H. A. Sinclair de Rochemont

Who was H. A. Sinclair de Rochemont?

Hugues Alexandre Sinclair de Rochemont was a Dutch fascist and later a collaborator with the Nazis.

Whilst studying Indology at Leiden University, he became associated with the rightist professor Gerardus Johannes Petrus Josephus Bolland. After leaving the university in 1924, he set up the country's first fascist movement, the Verbond van Actualisten, with Alfred Haighton. This group had stood in the 1925 general election but managed to win only 0.08% of the vote. Alongside this, Sinclair de Rochemont worked as a journalist for De Vaderlander and as a strike breaker. In 1927, he began editing De Bezem, a fascist journal aimed at the working classes and continued to publish under this name after 1930, when he split from Haighton.

Having split from Haighton, Sinclair de Rochemont became associated with Joris Van Severen of Belgium, although most of his time was given over to his work as a civil servant and then as an antiquarian bookseller. He joined both the National Front and the National Socialist Dutch Workers Party in 1940, having become fully convinced of Nazism, even to the point of accepting the incorporation of the Netherlands into the Third Reich.