Léon Joseph Marie Degrelle was born June 15, 1906 in Bouillon, to a prosperous brewer's family. After studies at Louvain University, he bought a newspaper and founded the Cristus Rex Party as an extreme right wing Catholic movement. His oratory skills and sense for the dramatic brought his party to its best showing in 1936, winning over 10% of the vote and 21 of 202 seats in the parliament. Thereafter, the party declined, especially after Degrelle broke with Catholic leadership. German occupation brought him a second life, although occupation authorities took little interest in him or the Rex Party, and Degrelle busied himself trying to win a local political following. In the end, his ambitions were served much more by his endorsement and joining of the small Walloon Legion. Degrelle had no military experience (as the eldest son of a large family he had not been drafted like any other young Belgian) and he was refused the rank of lieutenant when he in vain expressed the idea an officer's rank would suit his political status better. But service in the Legion, where he performed with enthusiasm and bravery, eventually brought him some of the power he sought, from contact with the SS hierarchy, integration into the Waffen-SS in 1943, promotions, and power as a henchman of Heinrich Himmler. By attrition, Degrelle rose to command the Walloon Waffen-SS, and on November 23rd 1944 he was granted civil authority in his capacity of Volksführer der Wallonen. This new appointment meant that from that moment on Degrelle was going to act with full power over all French-speaking Belgians residing within the borders of the Reich. But despite all these powers, he was by then just another collaborationist refugee from liberated Belgium. In effect, he abandoned the Rex party for the Waffen-SS, and later also left his troops behind, fleeing to Norway, where he managed to commandeer a plane to fly to Spain and exile. Degrelle was promoted lieutenant colonel by the SS on January 1, 1945, but after the war, he claimed to be a colonel as of April 20th and to have been made a general in a chance meeting with Himmler on May 2nd, although the latter had been stripped of his authority by then in one of Hitler's last tirades. After the war Degrelle never missed an opportunity to show off in a uniform of SS colonel, and permitted himself to be introduced publicly as 'General Degrelle.' He obtained Spanish citizenship and lived under several names, dying at Málaga on March 31, 1994.
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