by Richard Schapke

Aug 16, 2024

∙ Paid

Richard Schapke describes Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s ideological journey from a right-wing nationalist to a disillusioned fascist and advocate of pan-Europeanism and revolutionary socialism, ultimately leading to his collaboration with the Germans and tragic end.

I was born a right-winger and preserved through my upbringing a sense of authority and also an indestructible feeling for the homeland. But I had to move to the left to find the thorough awareness of the social disorder caused by decadent liberalism, by a capitalism devoid of any virtue.

— Drieu La Rochelle

We do not fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor for a right-wing dictatorship. We fight not for this or that. We fight against everyone: that is the meaning of fascism.

— Drieu La Rochelle

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle was born on January 3, 1893, as the son of a wealthy family of architects in Paris. Early on, the pupil of a Catholic private school showed a keen interest in Napoleon and the First Empire. These influences were soon joined by Friedrich Nietzsche and Georges Sorel. In 1910, Drieu La Rochelle began studying history, English, and law at the Sorbonne. However, he failed his exams in 1913 and was promptly drafted into military service. As a soldier, he experienced World War One from the beginning, during which he was wounded twice.

His first literary attempts also took place during the war. In the poetry collection Interrogation from 1917, the Germans were not portrayed as hateful enemies, as was common, but rather as brothers bound by the same fate. “I do not hate you, but I confront you with the full force of my weapons.” His time as a soldier ended in 1919, and Drieu La Rochelle, never plagued by financial worries due to his background and marriage, immersed himself in intellectual circles. From the realization of a world without valid values arose the struggle against the stagnant, corrupt bourgeois society. The bohemian initially sympathized with Action française, even though he did not share their anti-German stance.

In 1922, Drieu La Rochelle stated,

Europe, situated between two empires of continental dimensions, is beginning to suffer from being divided into 25 states, none of which are capable of surpassing the others or representing them with dignity… Perhaps we will succeed in awakening the deceased soul of the European homeland through the practice of federation…

This pan-Europeanism was complemented by the search for a functional political order. In the European Review, the maturing ideologue published the article “Capitalism, Communism, and the European Spirit” in 1927. The traditional value system had been destroyed worldwide by the World War, and all rescue measures were futile. In Drieu La Rochelle’s eyes, there was no God, no aristocracy, no bourgeoisie, no property, no homeland, and no proletariat anymore. “There are only people who are forced to create something new in order not to die.” He pointed out to orthodox Marxists that there were more than two classes, and the social structure was constantly changing. The article advocated a communism altered by capitalist influences as a grounded European opposition to the West.

In Geneva or Moscow (1928), Drieu La Rochelle elaborated on his views:

This will undoubtedly be a very strange civilization: abstract, mechanical, and surreal, focused on sports and dependent on drugs, obsessed with masturbation and Malthusianism… not artistic, but rather scientific and superstitious, as it is now spreading among us to our horror, driven equally by capitalism and Marxism — by both Chicago and Moscow.

Communism and capitalism were equally enemies of Europe, “inseparable agents of the ruin of known cultures.”

Europe is threatened by American capitalism and Russian imperialism… It is the battlefield where the two systems openly confront each other… We must create Europe, as it is necessary to breathe in order not to die. We must create Europe if we do not want to act like Bolsheviks from the left or the right, if we do not want to build a huge pyre on which within twenty years all culture, hope, and human honor will burn.

Drieu rejected the old fatherlands that tore Europe apart and called for the fight against the old forms.

Consequently, in 1930/31, he refused membership in the Legion of Honor — accepting this honor was not compatible with the fight against bourgeois society. The essay “Europe against the Fatherlands” followed in 1931. In the new Europe, ethnic conditions should be respected. Drieu La Rochelle envisioned autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine, while in places like Savoy or Corsica, a referendum on state affiliation should be held. After the civil war-like riots of February 1934, the final break with democracy and capitalism occurred.

In the article “Against the Right and against the Left,” he called for the formation of a new type of party:

This party must, if it is to survive, fight against the following: 1. the monarchists, the reactionary cliques paid by capital, who applaud the parliamentarians and journalists of the old right; 2. the radicals and socialists who imitate the old parliamentary routine, who profit from the old game of tacit understanding between capitalism and the representatives of democracy; 3. the communists, who isolate themselves with sterile and narrow worker policies. This party will unite the disillusioned radicals, the non-functionary syndicalists, the French socialists, the former fighters, and the nationalists who do not want to be decoys of capitalist maneuvers.

