The Resistance

by Matthew Cobb

On the one hand, we shall witness isolated activities, born to certain failure which will definitely go against the common goal because they will take place at the wrong moment, in a disorganized and inefficacious manner and thereby discourage the rest of the population.

  On the other hand, we shall be driving into the arms of the Communists thousands of French men who are burning with the desire to serve . . .265

  Given the spiral of Nazi repression that was engulfing the country following the attacks carried out in the Occupied Zone by Fabien and the Bataillons de la Jeunesse, this was particularly telling.

  Moulin argued that the Resistance needed moral support, regular communications, money and, above all, arms. As one of Moulin’s interrogators wrote after interviewing him on 4 November:

  Informant is strongly of the opinion that propaganda for de Gaulle as a symbol of resistance and, still more, strictly Gaullist propaganda are quite unnecessary. What is urgently necessary is to get down to the forming of paramilitary hard cores, everywhere if possible.266

  However, Moulin was not suggesting either individual attacks or an immediate insurrectionary campaign:

  . . . the mere fact of giving money and arms to the movement is not designed to increase for the present the number and importance of certain acts of violence. The object to be achieved is first and foremost to intensify propaganda and to organize eventual collective action for the future . . . there can be no question of aiming a revolutionary movement against the government of Vichy (at least not without previous agreement with London). The only question at stake is the fight against the Germans, and the men of Vichy are to be considered as opponents only insofar (and in such measure) as they help the enemy.267

  Faithful to his promise to Frenay, Moulin was an advocate for the Resistance, but he also began to play a part more in keeping with his professional training as a government administrator, acting as an interface between the military men in London and the Resistance forces on the ground. To truly fulfil this role, he had to return to France.

  *

  At around 3 a.m. in the morning of 2 January 1942 Jean Moulin jumped out of a twin-engined RAF Armstrong Whitley into the freezing black sky over the south of France somewhere between Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. Moulin was an athletic man – he was an enthusiastic skier and cyclist – and he had experience of keeping secrets both in his complex personal life, which featured a number of mistresses, and through his pre-war involvement in a secret government plot to supply the Spanish Republicans with French aeroplanes.268 But he had no real preparation for the terror of the parachute jump or for the incredibly dangerous underground life he was to lead for the next eighteen months. A few weeks earlier he had undergone a weekend of parachute training in Manchester together with Passy, the head of Free French Intelligence, and he had been initiated into the essentials of underground ‘trade-craft’ (use of codes and so on), but that was all.269 Moulin was dropped ‘blind’ – there was no one waiting for him on the ground; indeed, no one was expecting him back in France at all. Things started badly: due to a navigational error, Moulin and his two comrades were dropped fifteen kilometres from their intended landing site south of Avignon and became separated during the descent. Worse, Moulin came down in a frozen bog and was lucky not to drown or die of exposure, while the radio set was severely damaged on landing. For the next three months London heard nothing from him – they did not even know whether he had survived the jump.

  During Moulin’s time in London the war had changed dramatically. On 7 December the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, bringing the USA into the conflict. On the grand, strategic scale, the outcome was no longer in doubt. When de Gaulle heard the news, he told his intelligence chief, Passy: ‘Now the war is won for certain.’270 For de Gaulle, however, the entry of the US into the war meant that his relations with the Roosevelt administration became even more strained now that they were supposedly on the same side. Part of the problem was that, despite now being at war with both Japan and Germany, the Americans continued with their policy of trying to appease and influence Vichy. This disconcerted and irritated the Free French, and matters soon came to a head.

