Marie-Joseph Collard (9 August 1915 – 10 November 1947), known as Louis Collard,"Cons. Guerre Bruxelles (4e ch. Fr.) [Brussels War Council] (4th ch. Fr.), 11 June 1947," J.T. (in French), 22 June 1947, p. 374. was a Belgian Walloon soldier, nationalist, and politician who served as both deputy and acting leader of the Rexist Party. After World War II, he was executed for collaboration with Nazi Germany and organizing the assassination of political opponents during the German occupation of Belgium.
Biography Early life Born in Ans, Belgium, and educated in a Catholic college, Collard received the typical education of a young member of the bourgeoisie. He completed his military service in the Belgian Army, during which he obtained the rank of quartermaster sergeant. The great economic uncertainty and turmoil of the 1930s marked his path, and despite his privileged education, he drifted without a clear objective..
Rexist Party, 1936–1939
Collard was among the Rexist Party's first supporters. Despite serving only as secretary of the party at the time, he played a major role in the unexpected Rexist electoral triumph of 1936, in which the party obtained 11.49% of the seats and took charge of the Belgian province of Luxembourg. He subsequently joined the leadership of the movement, and in 1936 became responsible for organizing meetings as head of the party's meetings department. He organized large Rexist mass rallies during the winter of 1936–1937. A tireless worker despite criticism that he lacked organizational skills, Collard then took charge of Rexist Party leader Léon Degrelle's main public rallies. At the same time, he worked as an editor at the party newspaper Le Pays Réel ("The Real Country").
On 12 December 1936, Collard was placed under arrest for the theft of documents from a file in the registry of the Brussels Criminal Court. On 1 May 1938, he was summoned to appear before the court and accused of receiving stolen documents and violating professional secrecy for having diverted documents from a registry file in order to publish them as photographic reproductions in the Rexist press. Defended by Maître Waraux, he was presented as a young man proud to have obtained his first assignments for the Rexist Party and eager to serve the movement. The 20th Criminal Chamber ultimately sentenced him to eight days in prison with a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of 182 Belgian francs.
Interim period, 1939–1942 Around 1939, as the Rexist Party's fortunes and influence declined, Collard withdrew from the movement. He worked briefly for the Sarma department store before being recalled to service in the Belgian Army. World War II began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Germany invaded and conquered Belgium in May 1940, and German forces captured Collard. With Belgium under German occupation, he was released from a prisoner-of-war camp in October 1940. Although he showed no desire to rejoin the Rexist Party, his ideology remained intact. He applied for a job at the Commissariat aux prix et aux salaires ("Prices and Wages Commissariat"), a Belgian public administrative service headed by Paul Beeckman, leader of the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond ("Flemish National Union"), which was close to the New Order movement.Peter Scholliers, "L’appauvrissement Organisé : Les Prix, Les Salaires et Le Pouvoir d’achat Sous l’occupation" ["Organized Impoverishment: Prices, Wages and Purchasing Power Under the Occupation"], 1940-1945 : La Vie Quotidienne En Belgique (in French), Brussels: CGER, pp. 108–119. The Commissariat did not hire him, and he returned to Liège, where his only collaborationist activity was selling construction materials to the Germans.Charles Peeters, "Organisation interne du mouvement rexiste" ("Internal organization of the Rexist movement"), CREHSGM (in French), C 11/87.
Rexist Party, 1942–1945 Meteoric rise In September 1942, the pro-Rexist industrialist Van Reck agreed to finance the salary of an additional employee in the Rexist Party's political department, which was headed by José Streel. The department chose Collard for the position, and he took on his responsibilities with energy. At the end of 1942, Rex's interim leader, Victor Matthys, reorganized the headquarters into federations of hierarchical departments, placing the political department at the top of the organizational chart, occupying a dominant position relative to the other departments."Ordres et Communiqués" ["Orders and Communiqués"], National Socialism (n French), 15 April 1943, p. 12. Matthys appointed Léon Brunet, a notary, pre-war Rexist senator, and first alderman of Greater Brussels, to head the department to reassure skeptics after Streel's departure."Conseil de guerre de Bruxelles" ["Brussels War Council"], Le soir (in French), 5 March 1946, pp. 1–2. However, Brunet took little interest in the Rexist bureaucracy"Les conseils de guerre" ["The Courts Martial"], Le soir (in French), 7 March 1946, p. 2. and left the effective supervision of the department to Collard, whose organizational talents led to his appointment as deputy department head under Brunet."Le procès du Grand Bruxelles" ["The Trial of Greater Brussels"], Le soir (in French), 6 March 1946, p. 2.