From then on, Drieu La Rochelle described himself as a fascist. He saw fascism as the political movement of the youth of Europe willing to renew itself.

Fascism is a reformed socialism, but a socialism that, in my opinion, possesses more wealth and energy than that of the old political parties.

Drieu La Rochelle was greatly disappointed by the union of the Communist Party of France (CPF) with the socialists and radicals in the Popular Front of 1935.

Instead, I wanted to unite the demonstrators of February 6 with those of February 9, the fascists with the communists.

In September 1935, he traveled to Germany, where he met with his old friend Otto Abetz and with Ernst von Salomon. The Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg made a very impressive impact:

What I saw exceeded everything I expected. It was intoxicating and terrifying. It seems increasingly certain to me that the future, one way or another, will not be peaceful. In any case, it is impossible for France to continue to exist motionless next to such a Europe… The parade of the elite troops dressed entirely in black was of haughty splendor. Since the Russian ballets, I have not experienced a comparable artistic shock.

The journey then continued to Moscow — the ambivalent relationship with communism would accompany Drieu La Rochelle throughout his life.

In 1936, he joined the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) founded by former CPF politician Jacques Doriot, where he served as a member of the Central Committee and a contributor to the party newspaper National Emancipation. The PPF’s following consisted mainly of intellectuals and workers. Its program rejected class struggle, egalitarianism, and a state-controlled economy. The workers were to receive shares in the produced goods or profit participation. These shares would form the fonds social (social fund), with which the working class was to be de-proletarianized and socially equalized. After two and a half years, he left the party in 1939 because, in Drieu La Rochelle’s eyes, Doriot neglected socialism and also placed France’s national interests behind those of the Axis. He was shocked by the annexation of Czechoslovakia, as Hitler thus returned to the old methods of imperialist conquest politics.

The book Gilles, published in 1939, served as a manifesto for activism. The main character in the novel fought on Franco’s side in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Jeanne d’Arc Battalion: “He was alone, he found himself again. What had he been for twenty years? Nothing… Now, once again, he could be himself.” Regarding the political struggle, it was said:

Immediately open an office to assemble fighting units. No appeals, no programs, no new party. Just fighting units, calling themselves fighting units… Seize a newspaper from the right and one from the left one after another. Have someone beaten up at his home. Above all, stay away from the routine of the old parties, the appeals, the meetings, the newspaper articles, and the speeches. And you will immediately form a powerful movement of unity. The barriers between right and left will be torn down forever and currents of life will pour in all directions. Don’t you feel how the current swells? It is here, before us, it can be directed in the desired direction, but it must be directed immediately, at all costs.

After the collapse of France in 1940, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle became one of the leading collaborators. He held communists, freemasons, Jews, and socialists responsible for the destruction of the national will to self-assertion. The writer hoped for a just social reorganization of Europe and European unity, which he would ultimately see fail due to German imperialism. His ideal was a European empire modeled after the medieval Holy Roman Empire, based on the principles of nationalist socialism. In vain, he urged the now German ambassador Abetz to build a French unified party. However, the Germans did not want this, systematically pursuing the fragmentation of the collaborators instead. Drieu La Rochelle opposed Marshal Pétain, the head of state, whom he saw as the embodiment of archaic thinking. He had no sympathy for the dubious Laval either.

In December 1940, Abetz granted Drieu La Rochelle extensive freedoms and the takeover of the newspaper Nouvelle Revue Française. This now became an intellectual center of collaboration. Hitler was compared to Napoleon; the German leader appeared as the herald of a new European socialism. Soon the circle was also in contact with Ernst Jünger, stationed in Paris, and with Carl Schmitt.

A trip to Germany in October 1941 was very sobering. Hitlerism showed itself to be more nationalist than socialist. During this trip, Drieu La Rochelle, together with Robert Brasillach, represented France at the Weimar Writers’ Conference organized by Goebbels. Here, the European Writers’ Union was founded, whose members were supported in every way within the German sphere of influence. In 1942/43, the writer temporarily rejoined the PPF. Nevertheless, he increasingly became frustrated with the political and military developments, and first thoughts of suicide emerged. In April 1943, Drieu La Rochelle switched to the magazine Révolution Nationale.

