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Political opponents of Marine Le Pen’s poll-leading National Rally are seizing on the far-right party’s history to try to mobilise voters against it in the run-up to France’s snap election.

Leftwing and centrist politicians have sought to remind voters that when Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founded the party – originally named Front National – in 1972, its ranks included former members of a Waffen SS military unit under Nazi command during the second world war.

Pierre Bousquet, a former member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne division, was the party’s treasurer for its first nine years. Another early member had been in the paramilitary militia under Philippe Pétain, leader of the authoritarian, reactionary puppet Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis and ensured the deportation of one quarter of France’s Jewish population.

Sarah Legrain, of the left’s La France Insoumise party, told French TV at the start of the snap election campaign that “of course” the party was an heir to Vichy. Valérie Hayer, who led Emmanuel Macron’s centrists in the European elections, has also called Le Pen’s party “political heirs” to the Vichy era.

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