this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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Well it was kinda at gunpoint cuss the gestapo hounded him from his previous publication house after he published 'Music above all' and said a lot of negative stuff about Hitler and Mousilini. Still he became a collaborator and made propaganda cartoons for the pro Nazi occupied Belgian press. He was also previously very much conservative and pro catholic opposition to "socialist atheism", a major fear at the time for Belgian clergy, so overall he'd likely be within the same political spectrum as the dude that made Dilbert.
It was so not made at gunpoint. He could have stayed in France, or he could have stopped writing for large publication. He both returned to Belgium freely (Because of his monarchist views) and sought out the job at Le Soir.
He chose Le Soir over Le Pays Réel (an openly fascist pro francophone publication even before the war and occupation) though, which meant very little when most papers eventually became fash mouthpieces. Overall Herge just kinda did what most average people (Herge being a average propagandized Catholic monarchist) have done and likely will always do during a fash takeover of your country (head down and try to not get the gestapo to visit your home a second time). In a tier system of collaboration he'd be in the middle tier imho. Also between either Belgium or France I'd likely stick with the country I'm most familiar with given how both were ripe with "third wave" fanatics, neoliberals, and monarchists that never wanted to accept Marxism and instead go into revisionist death spirals (Henri di Man of the Belgian labor party for instance) and do jolly fash collaboration leading to starvation as the Nazis kinda just plundered whatever they wanted.
tldr: surviving during fash occupation doing propaganda pieces for the Vichy government is a moral death pit and Herge never fully repented (and also said stupid shit about the french resistance), he at a minimum should have faced jail time