Paul Estèbe

Paul Estèbe was born on 20 August 1904 in Saigon, French Indochina.[1][2] His parents were teachers.[1]

He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.[1] He studied the Law at the University of Toulouse and the University of Paris, before studying at Sciences Po. He received a Doctorate in Law in 1934.[1][2] His PhD thesis was about rice production in French Indochina.[1]

Estèbe started his career as a teacher in Saigon from 1930 to 1935.[1][2] He was then appointed as economic attache to the Minister of the Economy, Finances and Industry.[1] A friend of Adrien Marquet, Mayor of Bordeaux, he followed him when the neo-socialists broke up with the French Section of the Workers' International.

He joined the French army in 1939 at the outset of World War II.[1] He was appointed Under-Prefect in 1941 as a member of Philippe Pétain's staff.[1][2] He was decorated of the Francisque for his role in the Vichy Regime.[3] He was arrested as an ostage by the Gestapo on 10 August 1943 and deported to the Füssen-Plansee work camp, a converted former hotel used for personalities.[1][2] He was liberated in May 1945.[1]

After the war, he was a public defender of Pétain's régime.[4] He served as a member of the National Assembly from 17 June 1951 to 1 December 1955, representing Gironde.[1][2]

He started France réelle, a neo-Vichist newspaper, in 1951[5] and, Opinion girondine, a newspaper in Bordeaux, in 1953.[1] He served as a city councillor of Bordeaux from 1953 onwards.[1]

He was an officer of the Legion of Honour.[1]

He died on 14 October 1991 in Bordeaux.[1]