Régis d’Oléon, President of the “Légion Française des Combattants” of Vaucluse
The Shadow Prefect In-Waiting
Régis d’Oléon and his organization exemplified the new order established after the defeat of 1940 and the collapse of France. His collaborationist activism created an atmosphere conducive to the persecution of the Jews. More radical than the prefecture, he provided an ideological base for the staunchest anti-Jewish elements. He kept his ideological constancy until the end of the war.
Created on August 29, 1940, by Xavier Vallat, the Legion was the largest mass organization of the Vichy regime; several personalities were appointed to head over time. The Vaucluse was a good example of its national importance. In 1942, there were 102 local community sections including mostly military officers, landowners, industrialists and professionals. On its first anniversary, it boasted 15,000 members. Just for the town of Carpentras, the membership of the section1 reached 650 veterans-legionnaires, and 400 Volunteers of the National Revolution, who had not fought in the war. The law of November 19, 1941, had opened the doors of the Legion to this last category, thus significantly enlarging its membership. It must be said that the oath of the Legion allowed for it to cast a wide net:
I promise to continue serving France with honor in peace as I have when I was called up.
I promise to dedicate all my strength to the homeland, to my family and to work.
I commit to friendship and mutual aid towards my comrades of the two wars, to remain faithful to the memory of those killed in action.
I freely accept the discipline of the Legion for all orders I will receive in view of this ideal.2
However, the Legion was not a homogeneous organism in either ideology or action. Quite the opposite, it spanned a wide range of opinions and attitudes.
Barely rid of the parliamentary regime and its “old partisan struggles,”3 the Maréchal imposed the Legion rather than giving in to the temptation of a one-party system and the elections that would have ensued. In the hands of the notables, the Legion served the authoritarian regime of the Maréchal all the better since it was supervised by the old subordinates of the victor of Verdun. And for the demobilized men of the “Phony War,” the Legion substituted patriotic fervor for the shame of defeat.
The Maréchal used the Legion as a rampart against challenges to his authority from those who felt nostalgic for Parlementarism or from the ultra-collaborationists. It is possible that Pétain also saw in the Legion a roadblock to the collaborationist schemes of Laval who in turn was not fooled.
In any case, the Legion of Vaucluse did not disappoint the hopes of the Vichy ideologues. The elimination of the Jews from the economy was an integral part of it duty as guardian of the order. Under the d’Oléon presidency, some of its members went even further in their anti-Semitic collaboration in the name of the Révolution Nationale.
A Member of l’Action Française in Charge
Régis de Bonet d’Oléon4 was born in Avignon; he had a good secondary education at St. Joseph High School, followed by four years at the St. Geneviève School,* then he attended the Marine Engineering School in Paris, and had a few industrial internships in England to put the finishing touches on his training as a consulting engineer, a profession he practiced for five years in South America. He earned a Military Cross (Croix de guerre) in 1914–1918, was a reserves captain in 1920, and was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1929. This was a beautiful career path at juncture of industry and arms manufacturing, with politics not too far removed.
From 1923 to 1929, he served as elected mayor of Rognonas, a village in the Bouches du Rhône at the edge of Vaucluse, in practical terms a suburb of Avignon. Both a land owner and an engineer, he was an active member of l’Action Française.
In 1939, he was posted at the light cavalry depot No. 15 in Orange; he served as its squadron chief until the armistice. Demobilized in 1940, he settled in Avignon, where prefect Valin appointed him president of the benefit plan. In 1941, he enrolled in the Legion with a head office located at 3 bis, rue Violette in Avignon. He was then named by decree president of the special delegation and mayor of Rognonas, a position he kept until 1944.
An Appointment Imposed From Above
At the request of General Emile Laure, inspector general of the Legion, d’Oléon accepted an offer to become its president for the Vaucluse in 1942, replacing Ferdinand Bec, former president of the Avignon Bar Association, former mayor, and president of the Vaucluse federation of the League of Large Families.* The report that de Camaret sent on March 6, 1942, to his boss in Marseille about Ferdinand Bec was probably the determining factor in the change of leadership of the Legion.
