Foreign News: New Bully

A new, potent figure emerged in German Europe (and, according to Moscow, got shot in the arm last week). The new man of power: 46-year-old, heavy-jawed Joseph Darnand, an experienced terrorist who now commands all police and military guards in France, dominates Vichy.

The Killer. The Germans put Darnand in power. Late last December, old Marshal Pétain first resisted, then gave in to a Nazi demand that he revamp his government, throw out many of his closest advisers, replace them with stronger men who would not be squeamish about suppressing underground resistance. One of the new appointees was Joseph Darnand, a former carpenter who received full power over French police, gendarmerie, secret service, militia, and the private armies of ultra-collaborationists like Marcel Déat and Jacques Doriot. Also, in the event of Puppet Pierre Laval’s absence (which, of course, can be arranged at any time), Darnand is automatically to become “acting Chief of Government.” Mourning somewhere in the shadows is Marshal Pétain (who had written to Laval that he “declined all personal responsibility for . . . the new Cabinet”).

Darnand was a sergeant in World War I, a lieutenant in World War II, was highly decorated in both. He formed his own Fascist outfit, the Chevaliers du Glaive, in the ’30s became prominent among the Cagoulards (“Hooded Men”) a secret terrorist group which organized bombings and assassinations, stored arms depots all over France. Darnand was prosecuted for complicity in the murder of a business associate, for being too close to the Duce’s intelligence service, for bad checks issued in his name by his mistress.

Released from prison at World War II’s outbreak, he was captured by the Germans in June 1940, was at once repatriated. Then he became active in Pétain’s Legion of War Veterans, organized a special shock corps called SOL (Service d’Ordre de la Légion).

Pierre Laval sensed that brutal, stocky Joseph Darnand was seeking notoriety and power, thought he could use such a man. Laval sent Darnand to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, who received him magnificently. Since then, Darnand has nurtured his shock troopers, recently showed off their skill in thuggery to a group of Nazi experts visiting Vichy.

Killer at Work. When invasion comes, Darnand’s job will be to keep order in the rear of the German defenders. In advance of invasion, his job is to quiet those Frenchmen who yearn too strongly for it. His personally appointed courts now have the power of life & death over any Frenchman they can catch. His thugs do not require even this veneer of legality.

At Grenoble, city of glovemakers and students, Darnand’s men killed 18 intellectuals in one week. On a country road, they assassinated 81-year-old humanitarian Professor Victor Basch and his wife. Respected Maurice Sarraut, owner of the famous democratic newspaper La Dépêche, was shot dead on a Toulouse street. Two French senators were murdered.

Darnand has even tried to extend his long arm to neutral Sweden. He asked Vichy’s Chargé d’Affairs in Stockholm to report the names of all French prisoners of war who have escaped from Germany to Sweden and express anti-Vichy views. Penalty: sentences of death in absentia.