Robert Brasillach

Robert Brasillach (Perpignan, 1909 - Arcueil, 1945) was a French writer, journalist and film critic. He worked in French during the interwar years and the German occupation, and his name is today tied above all to his politics: fascism and collaboration with Nazi Germany. He is remembered as well for the death sentence passed on him after the Liberation.

The son of an army lieutenant, he studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris and then became a literary critic for Action française, the royalist movement led by Charles Maurras, whose ideas shaped much of his thinking. After the riots of 6 February 1934 at the Place de la Concorde, he openly backed fascism and eventually edited the nationalist paper Je suis partout. He wrote novels, poetry and essays, and in 1935 he and his brother-in-law Maurice Bardèche produced a detailed history of cinema that shaped criticism for years. His writings on the Spanish Civil War show unreserved support for the rebel side.

During the Second World War his pro-German stance hardened. He was captured by the Germans after the fall of France in 1940 and, once freed, he argued for collaboration with Nazi Germany, published the names of Jews in hiding and called for the elimination of left-wing politicians. He surrendered when the war ended, was tried in January 1945 and sentenced to death. A petition signed by many literary figures, among them Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel and Albert Camus, asked for the sentence to be commuted, but de Gaulle refused. He was shot by firing squad at Montrouge on 6 February 1945.

His legacy is divided. As a film critic he helped introduce Soviet, Chaplin-era and Japanese cinema to French readers, and he is still cited for that. As a writer, his poetry and fiction are seldom read today, and he is studied mainly as an example of intellectual complicity with fascism. His trial and execution remain a subject of debate, and Simone de Beauvoir wrote an essay inspired by his case.