… It is particularly as Département President of the Legion that his action has proven unfortunate. Indeed,
- He has not shown himself to be motivated by the spirit of the Révolution Nationale, and on several occasions, he has demonstrated a lack of faith in its success through some careless comments.
- As a result, his attitude, suspect in the eyes of the most fervent legionnaire, has sparked much dissension within the Legion.
Several reports were sent to Vichy and the principal authorities, asking for his replacement… I am bringing to your attention the most recent of these reports which was just sent to Doctor Bouyala, Regional President of the Legion, through the channel of the police for Secret Societies…
As for the Jewish question, Mr. Bec has become in a way the defender of the Jews, who appeal to him precisely because of the authority conferred to him by his title of Département President of the Legion…5
It is not surprising that d’Oléon, a great friend of de Camaret, became the successor of Ferdinand Bec.
On May 1, 1942, Bouyala proposed d’Oléon to prefect Henri Piton and asked him to receive two of his collaborators, M. Kellerhals, general secretary, and M. Paillas, inspector of the documentation service, for a discussion about the matter.6 On May 11, the prefect responded with his own list of candidates.
- Jean Farget, construction engineer
- Lucien Bonnet, lawyer, former president of the Bar
- Ferdinand Tartanson, general practitioner
- Raoul Fabre, coal trader, deputy mayor of Avignon
Visibly, d’Oléon, who did not appear on the list, was imposed by the hierarchy of the Legion, against the refusal of the prefect to accept as he wrote: “this candidate who is not from Avignon,” a barely veiled pretext to reject d’Oléon. The story of this nomination already promised a brewing conflict between the prefecture and the Legion.
The confrontations during the demonstrations of July 14, 1942, a few weeks later, radicalized the relations between the administration and the population, and induced the prefect to take action. Like many other parts of the southern zone, Avignon had responded to the appeal of the Resistance and the Free France representatives in London. The next day, in a letter to the head of the government and minister secretary of state, Pierre Laval, the prefect described the excesses of the Legion and the SOL, its independent policing service.
In Avignon, around 6:30 p.m., the City Hall and the Monument, both on place de l’Horloge, had been chosen as a rallying spot by the Gaullist demonstration.
The area of the square in question is very busy, especially on public holidays. Yesterday at 6:00 p.m., it was busier than usual. The police superintendant, in the view of the increasing number of people decided to clear the square and forbid its access, starting at 6:15 p.m.
Under these conditions, the demonstration could not therefore take place at the planned location.
But, as early as 5:45 p.m., the Legion des Combattants, whose club is located on the second floor of a building overlooking the square, started a broadcast with loudspeakers. After having picked out some lies of the British radio about the chief Darnand*, they announced that the British have sent to France a railroad car full of chocolate which the Jews and the Gaullists are invited to take delivery of at the train station…
Around 7:30 p.m., the crowd which had remained close by was slowly flowing through the rue de la République, where a police unit on bicycles was maintaining order. This crowd, swollen with spectators who exiting the movie theaters, was composed of strollers. Among them there were several groups of pretty noisy young people. One of these groups, which other people immediately joined, started again to sing the Marseillaise. There were approximately one hundred demonstrators followed by numerous onlookers. The demonstrators marched to the train station and left a short time thereafter, intending to march again towards the center of town reversing their previous itinerary. A roadblock was immediately established next to the Hautpoul barracks. It was broken, and a second one was set in front of Hotel Crillon, which is occupied by the Italian Commission of Control of War Industries and a German liaison officer.† After the intervention by the Gendarmerie which had been called in as reinforcement, the demonstrators finally scattered while blowing whistles and pouring out hostile screams against the head of the Government. Ten arrests were operated at that time, and four of them still stand.
I must underscore the facts that during the afternoon of July 14 members of the SOL had crisscrossed, in small groups and in uniform, the main artery of the city and the neighboring area of the location for the planned demonstration.
Moreover, the unexpected broadcast done by the Legion, did not particularly contribute to calm people down…
Finally, without having been asked to in any way, neither by me, nor by the Chief responsible for the police, the same SOL, with approximately 20 individuals, intervened and carried out arrests.
