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00:30In any other age, LĂ©on de Grel would have been a hero.
00:40He was handsome, charismatic, ambitious.
00:49A decorated soldier and a leader of men.
01:00He was a politician who was engaged in fighting himself on the front.
01:05I don't know any other.
01:07But unfortunately, LĂ©on de Grel was also a Belgian fascist.
01:13And he fell in love with Nazi Germany.
01:16For years, he courted the Nazis.
01:27And for years, they rejected him.
01:30But eventually, Hitler welcomed him into his embrace.
01:34But at a terrible price.
01:41For to be accepted by the Nazis, de Grel would have to betray everything he stood for.
01:47He would betray his faith, his country, and become a collaborator.
01:54He was prepared to sacrifice those who followed him and see Belgium eradicated entirely.
02:02LĂ©on de Grel was born in 1906, here in Bouillon, a small town in the heart of Belgium's Ardennes.
02:20His father ran a successful brewery business.
02:26And in the 1920s, he underwent a strict Jesuit education.
02:33He later won a place to the Catholic University at Louvain, near Brussels, to study law.
02:39Very soon, his life would be shaped by two factors, his pure ambition and his search for a cause.
03:04At first, it was the Catholic faith that attracted him.
03:09The young religious activist wanted to write about the church.
03:18So he became a journalist for Les Cahiers de la Jeunesse Catholique.
03:23And in 1930, became manager of Christus Rex, a religious publishing house.
03:33De Grel seemed to have found his calling.
03:35He abandoned his law degree and set about building Christus Rex into a movement to agitate for religious and social reform.
03:45And there was plenty to agitate about.
03:47The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Europe hard.
03:57Belgium was no exception.
04:00Poverty, discontent and social unrest spread across the continent.
04:06Far-left movements like communism were on the rise.
04:09A succession of short-lived coalitions failed to provide Belgium with stability and strong leadership.
04:22De Grel thought the source of all these problems was a lack of religious faith and a decline in morals.
04:28There was a bigger problem, too.
04:34Belgium's national identity was in crisis and the country risked being torn apart.
04:39It was fragmented between the French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish.
04:49The Flemish wanted to split the country and become part of Holland.
04:55There was bitter rivalry between both factions.
04:58De Grel believed only a powerful patriotic government could counter Flemish nationalism.
05:08So he decided to do something about it and started one of the strangest sagas in Belgian politics.
05:19De Grel turned his movement into a political force called Rexism.
05:23His goal was to build Rexism into a fully-fledged political movement.
05:43One woman who remembers the excitement generated by Rexism is Marie-Josée de Goy, whose father was a supporter.
05:53He was a leader in the Reunion.
05:54He said that it was wonderful, that it was a young man who would finally be a little bit
06:00to lower the current politics.
06:02For him, he was a leader.
06:08De Grel used the Christus Rex machine to promote his message of social and religious reform
06:14via its newspaper, Le Pei RĂ©el.
06:16The young leader hit the campaign trail to argue the case for stronger governance and
06:23a unified Belgian.
06:25He called for a Belgian new order.
06:27De Grel was undoubtedly a fine public speaker.
06:42People started to pay attention, especially traditional Catholic voters in search of a new choice.
06:46I have to say that he was a tribun who attacked the masses who were not believed.
06:53There were many, many Christians who believed, because there were only left and right.
06:59Because, in the end, there were only left and right.
07:02Everybody was trying to save the Christian moral, I would say.
07:09In the run-up to the general elections of 1936, his Rexists took part in demonstrations.
07:21And De Grel's own profile as a provocateur soared.
07:26Police and communist interrupters come to grips with the Rexists and general rioting breaks
07:30out.
07:31De Grel is arrested.
07:33Monsieur De Grel, indicated by Arrow, claims that the Rex party numbers half a million
07:37and will be in power in a few months.
07:39He and eight hundred followers are bundled up to the police station.
07:42De Grel has since said he will continue his bid for power.
07:52The elections brought the Rexists success.
07:55So, I tell you, there was an encouragement, like a renaissance, but crazy.
08:04I didn't hear that by Rex and even my father's friends.
08:09They were a lot of enthousiastes.
08:11In all the communities, he had so beautiful results,
08:15that in all the communities, there were Rexists.
