Jean Luchaire (French pronunciation:[ʒɑ̃lyʃɛʁ]; 21 July 1901 – 22 February 1946) was a French journalist and politician who became the head of the Frenchcollaborationist press in Paris during the German military occupation.[1] Luchaire supported theRévolution nationale declared by theFrench Government after it relocated to the spa town ofVichy in 1940.
Jean Luchaire was born inSiena, Italy, a grand-nephew of historianAchille Luchaire. He was married, with four children.[2]
He was the son of Lucien Luchaire, an Italianist and founder of theInstitut français in Florence, and an animator from 1916 to 1919 of theRevue des nations latines, and his wife Fernande Dauriac.[3] They would later divorce and in 1916 Dauriac would marryGaetano Salvemini, an Italian socialist and anti-fascist politician, historian, and writer who collaborated with theRevue des nations latines.[3]
BeforeWorld War II Luchaire frequented theFrench Chamber of Deputies, where he began a strong association withAristide Briand, known for theKellogg–Briand Pact. Luchaire's newspaper supported Briand's policy for arapprochement with Germany (while it was still theWeimar Republic).Manchester Guardian journalistRobert Dell is on record as saying that Luchaire was "most frightfully corrupt", and in 1934 Foreign MinisterLouis Barthou related that Luchaire was receiving "quite incredible" subsidies for his newspaperNotre Temps (which Luchaire had founded in 1927); some 100,000 francs a month fromJoseph Paul-Boncour.[4]
Jean Luchaire first met and became friends with GermanfrancophileOtto Abetz in 1930, when Abetz was still living inKarlsruhe. Abetz would go on to marry Luchaire's secretary, Suzanne, and becameGerman Ambassador in Paris duringWorld War II. Luchaire was convinced that the appointment of Abetz as Ambassador toParis was a godsend to France and that, between them, he and Abetz could moderate the rigours of the German military occupation and prepare the ground for a happy Franco-German union. He suggested that, in effect, he was adapting his old Briandism to new conditions.[5]
Pierre Laval, aware of Luchaire's friendly relations with Abetz, sent him to Paris in July 1940 to re-establish contact with him. Luchaire consistently maintained that he represented a certain respectable "rightist" anti-British French political tradition. He founded a further newspaper, the evening dailyLes Nouveaux Temps, in 1940, and subsequently became the President of the Association de la presse parisienne (Association of the Parisian Press) in 1941 and presided the Corporation nationale de la presse française (National Corporation of French Press). Duringthe occupation, however, it was claimed that Luchaire was disseminating Nazi propaganda, fulminating against England, America,de Gaulle, theSoviet Union,Bolshevism and theMaquis.[6] By the end of 1943 he advocated a "real" collaborationist government, Laval being, in his opinion, "inadequate".[7] During the occupation, as editor ofNouveaux Temps, he drew a salary of 100,000 francs a month, besides 'extras', lived in great luxury, lunched at the Tour d'Argent and according to his daughter Corinne, even started keeping expensive mistresses, which he had not done in the past.[8]
In 1944, Luchaire called on the Germans to "exterminate" theFrench Resistance, and his newspapers wrote violent anti-British and anti-American articles after theNormandy landings. He was appointed Minister of Information in the French government-in-exile, after the Germans forcibly removed it from Vichy to theSigmaringen enclave, 1944–1945, where, apparently, he continued to be optimistic.[9] He fled to Italy in 1945, but later was arrested and returned to France. He was tried by a tribunal consisting of broad Left appointees, potentially including Communist members of the resistance,[10] and executed.
Luchaire's daughterCorinne had become a film actress in the 1930s. Following her father's "joke trial", she regarded him as a martyr, "who had never wanted to harm anyone, who was sincere, and who never thought unkindly of any man."[11] In 1945, she was sentenced to 10 years ofdégradation nationale. She died of tuberculosis in 1950.
