Une tentative de propagande raciste dans la France de 1943. Darquier de Pellepoix et l’union française pour la défense de la race

Abstract

Up until May 1942 when Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was appointed Head of the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs, Vichy’s anti-Semitic propaganda was limited to several radio programs and a few publications. As the leader of the anti-Jewish party in France during the late 1930s, Darquier de Pellepoix accomplished his ambition to found a large popular racist party and named it The French Union for the Defense of the Race (UFDR). After a troublesome beginning, the UFDR was launched in January 1943 and made 5 minute bi-weekly broadcasts on Mondays and Fridays at 12 p.m. on the national radio waves. However, all its other initiatives failed and the number of its followers was meager total of 469 subscribers. In October 1943 the Union was disbanded by orders of the occupying authorities. This failure can be attributed to several factors including the organization’s own history, its disjointed ambitions and the rivalries which existed among Darquier de Pellepoix, his opponents and members of the German Embassy in Paris.The discovery of an unpublished archival fund, sealed immediately after the Second World War and containing documents of the UFDC, allows us to trace the history of this association which represented the only attempt to create a national “racist” movement financed by the French state under Nazi occupation.