Robert Brasillach

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Robert Brasillach (March 31 1909, Perpignan—February 6 1945, Montrouge) was a French pro-Nazi Germany author in the Vichy France who was executed for collaboration. French fascists today see him as a hero and a martyr.

He studied at the École Normale Supérieure and then became a novelist and literary critic for the Action Française of Charles Maurras. After February 6 1934 far right riots in the Place de la Concorde, Brasillach openly supported fascism.

After the fall of France, he became an editor of Je suis partout, an antisemitic paper and wrote in favor of the collaboration and Nazi policies. In November 1942 he supported the German takeover of the unoccupied zone under the Vichy government, because it "reunited France". He called for death of left-wing politicians and in the summer of 1944 signed the call for the summary execution of all members of the French Resistance. After the liberation of Paris, Brasillach hid in an attic but he gave himself up on September 14 when he heard that his mother had been arrested. He spent the next five months in prison.

Brasillach went to trial in Paris on January 19, 1945 and was sentenced to death. The sentence caused uproar in French literature circles and even some of Brasillach's political opponents protested against it. Resistance member and author François Mauriac circulated a petition to Charles De Gaulle to commute the sentence. De Gaulle did not comply and Brasillach was executed. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

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Selected Novels

1934 L'Enfant de la nuit (Child of the Night)
1937 Comme le temps passe (How The Time Passes By)
1939 Les Sept Couleurs (The Seven Colors)

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References

The Collaborator : The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan ISBN 0226424154 (publisher blurb, excerpt)
Fascist Ego: A Political Biography of Robert Brasillach by William R. Tucker ISBN 0520027108
The Ideological Hero in the Novels of Robert Brasillach, Roger Vailland & Andre Malraux by Peter D. Tame ISBN 0820431265
Translation of Notre Avant-Guerre/Before the War by Robert Brasillach, Peter Tame ISBN 0773471588
Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, 1991, ISBN 0130893013