Louis Delaprée

Louis Delaprée (20 April 1902^[1] - 8 December 1936)^[2] was a French screenwriter journalist and war correspondent in Madrid for the newspaper Paris-Soir during the Spanish Civil War.

Paris-Soir had National/Rebel sympathies and Louis Delaprée's articles reporting the horror of the National bombings over the city were not too well received.^[3] He eventually renounced to his position at the newspaper. The last article he wrote, under the title (borrowed from Émile Zola) "J’accuse...!", ended with the following sentence:

"Christ has said: Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. I think, after the Massacre of the Innocents (perpetrated) in Madrid, we should say: Do not forgive them, for they (the National side) do know what they are doing!"

After resigning, he died in a plane crash near Guadalajara, Spain in unclear circumstances that have given room to speculation. He was posthumously made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.^[4] After his death, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry replaced him as Paris-Soir's correspondent in Spain.

In 1933, he was co-screenwriter, with Julien Duvivier and Pierre Caldmann,^[5] of La Tête d'un homme, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Georges Simenon.