on January 19, 1945, Robert Brasillach was sentenced to death

After a five-hour hearing and twenty minutes of deliberation, Robert Brasillach was sentenced to death on January 19, 1945 for intelligence with the enemy. He was shot at Fort Montrouge on February 6 after General de Gaulle refused to commute his sentence despite a petition in his favor signed in particular by Mauriac, Camus, Claudel, Valéry, Cocteau.

The promising writer, editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic magazine I’m everywherewas a convinced collaborationist, admirer of the Third Reich. Its defenders will argue that words do not kill. His express trial, symbol of the purge, where everything was decided in advance, will continue to cause much ink to flow while so many other personalities compromised in the Collaboration will escape the death penalty.

Au Figarothe trial report is signed by the journalist Edouard Helsey. This renowned major reporter had already exercised his pen in the columns of the newspaper during the Gestapo trial on Rue Lauriston.

Article published in Le Figaro on January 20, 1945

Thin, as if shrunken in his too-large overcoat, his tiny hands barely overflowing the sleeves, Robert Brasillach, when the guard places him in the dock, is no longer the jovial, advantageous, noisy and peremptory boy that we have known. He’s a schoolboy caught at fault, about to appear before the principal.

He groomed himself carefully. He wears a beautiful garnet tie in a large white collar. His temples are freshly shorn. Very black locks highlight the paleness of his forehead. The look, extremely mobile behind large tortoiseshell glasses, shows less concern than curiosity.

We would forget, seeing him looking so young, the role he has played for seven or eight years and that a capital accusation weighs on him.

Does he himself fully realize the tragedy of his situation? We have the right to ask ourselves that. We remember, not without a feeling of sadness, the normalien before the war, friend of the “hoax”, a bit of a humbug, who prided himself on not taking anything too seriously and who joyfully juggled with ideas.

But ideas are not toys. They hurt and, often, they kill.

The entire audience will be held in three monologues, because President Vidal, during the interrogation, will limit himself to briefly asking rapid questions, as if he were dispassionately operating a series of switches. Only Brasillach will speak. Then, as we are not to hear any witnesses, it will immediately be the indictment and the pleadings.

The accused also defends himself skillfully and firmly. He denies nothing of the hundred articles that he is accused of and that he published in I am everywhere. He believed in Germany. He loved Germany. He hoped that France would adapt to its own genius what could be valid in fascist ideology. He hated the parliamentary Republic. He also believed that the day after the defeat, France had every interest in creating a viable place for itself with the winner.

The abandonment of “I am everywhere”

Along the way, he throws a few slashes, scratches today’s “resistance fighters”, whose patriotism was for a long time quite lukewarm, discreetly blames those of his fellow fighters who fled, and he explains that if he abandoned I’m everywhere in 1943, it was because they wanted to lead him into certain exaggerations that he did not approve of. But he has not a word of regret for the odious sentences which he has signed more than once and which cannot be read without horror. A sinister story of an unfortunate man who, almost without realizing it, slipped from the plane of literature onto that of facts.

The Government Commissioner is the formidable Mr. Reboul. We shudder when, to begin with, he covers the accused with flowers. We clearly feel that all these praises hide poisonous thorns. The indictment at times takes on the tone of a reception speech at the Academy. But these are not the doors to immortality that he opens to Robert Brasillach. They are those of death.

— Non, he exclaimsthe Republic is not putting you on trial for your opinions. You have powerfully helped to mislead an entire youth elite. France at war defends itself. We will quibble. We will talk about the rights of Justice. Oh! Justice… There is the country. It is with complete security of conscience that I request the death penalty against you.

Brasillach listened without flinching, but he had to take it upon himself to keep calm and we saw a bit of foam suddenly whiten the corners of his lips.

Me Isorni’s pleading

Me Isorni, to save the life of his client, will make a courageous effort in vain. He wants to move the jury by recalling that Captain Brasillach, the father of the accused, was killed just thirty years ago, in January 1915. He speaks of the great talent of the accused in whom we had the right to ‘expect a very high-class writer. He cites letters from Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel and François Mauriac in support of this opinion. But this language seems Hebrew to the jurors, standing still, like accessories painted trompe l’oeil on a backdrop. No doubt they knew I am everywhere. Failing to hold a Laubreaux, a Cousteau, a Lesca or a Rebatet, all on the run, they will make whoever is there pay (Ccollaborators of the anti-Semitic newspaper, they will be sentenced to death but, on the run or pardoned, will escape execution, Editor’s note). Me Isorni will waste his time and effort trying to bend them. His ardent sincerity, his calls for clemency and reconciliation will perhaps stir the audience. The judges are impervious to it. And the death verdict they report surprises no one. From the start of the hearing, he was taken for granted.

The condemned man greeted him with a certain cockiness. He had the strength to smile at the friends who flocked to shake his hand. He always maintained that a leader must hold himself accountable and he viewed himself as a leader.

— It’s a shame, someone told himin a guise of condolence.

— But no, he saidit’s an honor.

Poor, well-gifted, but non-judgmental simpleton, whose desire to shine and sectarianism will ultimately have made him fall like a soldier of the enemy. Alas! Is it not a great misfortune, when one has a light mind, to be born in difficult times?

By Edouard Helsey