Eugène Deloncle

Eugène Deloncle (20 June 1890 – 17 January 1944) was a French engineer and Fascist leader.

Deloncle in 1937

A graduate of the École Polytechnique, Deloncle worked for the French Navy, and served as an artillery officer during World War I. Wounded on the Champagne frontline, he was awarded the Legion of Honor.

Initially supportive of the integralist Action Française, he left the movement in 1935, in order to found his own group – the Comité Secret d'Action Révolutionnaire (CSAR), usually known as La Cagoule (a name given by the press). Cagoule kept the Orleanist and strongly anti-republican line of the Action Française, but added the rhetoric of Fascism.

With World War II, the Fall of France, and the German period of occupation, Deloncle created a movement backing Vichy France and Philippe Pétain, the Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire (MSR, Social Revolutionary Movement). MSR, a more radical form of the Cagoule, strongly supported Pétain's traditionalism, as well as the political experiment engineered in Southern France. Afterwards, he approached the National Popular Rally (RNP) of Marcel Déat, but conflicts with the latter got him expelled in May 1942, when he was succeeded as leader by Jean Fontenoy.[1]

Deloncle's involvement with the Abwehr made him an enemy of the Gestapo, who assassinated him and seriously wounded his son Louis.

References

1. David Littlejohn (1972) The Patriotic Traitors, London: Heinemann, p. 215, ISBN 0-434-42725-X