Breton nationalism and World War II

Long before World War II, the various Breton nationalist organizations were often anti-French and anti-colonialist, opposed to the Central Government's policy of linguistic imperialism, and critical to varying degrees of post-French Revolution-style Republicanism. Some Breton nationalists were openly pro-fascist. The extent to which this led Breton nationalists into collaboration with the Axis Powers and their motivations, remains a matter of often bitter historical controversy and debate. Before the occupation, Breton nationalists were divided between adherents of regionalism, federalism, and political independence. Essentially these factions, though divided, remained openly hostile to the Third French Republic's policies of centralized government, anti-Catholicism, the coercive Francization policy in the State educational system, and the continued ban against Breton-medium education. Among these groups, only the openly separatist Breton National Party remained organized; dissolved in 1939, it was rapidly reconstituted in the autumn of 1940 and became the most active political party in Brittany under the Occupation. Having broken in 1931 from regionalism, its founders (Olier Mordrel and François Debeauvais) were inspired by the success of the Irish War of Independence and played the secessionist card. When the war broke out, the Breton National Party chose a position of strict neutrality. This party's ideas were anti-republican and complacent towards xenophobia and antisemitism, influenced by German racism and close to all the varieties of European fascism. During the war the ideology of the Breton National Party was favored by the forces of occupation and other branches of the Breton movement accordingly found themselves marginalized. On 15 December 1940 a "petition" signed by 46 Bretons requesting "administrative autonomy" in the confines of a united France was sent to Philippe Pétain. On 22 January 1941, the Vichy government named Hervé Budes de Guébriant President of the National Commission for Agricultural Cooperation.