  On 24 December 1941 Admiral Muselier of the Free French navy landed on two tiny Vichy-controlled French islands, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, off the coast of Newfoundland. The takeover was bloodless and was greeted with enthusiasm, except in Washington. Roosevelt had rejected de Gaulle’s proposal to take control of the islands; the fact that the Free French had gone ahead and deployed armed force not far from the US coast was seen as an example of the kind of fierce independence that Roosevelt loathed so much in de Gaulle. The US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, publicly attacked the ‘so-called Free French’ and demanded to know how the Canadian government was going to restore Vichy’s authority over the islands. But the US public did not share the administration’s perception of de Gaulle. There was a huge outcry in the press, and Hull received piles of abusive mail addressed to the ‘so-called Secretary of State’. The prospect of similar protests quickly dissuaded the British from supporting the US position, and eventually the row subsided, with the Free French firmly in control of this relatively insignificant outpost of the French Empire.271

  Regardless of the rumbling conflict with Roosevelt, which continued until D-Day and afterwards, the involvement of the USA was ultimately of enormous benefit to the Free French. De Gaulle was right: victory was now merely a matter of time. The vast productive forces of the USA were bent to the defeat of Nazi Germany and of Japan. In 1942 alone the USA produced 45,000 tanks, more than twelve times the number the Nazis had used to attack the USSR. In 1941 Nazi plane production was 11,000 per year; the US government ordered the production of 43,000 planes in 1942 and 100,000 in 1943.272 In France the mood of the public began to change rapidly. Three days after the Pearl Harbor attack, André Philip, a university professor and one-time Socialist deputy, wrote in broken English to the Reverend Howard Brooks, who was by now back in the USA:

  I am speaking with complete liberty, until now without incident. The mind is changing rapidly in France. The spirit of national resistance is growing every day and everywhere and expressing it quite openly, chiefly in the trains and in the movies. We are full of hope about 1942, which will certainly bring something new in the world, even if it is not yet the final decision.273

  Despite Philip’s optimism, the ‘spirit of national resistance’ he described – conversations on trains and in cinemas – was hardly the stuff of decisive opposition to the Occupation. In reality, the war was far from over. Over the next four years, millions would struggle and die around the world, and in France people would make fundamental choices. Some would live and some would die; some would remain loyal to their principles and some would betray them.

  Even before Moulin’s return, the disparate forces of the Resistance had begun to shape themselves into something more coherent and effective. In the Occupied Zone the Communist Party’s turn to armed struggle had placed itself at the centre of popular perceptions of the Resistance. In the south, Liberté and Henri Frenay’s organization had fused and begun producing what became one of the best-known Resistance publications, Combat. Emmanuel d’Astier’s Libération refused to join in, partly as a result of his personal animosity towards Frenay, and partly because of the very different approaches of the two groups. Libération was more left-wing and criticized Combat for its militaristic structure, arguing that most of Combat’s recruits were ‘proto-fascists’.274 Furthermore, while Libération had recognized de Gaulle’s leadership from the summer of 1941, Combat continued to prevaricate, hoping that Vichy might throw up a more suitable leader. Moulin’s arrival eventually removed most of Frenay’s doubts.

  Because of these changes, Moulin’s report on the state of the Resistance was incomplete and out of date even as it was being written. While he was out of the country, new publications had appeared on both sides of the demarcation line, such as the Paris-based
Défense de la France, which concentrated on providing news, and the left-wing Le Franc-Tireur, set up in Lyons by Jean-Pierre Levy and named after the volunteers who had defended the Republic in 1870. Above all, the shot fired by Fabien in the Paris Métro at the end of August and the Communist Party’s campaign of isolated guerrilla actions against the Nazis had transformed the situation. In these circumstances, Moulin’s return to France was incredibly important. He had transmitted the Resistance’s needs to London, and now he returned as de Gaulle’s personal representative, carrying a letter from the Free French leader.

  After briefly visiting his family in Montpellier, Moulin made his way to Marseilles. Using his new pseudonym – Max – he met Frenay and another leader of Combat, Maurice Chevance. Frenay later described the meeting to his comrade, Guillan de Bénouville: ‘In the kitchen, next to the sink, he took out a handwritten letter. No one spoke a word; a handwritten letter from General de Gaulle.’275 Addressing his letter to ‘my dear friends’ in the Resistance, de Gaulle wrote in an unusually personal, almost tender, tone:

