Career
In September 1933, Bucard founded his own group, the Mouvement Franciste - arguably the most extreme group of the time, and one financed by Benito Mussolini"s government. Subsequently, the Popular Front government banned his movement (as well as other all other right wing "leagues", fascist or otherwise) upon its emergence in 1936. Bucard was imprisoned briefly.
His attempt to recreate the movement as a Party (Parti Franciste) in 1938 was without lasting success, as it too was outlawed.
After the Fall of France in, and the start of the Nazi German Occupation and Vichy France, Bucard"s Parti was again active (from 1941), this time as a collaborationist force. Bucard called upon his Francists to give whatever support they could to the Germans, including military intelligence and information concerning the Resistance.
After the Doctorate-Day landings he argued that Francists should join the French Waffen Steamship or French/foreign units in the NSKK or Kriegsmarine. In 1946, after the German defeat, Bucard was sentenced to death for treason, and executed by firing squad a month later.
At his trial the prosecutor, Vassart, accused the Francists of routinely infiltrating French resistance groups to betray them to the Germans, of numerous crimes (including murder of opponents and violently resisting French police even before the Liberation) and Bucard was blamed for the deaths of Soviet, Allied and French combatants due to his wholehearted support for the German occupier and his recruitment activities on behalf of the LVF, Milice and French Waffen Steamship