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Philippe Henriot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philippe Henriot (January 7, 1889, Reims—June 28, 1944, Paris) was a French politician.
Moving to the far right after beginnings in Roman Catholic conservatism, Henriot was elected to the Third Republic's Chamber of Deputies for the Gironde département in 1932 and 1936. His speeches showed him to be an Anti-communist, Anti-Semite, Anti-Freemasonry, and Anti-parliamentarianist. Initially, these were combined with strong Anti-German sentiment - Henriot became an active supporter of Nazi Germany in 1941, when it invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa).
In 1940, after the capitulation of France, he stood by Philippe Pétain's German-backed régime (Vichy France), and joined the paramilitary Milice. Henriot become a powerful voice of Radio Paris, engineering a war of propaganda with the Free French Forces and the BBC (facing Pierre Dac and Maurice Schumann). These activities earned him the nickname of French Goebbels, and they were continued after the 1942 imposition of direct Axis rule over Southern France.
On January 6 1944, he was made the Minister of Information and Propaganda. The following June 28, in the Ministry building where he slept, a group of fifteen members of the Résistance - dressed as members of the Milice - killed him in his bed. In retaliation, Georges Mandel, a long-time opponent of collaboration, was executed.