  I know the work you are doing, I know your worth. I know your great courage and the immense difficulties you face. Despite everything, you must continue your work and spread your influence. We who are lucky enough to be able to still fight with weapons, we need you now and in the future. Be proud and confident! France will win the war, and she will welcome us in her soil. With all my heart, Charles de Gaulle.276

  In the silence that followed, Moulin brought out his microfilmed orders. Chevance later recalled: ‘I can see him now, taking a tiny scrap out of his waistcoat pocket, a small piece of paper that was hidden in a matchbox, and which you needed a magnifying glass to read.’277 Despite his doubts about de Gaulle, Frenay was jubilant at the financial and material possibilities: ‘Here at last was what we had so long awaited: contact with Free France, miraculous contact on the highest level! What a powerful spur this would be to our unity drive! We read pure joy in one another’s faces.’278

  But things were not as straightforward as Frenay hoped. De Gaulle was deeply suspicious of civilians with guns; Moulin’s job was to persuade the Resistance leaders to separate the political, intelligence and military wings of the Resistance, with London controlling all military activities. This ‘idea’, as de Gaulle nicely put it, was in fact an order. Although de Gaulle’s microfilmed instructions outlined a wide range of military actions, there was no scope for the Resistance to use its initiative. Not only were there extremely precise orders for how physical resistance should be carried out, the document finished with a final, terse declaration: ‘Centralization and coordination will take place in London . . . All these operations will take place on the personal order of General de Gaulle.’279 The Resistance could produce its underground papers and paint slogans on walls, but the decisive questions of the war – including the nature of the regime that would emerge after an eventual Allied victory – would be settled by force of arms, and de Gaulle intended to control the use of those arms on French soil. Moulin was to ensure that this happened.

  Given that military action by the Resistance was still extremely rudimentary, there was no real reason for the Resistance not to accept de Gaulle’s proposal. There were not even any obvious political reasons – no one had yet begun to conceive of the Resistance as an insurrectionary army. But Combat had been founded with the perspective of taking military action, and Frenay did not want to cede the initiative to someone on the other side of the Channel. Above all, Frenay’s hostility to the idea of separating military and political action came from his realization that the résistants actually wanted to do both. Frenay’s first, rigid, structure for Combat had been based on the kind of division de Gaulle had prescribed, but he had soon abandoned it as impractical.280

  When Moulin first presented de Gaulle’s vision of the Resistance, Chevance bristled at the idea that London knew best and argued back:

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘in theory all this is perfect. But in practice it’s utterly unfeasible. For example, we have, as you know, a certain number of commando squads at our disposal. How can we possibly forbid them – as this dispatch demands – to receive and distribute Combat? How can we possibly order them not to transmit some important intelligence report they’ve received?’281

  In reply, Moulin repeated the arguments he had learned in London, and the debate went round and round. By the time the meeting finished, it was beginning to get light. Moulin had to leave for another meeting, and Frenay and Chevance went for a long walk around the empty streets of Marseilles to discuss what to do. Given de Gaulle’s real political influence as a symbol of resistance, and the possibility of substantial financial and military support from Britain, they had no alternative. As Chevance later put it:

  Everything revolved around the following question, which was fundamental: What do we do? Do we become Gaullists? . . . That is, accept the financial means, the contact, the orders . . . Don’t forget that London had the radio and that this means, this instrument, transformed, equalized, put everyone into the same Resistance. That was the importance of radio London and of the voice of the French. But in France, we did not have this kind of means. This was one of the main reasons that pushed us towards joining.282

  The radio was partly a way of giving people in France a focus, a way that everyone who was opposed to the Occupation could feel part of the Resistance, either simply by listening to the BBC or by following its calls to action, be they calls to demonstrate or to chalk up Vs. The BBC also read out readers’ letters – hundreds were sent each month, via the Non-Occupied Zone, or through the neighbouring neutral countries (Spain, Portugal or Switzerland).283 These letters had a palpable effect on morale in France, and reinforced confidence in the rest of the BBC’s output – if the letters were true, then the news must be, too. But the BBC’s broadcasts were also of more direct use to the Resistance – from autumn 1941 onwards, every evening the announcer would say ‘And now, some personal messages’, and dozens of cryptic and often bizarre phrases would follow, such as ‘Esculapius does not like sheep’ or ‘Romeo is kissing Juliet’. Some of these messages were deliberately meaningless, but others were precise instructions or messages to the Resistance – the Esculapius message indicated that supplies would be dropped near Chaumont, while Romeo told the Resistance that some correspondence from Toulouse had arrived safely in Switzerland.284

  This system, dreamed up in summer 1941 by French SOE agent Georges Bégué, gradually turned from being a mere military necessity into yet another expression of the Resistance. The nightly sound of the surreal, impenetrable messages reassured the public that the Resistance was at work. They were also of direct use to the Resistance – demonstrating a material link with London by getting the BBC to broadcast a phrase chosen by a contact was often decisive in establishing the bona fides of the résistant. For example, Lucie Aubrac was able to use a BBC personal message to convince the State Prosecutor that the Resistance would indeed kill him if he did not free her husband from a Vichy jail.285 For Frenay, Chevance and Combat, proof of the potential provided by Moulin’s London link came within a few weeks, when the first supplies for Resistance in the Non-Occupied Zone dropped out of the sky on schedule. Whatever the doubts that everyone shared about de Gaulle, his links with the British military machine meant that he could not be ignored. And that meant that the man who represented those links – Jean Moulin – could not be ignored, either.

  *

  Moulin was not the only Free French agent in France at this time. Film producer Gilbert Renault, who had been a far-right political activist before the war and was one of the first people to join the Free French intelligence services, had returned to France in autumn 1940 to set up a series of intelligence circuits in the Occupied Zone. Under his code name, Rémy, Renault eventually recruited over 2,000 agents to his circuit, the Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND – Fraternity of Our Lady; the name was chosen by Rémy, a fervent Catholic, after he prayed at Notre-Dame des Victoires, a seventeenth-century
church in Paris).286 The circuit was highly effective – CND members played a key role in collecting and transmitting information that helped sink the Bismarck in May 1941, while a resourceful CND agent, ‘Alex’, bribed a German with six bottles of fine Sauternes wine in order to steal the plans of the Saint-Nazaire submarine pens, completing the intelligence survey of the installation begun by Boris Vildé’s Musée de l’Homme group. When Alex arrived at Montparnasse station in Paris, carrying a large parcel containing the plans of all the Nazi Atlantic submarine bases, he first had to get through the police cordon at the end of the platform. Seeing an old lady struggling with a suitcase that was almost as big as she was, Alex offered to carry it for her. She accepted, and in return willingly carried his parcel. As Alex expected, he was stopped and her suitcase was searched, but she got through unhindered, together with the crucial plans.287

  There was another link between Rémy’s CND and the Musée de l’Homme group. When Vildé’s organization was smashed by the Gestapo in spring 1941, one of its key members, socialist journalist Pierre Brossolette, remained free. A slim man with aquiline features and dark eyes, Brossolette was easily recognizable by his cleft chin and a streak of white hair – one of his nicknames was ‘Pierre-le-Gris’ (‘Grey Pierre’).288 In the summer of 1941 Brossolette came into contact with Christian Pineau’s Libération-Nord, but despite the fact that they were on the same political wavelength, Brossolette wanted to be involved in something more immediate, more practical, than simply producing a clandestine newspaper, no matter how dangerous that might be.

  On a cold evening in November 1941 his friend Louis François was waiting outside the Parisian school near Port Royal, where Brossolette was a part-time teacher. As the two men walked down the Boulevard Saint-Michel towards the Seine, François explained that he was in contact with a Free French intelligence circuit, and that they wanted someone to write a monthly media report for London, describing the situation in the Occupied Zone, with the aim of guiding the propaganda output of the BBC. When he returned home, Brossolette excitedly beckoned his thirty-six-year-old wife, Gilberte, into their cramped bathroom so their two teenage children would not hear, and told her what had happened. Gilberte brushed aside his worries – ‘Don’t say any more. There’s no need. You have to say yes. Finally we’ll be doing something,’ she said.289