Jean Luchaire

Who was Jean Luchaire?

Jean Luchaire was a French journalist and politician who founded the weekly Notre Temps in 1927 and the Collaborationist evening daily Les Nouveaux Temps in 1940. Luchaire supported the Vichy regime's Révolution nationale.

Born in Siena, Italy, he was a grand nephew of historian Achille Luchaire. In 1927, he founded the weekly Notre Temps, which supported Aristide Briand's pacifist policies. The newspaper's main contributors were Bertrand de Jouvenel, André Weil-Curiel, Jacques Chabannes, Pierre Brossolette and Pierre Mendès France.

Jean Luchaire first met with Otto Abetz, who would become Nazi Germany's ambassador in Paris during World War II, in 1930. He became the President of the Association de la presse parisienne in 1941 and presided the Corporation nationale de la presse française.

In 1944 Luchaire called on the Germans to "exterminate" the French Resistance. He was Minister of Interior in the shadowy Vichy government-in-exile, set up by the Germans in Sigmaringen in 1944-5. He fled to Italy in 1945, but was arrested and returned to France, where he was tried and executed.