Henri Petit (1899–1985) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, Collaborationist under the Vichy regime and far-right activist.

Henri Petit wrote several anti-Semitic

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

 and anti-masonic

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 books and collaborated with Henry Coston

Henry Coston

Henry Coston was a French far right and anti-Semitic journalist, collaborationist and conspiracy theorist....

. He presented himself as an "anti-Jew" candidate for the 1936 legislative elections

French legislative election, 1936

French legislative elections to elect the 16th legislature of the French Third Republic were held on 26 April and 3 May 1936. This was the last legislature of the Third Republic and the last election before the Second World War. The number of candidates set a record, with 4,807 people vying for 618...

, won by the Popular Front

Popular Front (France)

The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...

. Petit then broke with Coston, who accused him of having stolen him money. In 1937, he became the secretary general of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix

Louis Darquier de Pellepoix

Louis Darquier, better known under his assumed name Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy Régime....

's Comité antijuif de France (Anti-Jew Committee of France) — Darquier de Pellepoix replaced in May 1942 Xavier Vallat

Xavier Vallat

Xavier Vallat , French politician, was Commissioner-General for Jewish Questions in the wartime Vichy collaborationist government, and was sentenced after World War II to ten years in prison for his part in the persecution of French Jews.- Until World War II :Vallat was born in the department of...

 as "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs."

Petit's work influenced the writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...

, who shifted more and more to the far-right during his literary career. Céline entertained a literary correspondency with Henri Petit.

In 1939, Petit traveled to Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 to work in the "World Center of Anti-Semitic Propaganda". He then returned to France after the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain

Philippe Pétain

Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...

 of the Vichy regime, and became in 1940 the chief editor of the Collaborationist newspaper Le Pilori

Au Pilori

Au Pilori, also known as Le Pilori, was an anti-Semitic newspaper published in Occupied France during World War II.The paper first appeared as Le Pilori, before changing its name through an evolution of the editorial team...

, before being replaced by another team. Petit worked directly with the German services of Nazi propaganda

Nazi propaganda

Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...

 and was, because of that, not really appreciated in Collaborationist circles. At the end of the war

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, 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

Épuration légale

The Épuration légale was the wave of official trials that followed the Liberation of France and the fall of the Vichy Regime...

period, he was condemned in absentia

In absentia

In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...

to 20 years of prison and to "national degradation" (dégradation nationale

Dégradation nationale

The dégradation nationale was a sentence introduced in France after the Liberation. It was applied during the épuration légale which followed the fall of the Vichy regime....

). He then lived in clandestinity in Belleville, Paris

Belleville, Paris

Belleville is a neighbourhood of Paris, France, parts of which lie in four different arrondissements. The major portion of Belleville straddles the borderline between the 20th arrondissement and the 19th along its main street, the Rue de Belleville...

, and in Meudon

Meudon

Meudon is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris.-Geography:...

. Amnestied in 1959, he then published an astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

 magazine, before collaborating with the Fédération d'action nationale et européenne

Fédération d'action nationale et européenne

The Fédération d'action nationale et européenne was a small French far-right organisation founded in April 1966. Openly Neo-Nazi, it was led by Mark Fredriksen, a bank employee who became involved in activism for French Algeria after serving in the paras there...

 (FANE) neo-Nazi group created in 1966 by Mark Fredriksen

Mark Fredriksen

Mark Fredriksen as a French extreme right figure and the founder, in 1966, of the neo-Nazi Fédération d'action nationaliste et européenne....

. Petit has been sentenced several times for "incitation to racial hatred

Hate speech

Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....

."

See also

• Georges Montandon
• Léon de Poncins