The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach

Robert Brasillach (1909-1945), a man of letters, a convinced fascist, a notorious collaborator with the Nazis during World War II, and chief editor of the fascist and antisemitic periodical "Je Suis Partout", was tried in January 1944 by the Liberation government of France and executed a year later. Discusses Brasillach's life, as well as his trial and its aftermaths; finds his death sentence exaggerated. Inter alia, dwells on his antisemitism. He regarded the Jews as a force standing in the way of fascism, striving for world power, and having provoked the war. His antisemitic views might have been "moderate" in the 1930s, but during the Nazi occupation he advocated the deportation of all French Jews. Even in a letter sent in 1944 from jail, he justified the Nazi deportation of Jews. His execution made him a saint in the eyes of the French right and Holocaust deniers.