Raymond De Becker
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Raymond De Becker (1912–1969) was a Belgian journalist, writer, and intellectual. He is most notable as the editor of the daily newspaper Le Soir and a leading exponent of "intellectual collaboration" in German-occupied Belgium during World War II
De Becker was born in Brussels in 1912. He became involved in Catholic and anti-parliamentarian politics in the interwar years. He founded the Communauté group at Leuven and sympathised with the Maurrassian ideology of Action Française and the fascism of Benito Mussolini in Italy. He edited the newspaper Indépendance from 1936 to 1939 and was a strong support of Belgian neutrality which he encouraged in a German-funded newspaper called Ouest from 1939.
After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 he became a leading figure in "intellectual collaboration" in Belgium. He was made editor of Le Soir which had been expropriated from its pre-war owners Rossel & Cie and which was re-purposed to carry censored news and propaganda under German supervision. This edition was popularly dubbed "Stolen Le Soir" (Le Soir volé). De Becker was initially convinced that the creation of a German-led New Order in Europe was imminent and hoped for Belgium to retain some autonomy as an authoritarian state under German auspices. He expanded on these themes in an autobiographical essay published in 1942 as Livre des Vivants et des Morts (Template:Lit). However, he remained apart from the major collaborationist groups such as Rex which he left in 1941. He was friends with the cartoonist Georges Remi (Hergé) and the writer Henry Bauchau. In 1943 he attempted to distance himself and Le Soir from German control and adopt a stance that was more sympathetic to the Western Allies. However, he was removed from the post on 4 October 1943 and placed under house arrest by the German authorities in the Austrian Alps.
He was detained after the Liberation of Belgium and sentanced to death by the Conseil de Guerre for collaboration as part of the épuration légale in 1946. The sentence was soon commuted to life imprisonment and later to 18 years imprisonment. He was released in 1951 and effectively exiled from Belgium. He became interested in Jungian psychoanalysis, Homosexuality, and Oriental religions and wrote on these subject in the post-war years. He was also an "active" pederast. He lived in Lausanne, Switzerland and Paris, France. He died at Versailles, near Paris, on 18 April 1969.
See also
- Paul Colin (1895–1943), collaborationist journalist involved with Le Nouveau Journal and Cassandre assassinated in 1943.
- Robert Poulet (1893–1989), collaborationist journalist also distanced from Rex
