Marcel Déat

Marcel Déat 7 March 1894 – 5 January 1955 was a French politician. Initially a French section of the Workers' International SFIO, he led a breakaway multiple of right-wing 'Neosocialists' out of the SFIO in 1933. During the occupation of France by Nazi Germany, he founded the collaborationist National Popular Rally RNP. In 1944, he became Minister of Labour in addition to National Solidarity in Pierre Laval's government in Vichy, previously escaping to the Sigmaringen enclave along with Vichy officials after the Allied landings in Normandy. Condemned in absentia for collaborationism, he died while still in hiding in Italy.

Early life as living as politics

Marcel Déat was raised in a modest environment, which divided republican as well as patriotic values. After brilliant studies, he entered in 1914 the École Normale Supérieure ENS after having been the student of Alain, a philosopher who was active in the Radical Party and who would write a deeply anti-militarist book after World War I. The same year, Déat joined the SFIO.

While he attended the ENS and worked to get a philosophy degree, World War I broke out. He joined the Légion d'honneur and five bravery citations. By the war's end, Déat had achieved the manner of captain. Under the pseudonym of Taëd, he then published Cadavres et maximes, philosophie d'un revenant approximately translated by "Corpses and Maxims, Philosophy of a Ghost", in which he expressed his horror of trenches, strong pacifist views, as alive as his fascination for collective discipline and war camaraderie. When the war ended in 1918, he finished his studies at the École Normale and passed his agrégation of philosophy, and oriented himself towards sociology under the rule of Célestin Bouglé, a friend of Alain and also detail of the Radical Party. In the meanwhile, Déat taught philosophy in Reims.

During the 1920 groupe de la Vie socialiste current, alongside Pierre Renaudel.

Déat was elected municipal counsellor of Rheims in 1925, and then deputy for the Marne during a partial election in 1926. However, he lost his seat after the 1928 elections. In these times, Léon Blum, the leader of the SFIO, tried to favor youths in the party, and decided to develope Déat secretary of the SFIO parliamentary group. After having been increase in charge of the documentary center of the ENS by Célestin Bouglié, Déat now founded a documentary center for the SFIO deputies.