Rexist Party of Belgiumpolitical party, Belgium

founder and leader of the Rexist Party of Belgium, who collaborated with the Germans during World War II.

After failing three times to pass his final law exams at the University of Louvain, Degrelle, who was a dynamic orator, entered politics. Using banking scandals and the corruption of national parties as issues, he organized the Rexist Movement in 1930, allegedly to cleanse the Roman Catholic religion of political contamination. Though originally a wing of the ruling Catholic Party, the Rexist Movement became an opposition party and, under Degrelle’s guidance, elected 21 deputies to the Belgian Parliament in 1936. Subsidized by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Degrelle turned the Rexists into a fascist organization. In alliance with the 16 deputies of the separatist Flemish Nationalist Party, the Rexists forced the formation of weak coalition governments in the late 1930s.

During World War II Degrelle collaborated with the German occupation forces. In August 1941 he formed and later commanded the Walloon and Flemish storm-trooper brigades that fought on the Russian front. Under his guidance the Rexists took control of local governments and newspapers in Belgium. After Belgium was liberated (September 1944) he was sentenced in absentia to death as a collaborator. Degrelle flew to Spain in the last days of the war after fighting the Soviet advance into eastern Germany. In Spain he was protected by Francisco Franco and became a Spanish citizen.

English politician who was the leader of the British Union of Fascists from 1932 to 1940 and of its successor, the Union Movement, from 1948 until his death. These groups were known for distributing anti-Semitic propaganda, conducting hostile demonstrations in the Jewish sections of east London, and wearing Nazi-style uniforms and insignia.

Serving in the House of Commons from 1918 to 1931, Mosley was successively a Conservative, an Independent, and a Labour Party member, serving in a Labour ministry in 1929–30. In 1931 he tried to form a socialist party but was defeated for reelection to Parliament. The next year he founded the British Union of Fascists, for which some enthusiasm was generated by his own powerful oratory and by the support of the newspaper publisher Viscount Rothermere. Interned after the outbreak of World War II, Mosley was released in 1943 because of illness. On Feb. 7, 1948, he launched the Union Movement, which he described as an amalgam of 51 organizations, most of them right-wing book clubs.

Mosley married in 1920 Lady Cynthia Blanche Curzon (died 1933), daughter of the 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston; and in 1936 Diana Guinness (née Freeman-Mitford), daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, himself a prewar apologist of Nazi Germany. Mosley’s autobiography, My Life, was published in 1968.