08:18Though De Grel didn't run for Parliament himself, aged just 30, he had become a rising political star.
08:31As leader of a dynamic new force in Parliament, his raw ambition was paying off.
08:36For a few months, it was enough for hundreds of thousands of men to be with us, fraternities, in total.
08:46On April 24, 1936, 300,000 elected officials were held in the chamber in one single coup, 33 rexists.
08:55But De Grel's rex party was viewed by some to be an extremist movement.
09:05And increasingly, his activists took on the air of Catholic fascists.
09:12To promote his particular brand of politics, De Grel needed his own political platform.
09:17So he decided to become a member of Parliament.
09:26He forced a rexist politician to resign and triggered a by-election.
09:34De Grel would fight for the parliamentary seat in Brussels in March 1937.
09:42The government, alarmed by the rise of extremism,
09:45had already tried to ban his rex party from the radio.
09:50Now, they seized their chance to humiliate him.
09:58The Catholic Prime Minister, Paul van Zeeland, stood against him.
10:05He hit at De Grel's claim to speak for disenchanted Catholic voters.
10:08Then Cardinal van Roy, the leader of the Belgian Catholic Church, pronounced that rexism was a menace.
10:18It was a disaster for De Grel. He was defeated.
10:29Labelled an extremist by voters and parties alike, and disowned by the Catholic Church, De Grel was in the political wilderness. His career over.
10:37The rexists lost public support and membership dwindled.
10:48To make things worse, as the threat of war with Germany loomed, De Grel was arrested and imprisoned as a dangerous Nazi sympathiser.
10:59He was shipped off to a jail in France. The charismatic hero had become the loser.
11:11Then came the war.
11:23May 1940. Hitler's armies launched their blitzkrieg attack on France.
11:27On the way, panzers sliced through Holland and Belgium.
11:44They destroyed everything in their path.
11:46The small Belgian army and her allies were powerless.
12:04Belgium was defeated in just 18 days.
12:07For the second time in a quarter of a century, the country had to endure occupation by Germany.
12:25Belgium's King Leopold III signed the document of surrender.
12:35This created a power vacuum in the country's politics.
12:40Leading politicians struggled to deal with occupation and vied for power and influence with the Nazis.
12:46This should have been De Grel's moment to step in and claim a stake in the new political landscape.
12:59There was just one problem.
13:01At the time, many thought he was dead, shot by the French in captivity.
13:06When news of Germany's invasion reached him in jail, he realized that if he was ever to create his vision of a new order, he had to get out of prison.
13:21Because back in Belgium, events were moving against him.
13:27The Germans imposed their own military administration under Eckert Rieder.
13:31Rieder then employed a classic divide-and-rule tactic.
13:39He decided to play the Dutch-speaking Flemish off against the French-speaking Walloons,
13:44by recruiting key administrators from a Flemish nationalist party, the fascist VNV.
13:53The VNV were rivals to De Grel's Rexists, and his party was out in the cold.
14:01So when De Grel was released from prison three months later, in July 1940, he found himself rejected, with no power and no influence.
14:17But instead of turning against the Nazis, he resolved to make himself indispensable and prove he could be their man to lead Belgium.
14:26So he petitioned the Germans.
14:31He met the collaborationist Prime Minister of France, Pierre Laval.
14:35He courted everyone from the king to his old critic, Cardinal Van Roy.
14:41But it didn't work.
14:42Under the direct orders of Hitler's propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, De Grel was ignored.
14:55Frustrated and rejected again, the outsider decided it was time to try something new.
15:00As the sincerest form of flattery is imitation, that was what he did.
15:14De Grel remodelled Rexism along purely fascist lines, the mirror image of the Nazis.
15:20The Nazis had a swastika.
15:25He commissioned a new heraldic flag.
15:28Hitler had his own uniformed thugs, the brown-shirted SA.
15:34So De Grel created Les Formations de Combat, his very own political enforcers.
15:44The Nazis rewrote German history and created their own cult-like ideology,
15:50where everyone swore allegiance to a great leader.
15:53De Grel did the same, making himself the Belgian FĂĽhrer figure.
