1. Pierre Firmin Pucheu was a French industrialist, fascist and member of the Vichy government.
14 Facts About Pierre Pucheu
1. 2.
The son of a tailor from southwest France, Pucheu was born in Beaumont-sur-Oise and won a scholarship to the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he was a contemporary of both Robert Brasillach and Jean-Paul Sartre.
3.
Pierre Pucheu was ultimately drawn to the steel industry and eventually came to head up one of the largest monopolies, the Cartel d'Acier.
4.
In particular Pierre Pucheu was opposed to the Munich Agreement, which he felt punished Czechoslovakia.
5.
Pierre Pucheu formed the Police aux Questions Juives in 1941 and took personal charge of the organisation.
6.
Pierre Pucheu was responsible for setting up the SPAC anti-communist police force, the anti-Masonic Service for Secret Societies, and the Amicales de France, which served as the propaganda arm of Vichy.
7.
However, Pierre Pucheu actually wanted to model France's economy on Nazi Germany's rather than being fully convinced of the merits of occupation, and as such the Germans called for him to be replaced in April 1942.
8.
In government Pierre Pucheu has been characterised, along with the likes of Jean Bichelonne, Jacques Barnaud and Francois Lehideux, as a technocrat who helped to ensure that the Vichy regime was able to take on the administrative functions of a government.
9.
The French army and administration in North Africa under Giraud had reentered the war against the Axis without renouncing Petain or the Vichy National Revolution; expecting to be called up to duty as a reserve military officer, Pierre Pucheu went to Casablanca, Morocco in May 1943.
10.
Pierre Pucheu was tried in March 1944, convicted, and sentenced to death.
11.
Pierre Pucheu was the first person tried under the French Committee of National Liberation's September 1943 edict charging all Vichy ministers with treason; it is said that de Gaulle had ensured that he faced the death penalty in order to undermine any further collaboration in France.
12.
On 20 March 1944, Pierre Pucheu was executed by firing squad.
13.
Pierre Pucheu met his death with great courage, shaking hands with the firing squad, and giving the order to fire himself.
14.
Pierre Pucheu was the first of the leading collaborationist figures to be executed directly under de Gaulle's jurisdiction.