World War II Vichy French Security Troops by Stephen M. Cullen & Mark Stacey

Author:Stephen M. Cullen & Mark Stacey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472827746
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Rassemblement National Populaire

The Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP – ‘National Popular Rally’) was, as already mentioned, the wartime creation of Marcel Déat, a long-time socialist deputy (member of parliament) and a veteran of the Great War. Formed in February 1941, the RNP grew to around 300,000 members by the summer of that year. This rapid growth, and the political leadership of Déat, made the movement the main rival to Doriot’s PPF. The RNP quickly established its own militia, the Milices Nationales Populaires (MNP), for propaganda and security purposes; but with the RNP’s absorption of the MSR that party’s existing militia, the LNP, became its main fighting force. By the summer of 1941 the RNP claimed that it had six brigades of LNP in Paris, with a total of 10,000 LNP militants throughout France. This was undoubtedly an exaggerated figure; however, at the combined fascist parties’ rally held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris on 18 July 1941 to create the LVF for service in Russia, the RNP’s LNP fielded 2,042 uniformed militants compared with just 101 provided by the PPF. Subsequently the RNP, like the other fascist parties, lost many of its most active men to the meatgrinder of the Eastern Front, thereby weakening the movement in France.

The LNP was the spearhead of the movement, and under its leader, the heavily decorated veteran Paul Montagnon, it sought to ‘serve and carry out the orders of the Chief [Déat], for the glory of the Party, for France, and for European socialism’. LNP officers wore a dark blue uniform of open-necked tunic, shirt, necktie, culottes, boots and beret. Enlisted ranks wore a work shirt in mid-blue with a red tie. The LNP brassard worn on the left arm was red, with a printed white diamond showing an angular black gamma fashioned to resemble a partial swastika (actually, it was an upside-down Odalrune). On the left breast pocket of tunics and shirts the ‘horseshoe and flames’ metal badge of the RNP was worn. As with the other militias, the LNP became increasingly involved in clashes with the Resistance, and began to carry small-calibre sidearms.

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