Joseph Darnand
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- For the Roman Catholic bishop, see Joseph Darnand (bishop)
Joseph Darnand (March 19, 1897 - October 10, 1945) was a French pro-Nazi leader and commander of the Vichy French Milice.
Joseph Darnand was born at Coligny, Ain, Rhône-Alpes in France. He fought in the First World War and received seven citations for bravery. After the war he worked as a cabinetmaker and later founded his own transportation company in Nice. He also supported the Orléanist group Action Française.
At the beginning of the World War II Darnand volunteered to join the French army and served in the Maginot Line. He was captured in June 1940 but fled to Nice. He became a leading figure in the Vichy French organization Légion Francaise des combattants (French Legion of Veterans) and recruited troopers for the fight against "Bolshevism".
The next year he found the collaborationist militia, Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), that supported Philippe Pétain and Vichy France. He offered his help against French Resistance. On January 1, 1943 he transformed the organization into the Milice. Although Pierre Laval was its official president, Darnand was its de facto leader. Darnand took an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler in October 1943 and received a rank of Sturmbannführer in the Waffen SS. In December 1943 he became head of police and later secretary of the interior.
After the Normandy Invasion and Allied advance Darnand fled to Germany in September 1944 and joined Pétain's puppet government in Sigmaringen. In April 1945 he had to flee from Sigmaringen to Merano in Northern Italy. He was eventually captured after the war and taken back to France, where he was executed in 1945.
[edit] References
- Biography in l'Humanité, March 23, 1994
- escape of Darnand Gerald Steinacher, „Ich mache Sie zum Erzbischof von Paris, wenn Sie uns helfen” Die Flucht der Vichy-Regierung nach Norditalien 1945, in: Der Schlern, Heft 1, 2007, p. 23-35.