I must take note that the agreement that had been reiterated even very recently, about using the SOL during demonstrations, was not respected on this occasion. The public willingly accepted police intervention, but is having difficulties with this group, it is to be feared that should such acts be repeated it may result in unfortunate consequences.
I have shared these observations directly with the Chief of the Legion in the département, M. d’Oléon, but I believe that it is necessary that orders, issued by the Government, be given directly to the Heads of the Legion to the effect that any intervention of the SOL should take place only at the request of the Prefects or the Police Chiefs responsible for public order, and finally, that they should not be allowed to intervene on their own initiative.
In his trial, d’Oléon claimed:
The members of the SOL escaped my command. With the Milice, my relations were limited to a few repeated interventions in favor of people arrested either by the Milice or by the Germans.
Who is the Boss?
Following the demonstrations of July 14, the prefect had contacted d’Oléon, which proving that the link between the Legion and the SOL had not been broken, as d’Oléon claimed.
After complaining to Laval, the prefect, Henri Piton, sent a circular note. It was addressed to “The Mayors and Presidents of the Special Delegations of the Département.” He reiterated that the mission of the Legion consisted in supervising the veterans, and he accepted the possibility that its members might be called upon to render some services to the authorities. The prefect encouraged the mayors to be attentive to their advice and to establish with them a “loyal and trusting collaboration.” But he underscored that…
… the agents of the Legion… cannot forget that the representatives of the Central Power are the only trustees responsible for the constitutional authority of the Central Power…
The arm-wrestling with the prefecture continued. In his circular note of October 23, 1942, d’Oléon replied by sending his own instructions to the Presidents of the Municipal Sections of the Legion.
… external and internal events lead us to seriously contemplate the possibility that public order may be disrupted… Consequently, I am issuing the following imperative orders:
1. Each section president will study which are the vital points of his municipality that need to be maintained in the hands of the guardians of order at all costs: post office, city hall, train station, power station, food warehouses, etc.
2. Once this study is completed, they will estimate the size of the force necessary to occupy these locations, to be entrenched inside them, and to keep control over them at all costs.
3. After having so determined the number of men necessary for the fulfillment of their mission, they will draw up the list of names* of reliable Legion members, capable of playing the role assigned to them.…
4. Do not count on the SOL that would be used on the outside…
…
6 … I am requesting that a report be sent to me informing me that the aforementioned orders have indeed been implemented and that the section is ready for its role.
Two weeks later, on November 7, d’Oléon sent a copy of these directives to the prefect who had probably already obtained them from the RG (Renseignements Généraux). The president of the Legion was using a lofty tone:
… As I had told you before, this note does not have any indication related to liaison with the Gendarmerie brigades and with the mayors. This additional information has been and will be dealt with by oral instructions on my part, this in order to avoid misunderstandings.
This will allow you to come up with your own instructions to the subprefects and the mayors, in a coordinated manner…
On January 26, 1943, d’Oléon stayed the course in his report about the collaboration of the Legion with the authorities:
The prefect… reaches his decisions alone.
But at his immediate side, the Chief of the Legion of the département is:
- an informer
- an advisor
- an intermediary between the administration and those administered
- an agent of dissemination of information and directions emanating from the power
- a political controller of the agents of power
As in most totalitarian regimes, d’Oléon assumed the function of “political controller of the agents of the administration” and of shadow-prefect in-waiting.
Ideas and Actions
A note by the RG about the Legion meeting of June 6, 1943, in l’Isle sur la Sorgue reveals what d’Oléon really thought about collaboration with the Germans. In his examination of the situation in front of the members of the section, d’Oléon picked up on a classical theme of nationalistic illusion:
Thanks to its prestigious past, France will almost have the advantages of a victorious nation. It will keep its integrity. If it must lose certain regions and a few clippings, it will be largely compensated in the north. Moreover, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, the territories which are facing it will be considered as an integral part of metropolitan France. She will keep the other colonies and if the general economy is operated jointly, at least the French flag will fly again alone on these lands.
… Some think indeed that Germany has no strength left and that soon it will be useful to join the fight on the side of the Anglo-Americans with the weapons provided by them.
It is unnecessary to qualify this idea as it is fallacious. And if, at any point in time, French people were to act this way, this must be said, they would assassinate France and would be the cause of its irrevocable ruin.
