Jacques Doriot (French:[ʒakdɔʁjo]; 26 September 1898 – 22 February 1945) was a French politician, initially communist, later fascist, before and during World War II.
During the war, Doriot was a radical supporter of collaboration and contributed to the creation of the Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism (LVF). He fought personally in German uniform on the Eastern Front, with the rank of lieutenant.[1]
Early life and politics
Doriot moved to Saint Denis, near Paris, at an early age and became a labourer. In 1916, in the midst of World War I, he became a committed socialist, but his political activity was halted by his joining the French Army in 1917. Participating in active combat during World War I, Doriot was captured by enemy troops and remained a prisoner of war until 1918. For his wartime service, especially for rescuing a fellow wounded soldier from no-mans-land, Doriot was awarded the Croix de guerre.[2]
In 1931, Doriot was elected mayor of Saint Denis.[3] Around this time, he opposed the "social fascism" theory and came to advocate a Popular Front alliance between the Communists and other French socialist parties with whom Doriot sympathized on a number of issues and worried that exclusion would alienate valuable political allies.[4] Although this would soon become official Communist Party policy, at the time it was seen as heretical and Doriot was expelled from the Communist Party in 1934.[5] This expulsion provoked a great sadness in Doriot, but above all a great anger and a thirst for revenge against the PCF leadership.[6]
Doriot speaking at the first meeting of the French Popular Party, 1936
Still a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Doriot struck back at the Communists who had renounced him: now bitter towards the Comintern, his views turned to embrace the French nation, evolving into a 'national' socialism—as opposed to the socialism of the Third International. By now embodying fascist more than socialist ideals, Doriot founded the ultra-nationalistParti Populaire Français (PPF) in 1936.[7] Doriot and his supporters were vocal advocates of France becoming organized along the lines of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and were bitter opponents of Socialist Premier Léon Blum and his Popular Front coalition.
When France went to war with Germany in 1939, Doriot was mobilized and fought at the front as a sergeant.[8] After the armistice in June 1940, he was demobilized. He became a staunch pro-German and supported Germany's occupation of northern France in 1940, specifically due to Hitler's anti-Bolshevik policy.[9] Doriot resided in collaborationistVichy France for a time and was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France in January 1941, but he eventually found that the Vichy regime was not nearly as Fascist as he had hoped it would be and moved to occupied Paris, where he espoused pro-German and anti-communist propaganda on Radio Paris.[10] In 1941, he and fellow fascist collaborator Marcel Déat founded the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a French unit of the Wehrmacht.[10]
Doriot in conversation with residents of the destroyed city of Saint-Lô, July 1944.
Doriot fought with the LVF and saw active duty on the Eastern Front when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 and was awarded the Iron Cross in 1943.[11] In his absence leadership of the PPF officially passed to a directorate, although real power came to lie with Maurice-Yvan Sicard.[12] In December 1944, Doriot travelled to Germany and made contact with the former members of the Vichy regime and other collaborators who had gathered together in the Sigmaringen enclave.[13] Doriot's PPF struggled to assume a leadership role within the French expatriate community, basing itself in Mainau and setting up its own radio station, Radio-Patrie, at Bad Mergentheim and publishing its own paper Le Petit Parisien.[14] The PPF was also involved in conducting intelligence and sabotage activities by supplying some volunteers whom the Germans dropped by parachute into liberated France.[15] He was killed on 22 February 1945 while traveling from Mainau to Sigmaringen when his car was strafed by Allied fighter planes. He was buried in Mengen.[16]
^Olivier Pigoreau, "Rendez-vous tragique à Mengen" 53-61 in (2009) 34 Batailles: l'Histoire Militaire du XXe siècle
^Pierre-Philippe Lambert and Gérard Le Marrec, Les Français sous le casque allemand Granchier, 1994. Some 95 Frenchmen were dropped into liberated France, but some were Milice or Franciste members.
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