Francois Lehideux, Nazi Collaborator, 95

published 27/06/1998 at 10:44

Francois Lehideux, the last surviving minister of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, who tirelessly defended its anti-Jewish measures, died on Sunday.

He was 95.

For years after the war, Mr. Lehideux was among France's most ardent supporters of Marshall Philippe Petain, who led France's collaborationist regime in World War II.

The son of a banker, Mr. Lehideux became one of the ablest and brightest of France's civil servants to work for the Nazis.

He headed the country's automobile commission in the early 1940's and then, as Minister of Industrial Production until 1942, set up links between top French companies and Nazi Germany.

Mr. Lehideux married a niece of the founder of the Renault automobile company. In 1940 he agreed that Renault would furnish parts to the German Army, repair tanks and provide any technical help necessary to its war effort.

A writer for Le Monde, Nicolas Weil, described Mr. Lehideux as a ''young idealist who dreamed of modernizing and industrializing France for its place in a German Europe.''

He was arrested and jailed after the Allies liberated France, but was freed in 1946. Charges of collaborating with the enemy were dropped in 1949. He went on to head Ford France until 1953.

Mr. Lehideux never voiced any regret about his wartime collaboration. In interviews on the eve of the war crimes trial of Maurice Papon, a former Budget Minister, this spring, he said there were ''extenuating circumstances'' to justify Vichy's systematic looting of Jewish assets.