D’Oléon went far beyond the intentions of the Maréchal, when he presented this argument well attuned to the collaborationist line of Pierre Laval. Things went even further. Thus, during the meeting of the Federal Council of the PPF on September 18, 1943, François Séraphin (responsible for information and head of the Avignon district of the Legion) made the announcement that
Régis d’Oléon, chief of the département Legion, and doctor Bonnefoy, chief of the départemental Milice, have taken identical steps to arm certain members of the Legion and the Milice.
Pierre Bonnefoy—a medical doctor in Sorgues, and a member of the special municipal delegation, within the leadership of both the SOL and the Milice, volunteer in the Waffen-SS on the Eastern front—was sentenced to death in absentia. He was never caught.*
Still in 1943, and in the office of the prefect during a meeting with Stehling, head of the Manpower German office, d’Oléon promised all his help to facilitate the departure of the class of 1942 to Germany for the STO.† Everything converged, most notably in his speech to the Milice constitutive assembly, held at “Le Palace” movie theatre, and reported by “Les Tablettes du Soir” of March 1, 1943.
D’Oléon claimed that the most profound friendship, the most complete camaraderie unites the Legion and the Milice. We are not only allies but combat comrades. The Legion has been a mother. It has taken its youngest sons to make them the forefront of a vanguard, but when these sons came of age, it has given them their freedom. The Legion is extremely proud of you and you have its entire support. Do not let people say that the Milice and the Legion may oppose one another, because on both sides, we are the soldiers of the Maréchal.
This article demonstrated the link between the Legion and the Milice, that d’Oléon would later deny.
Finally, the tribute paid on May 2, 1944, at the funeral of Bonadona, executed by the Resistance on April 29, 1944. About this chief of the French Guards* in Carpentras, d’Oléon said “He gave his life for France.” At his trial, d’Oléon blamed himself for not having known that Bonadona was a member of the PPF; another transparent attempt to minimize his own responsibility. This famous Bonadona was accused post mortem by Gaston Barbarant, the district chief of the PPF in Carpentras, of having made a quid-pro-quo deal with Wilhelm Müller, the Avignon head of the German police: the list of Carpentras Jews in exchange for not being sent to the STO7.
The CDL is Alarmed
D’Oléon’s rantings against the inertia of officials did not fall on deaf years. A police report dated February 10, 1945, confirmed that at the CDL, they remember “the public meetings at the municipal theater of Avignon where he underscored the benefits of the Révolution Nationale and his praise of Laval’s politics. In one of his speeches, he even spoke about the purges which had to be conducted relentlessly in the administrations against the government officials hostile to the regime.”8
The news that d’Oléon was to be judged in Civic Court rather than the Court of Justice spread like wildfire in Avignon. Alerted by the département section of the national union of government officials and agents of the prefecture, which thinks that “this decision [avoidance of the Court of Justice] could only have originated from the lack of proof and testimony against the accused,” as the president of the CDL immediately wrote on June 14, 1945, to the president of the Court of Justice.
Already during the session of the CDL of April 21, 1945, Resistance fighter Georges Laudon was very concerned, to the point of going public about the preferential treatment given to the prisoners d’Oléon and his good friend de Camaret. He stated:
At the Court of Justice I have learned a fact that I intend to publicize, in spite of the requests I have received to keep silent about it. On the 21st of last month, two distinguished prisoners have been taken out of Ste Anne and transferred to the camp at Sorgues. Moreover, they have never been placed under committal order at the Ste Anne prison. I am talking about Messers. de Camaret and d’Oléon, whose schemes you are aware of. The first was president of the anti-Semitic Legion,* and the second was recruiting Miliciens under the cover of the Legion. This is absolutely unacceptable… this is due to interventions from above and not to the work overload of the government commissioner.
In their session of June 20, 1945, the members of the CDL of the Vaucluse were stunned, when they were told that d’Oléon would be brought in front of the Civic Chamber, thus escaping the Court of Justice.9
On June 23, the CDL was informed of the response of the president of the Court of Justice, Judge Pierre Burgède.
