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National Popular Rally Rassemblement national populaire | |
|---|---|
| President | Marcel Déat |
| General Secretary | Georges Albertini |
| Founded | 1941 (1941) |
| Dissolved | 1945 (1945) |
| Headquarters | Vichy |
| Newspaper | Le National Populaire |
| Ideology | French fascismNeo-Jacobinism[1] Neosocialism Pan-Europeanism[2] |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Colours | Blue,red,white |
| Party flag | |
 | |
TheNational Popular Rally (French:Rassemblement national populaire,RNP, 1941–1944) was aFrench political party and one of the maincollaborationist parties under theVichy regime ofWorld War II.
Created in February 1941 by former members of theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) of theneosocialist tendency and led byMarcel Déat, the party was heavily influenced byFascism and saw the circumstances of the occupation as an opportunity to revolutionize France.
Marcel Déat, aneosocialist expelled from the SFIO in November 1933 and former Minister, first proposed to create a single state party during the 1940 summer, immediately following the proclamation of theVichy regime. Briefly arrested by theFrench police on 13 December 1940, he finally created the RNP in February 1941, which became one of the primary collaborationist parties, along withJacques Doriot'sFrench Popular Party (PPF),Marcel Bucard'sFrancisme and Pierre Clémenti'sFrench National-Collectivist Party.
Immediately, theGerman authorities imposed a fusion between Marcel Déat's RNP and thefar-rightSocial Revolutionary Movement (MSR) ofEugène Deloncle, an inheritor of theCagoule terrorist group. The first committee of direction of the RNP-MSR was composed of two RNP members and three MSR members: Marcel Déat,Jean Fontenoy, Jean Van Ormelingen (alias Jean Vanor), Eugène Deloncle andJean Goy.
However, the fusion between the RNP and the MSR was a failure, in part because Déat's RNP recruited mainly among former members of theFrench Left while the MSR was from the beginning located on the far-right of the political spectrum. The MSR conservedde facto its autonomy inside the RNP and was mainly charged of forming the RNP's security service. After the assassination attempt ofPaul Collette againstPierre Laval, MarshalPhilippe Pétain's Prime Minister and Marcel Déat on 27 August 1941, the latter accused the MSR of having attempted to eliminate him. Thereafter, the MSR was excluded from the RNP in October 1941, leading to the reorganization of the RNP (and exclusion of elements close to the MSR) until the first months of 1942.
The ideology of the RNP was clearly of afascist nature, advocatingantisemitic andracist policies and sharing a strong admiration forNazi Germany. Despite this, it differed fromJacques Doriot'sFrench Popular Party (PPF) in that it maintained the principle ofuniversal suffrage,public education,anti-clericalism or the conservation of sculptures ofMarianne, arepublican symbol, in the townhalls.[3] Those ideas created constant conflicts between the RNP and morereactionary elements of Vichy who also supported theRévolution nationale ("National Revolution") and had been trained in theAction française monarchist movement.
On a tactic level, the RNP supported Pierre Laval and criticized the "Vichy reactionaries" and the PPF. Marcel Déat maintained close links with the German ambassador in Paris,Otto Abetz, whilst Doriot turned himself towards theSS. After Laval's return to government in April 1942 and the Nazi occupation of the Southern Zone in November 1942, Déat focused all his efforts on creating a single party of the Collaboration which would permit him to impose himself as its sole leader. In November 1942, the leaders of the RNP, Déat andGeorges Albertini, met with MSR leaders such asGeorges Soulès. Following this meeting, the RNP created the National Revolutionary Front (Front révolutionnaire national, FRN) which gathered the main collaborationist parties, apart from Doriot's PPF. The FRN thus included the RNP-Labour Social Front, the MSR, the Parti franciste, theGroupe Collaboration, theJeunes de l'Europe nouvelle and theComité d’action antibolchévique [fr] (Anti-Bolshevik Action Committee). Déat furthermore managed to gain to his side the secretary of the PPF,Jean Fossati, and named to the head of the FRNHenri Barbé, issued from the PPF. However, the FRN finally was a failure.
In March 1944, Déat was named Minister of Labour and of National Solidarity and took as assistants the RNP leaders (Georges Albertini,Georges Dumoulin,Ludovic Zoretti andGabriel Lafaye) From then on, he focused more on his ministry tasks than on the organization of the RNP.
On 17 August 1944, Déat took refuge in Nazi Germany almost alone. In charge of the youth organisation of the RNP,Roland Gaucher would also accompany Pétain into exile in theSigmaringen enclave.
The RNP had at maximum 30,000 members.[4] According to the historianRobert Soucy, it had only 2,638 party members, of whom only 12.8 percent were industrial workers.[5]
Its mouthpiece, directed byRoland Gaucher, wasLe National Populaire, but the party was also supported by Déat's daily,L'Œuvre.
The youth organisation (Jeunesses nationales populaires, JNP) was headed byRoland Silly,Roland Gaucher (future co-founder of theNational Front in 1972) and eight other personalities.
The RNP was directed by a permanent commission of 15 members. According to a February 1943 list, these included:
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