page_title: La Cagoule
section_title: In the Third Republic
hierarchical_section_title: La Cagoule / In the Third Republic
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: «&#160;Les premières constatations&#160;: MM. Guillaume (1), Moreux (2), et la cuisinière de la victime (3)&#160;». Photographie du cadavre de Dimitri Navachine, publiée dans Le Petit Parisien, n° 21882, 26 janvier 1937.
context_page_description: La Cagoule, officially called Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire, was a French fascist-leaning and anti-communist terrorist group that used violence to promote its activities from 1935 to 1941.
  It developed to overthrow the French Third Republic, led by the Popular Front government, an alliance of left-wing groups. La Cagoule was founded by Eugène Deloncle. Among others, the founder of the cosmetics company L'Oréal, Eugène Schueller, bankrolled the clandestine movement.
  The group performed assassinations, bombings, sabotage of armaments, and other violent activities, some intended to cast suspicion on communists and add to political instability. Planning a November 1937 overthrow of the government, La Cagoule was infiltrated by the police, and the national government arrested and imprisoned about 70 men. At the outbreak of World War II, the government released the men to fight in the French Army. Some supported other right-wing organizations and participated in the Vichy government; others joined the Free French of Charles de Gaulle. It was not until 1948 that the government tried surviving members for the charges of 1937.
context_section_description: The group was founded in 1936–1937 by Eugène Deloncle. The group enjoyed privileged relations within industrial circles (National Federation of ratepayer, Company Lesieur, L'Oréal, etc).
  An important member was Joseph Darnand, who later founded the Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), the forerunner of the Milice, the Collaborationist paramilitary of the Vichy regime. His nephew Henri Charbonneau was also a member. Jean Filiol was a member. He was appointed as the head of the Milice in Limoges, and fled to Spain at the end of World War II, where he worked in the Spanish subsidiary of L'Oréal. Gabriel Jeantet, who was a lover of a sister of François Mitterrand who later recommended him for the Francisque. Dr. Henri Martin, a medical doctor who is suspected of having forged the Pacte Synarchique, and worked for the Organisation armée secrète (OAS) after World War II. Mohammed El Maadi, head of La Cagoule for French Algeria, creator of the antisemitic newspaper Er Rachid, and organizer of the North-African Brigade, known as SS-Mohammed, in 1944.
  The group drew most of its members from Orléanists disappointed by the lack of action by Action Française, which was founded by Charles Maurras. They were opposed to the Popular Front government, created from an alliance of left-wing groups. Historians believe many low-level members were recruited in the belief that it was an auto-defense organization, intended to fight against a Communist takeover.
  In Nice, new members were initiated in a formal ritual. In the presence of the Grand Master, dressed in red and accompanied by his assesseurs dressed in black, with their faces covered, new members stood before a table draped with a French flag. A sword and torches were placed on it. Each man raised his right arm and swore the oath, Ad majorem Galliæ gloriam ("For the greater glory of France"). This oath echoed the Jesuit motto, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (For the greater glory of God). Disloyalty was punished by death. For instance, the arms suppliers Léon Jean-Baptiste and Maurice Juif were murdered by Cagoulards in October 1936 and February 1937, respectively, for attempting to enrich themselves by lying about the price they had paid for the arms.
  The paramilitary organization was active in the provinces. In Paris it organized militias and demonstrations, and it amassed arms. They attempted to assassinate Léon Blum, the prime minister. They also trained men in terrorism, built underground prisons, and "ran guns in Belgium, Switzerland and Italy."
  La Cagoule directed its members in various actions aimed at creating suspicions of Communists to destabilize and destroy the French Republic. Some argue that on 26 January 1937 Jean Filiol stabbed to death Dimitri Navachine, a Russian national and for several years the respected director of the Paris branch of the Soviet State Bank, in the Bois de Boulogne. Others believed that he had been killed by Joseph Stalin's Secret Service, the NKVD, as the Great Purge was underway in the Soviet Union. To ease their obtaining arms from fascist Italy, on 9 June 1937, the group assassinated two Italian antifascists, the Rosselli brothers, who were refugees in France. They sabotaged airplanes clandestinely supplied by the French government to the Spanish Republic. On 11 September 1937, the Cagoule blew up two buildings owned by the Comité des Forges (Ironmasters Association), to create the impression of a communist conspiracy. Although it was widely believed at the time that communists had set the bombs, the government took no official action against the French Communist Party, to the disappointment of Cagoulards. The Cagoule tried to infiltrate the International Brigades for the same purpose.
  Organized along military lines, the Cagoule infiltrated parts of the French military via Georges Loustaunau-Lacau's Corvignolles organization (as a means to acquire weapons). They prepared to overthrow the Popular Front government in November 1937 to install a fascist government. The Cagoulards initially intended to make Philippe Pétain chief of state. Pétain refused thei
caption: Police investigating the murder of Dimitri Navachine in January 1937
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