When Mussolini was overthrown in July 1943, he noted in his diary, “The Marxists were right: Ultimately, fascism was nothing more than bourgeois defense. Now (it has been like this for a year), all my wishes are directed towards communism.” This was still preferable to capitalism and Americanism. In August 1943, Drieu La Rochelle harshly criticized the Italian corporative system. Mussolini was always bound to the crown, the church, and capital, and showed no signs of social revolution.

From a social standpoint, the work of fascism has always remained insufficient. Corporatism is no solution. As it has demonstrated its inadequacy in France, I think it has done so in Italy as well. Corporatism is only useful as a pathway to socialism, but if it is turned into a brake, it only provokes dissatisfaction… Italian corporatism serves, due to its shortcomings and ambiguities, as a model for all those hesitant and disguised regimes that try to muddle through between the democratic-capitalist and the socialist period. This system has only strengthened monopolies and trusts under the timid control of the state. By the way, we have now reached a paradoxical situation. Capitalism has begun to hate corporatism, which it once approved as its salvation.

In October 1943, open criticism of the German side followed:

It cannot be hidden that the French who sought support from the Germans to rebuild their country have badly committed themselves. They have found hardly any sense of universalism or European ‘systematization’ in German politics, as they expected.

A diary entry from March 1, 1944, reads:

The Germans are political zeros. Their entire Roman policy of brutal domination does not pay off. What a European decline! Germany, incapable like England and France! After a century of petty bourgeois civilization, there is no more political genius. Hitler is a German revolutionary, but not a European one… He is not socialist enough — more nationalist than socialist — more militaristic than political.

The article “Fascist Balance Sheet,” written at the same time, was banned. According to Drieu La Rochelle, German politics failed in all conquered countries due to prejudices, old war habits, and old diplomacy. Germany had failed to turn its war of conquest into a revolutionary war. The National Socialist revolution appeared to be a failure economically, socially, and politically. The annexation of Czechoslovakia, Alsace, Northern France, and Poland was criticized, as was the plundering of Europe by Germany or the retention of prisoners of war. In a united Europe, Germany would have been the leading power anyway, so the excesses seemed completely unnecessary. Drieu La Rochelle demanded the conclusion of peace treaties and the establishment of a European customs union. The ultimate goal was the United States of Europe, created through plebiscites in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark. The Wehrmacht should become the core of the European army, with the Waffen-SS as the center of the warlike European youth.

The National Socialist revolution was not fully carried out in any area… It showed too much deference to the members of the old military and economic leadership, and it was too lenient with the capitalist establishment and the old elites.

Nevertheless, Mussolini and Hitler had punched a big hole in the capitalist front.

In this regard, we will not have been mistaken. We European fascists, we will have been truly revolutionary, as we wanted to be. We can die in peace. We have accomplished a task that others besides us in Europe could not accomplish. Later, the communists will find that we have cleared the way for them, a path on which they timidly advanced at the beginning.

After the Americans occupied Paris in August 1944, Drieu La Rochelle went underground to escape the brutal reckoning of the victors. At the turn of the year, he noted in his diary:

What will happen to me? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. The alternative between democracy and communism doesn’t interest me. I was for Europe, and Europe was destroyed by Hitler in 1940; I was for European socialism, but that no longer exists today, for Europe has been divided between the Anglo-Americans and the Russians.

In 1945, Drieu La Rochelle wrote the Secret Report as his political testament. He accused Hitler of having ruined Europe just as much as the Allies.

I belong to the intellectuals whose role it is to be in the minority… I am proud to have been one of those intellectuals. Later, people will curiously examine us to hear a different tone than the usual one. And this faint tone will grow stronger and stronger… I am not only French, I am European. So are you, unconsciously or consciously. But we played, and I lost. I ask for death.

On March 15, 1945, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle took his own life in Paris with a gas stove and pills to avoid an announced show trial, the outcome of which was beyond doubt given the conditions that mocked all rule-of-law norms.

(translated from the German by Constantin von Hoffmeister)