| La Cagoule (The Cowl) | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Eugène Deloncle |
| Dates of operation | 1936 (1936)–1938 (1938) |
| Country | France |
| Motives | Overthrow ofPopular Front government |
| Ideology | French nationalism Fascism Anti-communism Antisemitism |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Major actions | Assassinations, bombings, sabotage |
| Means of revenue | Industrialists such asEugène Schueller ofL'Oréal |
| Opponents |  French Third Republic |
La Cagoule (French pronunciation:[lakaɡul],TheCowl; founded in 1936)[a] was a Frenchfascist-leaning andanti-communist militant group.[1] It opposed the left-wingPopular Front (in office, June 1936 to 1938) and used violence to promote its activities in the final years of theThird Republic and into theVichy Regime.La Cagoule was founded byEugène Deloncle and bankrolled, among others, byEugène Schueller, the founder ofL'Oréal.
La Cagoule committed assassinations, and undertook bombings, sabotage of armaments, and other violent activities, some intended to cast suspicion on communists throughfalse flag operations and to add to political instability. Planning a November 1937 overthrow of the French government,La Cagoule was infiltrated by the police, and the national government arrested and imprisoned about 70 men. At the outbreak ofWorld War II (September 1939), the government released the men to fight in the French Army. Some supported other right-wing organizations and participated in theVichy government of 1940–1944; others joined theFree French ofCharles de Gaulle. It was not until 1948 that the government tried surviving members for the charges of 1937.[2]
Originally the Secret Organisation for Revolutionary National Action (Osarn or OSAR,Organisation secrète d'action révolutionnaire nationale), the group's name was later officially changed to the Secret Committee of Revolutionary Action (CSAR,Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire).
The group was founded in 1936 or 1937 byEugène Deloncle and enjoyed privileged relations within industrial circles (National Federation of Ratepayers, Lesieur,L'Oréal etc).[3]
An important member wasJoseph Darnand, who later founded theService d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), the forerunner of theMilice, thecollaborationist paramilitary of the Vichy regime. His nephewHenri Charbonneau was also a member.
Another member wasJean Filiol, who was appointed as the head of the Milice inLimoges. He fled toSpain at the end of World War II and he worked in the Spanish subsidiary of L'Oréal.Gabriel Jeantet was a lover of a sister ofFrançois Mitterrand, who later recommended him for theOrder of the Francisque.[4]Dr. Henri Martin was a physician suspected of having forged thePacte synarchique and worked for theOrganisation armée secrète (OAS) after World War II.[5]
Mohamed el-Maadi, the head ofLa Cagoule forFrench Algeria, started the antisemitic newspaperEr Rachid and organised the North-African Brigade, known asSS-Mohammed, in 1944.
The group drew most of its members fromOrléanists disappointed by the lack of action by theAction française founded byCharles Maurras. It opposed thePopular Front government, created from an alliance of left-wing groups. Historians believe that many low-level members were recruited in the belief that it was an auto-defense organization, which was intended to fight against a communist takeover.[4]
In Nice, new members were initiated in a formal ritual. In the presence of the Grand Master, dressed in red and accompanied by hisassesseurs dressed in black, with their faces covered, new members stood before a table draped with a French flag. A sword and torches were placed on it. Each man raised his right arm and swore the oath,Ad majorem Galliæ gloriam ("For the greater glory of France").[6] This oath echoed theJesuit motto,Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (For the greater glory of God). Disloyalty was punished by death. For instance, the arms suppliers Léon Jean-Baptiste and Maurice Juif were murdered byCagoulards in October 1936 and February 1937, respectively, for attempting to enrich themselves by lying about the price that they had paid for the arms.
The paramilitary organisation was active in the provinces. In Paris, it organised militias and demonstrations and amassed arms. It attempted to assassinate French Prime MinisterLéon Blum, trained men in terrorism, built underground prisons and "ran guns in Belgium, Switzerland and Italy".[4]
La Cagoule directed its members in various actions aimed at creating suspicions of communists to destabilise and to destroy the French Republic. Some argue that in theBois de Boulogne on 26 January 1937, Jean Filiol stabbed to deathDimitri Navachine, who was a Soviet national and for several years the respected director of the Paris branch of the Soviet State Bank.[4] Others believed that he had been killed byJoseph Stalin's secret service, theNKVD, as theGreat Purge was underway in theSoviet Union.[7] To ease its obtaining arms fromFascist Italy, on 9 June 1937, the group assassinated twoItalian antifascists, theRosselli brothers, who were refugees in France.[8][9] It sabotaged airplanes clandestinely supplied by the French government to theSpanish Republic. On 11 September 1937, theCagoule blew up two buildings owned by theComité des Forges (Ironmasters Association) to create the impression of a communist conspiracy. Although it was widely believed at the time that communists had set the bombs, the government took no official action against theFrench Communist Party, to the disappointment of the group's members. TheCagoule tried to infiltrate theInternational Brigades for the same purpose.
