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Periodical: Vaincre (Plantard)

Ssummary: From Pat Deveney's database:

Vaincre.
Pour une jeune chevalerie.
Alpha Galates, Honneur Patrie
1942 Monthly
Paris, France. Language: French.
Editor: "Pierre de France" or "Pierre de France-Plantard" (Pierre Plantard). Succeeds: Rénovation Francaise (?) Succeeded by: Circuit (1956 and 1959)
1/1, September 21, 1942-February 1943. 6 issues only.
4 pp, distributed without charge to members of the order (although the journal provided space for members to subscribe 40 francs for a year's issues.

It prominently displayed a strict prohibition of its "diffusion publique" while at the same time listing a (certainly false) publication run of 4,500 copies. The journal is controversial even today because of Plantard's later exploits with the Priory of Sion, with some saying the entire Alpha Galates organization was simply a hoax and others attempting to pluck some elements of possible truth from the dross. The journal invited such scrutiny with its allusive, name-dropping style and hints of mysterious, shadowy historical associations (with the Druids and Atlantis, whose secrets the order claimed to preserve) and its membership. Alpha Galates, of which it was the short-lived organ, was said to have been begun in its latest manifestation in 1937 (when Plantard would have been 17 years old) with the goal of establishing a Christian "youth chivalry" in conjunction with the illustrious dead who live among us to conquer the "forces noires" of this degenerate age. Its stated goal was the establishment of a "United States of the West" under the guidance of the ancient Western wisdom: The Alpha is the esoteric summit of Christianity, whose principles it preserves in their integrity. It forms the real nucleus of the the living university which one day bring to live the union of science and faith." The journal was published in conquered France and is politically ambiguous. It unabashedly praised Philippe Pétain and was printed with the appropriate approvals from both Vichy France and the occupying Germans but claimed after the War to have been a resistance effort. It was in the line of succession of France Chretienne/Anti-Maconnique and other French journals in being strongly anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish, and also contained the obligatory (for a French journal) references to Ram and Agartha, with allusions to Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. The journal came to an end after six issues when Plantard was arrested and imprisoned for four months by the Germans. There is said to have been a predecessor journal of Alpha Galates under the name Rénovation Francaise as early as 1937, but no issues remain. The journal contains several photographs of a very young Plantard (1920-2000) who edited it under the name "Pierre de France" or "Pierre de France-Plantard." (In later years when he was was promoting the Priory of Sion he modified the name to add "de Saint-Clair" to indicate that his Merovingian genealogy ran though the Scottish Sinclair family of Masonic legend). It contained contributions by Plantard, the eighteen-year-old Robert Amadou, Gabriel Trarieux d'Egmont, Camille Savoire, Louis Le Fur and others, likely and unlikely, who were claimed to have played a role in Alpha Galates. In 1956 and again in 1959, after several imprisonments for fraud (including one for the selling of bogus orders and degrees of chivalry, after the manner of The Comte de Sarak) and one for abuse of a minor (an affair with an 18 year old), he tried again with a more purely occult journal (Circuit), advertising himself as a clairvoyant, and in the early 1960s went on to reveal the Priory of Sion, by which he is remembered today. BNF.

Issues:Vaincre V1 N1 Sep 1942
Vaincre V1 N2 Oct 1942
Vaincre V1 N3 Nov 1942
Vaincre V1 N4 Dec 1942
Vaincre V2 N5 Jan 1943
Vaincre V2 N6 Feb 1943


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