Jacques Doriot

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Jacques Doriot (September 26, 1898, Bresles, Oise—February 22, 1945, near Mengen, Württemberg) was a French politician prior to and during World War II. He began as a Communist but then turned Fascist.

[edit] Early life and politics

Doriot moved to Saint Denis at a young age and became a laborer. 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, Doriot was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

After being released, he returned to France and in 1920 joined the French Communist Party (PCF), quickly rising through the party - within a few years, he had become one of the PCF major leaders. In 1922 he became a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, and a year later was made Secretary of the French Federation of Young Communists. In 1923, Doriot was arrested for violently protesting French occupation of the Ruhr Area. He was released a year later, upon being elected to the French Chamber of Deputies (the Third Republic equivalent of the National Assembly) by the people of Saint Denis.

[edit] Fascism

In 1931, Doriot was elected mayor of Saint Denis. Around this time, he came to advocate a Popular Front alliance between the Communists and other French socialist parties with whom Doriot sympathized on a number of issues. Although this would soon become official Communist Party policy at the time it was seen as heretical and Doriot was expelled in 1934. Still a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Doriot struck back at the Communists by becoming a devoted Fascist and forming the ultra-nationalist Parti Populaire Français (PPF) in 1936. Doriot and his supporters were vocal advocates of France becoming organized along the lines of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and bitter opponents of Socialist Premier Léon Blum and his Popular Front coalition.

[edit] Collaboration

When France went to war with Germany in 1939, Doriot became a staunch pro-German and supported Germany's occupation of northern France in 1940. Doriot resided in collaborationist Vichy France for a time, but he eventually found that it wasn’t 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. In 1941, he and fellow Fascist collaborator Marcel Déat founded the Legion des Volontaires Francais (LVF), a French unit of the Wehrmacht.

Doriot fought with the LVF and saw active duty on the Eastern Front when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. When the LVF was all but destroyed, Doriot fought with the Wehrmacht, and was awarded the Iron Cross in 1943. In December of 1943, Doriot travelled to Sigmaringen, Germany, and later became a member of the exile Vichy government there. He was killed while traveling from Mainau to Sigmaringen in February of 1945 when his car was hit by Allied strafers. He was buried in Mengen.