The Immortal Who Fell: Abel Hermant’s Betrayal of France
In 1927 Abel Hermant became one of the forty “immortals” of the Académie française — a celebrated novelist, language purist, and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. Eighteen years later the same man, now eighty-two, stood in a courtroom and received a life sentence for treason.
This episode examines how a pillar of French letters lent his pen, prestige, and name to the Nazi occupation, the post-Liberation purge that stripped him of everything, and the quiet, devastating power of intellectual collaboration. Host Alexander Lawson opens the file on one of the most unsettling falls from grace…
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