The harshness of German rule and the growing hopes that France and Belgium would soon be liberated by the Allies doomed any hope of the collaborators' winning mass support, and Hitler himself had no intention of turning the New Order into a genuine European partnership.

Depending more and more on

German

support, many, but not all, Europeanist and fascist collaborators by 1944 embraced an SS- inspired Euronazism, which envisioned a Germanized

Europe organized on

a purely racial basis. With the exception of the Milice franpise, those nationalist and even fascist collaborators who preferred a less Nazified vision of European solidarity became politically marginalized.

The experience of collaboration

was to exert a long-term impact upon the discourse of the postwar extreme right which continued to perpetuate many of the concepts of European unity entertained by the wartime collaborators.

O Copyright

by

David Charles Lewis

1996

All Rights Reserved

APPROVAL SHEET

Title of Thesis: European Unity and the Discourse of Collaboration: France and Francophone Belgium:

1938- 1945

Name of Candidate: David Charles Lewis Doctor of

Philosophy. 1996

Thesis and Abstract Approved: Michael R. Marrus

Professor Department

of History

Date Approved:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Michael R. Mams. for his helpful guidance and consideration in the preparation of this dissertation. I would like as well to thank

Professors Bertram Gordon, John Cairns,

Alain

Daintoing, Robert

Paxton,

Robert Edwin

Herzstein,

and Robert Soucy for their guidance and insights. Also,

I want to convey my

gratitude to Mme. Chantal Tourtier de Bonazzi and the staff of the Archives nationales. Bernard

Delcord,

and Hans-Werner Neulen for their assistance and cooperation, and give a special thanks to both Franqois Lehideux and RenC de Chambrun for their time. insights. and hospitality.

Finally.

I wish to thank the University of Toronto for its financial support. my friend

Nelson

Thall for his emotional support and laser printer, and above all. my parents Hannah and

Ellison Lewis for their help and encouragement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTR0DUCTION:"UNE

GENERATION

REUISTE"

: EUROPEANISM. NATIONALISM, AND FASCISM IN THE LOCARNO ERA: 1924- 1932: ---------------- 9

France and the European Federalist Legacy: 1924- 1932. The Nationalist Right and the Rise of Francophone Fascism: 19 19-

1932
The

Briandist

Legacy

in the Shadow of Hitler: 1933-36. The Comitk France-Allernage and Germanophile Appeasement : 1934- 1938 .

Neo-Pxifism, Resigned Nationalism and Universal Fascism: 1933-38. From Munich to Sedan: the Preambles to Collaboration: 1938- 1940.

TWO: "NOUVELLE

MESURE

DE LA FRANCE": THE NEW ORDER

AND THE IDEOLOGIES OF COLLABORATION: JUNE-DECEMBER, 1940:------------ 6 I From Appeasement to Collaboration: the Birth of Vichy: Summer. 1940.

A New Continental System? The Propaganda of the New Europe and the Battle of Britain: August-October. 1940. "The

Dawn of a New Era": ,Montoire and its Aftermath: October-December, 1940. Collaboration in Belgium: "The Politics of Presence": June-December, 1940. THREE: "LA FRANCE EUROPEENNE~: THE REIGN OF THE NATIONALISTS AND THE EVOLUTION OF ARYAN-FASCISM: JANUARY. 194 1 -JUNE, 1 94 1 :------- 88

The Rise of Admiral Darlan and Technocratic Petinism: January-May, I94 1. The Development of the Collaborationist Blocs: January-March, 194

1. "European Spring": the RNP, PPF and the Axis Balkan victories: April-June, 194 1. National-Socialism and the Radicalization of Rex: January-June, 194 1. Operation Barbarossa and the Formation of the Legions: June-August, 194 1. The Ideology of Economic Collaboration: June-December, 194 1. "Cross of Burgundy": Rex. the Walloons and the Empire: July-November. 194 1. The Relaunching of the RNP and Polarization of Collaboration: September-December, 194 1. vii The RNP and PPF in Global War : December, 194 1 -March, 1942. The Retum of Pierre Lavai : Vichy: December. 1941 -April. 1942.