In response to your letter of June 14, received today (June 20), related to the Régis d’Oléon affair, I have the honor to inform you that whether to refer a case to the Civic Court or the Court of Justice is for the government commissioner to decide. However, the members of the jury of the Civic Chamber have the opportunity, if they deem the case serious, to declare themselves incompetent, and to send it back to the Court of Justice.
Paul Faraud, the CDL president, thundered forth.
This beats everything we had seen so far. I think that we need to stand our ground. D’Oléon has done so much propaganda, he is, in my mind, far more guilty than an ordinary milicien who has been brainwashed into signing a piece of paper.
The anger was genuine. The case of d’Oléon was symbolic of a period when conflicting interests were colliding in the purge process.
To Judge But to Spare
During his trial, d’Oléon described his functions as innocently as possible:
- passing on to the prefect the complaints about malfunctions of the services
- informing Vichy about the malfunctions of the services, the unfortunate measures…
- helping prisoners and their families
- provide all possible services in the social area
In front of the court, he took pride in the creation of his mutual aid restaurants to feed all kinds of refugees—and he specified “including Israelites.”* Here is a man who quite simply did only good things!
When it comes to the persecution of the Jews, d’Oléon’s Legion had been the main Vaucluse source for de Camaret’s network of informers. In the Vaucluse, seven presidents of local sections and numerous active simple members volunteered for this network, which also supplied provisional administrators to the CGQJ. The presidents of twelve district and local sections were brought to trial in front of the Court of Justice. This role of d’Oléon did not come up during his trial. Who then was the real Régis d’Oléon?
The fact is that his leadership role as a collaborator was minimized. Even his participation in the infamous Tribunal d’État in Lyon from September 22, 1943, to June 20, 1944, the crowning achievement of his career, went off without a hitch.10 D’Oléon sat on this court as a nonprofessional judge in company of Joseph Darnand—head of the Milice, officer in the Waffen-SS, chief of police and secretary of state for the maintenance of law and order at the request of the Germans—who had recommended him for his titles and his 9 children family, as greatly valuable to Vichy.11
In spite of all of this, on July 11, 1945, the Civic Chamber found d’Oléon solely guilty of indignité nationale (national indignity) and sentenced him to dégradation nationale à vie (national degradation, i.e., loss of civil rights, for life):
The accused is guilty of having, in France, after June 16, 1940, either by his words or by his actions, knowingly provided direct or indirect assistance to Germany, or damaged the unity of the nation, the freedom of French people or the equality between them. After he committed the crimes retained by the court, he has not rehabilitated himself.
There was no mention that the institution he had been the president of had provided a wealth of anti-Jewish activists, except the rather subtle mention “damaged… the equality between them.” A justice barely symbolic in the name of national reconciliation? One senses in this verdict a reluctance to add on any further accusations against this soldier of the Maréchal.
There was even a Jew to defend him. René Gutman, a medical doctor at Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris, claimed that “d’Oléon had intervened several times in favor of arrested Jews.” He cited Dr. Albert Lesbros, and for himself, “d’Oléon has intervened several times with the organism for Jewish Questions for my file to be hidden from the Germans.” So d’Oléon had helped a “good Jew,” but is that sufficient to exonerate him? René Gutman states: “Finally, I know that Mr. d’Oléon declared several times that the anti-Semitic persecutions triggered by the Vichy government were disgusting and unacceptable.”
Would d’Oléon have provided to de Camaret a long list of reliable correspondents in the towns and villages, as well as administrators of Jewish assets, if he had really deemed the persecution of the Jews “disgusting and unacceptable”? Or maybe he had “his own Jews,” as we have seen in the case of Aimé Autrand? The fact remains that René Gutman, a convert in 1914 and close to d’Oléon, needed this help, because in the eyes of the Nazis and of the CGQJ, he was still Jewish as he did not have at least two Christian grandparents, as specified in the Statute.
In fact, would Gutman have felt offended by the correspondence of Bernard Faucon to his “Dearest Guigui,” as he was so sweetly calling his wife?12 Faucon, an Avignon insurance agent, who resided in Villeneuve lès Avignon, was the chief of a hundred (chef de centaine) in the Milice.* He had participated in several expeditions and was sentenced to hard labor for life. During a reception at his home in Villeneuve, he conversed with his friends Max Knipping and d’Oléon. These people respected and understood one another without having to spell it out. They belonged to the Avignon establishment of the “dark years.”
