Alexandre Villaplane - The Footballer executed for being a Nazi (Article for Sporting Blog)

Alexandre Villaplane - French Captain turned Nazi

El Hadji Diouf, John Terry, Luis Suarez, Diego Costa, and Sergio Ramos are possibly amongst some of the most hated footballers to have played the game. Their on and/or off field actions have angered many supporters of rival clubs and ensured that, despite their differing levels of ability, their legacy will remain tarnished.

However, the actions of these more modern examples of players pale into insignificance when viewed through the prism of the actions of French footballer Alexandre Villaplane.

He is certainly not a household name, and his life has been thankfully overlooked and cast aside. However, it is important to revisit his story as it shows that footballers are not born role models and have their own lives off the pitch.

Players such as Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and Jordan Henderson today attract a lot of attention for the right reasons, for being bold enough to stand up for what is right.

People like Alexandre Villaplane need to be examined to highlight how important the morally righteous players are, as they use their positions of power to good. Villaplane was certainly not a footballer with the public reach of players today, nevertheless, he had a position of responsibility and his evil and psychotic ways saw him executed due to his involvement in the malevolent Nazi party.

Alexandre’s Algerian Ancestry

Born in Algiers, the modern-day capital of Algeria, Villaplane endured a modest upbringing in the French territory. Being born into an immigrant family in 1905 meant that he received little access to education during his formative years. He spent 16 years in Algeria before his family split up and he was sent to live with his Uncle in Cette (modern-day Sète) on the South Coast of France.

The 500-mile journey would have been an emotional one for Villaplane who was leaving a disrupted childhood behind him as he crossed the Balearic Sea. One thing that enabled him to settle into his new surroundings quickly, was his footballing ability. One person who spotted his talents was English born Victor Gibson, he went on to manage Montpellier, Marseille, and Sochaux but he was taking charge of his first club FC Cette.

The English born Gibson who made his name as a player in Spain and manager in France, saw the potential of the Algerian born Frenchman born to immigrant parents, a true story of international unity and togetherness.

His performances on the pitch were gathering Villaplane welcome attention, the tough-tackling, high energy, combative midfielder was making a name for himself. Still a teenager at the time, his on-field displays illustrated his eye for a pass and tremendous heading ability, and it was inevitable that he was destined for bigger and better things.

As the professional game in France had not begun, players could not be paid to play the sport. Despite this, owners of the ‘bigger’ French clubs found ways to financially reward their players which often coaxed the better players to the richer teams. Villaplane was one of the men who had his head turned.

Nîmes and the National Team

By 1927, the now twenty-two-year-old Villaplane moved to Cette’s long-term local rivals, Nîmes. To get round the financial restrictions, Villaplane was promised a fictitious job in which he would receive a generous salary. Unperturbed by upsetting the team he had represented for three seasons and which had provided his route to play the game he loved, Villaplane joined their fiercest rivals in return for a financial reward that was not permitted in France, at the time.

The step onto a greater platform provided Villaplane his first international call-up in 1926. He was quickly making a name for himself in French football as one of the brightest talents of his generation. He allowed this hype to get to his head and he realised the financial rewards that could come alongside his widely appreciated talents.

Captain of France

His career with France was successful, he captained Les Bleus on five separate occasions including the honour of doing so for the inaugural World Cup in 1930. The tournament was the brainchild of fellow Frenchman Jules Rimet, he pressured his native country into participating as one of only two European teams of the thirteen participating nations.

Back-to-back Olympic Games gold medal winners Uruguay were the hosts and Villaplane led a French side that had to travel on a three-week boat ride to get to the tournament. Villaplane was the captain in a young squad where he had the most caps (22), despite being just 24 years old. They started the tournament well with a 4-1 victory over Mexico but subsequent defeats to Argentina (1-0) and Chile (1-0) meant that they were eliminated from the tournament at the group stage.

Despite a disappointingly early exit, the French side were up against the laborious travel time and a South American dominance for the competition. Villaplane knew that he was a pivotal part of his nations’ future hopes and grew in self-belief and confidence that he was the greatest player in France. This self-belief was slowly turning to arrogance and greed.

Villaplane realised that, until football became a professional sport in France, he could and would manipulate his way around the league to ensure that he received the largest pay packet from the highest bidder. Therefore, in his 14-year club career, he represented six different clubs.

Clubs and Cash Carousel for Villaplane

Racing Club de Paris

The third move of his career preceded the shift to professionalism in France by three years as Villaplane joined RC Paris in 1929. Backed by a bountiful beneficiary, Racing Club de Paris were keen to secure the signature of Villaplane in their ambitious side. Again, finding ways around the financial barricades, Villaplane was able to receive a further pay rise in Paris.

Instead of masking his ill-gotten gains, Villaplane was quick to flaunt his wealth in the capital city’s bars, casinos and horse racing tracks. This influx of wealth and brashness brought Villaplane into the wrong crowds. The illegal actions of the clubs who employed him provided him with the knowledge of cutting legal corners, and the finances to cut them himself.

He spent three years in Paris before football in France became a professional sport. This saw a further transfer to FC Antibes. The story was like RC Paris, a new owner wanting to secure the ace midfielder in a bankrolled push for silverware. The only difference was that Villaplane no longer had to have his source of finances disguised, not that he had done in the capital.

Antibes

Antibes enjoyed some of Villaplane’s best performances and he was enjoying his time back on the South coast of France. The league was split into two divisions, North and South, the winners of each were to face each other in the final. Antibes reached the final and won the league in 1933.