The Return of Charlernagne: the Collaborationist Parties in the Spring of 1942. "I Desire the Victory of Germany": Laval

and the ReEve: April-June. 1942. The "War of Continents" in Belgium: December, 194 1 -June , 1942.

SIX: "DORIOT AU POUVOIR!": THE SOLUTION" AND THE

CRISIS OF COLLABORATION: JULY-DECEMBER, I 942:--------------------------- 196

The Heyday of Eurofascism: April-October,

1942.
"Doctrinaires and Cornbattants": the RNP and PPF, Summer, 1942. The Crisis of Collaboration: September-October, 1942. Eurofascisrn, Nazism, and Rex: July-December. 1942.
Diat and Doriot in the Shadow of S talingrad: Winter, 1943.

Pierre

Laval

and the European Charter: March-June, 1943. The Militarization of Collaboration: The Rise of the Milice: May-June. 1943.

Lion

Degrelle

and the Nazification of Rex: January-June. 1943.

Aryan-fascism

and Maurrassian-fascism:Spring, 1943. The Italian Social Republic and the Demise of Eurofascism:July-September, 1943 .

The Europeanization of the Waffen-SS: 1943.

The Speer-Bichelonne "Common Market":July -December, 1943. "Vichy Must Disappear": Diat, Darnand, and the Collaborationist Consensus: Autumn, 1943. The

Milice and RNP in Power: January-June, 1944.

"Ayn International": the LVF and the Waffen-SS, January-May, 1944. The Impact of the Normandy Invasion: June-August, 1944. The New Europe in Exile: September-December, 1944. "Gotterdammerung": the Death of Doriot ... and the New Europe: January -May, 1945.

GLOSSARY:

Annexationism: A position of extreme pro-Nazi collaborationists in the Low Countries and Scandinavia which desired that Walloons. Flemings. and other Germanics relinquish their political sovereignty in favor of full incorporation into a Nazi Reich based on Germanic blood.

Belgicism:

A position entertained by those collaborationists of Brussels who desired that a united, autonomous Belgian state, generally monarchical. be preserved within the New Order.

Rriandism:

A liberal philosophy of international relations based upon the teachings and

policies of French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand ( 1862- 1932) which included a belief in arbitration, pacifism,

and supranational European federation.

Collaboration: The general process

by which officials, organizations, and individuals in the conquered states cooperated with

the German government and its authorities during the occupation. The term in this study is narrowly used in terms of pro-Axis collaboration, being that resistance movements also collaborated, but with the Allies.

Euro~eanist

collaboration derived from Briandist and neo-socialist sources and reflected long-term philosophical commitment to Europe as a supranational reality and the creation of a European superstate as an end in itself. Nationalist collaboration arose from conservative or reactionary na:i;nalism and

represented a strictly limited form of collaboration in which the national interest of the conquered state remained paramount. Fascist collaboration was practiced

by native French and Belgian fascists who aided the Axis 9n the basis of shared fascist or Nazi beliefs. During the war. fascist collaboration evolved from a

Eurofascist

to a Euronazi phase.

Collaborationism:

A degree of collaboration based upon an enthusiastic commitment. generally fascist or national-socialist in nature,to the Axis cause.

Corporatism: An ideology

of social solidarity developed in late nineteenth century French Catholic thought by the Marquis La Tour du Pin and others and eventually adopted by Fascist Italy and Vichy France. Under corporatism, both the free market and the ability of labor to strike are supplanted by

a regime of economic corporations. Private enterprise is preserved. but labor and management are subordinated

to a policy of state direction in the name of the nation.

Euronazism:

A phase of fascist collaboration based upon an SS-inspired conception of European unity, alleging the common descent of white Nordics. Alpines. and Mediterraneans

from a common Indo-European. Indo-Germanic, or Aryan race. Euronazism totally dominated fascist collaboration in Belgium but only partially dominated fascist collaboration in France.

In its most extreme form. the nation-state would be replaced by a tribal European order orgaqized on the basis of regional racial groups.

