Pierre Pucheu

Pierre Firmin Pucheu (27 June 1899 in Beaumont-sur-Oise - executed 20 March 1944 in Algeria) was a French industrialist, fascist and member of the Vichy government. He became after his marriage the Son-in-Law of the Belgian architect Paul Saintenoy.

The son of a tailor from southwest France, Pucheu won a scholarship to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris where he was a contemporary of both Robert Brasillach and Jean-Paul Sartre. Initially intending to follow the path of a writer himself, he became enamoured of capitalism in Paris and determined instead to enter the business world. He was ultimately drawn to the steel industry and eventually came to head up one of the largest monopolies, the Cartel d'Acier.

Initially showing little real interest in politics, his interest was sparked by the 6 February 1934 crisis and he became associated first with the Croix-de-Feu and then with Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Français before splitting from the latter group in 1938 over Doriot's financial links with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In particular Pucheu was opposed to the Munich Agreement, which he felt punished Czechoslovakia. This was in part motivated by Pucheu's business interests, which included close links to Škoda Auto, a company threatened by German expansion. Pucheu's support for the PPF had been motivated by what he saw as the growth of communism and the desire for a rightist party to oppose that whilst his departure from the group (along with that of other industrialists whom he had encouraged to support them) saw the PPF decline sharply due a significant drop in funding.

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