Rex vaincra! LBon Degrelle and the Failure of the Rexist Movement by Mark Esposito '05 A Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree with Honors in History WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts April, 2005 Many thanks to Professor Alexandra Garbarini for her invaluable insights and editorial coritributions. Chapter 1-Introduction "l'homme a la fois le plus aime et le plus hai, le plus celebre et le plus calomnik de la Be1gique."-Pierre ~a~e' In 1937, it could be said of Leon Degrelle that he was, in the words of Pierre Daye, one of his supporters, "the man at once the most loved and the most hated, the most famous and the most infamous in all of Belgium." Degrelle's fame, however, proved to be fleeting. Outside of Belgium, Degrelle, a Catholic nationalist politician turned Nazi-collaborator, is a largely unknown figure. Besides rare translations of works by Degrelle himself, there are only a small number of books in English on Degrelle and Rexism, and none of them have attracted wide scholarly interest. There are sources on the internet about Degrelle, but they are not exactly characterized by rigorous scholarship. Judging by internet searches, virtually the only people in the English speaking world who care about Degrelle are Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists of various and sundry types. To this small segment of the population, Lkon Degrelle is a hero. Their admiration for Degrelle seems to be founded mainly on Degrelle9s wartime exploits and his admiration for Hitler, rather than on an analysis of Degrelle's political philosophy. Beyond the socially marginal individuals who are interested in Degrelle, a small number of scholars have written studies on Degrelle and on the political party he founded, the Rex party. Many historians have focused on Degrelle's links with fascism, viewing Rex largely through the prism of other interwar European fascist movements. 1 Pierre Daye, Lion Degrelle et le Rexisme (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 19371,247. Others have approached Rex as a more discrete entity, focusing on the Belgian context rather than broader European trends. The most valuable studies are by two historians: Jean-Michel ~tienne'sLe Mouvement Rexiste Jusqu 'en 1940 [The Rexist Movement Until 19401, and Martin Conway's Collaboration in Belgium: Lion Degrelle and the Rexist Movement, 1940-1944. Both of these works focus more on Rex itself than on events outside of Belgium, an approach I find to be more helpful. ~tiennefocuses mainly on the beginning of Rex, while Conway deals mainly with its wartime manifestation. I hope to bridge that gap. This thesis is not intended as a biography of Lkon Degrelle. Rather, I seek to provide a coherent narrative of the Rexist political movement throughout much of its existence, treating Degrelle's wartime behavior as having evolved from his prewar experiences. The aim of this study is to explore the reasons behind Rex's increasing radicalization throughout its existence, and Degrelle's decision to collaborate with Nazi Germany. Most Belgian sympathizers toward the Germans were Flemings, not Walloons like Degrelle, and Belgium's most openly fascist party-also a Walloon party-resisted the Nazi occupation. That a nationalist Walloon would aid his country's occupiers is rather curious, though Degrelle did meet with Hitler as early as the summer of 1936. As the Rex party lost electoral support after its height in May 1936, Degrelle seemed to turn more and more to fascism, introducing elements such as heightened anti-Semitism. I explore this connection between electoral failure and political radicalization. To do this, I trace the evolution of the political ideology of Lkon Degrelle and the Rex party, focusing mainly on the years 1932-194 1. I argue that Degrelle ultimately rejected parliamentary democracy and embraced fascism as a result of Rex's electoral failure. Though Degrelle may well have had an ideological affinity with Adolf Hitler all along, this would not have manifested itself without the Rexist marginalization, which began in 1937. In the 1930s and early war years Degrelle was above all an opportunist, strategically couching his public rhetoric in a way that he believed would be most beneficial to Rex. This trend would likely have continued had Degrelle and Rex remained popular. In this chapter, I set out a framework for my treatment in subsequent chapters of ~ebelleand the Rexist movement. First, I explore the intellectual and political antecedents to Rex. Next, I consider the debates surrounding fascism generally and Rex specifically. In so doing, I attempt to show that examining Rex through the prism of fascism is not necessarily the most illuminating approach. Rather, Rex should be discussed on its own terms, while still remaining mindful of the larger political contexts of interwar and wartime Belgium and Europe. Overview At the outset of his career as a political journalist, JRon Degrelle was an avowed Catholic and Catholic Party supporter. As head of the Rex publishing house in Louvain in the early 1930s, Degrelle sought to reform the Belgian Catholic Party from within. Degrelle proved to be more of an annoyance than an aid to the party, and as a result he and his followers were expelled in 1935 for their increasingly critical attacks on party leadership and its alleged corruption. With its expulsion from the Catholic Party's ranks, Rex became a political party in its own right, rather than only a publishing house. The Rex party entered the Belgian political scene in 193511 936, as an energetic, youthful movement with a strange amalgam of different political ideologies. In this respect, Rex was by no means unique in Europe; many groups in this time period had syncretic ideologies. Degrelle grabbed the public spotlight as a reformer who would clean up what he cast as the corruption of Belgian politics, while also making himself known for his superb oratory (in this time period, Degrelle and Rex were interchangeable; the party was indisputably Degrelle's, and he was its sole driving force). Degrelle's mastery of oratory, however, was not the only source of his appeal. During the height of his political career, Degrelle was charismatic and handsome, a dashing young renegade reinvigorating Belgian politics. Degrelle's supporters joked of his "Rex-Appeal" as the source of his great popularity with women2 Rex was strongly Catholic, monarchist, and Belgian nationalist, in addition to being vehemently anti-socialist. Like a number of other nationalist parties from the 1930s, Rex simultaneously took a strongly anti-socialist stance, while adopting the rhetoric of social change and aid to the poor. It called for a non-violent revolution of the soul and society, rather than the class warfare of communism. Yet at the same time that there were elements of fascism in Rexist thought and rhetoric, Rex self-consciously distanced itself from identification with fascism, at least initially. Degrelle and other Rexist writers stated explicitly that Rex was an entirely different phenomenon. The link between Rex and fascism is a highly contentious subject, and will be explored more fully below. Robert Brasillach, Histoire de la Guerre d'Espagne: Mdmoires, suivi de Lkon Degrelle et L 'avenir de "Rex " ([Paris]: Plon, 1969), 475. In a period of months after its founding as an independent party in November 1935, Rex garnered significant support in much of Belgium. The charismatic young Degrelle led Rex to win more than 270,000 votes, 11.49% of all votes cast, in the national parliamentary elections of May 1936.3 In the stable political climate of Belgium, such a strong showing by a relatively unknown party represented a significant shakeup. With the success of May 1936 in hand, the future of Rex seemed bright indeed. The first election that Rex competed in, though, proved to be the movement's apex. After electoral disappointment in 1937, Rex became more and more radicalized, losing much of its Catholic component and replacing it with a newfound cynicism and outspoken scorn for democracy, in addition to increasing xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and ' a neutralist foreign policy. Degrelle's relations with the Catholic Church had long been strained. Early on, before the electoral drubbing of 1937, the Belgian Catholic Church denounced Rexism generally and Degrelle specifically, before finally excommunicating Degrelle in 1943 .5 By 1941, with Belgium occupied by Nazi Germany, Rex had undergone a dramatic evolution, with little resemblance to its original form. By this time, Degrelle was ready to publicly heil Hitler and emulate Nazi racial thinking. Degrelle emulated the Nazis to the extent that after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Degrelle worked to raise a Walloon collaborationist military unit, spending much of the Jean-Michel ~tienne,Le Mouvement Rexiste Jusqu'en 1940 (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1968), 53. Rex was a political party, but to Degrelle the designation of "party" sounded too mundane, too much like politics as usual. As someone who cast himself as a reformer, as a non-politician, he preferred to use a new term. Rather than the term party, Degrelle "preferred that of a rally or a movement or even a 'mystique. "' Luc Schepens, "Fascists and Nationalists in Belgium 1919-1940," in Stein Ugelvik Larsen, Bernt Hagtvet and Jan Petter Myklebust (ed.), Who Were the Fascists: Social Roots ofEuropean Fascism (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1980), 507. In Rex in February 1933, Degrelle referred to Rex as "avant tout un mouvement, un organisme de combat." ~tienne,Mouvement, 18. In referring to Rex, the terms party and movement both seem appropriate, and both can be used more or less interchangeably. The use of the word "movement" rather than "party" is paralleled in the Nazis' portrayal of themselves. Martin Conway, Collaboration in Belgium: Lkon Degrelle and the Rexist Mov~rneat1940 -1944 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 208.