Marcel Déat | |
|---|---|
 Déat in 1932 | |
| Minister of Air | |
| In office 24 January 1936 – 4 June 1936 | |
| Prime Minister | Albert Sarraut |
| Preceded by | Victor Denain |
| Succeeded by | Pierre Cot |
| Member of the French Chamber of Deputies | |
| In office 1939 – 10 July 1940 | |
| Constituency | Charente |
| In office 9 May 1932 – 3 May 1936 | |
| Constituency | Seine |
| In office 1926 – 29 April 1928 | |
| Constituency | Marne |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1894-03-07)7 March 1894 |
| Died | 5 January 1955(1955-01-05) (aged 60) Turin, Italy |
| Political party | French Section of the Workers' International (1914–1933) Socialist Party of France (1933–1935) Socialist Republican Union (1935–1940) National Popular Rally (1941–1944) |
| Education | École Normale Supérieure |
| Profession | Journalist, writer |
 | This article includes a list ofgeneral references, butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations. Please help toimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(February 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Marcel Déat (French pronunciation:[maʁsɛldea]; 7 March 1894 – 5 January 1955) was a French politician. Initially asocialist and a member of theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), he led a breakaway group of right-wingNeosocialists out of the SFIO in 1933. During the occupation of France byNazi Germany, he founded thecollaborationistNational Popular Rally (RNP). In 1944, he becameMinister of Labour and National Solidarity inPierre Laval's government inVichy, before escaping to theSigmaringen enclave along with Vichy officials after theAllied landings in Normandy. Condemnedin absentia for collaborationism, he died while still in hiding in Italy.
Marcel Déat was raised in a modest environment, which sharedrepublican and patriotic values. After brilliant studies, he entered in 1914 theÉcole Normale Supérieure (ENS) after having been the student ofAlain, a philosopher who was active in theRadical Party and who would write a deeplyanti-militarist book after World War I. The same year, Déat joined the SFIO.
While he attended the ENS and worked to get a philosophy degree, World War I broke out. He joined theFrench Army and saw active duty, winning theLégion d'honneur and five bravery citations. By the war's end, Déat had achieved the rank ofcaptain. Under the pseudonym of Taëd, he then publishedCadavres et maximes, philosophie d'un revenant (approximately translated by "Corpses and Maxims, Philosophy of a Ghost"), in which he expressed his horror oftrenches, strongpacifist views, as well as his fascination for collective discipline and war camaraderie. When the war ended in 1918, he finished his studies at the École Normale and passed hisagrégation of philosophy, and oriented himself towards sociology under the direction ofCélestin Bouglé,[1] a friend of Alain and also member of theRadical Party. In the meanwhile, Déat taught philosophy inReims.
During the 1920Tours Congress in which a majority of the SFIO decided to spin off to found theFrench Communist Party, Marcel Déat positioned himself at the right wing of the SFIO, taking part in thegroupe de la Vie socialiste current, alongsidePierre Renaudel.
Déat was elected municipal counsellor of Reims in 1925, and then deputy for theMarne during a partial election in 1926. However, he lost his seat after the1928 elections. In these times,Léon Blum, the leader of the SFIO, tried to favor youths in the party, and decided to name Déat secretary of the SFIO parliamentary group. After having been put in charge of the documentary center of the ENS by Célestin Bouglié, Déat now founded a documentary center for the SFIO deputies.
