1940: Freemasonry to Be Outlawed by Pétain’s Regime
A news report, produced by the Vichy government, shows an anti-Freemasonry exhibition in Paris in 1940. The video has no sound. INA.fr.
VICHY — Freemasonry is
to be suppressed in France under a decree adopted by the government of
Marshal Henri Petain last night [Aug. 2] empowering Raphael Alibert,
Minister of Justice, to draft a decree dissolving all secret societies.
Following, as it does, measures taken recently against foreigners, this
action is another step tending to bring France’s policy into line with
that of Germany and Italy, where Freemasonry has been proscribed by the
Nazi and Fascist governments.
Commenting on the
decree, the newspaper ‘‘Le Jour’’ said today: ‘‘It is a veritable
abscess that the government has just cut — an abscess which for half a
century poisoned the country so much that it nearly perished. On the
margin of the official powers and more often against them, the policy of
the Third Republic was directed, under the regime now fallen, by an
occult and all-powerful force — that of the secret societies, and
notably of the most powerful and best organized of all — Freemasonry.’’ — New York Herald Tribune, Aug. 3, 1940
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