Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie

French Journalist and Politician

Born: January 6,1900 at Paris
Died: 1969

     D'Astier began his career as a naval officer but resigned his commission in 1923 to pursue a career in journalism. He collaborated with Drieu La Rochelle in writing political commentary for the royalist journal l'Action Francaise before adopting Leftist views during the 1930s.

     D'Astier refused to accept the June 1940 armistice or Vichy. He joined Raymond Aubrac and Jean Cavailles in forming the Liberation-sud resistance and edited the movement's clandestine journal, Liberation. He supported de Gaulle's efforts to unify the disparate resistance movements and was appointed political affairs commissioner when Jean Moulin organized the Mouvements unis de la Resistance in the fall of 1942. He became Commissioner to the Interior from the French National Committee of Liberation in 1943.

     D'Astier was elected to the constituent assemblies that drafted a new constitution after the liberation, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Ile et Vilaine (Rennes) with Communist support in 1945 and co-founded the Stockholm Committee to protest the nuclear arms race. D'Astier broke with the Communists in 1956, denouncing Stalin and the Hungarian intervention in 1956.