By Richard Rule
Leon Degrelle was born in 1906 in Belgium to a prosperous family in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. During the tumultuous years leading up to World War II, he was the Continent’s youngest statesman, but as a soldier on the Eastern Front he became the most famous and highly decorated foreign volunteer in the entire German armed forces. This remarkable man who was a hero to some and a vile traitor to others would earn all stripes from private to general officer and in doing so forge one of the most distinguished careers from among the foreign legions of the Waffen SS.
Leon Degrelle’s Early Years: The Youngest Fascist Statesman in Europe
In the early 1930s, Degrelle, who was an ardent Catholic, had become so disillusioned with the level of government corruption in Belgium that he formed his own Rexist Party, which in essence was a movement of Christian renewal and social justice. Heavily influenced by fascism, Degrelle and his supporters were fiercely anticommunist, anti-Semitic and antibourgeois and quickly capitalized not only on internal ethnic tensions within Belgium but also on the population’s widespread dissatisfaction with the nation’s governing parties.
Charismatic, intelligent, and handsome, Leon Degrelle’s talent for self-promotion coupled with his brilliant oratory skills struck a chord with voters, and his party attracted an incredible 11.5 percent of the vote in the 1936 Belgian elections. It was tantamount to a revolution! At 29 years of age, Degrelle had been catapulted to prominence as the youngest political leader in Europe. His meteoric rise saw British Prime Minister Winston Churchill grant him an audience in London. He visited Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Rome, and Hitler received him in Berlin.
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This was a truly remarkable man. Irrespective of what one may think of him, nobody can slight his qualities, resourceful bravery and intellect, regardless of the aspects to which they were applied.
Strange how a government of Nazi collaborators and Congolese butcher’s of rubber workers limbs, can accuse a individual of doing something that they did themselves. A disgraceful act of vengeance to separate and scatter innocent children around Europe. What Crimes did they commit?
Your point is well taken.
I don’t know anybody in any politics that would volunteer to go into real battles where their own lives are in jeopardy…I have much Respect for this Man…being in such Battles myself…
DeGrelle was a first-rate hero. Courage has no allegiance. His detractors are , to a person, not worthy to wash his socks.
There are many people that fought for bad causes. That DeGrelle continued to support Nazis will forever stain his reputation. That cannot be overlooked or ignored. His denials of the Holocaust alone condemn him.