Oltramare, from the “Duke of Geneva” to the anti-Semite of Vichy

At the beginning, nothing or almost nothing comes through Georges Oltramareyoung journalist, correspondent in Romania during the Great War, from where he sent chronicles which contained criticism of Germanism and conservative clans.

Georges Oltramare began by making a name for himself in the cultural Geneva of the 1920s. He wrote a column in “La Suisse” whose beginnings were from the outset quite moralistic. He wrote several light, humorous plays, played on stage, made a name for himself in Paris, and had a series of “talks”. The review is generally positive.

But from satire, “Géo” quickly moved on to pamphlet, founding the magazine “Le Pilori” in 1923 which allowed him to hit the headlines. The same year, he already had several defamation trials, one of which turned into a physical attack where scores were settled with a cane and an ivory pommel. In this case, Oltramare is cleared. But not on other similar trials which will continue for ten years.

The Masonic delirium

“Le Pilori” is notoriously anti-Semitic and anti-Freemason. In 1928, the title even launched a cantonal initiative, aiming to ensure that “no magistrate or civil servant is a member of a secret society”.

In fact, Oltramare gradually weaved its web. There we find in particular a certain René Fonjallaz, one of the sons of the Vaudois colonel, with whom he signed an innocent “Love in French-speaking Switzerland”. Innocent? Not so much. 1942, René Fonjallaz will be established in France, where he writes several articles for “Au pilori”, one of the worst anti-Semitic newspapers of the collaboration.

Oltramare failed to join the cantonal Executive, but launched his own movement, the “National Political Order” which would become the “National Union”. There we take an oath as in the days of foreign service, military discipline, training of the “service of order” in street combat… attempts at extensions are taking place in French-speaking Switzerland, notably with the efforts of the infamous pastor Philippe Lugrin.

“Incident” in Montcherand

The “National Union” is angry with democracy, with the League of Nations (SDN, ancestor of the UN), with big finance. But “despite his proclamations, Georges Oltramare has no real doctrine or coherent program, contenting himself with an ideology with vague and essentially negative contours.” writes historian Claude Torracinta. “Géo” rubs shoulders with Charles Maurras, Céline, meets Mussolini. In 1934, he set up a resounding jacquerie in Montcherand, birthplace of the socialist Léon Nicole.

1938, the socialist press ensures that “the Geneva Führer” threatened elected officials in public. “If, when the war is upon us, Switzerland finds itself in the League of Nations, we will consider the members of the government as traitors and we will punish them as such.” He was not prosecuted, but abruptly left the political scene a year later.

Towards Nazism

The historian Christophe Vuilleumier recalls that Oltramare had already been accused of being a Hitler agent by “Berner Tagblatt”, and that it was a relative who rented its local headquarters to the Geneva NSDAP.

In 1940, Oltramare left Geneva definitively and entered occupied France, signing in particular “Charles Dieudonné”. We will find him at the head of “La France au travail”, a barely unofficial organ of the German embassy, ​​or on the airwaves of “Radio Paris”: “Who is the interloper, descendant of the wandering Jew, who wandered too much in Europe and who has to leave, it’s the yip (bis)», he sang there, in 1942.

Arrested in 1945, Oltramare was tried in 1947 for having openly criticized federal neutrality. He will be defended by Eugène Duperrier, former member of the National Union, also lawyer, four years earlier, of the leader of the assassins of the cattle dealer Arthur Bloch in Payerne.

Did you find an error? Please report it to us.

0 comments