Organised along military lines, theCagoule infiltrated parts of theFrench military viaGeorges Loustaunau-Lacau'sCorvignolles as a means to acquire weapons.[10] It prepared to overthrow thePopular Front government in November 1937 to install a fascist government. The group initially intended to makePhilippe Pétain chief of state, but he refused its overtures. TheCagoule chose MarshalLouis Franchet d'Esperey as their future chief of state.
It was infiltrated by the French police. On 15 November 1937,Marx Dormoy,Minister of the Interior and the highest officer of law enforcement, denounced its plot and ordered wide arrests of members. The French police seized 2 tons of high explosives, several anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, 500 machine guns, 65 submachine guns, 134 rifles and 17 sawn-off shotguns.[11] Some of the arms were of German or Italian origin, and about 70 men were arrested. Deloncle had boasted that he had 12,000 men under his order in Paris, and 120,000 in the provinces, but it is likely there were no more than 200 men who knew much about the organization and its structure, and another several hundred who were more loosely affiliated with the group.[4]
Reactions to the plot and the revelations by the French government about theCagoule varied among the international media. In the United States, the editors of theNew York Times were initially suspicious of the accounts.[citation needed]
The journalists ofTime magazine likenedLa Cagoule to the AmericanKu Klux Klan, a right-wing group that had a widespread revival from 1915 and reached its peak of influence in 1925, with members elected to political office in midwestern cities and states as well as the South.[citation needed]
TheCagoule was organised into cells. Light cells had eight men, armed withsubmachine guns (typically one per light cell),rifles,semi-automatic pistols andhand grenades. Heavy cells had twelve men, armed with a heavymachine gun and the individual weapons. A group of three cells formed one unit, three units a battalion, three battalions a regiment, two regiments a brigade and two brigades a division. Battalions could be divided into automobile squads of about fifty men. Written communications were avoided as much as possible.
The "street fighting" handbook was titledSecret Rules of the Communist Party to avoid revealing theCagoule in case the booklet was found by the police.[12]
At the outbreak of World War II, the French government released imprisonedCagoulards to fight in the French Army. Some entered theMilice, such asJacques de Bernonville.
During theOccupation of France in 1940, the Vichy government arrested Marx Dormoy, as he had refused to vote for full powers for Pétain, and it eventually interned him under house arrest atMontélimar. He was assassinated on 26 July 1941 by a clockwork bomb set off at the house. It was believed to have been done byCagoule terrorists in reprisal for Dormoy's arrests in 1937 and his attempt to suppress the organization.[13]
The members of theCagoule were divided. Some of them joined various Fascist movements; Schueller and Deloncle founded theMouvement Social Révolutionnaire, which conducted various activities forNazi Germany in occupied France. Itbombed seven synagogues in Paris in October 1941. Others became prominent members ofPhilippe Pétain'sVichy Regime. Darnand was the leader of theMilice, the Vichyparamilitary group that fought theFrench Resistance, and enforcedantisemitic policies. He took an oath of loyalty toAdolf Hitler after he had accepted aWaffen SS rank.
Othercagoulards sided against the Germans, either as members of the Resistance (such asMarie-Madeleine Fourcade,Pierre Guillain de Bénouville orGeorges Loustaunau-Lacau in theMaquis), or as members ofCharles de Gaulle'sFree French Forces, such as GeneralHenri Giraud orColonel Passy. After the war, the politician and writerHenri de Kérillis accused de Gaulle of having been a member ofLa Cagoule and said that de Gaulle had been ready to install a fascist government if the Allies let him become France's chief of state.[14]
Thecagoulards arrested for the 1937 conspiracy were not brought to trial for those charges until 1948, after the liberation of France. By then, many had served in the Vichy government or the Resistance, and few of them were brought to trial.[4]
