Alain Laubreaux

Son of a businessman settled since 1898 in New Caledonia , he spent his youth and the French colony will mark several of his later accounts.

Alain Laubreaux's brothers Raymond Laubreaux, future teacher at the Lycée Rodin in Paris, and who will write several books and critics on the theater just like him, and Félicien Laubreaux, born in 1905, who will be a collaborationist and prisoner of war in Germany and released all continuing to express during his captivity his adherence to the policy of collaboration as editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the Association of French Workers in Germany from 1942 to 1944.

Alain Laubreaux went to France to finish his schooling at Lycée Louis-le-Grand . He returned to New Caledonia for a time after the First World War and, after practicing as a notary clerk, he made his weapons in journalism by founding there with his father the Messenger of New Caledonia in 1919, newspaper he writes most of the articles and of which he does the layout alone.

In 1921, he returned to metropolitan France and served alternately in Le Journal (a newspaper firmly rooted on the right, anti-communist and then not hiding his admiration for the fascist regime of Mussolini , Laubreaux then wrote only for the heading called "Crushed dogs") then L'Oeuvre (on the contrary rather left and pacifist). He soon specialized as a literary critic for the radical daily Dépêche de Toulouse (ancestor of La Dépêche du Midi ). He was also editor-in-chief of early Paris from 1927 and L'Européen from 1929. Despite his republican convictions, he wrote a time for the Madrassian journal Candide . It was before the war the secretary of Henri Béraud , but a dark affair of plagiarism will taint their relationship which will end in 1928.

In 1936, he joined the weekly, I am everywhere where he fulfills the function of theater critic, while occasionally dealing with political subjects. He holds pacifist and anti-Semitic positions, advocating the agreement with Germany. Lucien Rebatet , another journalist from Je suis partout , explains Laubreaux's collaborationist attitude in these terms: "With him, no equivocation.Coming from several bands of refractory and socialist radicals of Toulouse, very disinterested in their convictions, he did not have to shake like us the scruples of men on the right. No debris of dogmas embarrassed him. It can be said that he had joined us instinctively, in 1936, the day his Democratic friends began agitating the fire. Not the slightest debate of conscience in his case, not one of those ridiculous hot flashes that we almost all had to confess " ¹ .

He was arrested on June 3, 1940 ² by Georges Mandel (new minister of the interior of the government Paul Reynaud who then tries to prevent the debacle and makes stop the leading right-wing intellectuals favorable to Nazi Germany ) and placed two days later in detention at the prison of Health with Charles Lesca , another collaborator at Je suis partout . He released by order of the investigating judge to the Military Court of the 12th region in Périgueux dated August 6, 1940, which indicates that "the charge is based on vague allegations, that nothing specific was established in against the accused and that it is not enough to simply pretend that their activity is doubtful and their resources are not well established.

(Taken from Wikipedia)