Fascism: That category of ultranationalist movements, highly populist and authoritarian in character, which strive for a national renewal through a total revolution based upon a single mass party, a corporate state,

and the transformation of society on the basis of military virtues and

an idealized portrait of the nation derived from the remote pat. Domestic fascism stressed the primacy of a doctrine derived from violent, spontaneous action

and the supremacy of the nation-state. During the Occupation domestic fascism evolved into Eurofascism. Eurofascism

. along with its Italian-inspired precursor Universal Fascism represented

a conception of European unity popular in Latin circles, in which the continent organized on the basis of an alliance of fascist and corporatist states. Each nation-state retained

its sovereignty, traditions, and own form of national revolution, usually more akin to the

Mussolinian

or

Iberian

than the Nazi model. The Aryan-fascist form of French Eurofascism fused the supposed violence and spontaneity of the Latin tradition with a strong racism and antisernitism based upon the common Nordic parentage of

the Gauls, Franks, and early Germans. Maui~assian-fascism, in contrast, represented a form of French and Walloon fascism in which racism played a role but in which the Latin and Catholic tradition of the nation-state

remrunsd pre-eminent. National-socialism signified

a Germanized variety of fascism, prevalent in northern Europe, that emphasized a systematic doctrine of historical determinism based upon the supremacy of the

Volk, or race. A domestic variant of national-socialism was found among Europeanist

and even some fascist collaborators who attempted to apply the German model to French or Belgian symbols and traditions. Annexationist nationai-socialism, on the other hand, obtained

a small but significant following in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Alsace- Lorraine, Flanders. and even Wallonia, where

it directly appropriated Nazi myths and symbols on the premise that the Reich itself represented the greater homeland of all peoples of Germanic blood

and heritage. True Nazis, annexationists hoped to merge their countries within this enlarged Germanic Reich.

Greater German Reich: An ultranationalist concept entertained by both pan-Germans

and Nazis in which all Germans. Austrians, and other ethnic Germans would be united in a single state.

Heinrich

Himmler

and the

SS expanded this concept to an even more racist formulation in which Danes, Norwegians. Swedes, Icelanders. Swiss, Dutch. Flemings, Walloons, and even parts of France would constitute a Greater

Gemanic

Reich.

Mitteleuropa:

A concept of European integration in which east central Europe, including Italy and Belgium. would be organized under German hegemony. Paneuropa, in contrast, represented a more federal conception, popular in 1920's Austria and France, in which all European states would be united on a more equal basis.

Neo-fascism:

A revived form of fascist ideology which existed after 1945 and whose forms and discourse were adapted to the postwar world. More generally racist and European than its classical counterpart, neo-fascism was paralleled in postwar Europe

by neo-Nazism, which was much more imitative of the Hitler model.

Neo-~acifism:

An antiwar policy pursued by French and Belgian conservatives

and fascists during the 1930's based upon anticommunism, fear of domestic revolution. and a belief that the Axis powers represented a lesser evil than the Soviet Union. Neo-pacifism derived from resigned nationalism, which accepted the limits of French and Belgian power

in relation to

Germany and considered appeasement of her

demands in the French and Belgian interest.

Neo-socialism:

A non-Marxist revision of socialist doctrine which rejected the doctrines of pure economic determinism. class

war, proletarian internationalism. and violent revolution in favor of a socialism based upon economic planning on a national and European scale.

LIST OF ABBREVLATIONS

Archives Nationales:

AN. Bibliotheque du Documentation Internationale et Contemporaine: BDIC.

Bulletin des cadres

du Rassemblement national-populaire: BCRNP.

Bundesarchiv Koblenz: BA K.

Centre de recherches et d'etudes historiques de la Seconde Guerre mondiale: CREHSGM. La Diligation frangaise aupres de la Commission d'armistice: DFCAA.

Documents diplomatiques francais: DDF.

Documents on German Foreign Policy: DGFP.

Foreign Relations of the United States: FRUS.

German Foreign Ministry Archives: PA AA.

Institut dlHistoire du Temps Present: MTP.

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