16:08And whereas the Nazis had the Hitler Youth,
16:11De Grel created his own youth movements to encourage youngsters to join the party.
16:18Many children of Rexists found themselves enrolled.
16:23I was 15 years old.
16:26And then my father told me, as we were three girls,
16:30I was going to put you in the jeunesse, because we will not go to the sea,
16:33maybe for several years.
16:35If you put you in a jeunesse movement, it will be fine.
16:39You will meet the jeunes.
16:41And like that, it's good.
16:43It's a beautiful distraction for the summer.
16:45I didn't care about politics at that time.
16:48I was too young, I was too young.
16:51I went to school with my little white socks.
16:54To ingratiate himself with the Nazis even more,
16:58De Grel didn't just adopt their external trappings.
17:01He adopted their rhetoric too.
17:04Jews, liberals, Freemasons, and especially communists,
17:10all became targets.
17:11And in 1941, he went a step further.
17:19He categorically supported Nazi rule in writing.
17:24Signing off an article with the words,
17:27Heil Hitler.
17:28De Grel's desire for power had put him on the path of unlimited collaboration.
17:40But even now, he still wasn't taken seriously in Berlin.
17:44Goebbels described him as a fraud.
17:46It seemed that Leon de Grel was destined to be nothing more than the leader of a marginal party of unpopular extremists.
17:59But again, rather than accept Hitler's rejection, he resolved to find a new way to ingratiate himself with the Fuhrer.
18:10And soon the German leader's ideological crusade would give him the perfect launch pad.
18:16June 1941.
18:28Hitler's armies launched Operation Barbarossa,
18:32the massive invasion of Russia, along a 2,000-mile front.
18:37Hitler had vowed to crush the communist threat.
18:40Now, it was a reality.
18:46All over Europe, collaborationist regimes were providing volunteers to join the Fuhrer's Crusade.
18:55There was never such a big commitment in all the countries of Europe to fight communism.
19:03There were volunteers in all the countries of Europe.
19:07Denmark, Norway and Finland had all supplied soldiers for special SS units,
19:13dubbed Freivillingen or volunteers.
19:16In Belgium, de Grel's great political rivals, the VNV, had been allowed to form a legion in June 1941.
19:33Known as the Flemish Lions, they were considered an elite SS unit.
19:37De Grel realised this was a new opportunity.
19:42He, too, would join Hitler's Crusade and become the best soldier he ever had, and his finest leader of men.
19:52De Grel's plan was to be so successful in battle, that he could return to Belgium at the head of a conquering army.
20:06Then, at last, he would have political credibility and ultimately power.
20:16But there was a snag. De Grel had no military experience at all.
20:22So what he did next was truly astonishing.
20:27De Grel handed the leadership of his party to a deputy, Victor Matisse.
20:32And enrolled as an ordinary foot soldier in the Nazi battle against communism.
20:44In July 1941, de Grel joined the LĂ©gion Wallonie, a German army unit manned by French-speaking Walloons.
20:51The wealthy and privileged young politician went off to war as a legionnaire machine gunner, a humble private, along with 775 other foot soldiers and 16 officers.
21:10Whilst de Grel was motivated primarily by ambition, he was soon joined by other Walloons, who felt ideologically compelled to combat communism.
21:21One man who followed De Grel into the legion aged just 19 was Fernand Kaisergruber.
21:30His motives for fighting were crystal clear.
21:36It was anti-communist ideology.
21:40And I fought against Bolshevism.
21:45Fernand Kaisergruber never saw joining the legion as an act of collaboration.
21:49And finally, for me, it was an army of European, since we were 37 countries.
22:00So we didn't have reason for this or for this issue to make a special issue.
22:05The other recruits included Marie-José de Goy's fiance, Roger, whom she had met in the youth movement.
22:11they had met in the youth movement.
22:14They went, a bit like the crossings,
22:17to defend Jesus's tomb.
22:20They went to defend Belgium and Europe.
22:24When you think they went with an ideal,
22:27that they offer their lives to defend their country and Europe,
22:31I had 17 years and I found it formidable.
22:35That winter, de Grel and the legionnaires got stuck into violent combat
22:44along the Russian front line.
22:55By January 1942, the legion had lost half its men.
23:00In February, 200 Walloons were killed in one month alone.
