# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/leon-degrelle
# Generated: 2026-09-01T04:27:31.217Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/leon-degrelle"
name: "Léon Degrelle"
slug: "leon-degrelle"
description: "He led a Catholic-rooted party in 1930s Belgium, then volunteered for the Waffen-SS and spent fifty years in Spanish exile writing Holocaust denial. The attention comes from the arc: how far someone traveled from respectability to the outer edge of collaboration."
tagline: "Belgian journalist, politician, SS soldier, fugitive (1906-1994)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle_portrait.jpg"
gender: "male"
category:
  name: "Journalists"
  slug: "journalists"
profileType:
  name: "Journalist"
  slug: "journalist"
birthDate: "1906-06-15"
deathDate: "1994-03-31"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           61.16
  momentum:             8.601442550124208
  historical:           25.198832
  currentAttention:     16.32553606237817
  sourceConfidence:     60
  profileCompleteness:  60
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: 245
tags:
  - name: "Politicians"
    slug: "politicians"
  - name: "Politician"
    slug: "politician"
  - name: "Politics"
    slug: "politics"
  - name: "Journalism"
    slug: "journalism"
  - name: "Literature"
    slug: "literature"
  - name: "Law"
    slug: "law"
  - name: "Entrepreneurship"
    slug: "entrepreneurship"
  - name: "20th Century"
    slug: "20th-century"
sources:
  - url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Wikipedia"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q158844"
    title: "Wikidata"
    type:  "WIKIDATA"
  - url: "https://pantheon.world/profile/person/L%C3%A9on%20Degrelle"
    title: "Pantheon 2.0"
    type:  "DATABASE"
  - url: "https://ast.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://br.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9B%CE%B5%CF%8C%CE%BD_%CE%9D%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%B3%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%AD%CE%BB"
    title: "Λεόν Ντεγκρέλ"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%84%D8%A6%D9%88%D9%86_%D8%AF%DA%AF%D8%B1%D9%84"
    title: "لئون دگرل"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%93%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%9C"
    title: "לאון דגרל"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://io.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Léon Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%A0%88%EC%98%B9_%EB%93%9C%EA%B7%B8%EB%A0%90"
    title: "레옹 드그렐"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Degrelle"
    title: "Leo Degrelle"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://cs.wikiquote.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://pl.wikiquote.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Degrelle"
    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://sr.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D0%9B%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%BD_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5"
    title: "Wikiquote"
    type:  "WEBSITE"
  - url: "https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%86_%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%BA%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%84"
    title: "ليون ديغريل"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Degrelle came up through Catholic journalism and by the early 1930s controlled a publishing house that became the Rexist Party. Rex took 11 percent in the 1936 Belgian election, then collapsed into irrelevance before the war. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1940, Degrelle was released from detention and began reshaping Rex to win Nazi favor. In 1941 he organized the Walloon Legion and fought on the Eastern Front; his actions at Cherkassy in 1944 and the decorations that followed made him a showcase for foreign volunteers. Belgium stripped his citizenship and sentenced him to death in absentia after liberation. He fled to Spain in early 1945, went into hiding with government help by 1946, and resurfaced in the 1960s as a prominent neo-Nazi, publishing books that glorified the regime and denied the Holocaust until his death in 1994.