SS-Gruppenfuhrer Richard Jungclaus, Higher SS and Police Leader for Belgium and Northern France, gives the salute to an SS gathering, rather overshadowed by a huge Belgian heraldic Lion, 1944.  Best regards, JR.

The Higher SS and Police Leader and the Lion ...

Léon Degrelle

Prewar 'photo of Léon Degrelle, subsequently Heer soldier and officer, SS Oberfuhrer and commander of the 38th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division, "Wallonien", in the uniform of the the Belgian (Walloon) corporativist/Fascist "Parti Rexiste" - his armband shows the crown impaled with the word "Rex" emblem of the Rexist Party.

Degrelle's first formal involvement with the Belgian extreme Right was as a journalist on the newspaper "Christus Rex", a Walloon Roman Catholic revival movement of the same name.  However he, and other political radicals, came to be at odds with the majority of "Christus Rex" members and supporters who, generally, were more religious in orientation, and monarchist/reactionary in politics.  Consequently, the Radicals split from "Christus Rex" to form the "Parti Rexist", a Fascist-style political party and movement devoted to French nationalism and (at least initially) Italian-style Fascism/corporativism.  The Party contested a number of elections in the latter part of the 1930s, but appeared to be past its electoral peak by the eve of WW2 (an experience common among western European Fascist parties in this period).  Rexism was, arguably, rescued from pending oblivion by the German takeover of Belgium.  During this period, Degrelle became the predominant figure and orator of the Party.  Following his release from detention as a suspected potential German collaborator, Degrelle lived up to the expectations of his captors by declaring Rexist co-operation with the German invaders.  By late 1941, he was unquestioned leader of the Rexist political movement, as well as a Heer soldier.  He subsequently moved into the Waffen SS along with the Walloon volunteers to the Wehrmacht, eventually rising to the rank of Oberfuhrer and command (at least nominal) of the "Wallonien" Waffen SS (at least nominal) Division.

By the end of the war, Degrelle was a poster boy of the Waffen SS; whatever about the extent of his actual field command, he was certainly a brave soldier and at least a competent officer, in spite of his lack of formal military training.  He became, jointly, the most highly decorated non-German in the German forces, having been awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.  At the end of the war, he escaped into Spanish exile, from which he ran a voluble Nazi apologist/neo-Nazi propaganda operation until his death.  Best regards, JR.