23:05But de Grel survived.
23:12He was involved in more bitter fighting around the Maes River in southern Russia.
23:19Outnumbered and cut off,
23:21the legionnaires bravely blocked a huge Russian attack for 10 hours.
23:30This led to the unit's first battle honours.
23:43De Grel, along with other Walloons, was decorated.
23:48He was awarded the Iron Cross second class for bravery
23:51and was promoted to sergeant major.
23:54The legion had acquired a reputation as determined fighters.
23:57And de Grel himself, the politician with no military training,
24:00was winning respect as a hardened warrior.
24:04He was not afraid of exposing his life.
24:07He was not a military of nature,
24:11but he was tied to the obligations required by a military.
24:17That was a thing.
24:19And he was not afraid of bringing men to the front and to the front.
24:23He was not afraid of bringing men to the front and to the front.
24:28That's what he did.
24:30In May 1942, he was made an officer.
24:37He also made the legion his own.
24:39He removed any political rivals and ensured it was dominated by Rexists.
24:46He became its figurehead and was firmly in charge, even though he was only a lieutenant.
24:58De Grel was proud to lead his men and his bravery was rewarded again.
25:05On May 21, he added the Iron Cross first class to his tally.
25:18Three months later, he received the coveted infantry assault badge awarded only to those soldiers who had seen the whites of the enemy's eyes.
25:30He had cemented his position in the legion and finally started to get noticed in Berlin.
25:38And De Grel now became the legion's main recruiting force.
25:46His gamble to become a soldier was paying off.
25:52And soon events conspired to bring him even closer to the Nazis.
26:00February 1943, Stalingrad.
26:14A defeat of epic proportions for the Nazis.
26:19400,000 German troops were lost or captured.
26:23It was a hammer blow to Hitler's campaign in the east and the first major disaster of the war.
26:37But instead of questioning his allegiance to Germany, Leon de Grel remained upbeat.
26:42He saw this news as a chance to get even closer to the Nazis.
26:52Now, he could get the attention of the Nazis he so craved.
26:56His currency, the lives of the men he could recruit to their cause.
27:01And so, on the back of his military record and the reputation of his Walloons, De Grel set out to win the blessing of that most Nazi of organisations, Adolf Hitler's SS.
27:20The SS was Hitler's elite personal army.
27:27They had their own uniforms, the best military equipment, and they fought unswervingly for the ideology of Nazism.
27:39Watching over it all was Heinrich Himmler, leader of the force of 900,000 men.
27:45He made sure that the Germanic ethnic purity of the SS was maintained.
27:55He also developed the SS racial vision of a world united along purely Aryan lines.
28:06To join the SS, De Grel would have to prove himself worthy and adopt their beliefs wholeheartedly.
28:12In May 1943, De Grel was granted an audience with Himmler.
28:23He listened to the SS ReichsfĂĽhrer's vision of a greater German Empire, Germania, a racially pure superstate of Germanic peoples.
28:32And De Grel signed up for it.
28:34The fact that the Walloons spoke French and weren't Germanic hardly seemed to matter to either man.
28:45Instead, the former Belgian patriot agreed to carve up his country and cede Wallonia to the Reich.
28:51Belgium would be a thing of the past.
28:54It meant the death of his homeland and its subjugation to Hitler forever.
29:01At this point, De Grel betrayed everything he had previously stood for.
29:09He had crossed the line and become a fully fledged Nazi.
29:20The SS Sturm Brigade Wallonie was duly formed in June 1943, numbering almost 2,000 men.
29:25Four Fanon Kaisergruber joining the SS did not bother him.
29:34De toute façon, j'ai pas de raison d'être honteux, hein. Certainement pas.
29:37Je dis sincèrement, quand nous sommes passés à la SS, j'ai considéré comme le plus grand nombre d'entre nous que c'était, comment dirais-je, une promotion.
29:54Finally, all those years ingratiating himself with the Nazis had paid off.
29:59He now had that private army he had always wanted to lead.
30:04He had proven that he had leadership in his blood.
30:08And he had joined the ranks of the SS.
30:14But even that wasn't enough.
30:16He still hadn't received the adulation of the FĂĽhrer himself.
30:22Soon, the perfect opportunity would present itself.