Within six months, Collard surpassed his rivals and became Matthys's privileged advisor and confidant, playing a central role in Rexist Party initiatives of 1943. He established himself as the third-most powerful man in the party after Matthys and Degrelle, and he managed 60 employees. In 1943 and 1944, Collard dominated the Rex leadership and was described as the movement's "éminence grise" by former Rexist Henry Marcovitz. According to Marcovitz, Collard used his influence over Matthys, who by then no longer had any effective role in party affairs. The journalist Raymond De Becker also supports this thesis, but the historian Philip Rees disagrees, arguing that the Rexist movement and its collaborators disavowed Matthys, who openly and directly gave his place to Collard.Philip Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890, Simon & Schuster, 1990, p. 330. In any case, Streel, Matthys and Degrelle all recognized Collard's qualities as a dynamic and talented worker.
Infiltration of government Collard, Matthys, and their collaborators had long understood that exploitation of the recruiting base of the Walloon Legion — a combat unit initially of the German Army and later of the Waffen SS composed of French-speaking Belgian collaborators that fought against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front — was their only reasonable hope of establishing their power on a large scale in Belgium. Streel initiated this work and Collard continued it: He made Rex's political department's organization more structured and efficient and transformed Rexist policy, focusing it solely on infiltrating local government administrations. This policy of occupying positions of public responsibility originated solely from Collard's political department, and Matthys's elevation of the department's status to the highest level of the party's bureaucracy meant that Collard became the principal architect of — and the most enthusiastic of all the Rexists regarding — the idea of pursuing a policy of infiltration.
By the autumn of 1943, the political department had established a vast file covering all government personnel in Belgium, based on close relations it maintained with the Walloon cabinet at the Belgian Ministry of the Interior, and Collard visited Secretary-General of the Interior and Health Gérard Romsée at least once a week. This cooperation allowed Rex to select activists likely to be appointed to various positions within the Ministry of the Interior; in fact, relations between the Rexist political department and the cabinet became so good that the cabinet directly approached Collard to ask him to fill vacant positions with Rexist militants himself."Les conseils de guerre de Bruxelles" [""The Brussels War Councils"], Le soir (in French), 28 May 1947, p. 5. Thanks to this policy, according to a Rexist report from the end of 1943, one in eight municipalities in French-speaking Belgium was under Rexist control."Enfin, la bande Duquesne va payer!" ["Finally, the Duquesne gang will pay!"], Journal de Charleroi (in French), 13 September 1946, p. 4. The local infiltration strategy particularly targeted the most populated municipalities, such as Charleroi, La Louvière, and Liège, where, according to the report, 70% of the French-speaking population resided in municipalities run by Rexists."On va juger Duquesne...!" ["Duquesne is going to be judged...!"], Journal de Charleroi (in French), 5 September 1946, p. 4.
Collard had expressed as early as 1942 a desire to control municipal police services by infiltrating them, considering this an absolute priority for transforming towns and villages into safe havens for the Rexist movement. To this end, he promoted numerous Rexist police officers and facilitated the appointment of pro-German police officers by municipal councils Rex had infiltrated. The Rexist Party even went so far as to offer bonuses to police officers who distinguished themselves in fighting against the Belgian Resistance to the German occupation."Conseil de guerre" ["Court-martial"], La Meuse (in French), 29 March 1945, p. 2. Despite all the efforts the Rexists made to control the police, the results were disappointing, and their hope of controlling the gendarmerie faded. The pro-Rexist gendarmes became isolated and demoralized in the face of their more numerous Anglophile counterparts.
Rexist repression In 1943, as many Rexists began to feel threatened by the Belgian Resistance and Belgian collaboration with the Germans was showing signs of weakness, Matthys and Collard considered creating a special police force to protect Rexist mayors and aldermen. To this end, they approached Richard Jungclaus, the Higher SS and Police Leader in Belgium and Northern France, and proposed the creation of a Rexist bodyguard unit operating under the protection of SS forces stationed in Belgium. Jungclaus accepted this proposal in order to increase the number of men under his command and strengthen SS ties with the Rexist Party. On 20 November 1943, Collard negotiated an agreement with Jungclaus leading to the creation of the Étendard de Protection Paul Colin ("Paul Colin Protection Standard") unit, named in honor of Paul Colin, a Rexist journalist assassinated in April 1943 but more commonly known as "Formation B." The unit became operational at Namur in January 1944 and consisted of approximately 300 men operating under Rexist command, which in turn was under the overall responsibility of the SS.
On 3 January 1944, Matthys decided to reorganize the Rexist Party and made Collard secretary of the party's general staff. Collard also retained his position as head of the political department, allowing him to supervise directly all of the party's central offices. With the reorganization, Matthys adopted a more presidential role, leaving Collard with total responsibility for Rexist Party headquarters.