Paul Ferdonnet (28 April 1901 – 4 August 1945), dubbed "the Stuttgart traitor" (french: le traître de Stuttgart) by the French press, was a French

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and Nazi sympathizer, who was executed for

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

in 1945.

Biography

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

sympathizer, Ferdonnet was known for having published an anti-semitic book, ''La Guerre juive'' (''The Jewish War''). He relocated to

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in the 1930s and was an employee of Radio-Stuttgart where he worked on propaganda broadcast in French and aimed at promoting the Nazi regime and demoralizing French troops and civilians. Ferdonnet was identified in 1939 by French intelligence as the main French speaker of Radio-Stuttgart. The previously obscure Ferdonnet became famous and notorious, and claimed that Britain would let France fight and die on its behalf: "Britain provides the machines, France provides the bodies". After the fall of France, transmissions in French were progressively discontinued and Ferdonnet stopped working for Radio-Stuttgart around 1942. He was arrested after the fall of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and executed for

in 1945. During his trial, Ferdonnet asserted in vain that he had not been the speaker. Some historians consider that he might have merely worked for Radio-Stuttgart as a translator of the scripts submitted by the Germans, his translations being read by another Frenchman. According to writer

Maurice-Yvan Sicard Maurice-Ivan Sicard (nom de plume Saint-Paulien; 21 May 1910 in Le Puy-en-Velay – 10 December 2000) was a French journalist, far right political activist, and Nazi collaborator. Biography Initially a teacher and journalist for such mainstream ...

(writing under the pseudonym Saint-Paulien and himself a former collaborationist), the actual speaker was "a former actor named Obrecht", an actor who was never found. This evidence is considered by experts on the subject as void.Saint-Paulien, ''Histoire de la Collaboration'', L'Esprit Nouveau, 1964

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferdonnet, Paul 1901 births 1945 deaths French radio presenters Nazi propagandists Nazi propaganda radio Nazi collaborators shot at the Fort de Montrouge Executed French people French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers