Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle (3 January 1893 – 15 March 1945) was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays. He was born, lived and died in Paris. Drieu La Rochelle became a proponent of French fascism in the 1930s, and was a well-known collaborationist during the German occupation. Drieu was born into a middle class family from Normandy, based in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. His father was an unsuccessful lawyer and businessman and womanizer who relied on his wife's dowry and ended up squandering it, being "responsible for a sharp decline in the family's social status" by the time of his son's adolescence. Although a brilliant student, Pierre failed his final exam at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. Wounded three times, his experience as a soldier during World War I had a deep influence on him and mar...read more