Léon Degrelle comme référence des droites radicales allemandes après 1945

The Belgian fascist Léon Degrelle claimed easily being Hitler’s spiritual heir in the post-war, a role which became obvious at the end of the 1970’s when he was the last of the great War collaborators still alive. On the fringes of the political spectrum Degrelle’s personality was still fascinating. This was also the case in Germany where – like an absent chief – he was used as a reference by right-wing movements from various tendencies – from the, expected, reference for the veterans of the Waffen-SS to reference for neo-nazi movements at the turn of the 1970-1980s. Finally, he was also a reference for the Europeanization of the right-wing extremism which considered him as a “watchkeeper” for the West.
After a brief return to the period before 1945, this contribution is searching for traces of what Degrelle could be for German right-wing extremists and furnishing a first analysis through some key moments covering chronological and thematic segments from the 1950s to Degrelle’s death in 1994. It studies a little known dimension of Belgian-German relations, an European discourse which was of course anticommunist and antiliberal but was using as mean of action facts of the past which had constantly to be legitimized and brought back to life.