Leon Degrelle Belgian politician Date of Birth: 15.06.1906 Country: Belgium

1. Biography of Leon Degrelle
2. Early Years
3. Founding the Rex Movement
4. Political Defeat and World War II
5. Exile and later years

Biography of Leon Degrelle

Leon Degrelle was a Belgian politician, leader of the Belgian Nazis, and one of the commanders of the SS troops. He held the rank of Obersturmbannführer SS (1945). He was born on June 15, 1906, in Bouillon, into a family of Jesuit priest.

Early Years

In the 1920s, Degrelle was influenced by the French nationalist Charles Maurras and became a member of the reactionary organization "Action Française." He believed that law, order, and responsibility rested on one common principle - monarchy. Adhering to the theory of racial purity, he attacked Jews, whom he believed "never wanted to be loyal citizens of any country."

Founding the Rex Movement

In 1930, while leading a small publishing firm in Leuven, Degrelle founded the fascist organization "Rex" - the Belgian analogue of Mussolini's movement in Italy. Extremely anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-Semitic, and anti-bourgeois, he launched a movement that imitated the external attributes of Nazism on a smaller scale: massive rallies, parades, banners, and gangs. Flattered by the imitation, Hitler once said, "If I had a son, I would want him to be like Degrelle."

Political Defeat and World War II

Belgian voters did not sympathize with the Rexist movement. Degrelle lost key elections in February 1937 when all other political parties united against him. Rexism resurfaced in 1940 with the beginning of the German occupation of Belgium. In 1941, Degrelle joined the Walloon Legion of Volunteers to fight alongside the Germans on the Eastern Front. The legion, initially consisting of 850 people, was almost completely destroyed after three years of combat.

Exile and later years

In 1945, Degrelle fled to Spain. The Belgian Supreme Court sentenced him to death in absentia for treason. In 1946, he went to Argentina, and then returned to Spain. In April 1973, a Dutch television group discovered him in Madrid, where he lived in a luxurious apartment. Degrelle praised Hitler as the greatest statesman of his time. "I regret that I failed to achieve my goals, but given the chance, I would do it all over again," Degrelle said, "but much more effectively."