30:291943 was a year of more defeats for the German campaign in Russia.
30:47After the massive tank battle of Kursk, the Germans were on the retreat.
30:51Leon de Grel alternated between recruiting trips back to Belgium and front-line action with the Walloons.
31:03Il est monté en ligne souvent avec les hommes.
31:06Non, non, ça c'est...
31:08Ça il faut lui laisser et que personne ne vienne me dire le contraire.
31:12As the Russians drove the Nazis back, de Grel, along with his men and 60,000 Germans,
31:22became trapped in a salient known as the Kurson Pocket, near Chakassi.
31:26They faced being cut off and annihilated by 300,000 Russians.
31:33It promised to be a fight without mercy.
31:36C.
31:37C.
31:40Grel alternated by Kursk Company.
31:42C.
31:43C.
31:44C.
31:45C.
31:46C.
31:47C.
31:48C.
31:49C.
31:50C.
31:51C.
31:52C.
31:53C.
31:54C.
31:55C.
31:57C.
31:58C.
31:59C.
32:00and we had cut their genital parts and put them in the mouth.
32:07We knew that they wouldn't fall alive in the hands of the Russians.
32:15Degrelle and the Walloons were ordered to fight a desperate rearguard action
32:18to allow the 60,000 Germans to escape.
32:30There was a German soldier that I had seen move there,
32:35who still lived, and a Russian dog that was wounded.
32:39I always remember that his arm was stuck in his mouth with a knife.
32:45And this knife, every time he was eating it,
32:48it would be bang for protection.
32:51And when the dog was moving, his head became red,
32:54as if the blood came out of his pores.
33:01Despite being outnumbered six to one and taking massive casualties,
33:05the Walloons held back the Russian forces.
33:20When we were up in Tcherkassi, we were 2,200,
33:26and we were out at 632.
33:29632, they were out there.
33:36The Walloons had saved the day,
33:38and the German units managed to escape.
33:44They had become heroes,
33:45and none more so than the wounded LĂ©on de Grelle,
33:48who had survived the retreat.
33:56After the battle, de Grelle was whisked back to Berlin.
34:05There, the FĂĽhrer was waiting.
34:08As the cameras rolled, he awarded de Grelle the Knight's Cross,
34:12one of Germany's highest bravery awards.
34:16The former political write-off had become a super soldier.
34:20The FĂĽhrer was held up as the epitome of the true-blooded collaborator,
34:26a resolute believer in the Nazi cause.
34:30He had become their poster child.
34:37More importantly, he had finally won the love of the FĂĽhrer.
34:42De Grelle declared that Hitler had told him,
34:47You are almost unique in history.
34:50A political leader who fights as a true soldier.
34:53If I had a son, I would wish him to be like you.
34:59Even Joseph Goebbels, who had once called de Grelle a fraud,
35:03was quick to praise his men as heroes.
35:05Degrelle was fated in Berlin and Paris,
35:18where he addressed a host of collaborators and sympathisers.
35:22He gave graphic accounts of the saving of the Kursen pocket.
35:26But his proudest moment was yet to come.
35:31He and the Walloons were allowed to return here, to Brussels,
35:45for a lavish victory parade in their homeland.
35:48Leon de Grelle at last returned to the scene of his past failures a hero,
35:59as he had always intended, at the head of a victorious army.
36:07The crowd showed de Grelle that he had finally secured some of the prestige and power that he had always craved.
36:13One eyewitness was Marie-José de Goy.
36:19I was there, on this side, at the Palais des Parfums.
36:26A crazy world!
36:28The Bourse was filled up to the North and the Midi.
36:31The trottoirs were flooded.
36:33It was a great spectacle.
36:35It was a great moment of glory for him.
36:38To see a lot of people who look at the Kursen with the Legionnaires.
36:41It was not the Germans, it was all the Legionnaires.
36:44It was not the Germans, it was all the Legionnaires.
36:50If a parliament like this could be a socialist revolution,
36:54but, my dear...
36:56After the parade, he triumphantly addressed a mass rally in Brussels.
36:59The United Nations was lost.
37:09But despite this personal success, the war was going badly.
37:14And in reality, his popularity at home was a mirage.
