La Cagoule - in The Third Republic

In The Third Republic

The group was founded in 1935 by Eugène Schueller, who had created the French cosmetics giant L'Oréal. Some of the early meetings of the Cagoule took place at l'Oréal headquarters. Some former Cagoulards, such as Jacques Corrèze, were later hired as company executives. Its major industrialist leaders provided funds for arms and operations.

Another important activist was Joseph Darnand, who later founded the Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), the ancestor of the Milice, Collaborationist paramilitary of the Vichy regime. His nephew Henri Charbonneau was also a member. Other notable members were Jean Filliol (who was appointed as the head of the Milice in Limoges, and fled to Spain at the end of World War II, where he worked in the Spanish subsidiary of L'Oréal); Gabriel Jeantet (who was a lover of a sister of François Mitterrand and later recommended him for the Francisque); Dr. Henri Martin (a medical doctor who is suspected of having forged the Pacte Synarchique, and worked for the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) after World War II); and Mohammed El Maadi (head of La Cagoule for French Algeria, and creator of the antisemitic newspaper Er Rachid and of the North-African Brigade on January 28, 1944, also known as SS-Mohammed).

The group drew most of its members from Orléanists disappointed by the lack of action from the Charles Maurras' Action Française. They were opposed to the Popular Front government, created from an alliance of left-wing groups. Historians believe many low-level members were recruited in the belief that it was an auto-defense organization, intended to fight against a Communist takeover.

In Nice, new members were initiated in a formal ritual. In the presence of the Grand Master, dressed in red and accompanied by his assesseurs dressed in black, with their faces covered, new members stood before a table draped with a French flag. A sword and torches were placed on it. Each man raised his right arm and swore the oath, Ad majorem Galliæ gloriam ("For the greater glory of France"). This oath echoed the Jesuit motto, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (For the greater glory of God). Treason was punished by death. For instance, the arms suppliers Léon Jean-Baptiste and Maurice Juif were murdered by Cagoulards in October 1936 and February 1937, respectively, for attempting to enrich themselves by lying about the price they had paid for the arms.

The paramilitary organization was active in Paris as well as the provinces, organizing militias in the capital, creating demonstrations and amassing arms. They attempted to assassinate Léon Blum, the prime minister. They also trained men in terrorism, built underground prisons, and "ran guns in Belgium, Switzerland and Italy."

La Cagoule directed its members in various actions aimed at creating suspicions of Communists to destabilize and destroy the French Republic. On January 26, 1937 Jean Filliol stabbed to death Dimitri Navachine, a Russian national and for several years the respected director of the Paris branch of the Soviet State Bank, in the Bois de Boulogne. Initial suspicions were that he had been killed by Joseph Stalin's Secret Service, as the Great Purge was underway in the Soviet Union. To ease their obtaining arms from fascist Italy, on June 9, 1937, the group assassinated two Italian antifascists, the Rosselli brothers, who were refugees in France. They sabotaged airplanes clandestinely supplied by the French government to the Spanish Republic. On September 11, 1937, the Cagoule blew up two buildings owned by the Comité des Forges (Ironmasters Association), to create the impression of a communist conspiracy. Although it was widely believed at the time that communists had set the bombs, the government took no official action against the French Communist Party, to the disappointment of Cagoulards. The Cagoule tried to infiltrate the International Brigades for the same purpose.

Organized along military lines, the Cagoule infiltrated parts of the French military via Georges Loustaunau-Lacau's Corvignolles organization (as a means to acquire weapons). They prepared to overthrow the Popular Front government in November 1937 to install a fascist government. The Cagoulards initially intended to make Philippe Pétain chief of state. Pétain refused their overtures, and they chose Marshall Louis Franchet d'Esperey as their future chief of state.

The Cagoule was infiltrated by the French police. On November 15, 1937, Marx Dormoy, Minister of the Interior (and the top officer of law enforcement), denounced their plot and ordered wide arrests of members. The French police seized 2 tons of high explosives, several anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, 500 machine guns, 65 submachine guns, 134 rifles and 17 sawed-off shotguns. Some of the arms were of German or Italian origin. About 70 men were arrested. Deloncle had boasted that he had 12,000 men under his order in Paris, and 120,000 in the provinces, but it is likely there were no more than 200 men who knew most about the organization and its structure, and another several hundred who were more loosely affiliated with the group.

Reactions to the plot and the revelations by the French government about La Cagoule varied among the international media. In the United States, the editors of the New York Times were initially suspicious of the accounts. The journalists of Time magazine likened La Cagoule to the American Ku Klux Klan, a right-wing group that had a widespread revival from 1915, reaching its peak of influence in 1925, with members elected to political office in midwestern cities and states as well as the South.

At the outbreak of World War II, the French government released imprisoned cagoulards to fight in the French Army. Some entered the Milice, as did Jacques de Bernonville.

During the Occupation of France in 1940, the Vichy government arrested Marx Dormoy, as he had refused to vote for full powers for Marshal Philippe Pétain. They eventually interned him in house arrest at Montélimar. He was assassinated on July 26, 1941 by a clockwork bomb set off at the house. It was believed to have been done by La Cagoule terrorists, in reprisal for Dormoy's arrests in 1937 and attempt to suppress the organization.