On July 9, 1943, while on a business trip on the Côte d’Azur, Faucon wrote to his wife, the mother of his six children:
The sky was stormy, but this did not prevent me to have a delightful swim. There is nobody in Cannes except a few Yids. Without them, it would be marvelous.
As Faucon notices, the Jews felt safe in Italian occupied Cannes.
The denials by d’Oléon were barely veiled attempts to disclaim any responsibility. But it is also possible that d’Oléon did not understand, at the time of his trial, how disgrace could have been brought upon the social establishment he had been part of. Moreover, he had not fled as the allies were closing in, maybe because of his trust in the establishment, whose downfall he could not conceive.
The national degradation for life of Régis d’Oléon apparently did not preclude him from being honored after his death. The city of Rognonas made sure we are not disappointed, when it expressed its gratitude to its former mayor of 1923–1929 by dedicating two streets to him, boulevard de Bonet d’Oléon and the alley d’Oléon. The street signs do not mention that in 1941–1944, he had been mayor and president of the special delegation directly appointed by Vichy. There was to be one more street to his name than Aimé Autrand.
On the other hand, de Camaret got nothing.
To Top a Résumé
The arrests of September 16, 1943, aimed at disciplining the French institutions did not succeed in getting the prefecture in step and shake its inertia. Prefect Benedetti, appointed on December 16, 1943, and in the eyes of the Germans, no more docile than his predecessors, was arrested on May 11, 1944. The SiPo-SD became impatient, since the case of the Vaucluse was not unique. On May 27, 1944, Colonel Helmut Knochen, head of the SiPo-SD, sent a proposal for reorganization of the prefectures to his superior infantry General Heinrich Von Stülpnagel, supreme military commander in France. Knochen described the malaise:
The current crisis in the prefectural administration has the striking result that neither Laval nor Lemoine are in a position or have the will to accept the strict execution and supervision of the orders given by your authority.13
He then proposed to replace 14 département and region prefects with trusted individuals who were not from the traditional administration. However, this is an approach that von Stülpnagel would oppose. In fact, the supreme commander had penciled a question mark next to the paragraph in question.
For the Vaucluse, Knochen nominated Jean Lombard, subprefect in St. Julien en Genevoix (Haute Savoie). Régis d’Oléon apparently suited the taste of the SiPo-SD, since he was meant to take over as regional prefect of Montpellier.
Régis d’Oléon had definitely crossed into the circle of trust of the heads of the SiPo-SD in Avignon and Marseille.
Had Knochen’s letter been revealed to the court, would it have made a difference?
____________________
* Four years at the St. Geneviève school, a preparatory class for Engineering School, seems to be a very long time.
* The Leagues of Large Families (Ligues des Familles Nombreuses) were private organizations declared beneficial to the general public which started operating at the end of the 19th century in defense of empoverished large families. Their importance grew with the demographic problems cause by the 1914–1918 war. The Vichy regime enhanced their importance and federated them under French Families Federations (Fédération Française des Familles).
* Joseph Darnand (1897–1945), leader of the Legion and, later, head of the Milice at its creation.
† The prefect mentions in passing that German and Italian representatives were at the Crillon hotel. Before the occupation of the free zone, these individuals probablement had intelligence functions, under the cover of their coordination role. A prelude to a carefully planed invasion?
* Underlined by d’Oléon.
* After several postings, in August 1944, he served in Galicia as medical officer, ending up with the rank of Obersturbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel), in the first battalion of the 8th SS Assault Brigade (Charlemagne Division) of French volunteers.
† The class of 1942 were the 20 year olds, who would have been drafted for the military service under normal circumstances.
* PPF groups armed by the Germans in case of uprising.
* M. Laudon was referring this way to the CGQJ, by using a descriptive expression of the times.
* Two are in Avignon, and one in Carpentras, Cavaillon and l’Isle sur la Sorgue.
* See Appendix B (Organization of the Milice).