37:17Then, came news of the inevitable.
37:24The United Nations have bridged the English Channel.
37:29On June 6th, 1944, a date indelibly written in the annals of history
37:34by the armed forces of the free world,
37:36the fighting men of Britain, the Empire and America
37:39embarked on the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken.
37:41The D-Day landings were a first step towards the liberation of occupied France and Belgium.
37:56Violence and retribution now erupted in Belgium at the prospect of liberation by the Allies.
38:00Degrell's Rexists, along with other collaborators like the Flemish VNV, were now in the crosshairs of the resistance.
38:18One after the other, collaborators were killed in targeted assassinations.
38:22The scale of the violence within Belgium escalated evermore.
38:43It was now that Degrell's own family became a target.
38:46His brother, a pharmacist in his hometown of Bouillon, was shot by the resistance.
38:56The town's archivist, Roger Nicolas, has studied the events that followed.
39:01So, on June 8th, 1944, it was in the building behind me, that the pharmacist Edouard Degrell,
39:11his brother of Leon, had been destroyed by the regional resistance.
39:16The two resistance came into the pharmacy, they demanded a medicine,
39:23and they destroyed the pharmacist Degrell.
39:25Then, the two resistance came into the Rue des Augustins and the Rue du Bru,
39:32before going to hide in the woods close to Bouillon.
39:39The German reaction was immediate.
39:41A curfew was imposed, and 46 people were arrested.
39:47Then, a Rexist hit squad from Brussels traveled to Bouillon,
39:51and murdered another pharmacist in revenge.
39:55His name was Henri Charles.
40:00The plaque on this house indicates the place where the pharmacist Henri Charles,
40:08the 9th July 1944, at 11am.
40:13Degrell returned to Belgium to attend his brother's funeral, and called for revenge.
40:21Enraged, he called for bloody reprisals.
40:25In a telegram to Himmler, he demanded the execution of a hundred Belgians.
40:33Though the request was ignored, the former politician had shown himself to be as ruthless as any German Nazi.
40:39In the end, his hometown endured the brunt of his rage.
40:48Three hostages from Bouillon were chosen.
40:53Three hostages from Bouillon were chosen.
40:58In this precise place of Bouillon, the three thieves who were taken on the 11th July 1944,
41:08were assassinated by probably two German officers from the SD Darlon.
41:15The stones that we can see here, the three stones,
41:21indicate the exact place where the three bodies were found.
41:28The choice of those executed was especially resonant.
41:32It showed that Degrell's fingerprints were all over the crime.
41:34We can understand that it was on the personal order of LĂ©on de Grel,
41:41who was present in Bouillon on Monday, 11th July.
41:45And the three thieves that we found the corps here,
41:49were particular enemies of LĂ©on de Grel, as a political man.
41:54There was nothing left of the patriotic religious campaigner of his youth.
42:07As more blood was spilt by all sides, Degrell prepared to return to the Eastern Front.
42:12But even in these desperate times, he managed to recruit more Belgians to accompany him.
42:27It was testament to what a figure he had become, for some Belgians at least.
42:36With his new volunteers, Degrell fought in the defence of Estonia,
42:39at the northernmost point of the Eastern Front.
42:44But it was a hopeless attempt to stop the advancing Russian juggernaut.
42:50He threw more and more Walloons into a succession of suicidal battles.
42:58Then bad news reached the front line.
43:04Early September 1944, Allied tanks drove into a liberated Brussels,
43:08and liberated Brussels.
43:09In Belgium, any sympathisers or soldiers suspected of being Wallonian legionnaires were rounded up.
43:27On the Eastern Front, Degrell was now an OberstundbahnfĂĽhrer,
43:33in command of a whole division of volunteers.
43:37But they were now an exiled band of survivors, following a leader with no homeland.
43:44And anyway, the game was up. Defeat was inevitable.
43:54By the end of the war, only around 30 Wallonian remained.
44:00Of the 800 or so original legionnaires, Degrell was one of only a handful to survive the Russian Front as a combatant.
44:13He had been wounded a total of seven times in four years of combat.
44:18But this wasn't the end for Leon Degrell. Far from it.
44:25It was time to devise another plan.