Marcel Déat published in 1930Perspectives socialistes (Socialist Perspectives), arevisionist work closely influenced byHenri de Man'splanisme. Along with over a hundred articles written inLa Vie Socialiste, the review of the SFIO's right-wing,Perspective socialistes marked the shift of Déat from classical socialism toneosocialism. Déat replacedclass struggle by collaboration of classes and national solidarity, advocatedcorporatism as a social organization model, replaced the notion of "socialism" by "anti-capitalism" and supported an authoritarian state which wouldplan the economy and from whichparliamentarism would be repealed.[2]
During the1932 elections, he was elected deputy of the20th arrondissement of Paris, beating theCommunistJacques Duclos — who himself had gained the upper hand against Léon Blum in 1928 in the same electoral district. Déat and other Neosocialists were expelled from the SFIO at the 5 November 1933 Congress, for their revisionist views and disagreements withLéon Blum's policies toward Prime MinisterÉdouard Herriot, leader of the secondCartel des Gauches (Left-Wing Coalition). The official position of the SFIO was then to support the Cartel without participating in the government, which it considered "bourgeois." The same year, Déat joined theSocialist Party of France – Jean Jaurès Union (PSdF) created the same year by Planist and Neosocialist elements expelled by the SFIO during the 1933 Congress. The new party's slogan was "Order, Authority and Nation".
The expelled faction was a minority in the SFIO, but represented the majority of the SFIO parliamentary group. They were opposed both by the left wing of the SFIO, represented byMarceau Pivert, and by the SFIO's center, headed by Blum. The Neosocialists wanted to "reinforce the state against theeconomic crisis", open themselves to the middle classes and participate in non-Socialist governments.
Without the support of the Socialists, Déat lost his seat in the Chamber. Two years later, he joined theSocialist Republican Union (USR). He becameMinister of Air in the "bourgeois" government ofAlbert Sarraut (Radical) but he quickly resigned his post over disputes with the Prime Minister. With theincreasing threats represented by Nazi Germany, Déat wanted to maintain peace at any cost.
He returned to the Chamber of Deputiesin 1936 as a delegate fromAngoulême, and at first supported thePopular Front led by Blum before denouncing "Communist infiltration" of it. After Blum's replacement byÉdouard Daladier in 1938, which marked the end of the Popular Front, Déat participated in the "Anti-Communist Rally." In an article published on 4 May 1939 entitledWhy Die for Danzig?, published in the newspaperL'Œuvre, Déat argued that France should not go to war for Poland if theDanzig crisis resulted in war.[3][4] There, he argued that France should avoid war with Germany if the latter seized Poland – the publication caused a widespread controversy, and propelled Déat to national fame. Déat would collaborate withL'Œuvre during the entire period ofVichy France.
A strong supporter of Germany'soccupation of northern France in 1940, Déat took up residence in unoccupied France, and was initially a supporter ofPhilippe Pétain. He attempted to create a single party to fully realize the aims of the "Révolution nationale", the official, reactionary ideology of Vichy. Thereafter, he founded in February 1941 theNational Popular Rally (RNP) which advocatedCollaboration with Nazi Germany andantisemitism.[5] When theFrench State, then headed by Pétain, did not become the Fascist state Déat had in mind, he moved to occupiedParis and was funded by the Germans. The Germans forced Déat at first to merge his new party (RNP) withEugène Deloncle'sMSR (Social Revolutionary Movement), afar-right party, the successor of theCagoule terrorist group. The merger was a failure and Déat later expelled MSR elements from his party, before trying to form a unified front of Collaborationist parties.
Déat also founded, along with fellow CollaborationistsJacques Doriot andMarcel Bucard, theLégion des Volontaires Français (LVF), a French unit of theWehrmacht (later affiliated with theWaffen-SS).
While reviewing troops from the LVF with former Prime MinisterPierre Laval inVersailles on 27 August 1941, Déat was wounded in an assassination attempt—carried out byPaul Collette. After recovering, he became a supporter of Laval, who supported more reactionary policies than Pétain, and again became Prime Minister of France in 1942. Under the suggestion of the Germans, Marcel Déat became on 16 March 1944,Minister of Labour and National Solidarity in Laval's cabinet.
After theAllied landings atNormandy the French Government, with Déat, was escorted to Germany and he became an official of the government-in-exile atSigmaringen. With thedefeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Déat fled toItaly in April and took his wife's name, temporarily teaching inMilan andTurin. He was later taken in and hidden by aRoman Catholic religious order in the convent of San Vito, near Turin, where he wrote his memoirs and lived undiscovered until his death in 1955. After the war, he was convicted of treason in France and sentenced to deathin absentia.[6]