However, soon after it was discovered that the match officials had been bribed and the title was stripped away from the club. Due to Villaplane’s previous disreputable Parisian past, it was widely believed that he was a key cog in the cheating machine that saw Antibes’ manager dismissed and Villaplane soon left the club after just one season.

Nice and Beyond

Next was Nice where he was offered the chance to re-ignite his career which had plummeted from captaining France in 1930 to being ousted at Antibes, just three years. Instead of knuckling down and working hard, Villaplane grew increasingly disenfranchised with football and began turning up late to training, putting on weight and generally dropping in standards from his former energetic performances. The move was a disaster for all involved, Nice were ultimately relegated and Villaplane was released.

His career was on the rocks and the only side remotely interested in taking the troublesome and underachieving midfielder was Second Division outfit Hispano-Bastidienne in Bordeaux. Here he was reunited with Victor Gibson who had coached him at Cette. He too had seen his stock rise and fall in the period between the last time the two worked together, they both needed each other for a second chance to restore their former selves.

Unfortunately for Gibson, Villaplane was not his former self, three months later he had to sack the midfielder for not turning up. 1935 was the last time Villaplane played a competitive game of football at the age of 30, nine years later he was executed.

Criminality, World War Two, The Nazi Party and Execution

His life and career had spiralled out of control, greed had taken the place of hunger to improve, and he sought criminality to cover the lost finances he grown accustomed to in football. The illegal crowds he had become intertwined with from his days in Paris were now, as he perceived it, the only people he could rely on to get funds following his disgraced exit from football.

Life changed for the French in June 1940 when the Battle of France ended with the Germans taking control of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland. This catastrophic defeat for the nation provided a great opportunity for the French fraudsters to capitalise on the surrender to the Nazis. Villaplane was one of those who manipulated the situation at hand, turning to racketeering and blackmail particularly of the black and Jewish communities in France. He wasn’t very good at this however as he was quickly imprisoned for his criminal behaviour.

The former captain of the French national side was imprisoned for attempting to acquire businesses owned by black and Jewish people, through his illegal methods. His greed had taken him to the bottom and yet there was still further for him to fall. Whilst imprisoned he met members of the so-called French Gestapo, a group who acted in direct opposition to the French Resistance who had been fighting to remove the Nazis from France and restore rule over their nation.

Villaplane caught the attention of the chief organisers Henri Lafont and Pierre Bonny who wanted to recruit Villaplane as part of their Nazi sympathising, racist, violent, and illegal actions. In search of easy money, Villaplane happily joined forces with the French Gestapo.

Once he left prison, he worked with Lafont and Bonny closely, driving them around and generally being part of their gang. By 1944, he had risen to oversee the North African Brigade, made up of fellow immigrants from French territories like Algeria, where he was born. His task was to collaborate with the Nazis by maliciously blocking, reporting, and personally stamping out the French Resistance fighters in the nation. They wore the uniform of the Nazi Waffen-SS and proudly displayed their ties with Hitler.

Villaplane was not interested in the moral or political ramifications of his actions, just the paycheques and the parties he could celebrate at afterwards. His power and cruelty rose in equal measure culminating in the massacre in Mussidan in 1944. Villaplane already had the experience of ordering the deaths of those who he had help capture, even exchanging hostages for money on several occasions.

Mussidan Massacre

At Mussidan 52 inhabitants were killed by Villaplane and the rest of the Nazi SS present. This included men, women and children not involved in the French Resistance or even fighting against the Nazis at the time.

That was in the June of 1944 and Villaplane had hit his heights of pure evil. He had continued to escalate his violence and corruptness since his early playing days in Paris and was now killing the people fighting to restore the country that had given him everything.

Allied Liberation and Death of Alexandre Villaplane

In August 1944, France was liberated by the Allied forces and the French were quick to swarm on their people who had betrayed them and joined the Nazis. Villaplane was amongst five of the key members of the French Gestapo arrested and put on trial for their war crimes.

The judge was quick to deduct the methods in which Villaplane used to lie, cheat, and steal his way to power and money. He had little disregard for anyone and in truth, it is sad to see the monumental decline from captaining his country and being a true beacon of the potential future for his nation. Wasting his talent to turn against the nation he had captained and represented less than ten years earlier. Villaplane, alongside Lafont and Bonny, was executed at gunpoint on Boxing Day 1944.

Hero to Zero

Thankfully, Alexandre Villaplane’s life is not one that is often discussed or remembered. His story would leave nobody in any doubt of the deplorable behaviour he displayed, particularly in the final years of his life. The only thing to take from the fall of Villaplane is that he is an oddity, someone who wasted his talent and did not use his power, skill, and reputation for good. History remembers the villains to demonstrate how bad decisions can snowball into complete destruction of character. Villaplane was evil and died in a way that fitted his repulsive life choices.

Instead of concluding his story and trying to explain or vilify him further, it is best to turn to the brave men who didn’t follow his cowardice and greed and stood up for what is right. Victor Farvacques, Noel Lietaer, Eugène Maës and Jacques Mairesse all represented France at international level, and they died during the War for either fighting or standing up for their country.

They deserve their names in lights and to be remembered for being heroes, as do people like Matthias Sindelar - the footballer who defied Nazi Germany.

PETER KENNY JONES

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Peter Kenny Jones

@PeterKennyJones

https://peterkj.wixsite.com/football-historian