44:27In the end, it was typical Degrell, who requisitioned a Heinkel bomber and took off for Spain,
44:38the last friend of fascism in Europe.
44:40It was a nail-biting flight.
44:49The Heinkel had just enough fuel to reach the coast and had to crash land.
44:58Degrell was severely injured, but alive.
45:02The great survivor had survived again.
45:10But while Degrell was untouchable under Spanish protection, other Rexists and Legion volunteers back in Belgium were less fortunate.
45:23I couldn't even see that...
45:26I had abused people.
45:29They told me that they were catastrophizing therative rights that were used in conflict-sponsoring.
45:32They said, we're going to condemn you for 15 years, 15 years of loss of your civil rights and politics.
45:39I was 21 years, almost to my 36 years, and 10,000 francs to death.
45:4510,000 francs to death.
45:50Her husband, whom she had married in 1945 and who had survived the war, was arrested.
45:56He was sentenced to death as an officer of the Wallonie's legion.
46:03For the two years he was sentenced to death, I could go see him every two days, every two days, 10 minutes.
46:16Marie-Josée's husband was eventually released, and they set about quietly rebuilding their lives.
46:21But unlike many of his followers or former comrades, de Grel was more vocal.
46:32Rather than renounce his past, he talked with pride of his time as a Nazi collaborator.
46:40He often wore his SS medals and uniform.
46:45He made numerous media appearances where he vehemently justified his choices.
46:51It was as if he were frozen in a past era.
46:57He continued to extol the racial theories and prejudices of the Nazis' ideology.
47:07In 1979, Pope John Paul II visited the site of the death camp at Auschwitz, and de Grel rose to the occasion.
47:16He wrote an open letter to the Pope, denying the Holocaust.
47:21It dismissed the murder of six million Jews as a lie.
47:28De Grel stated,
47:30Zyklon B, which the Nazis used in the gas chambers, would have been impractical to use.
47:36As a result, he claimed it was logistically impossible to have killed the sheer numbers involved.
47:41But the truth was, Leon de Grel was more alienated than ever from his homeland, and his origins as a Catholic campaigner.
47:56He had been sentenced to death in Belgium, and several attempts to extradite him had failed.
48:09In the end, Leon de Grel died aged 87 in 1994 in Malaga, Spain.
48:17Today, his legacy still divides Belgium.
48:27Those who survived him can only reflect on his impact on their lives, and on those Walloons who fought and died at his side.
48:37Remarquable and admirable.
48:42Moi, on va dire que je suis folle parce que je dis admirable, mais pour moi c'Ă©tait, oui.
48:47Ils offraient leur vie d'avance.
48:53Et je vous assure, ça m'émeut toujours.
48:56Ça m'émeut toujours.
48:59Parce que je vois leur visage, je connais leur nom.
49:02Je ne les oublierai jamais leur nom.
49:03Jamais, c'est gravé.
49:07Moi, je ne regrette pas de l'avoir vécu.
49:10Je regrette simplement la disparition de tous ses compères.
49:17Eh bien, on peut penser de Leon de Grel, tout ce qu'on veut.
49:21On peut l'aimer ou le haĂŻr.
49:23Je ne connais qu'un homme politique qui s'est engagé pour combattre lui-même sur le front.
49:30Je n'en connais aucun autre.
49:34De Grel went to his grave, claiming that he fought as a brave Belgian nationalist.
49:41But the truth was that he fought for Germany to further his own ambition.
49:44He betrayed his country.
49:48And in the end, the course he chose culminated in murder.
49:53Something that is still raw in Belgium today, especially in his hometown.
49:57The reality is, this former patriot was an adventurer who was prepared for the war.
50:02To gamble everything for his ambition.
50:04He didn't say anything, but where he really provoked the hatred of the almost total of the population is when he had these four assassins and the victims.
50:17All that to venger the death of his brother.
50:22The reality is, this former patriot was an adventurer who was prepared to gamble everything for his ambition.
50:29Even if it meant sacrificing those around him and destroying his homeland forever.
50:59Heaven wants to be a hero for the first time.
51:05The Today is The Good God of Life.
51:12The Good God of Life.
51:14The Good God of Life.
51:15The Good God of Life.
51:16The Good God of Life.
51:20The Good God of Life.
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