Henri-Robert Petit


Henri Petit was a French journalist, collaborationist under the Vichy regime, and far-right activist.
Henri Petit wrote several anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic books, and worked with far-right journalist Henry Coston, creator of an "Anti-Jewish Youth" organisation. Petit presented himself as an "anti-Jew" candidate for the 1936 legislative elections, which were won by the left-wing Popular Front. Petit then broke with Coston, who accused him of having stolen him money. In 1937, Petit became the secretary general of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix's Comité antijuif de France. In May 1942, Darquier de Pellepoix replaced Xavier Vallat as Vichy France's Commissioner for Jewish Affairs.
Petit carried on a literary correspondence with the influential novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Petit's work influenced Céline, who shifted more and more to the far right during his career.
In 1939, Petit traveled to Nazi Germany to work in the "World Center of Anti-Semitic Propaganda". He returned to France after the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy regime in 1940, and became the chief editor of the collaborationist newspaper Le Pilori before being replaced. Petit worked directly with the Nazi propaganda services and was, because of that, not really appreciated in collaborationist circles. In August 1944, he left for Germany where his two sons worked as volunteers in the German Army.
On 18 November 1947, during the Épuration légale, Petit was condemned in absentia to 20 years of prison and to "national degradation". For some time, he lived clandestinely in Belleville, Paris, and in Meudon. After receiving amnesty in 1959, he published an astrology magazine, before collaborating with the Fédération d'action nationale et européenne, a neo-Nazi group created in 1966 by Mark Fredriksen. Petit was sentenced several times for "incitation to racial hatred."

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