du 17 oct. au 25 déc.1940 suppl. hebdomadaire "Le Soir jeunesse"
Variantes de l'édition : Bruxelles-Périphérie, Bruxelles / Brabant wallon
Abstract
Le Soir was founded on 17 December 1887, by Émile Rossel as a newspaper "without political color" and "absolutely free," and immediately became popular among the Brussels public. From 60,000 copies at its launch, its declared circulation rose to 100,000 in 1890, 180,000 on the eve of World War I (about 110,000 in the Brussels area), and more than 270,000 in the early 1970s. Today, Le Soir has the largest circulation of all French-speaking Belgian newspapers and is part of the Rossel group. From 1898, the newspaper ceased to be free. Although it presented itself as a "neutral" daily, Le Soir adopted a progressive-liberal stance. It played an active role in many significant national and European political debates: universal suffrage, Belgium's takeover of the Congo, the fight against Italian fascism, Nazism, and Rexism, opposition to the return of King Leopold III during the Royal Question, mobilisation for the Francophone struggle in the 1960s-1970s, decriminalisation of abortion, support for European integration, among others. Le Soir suspended its publication between August 1914 and November 1918, and between May 1940 and September 1944. From 13 June 1940 to 3 September 1944, the title and facilities of Le Soir were used by supporters of the New Order to publish the “stolen” Le Soir. On November 9, 1943, resistance fighters from the Front de l'Indépendance organised a spectacular act of resistance by distributing a fake edition of Le Soir that mocked the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators ("le faux Soir").
