Rexism
As Rexists is known mainly in Belgium , the supporters of the Walloon fascist movement Rex (from latin Christ Rex for Christ is king ), which during the German occupation during the Second World War with the Nazis collaborated . Due to its close adherence to the dogmatics of the Catholic Church , the movement is assigned by some historians to clerical fascism .
During the First World War , the German military administration unilaterally supported the Germanic (Dutch-speaking) Flemings to the detriment of the Romance (French-speaking) Walloons in order to induce them to collaborate (or at least to become neutral). Until the middle of the 20th century, the Flemings lived in a state that did not even have a code of law in their language. The previously undisputed supremacy of the Walloons was weakened. The Rexists emerged in response in 1918 as a "Christian renewal movement" which "naturally grown communities" such as family, profession, people as the basis of a corporately structured authoritarian demanded state. But they also strove for the equality of Belgian nationalities and for a dictatorship in Belgium based on the model of Dollfuss in the Austrian corporate state .
Their most important leader before and during the Second World War was Léon Degrelle . On the eve of the war they had several seats in the Belgian parliament, which led the king to declare neutrality. At the same time, however, there was a secret military pact with France, which the German leadership knew in detail. As in 1914, Germany ignored neutrality in 1940. The king capitulated when the foreseeable French defeat and the flight of the British troops via Dunkirk made the situation hopeless.
Notwithstanding the Flemish-Walloon antagonism , both Flemish nationalists and the Rexists collaborated intensively with the German occupiers until 1944. From a Walloon point of view, they did not want to fall behind the Flemings for the post-war order. The collaboration was particularly evident on both sides in the participation of thousands of volunteers in the Russian campaign , which was understood as a common European struggle against Bolshevism , and also as the beginning of a European (and thus also internal-Belgian) unification.
After the war, King Leopold III. In 1951 he was forced to renounce the throne for his capitulative and pro-rexist stance. Thousands of Rexists were sentenced to death or long prison terms. The rexist movement lost all meaning with the outcome of the Second World War.
literature
- José Streel: La révolution du vingtième siècle. Nouvelle société d'éditions, Bruxelles 1942 (Reproduction en fac similé: La révolution du XXe siècle. Déterna, Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) 2010, ISBN 978-2-36006-017-7 ).