How a young Catholic journalist’s political movement transformed into a radical collaborationist force in Belgium.
In short: Léon Degrelle founded the Rexist movement in the 1930s, promising moral renewal and social order. What began as a populist challenge to parliamentary corruption quickly morphed into an authoritarian project. By the end of World War II, the movement had collapsed, leaving behind a legacy of collaboration and exile.
The Rexist movement emerged in the mid-1930s from the University of Louvain, led by the thirty-year-old journalist Léon Degrelle. Initially, the party sought to cleanse Belgian politics of corruption, drawing support from small businessmen and farmers who felt alienated by the established Catholic Party. In the May 1936 elections, the movement achieved its peak, securing 11 percent of the vote and electing twenty-one deputies to parliament. Its name, derived from Christus Rex, reflected its early roots in Catholic social and political activism.
The movement’s fortunes shifted dramatically after Degrelle’s decisive defeat in an April 1937 by-election against Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland. Following this setback, the party abandoned its initial populist appeal, adopting a more explicit fascist style and aligning itself with Nazi Germany. As the movement lost credibility, its electoral support plummeted to 4 percent by the 1939 elections. During the German occupation of Belgium, the Rexists became increasingly isolated, though they were appointed to positions of authority, such as local mayors, by the German military.
Degrelle’s final years in the movement were marked by his shift toward military collaboration. In 1941, he formed the Légion Wallonie to fight on the eastern front, eventually earning the Iron Cross from Hitler in February 1944. Despite his grandiose, unrealistic ambitions of creating a new Burgundian Empire, he remained a peripheral figure to the Nazi leadership. Following the war, many Rexist militants faced trial for collaboration, while Degrelle escaped to Spain, where he lived until his death in 1994.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Rexist Movement | Encyclopedia.com
- Also: Rexist Party
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