Army of the Night: The Life and Death of Jean Moulin, Legend of the French Resistance

236 Pages·2015·3.75 MB·English

by  Patrick Marnham

Patrick Marnham is a biographer and travel writer. He read law at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford and was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn. He began his career as a reporter on Private
Eye and has written for many newspapers including The Times, the Guardian, The New York
Review of Books and Libération. He has worked as a BBC script writer and as a special
correspondent in Africa, the Middle East and Central America. He has been literary editor of
the Spectator and was the first Paris correspondent of the Independent. Patrick Marnham’s
work has been translated into ten languages. He has written lives of Georges Simenon, Diego
Rivera and Mary Wesley, and his books include Road to Katmandu (Tauris Parke Paperbacks,
2006), Crime and the Académie Française (1993) and Snake Dance: Journeys Beneath a
Nuclear Sky (2013). His books have won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize and the Marsh
Biography Award and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lived in Paris for
twelve years and now lives in Oxfordshire.
‘A gripping account of the last days of the French Resistance hero who was tortured to death by Klaus Barbie. Marnham’s
biography is a brilliant mix of political thriller and wartime history.’
J.G. Ballard
‘The betrayal and murder of Jean Moulin is a story which has gripped France for more than half a century. Exactly who
betrayed him has long been one of the great mysteries of the Second World War […] Patrick Marnham is very good on French
self-deception: a moral self-deception which began with Vichy for psychological reasons and continued under de Gaulle. His
book is as gripping as a detective story.’
Antony Beevor
‘Enthralling and intelligent, a masterly exploration of the sinister labyrinth that was wartime France […] It is a remarkable book,
utterly fascinating.’
Allan Massie
‘If you are interested in France, the real France, or if you are interested in the Second World War, or if you are interested in
courage, real courage, and how it can rise to meet the most severe test imaginable, then I believe you ought to make it your
business to read Patrick Marnham’s extraordinary book.’
Alan Furst, author of Midnight in Europe
‘Secret agents do not leave reliable accounts of their activities, nor do double- and triple-agents act from simple motives. The
lucidity comes, like the solution of a good detective story, towards the end of a tangled tale full of unusual suspects.’
The Sunday Times
‘A brilliantly sustained, atmospheric and often tensely thrilling narrative […] This book is a remarkable achievement that evokes
the whole tragedy of wartime France.’
The Independent
‘This is first-rate history that reads like a thriller and keeps the reader engrossed to the very end.’
Piers Paul Read, Literary Review
Tauris Parke Paperbacks is an imprint of I.B.Tauris. It is dedicated to publishing books in accessible paperback editions for
the serious general reader within a wide range of categories, including biography, history, travel, art and the ancient world. The
list includes select, critically acclaimed works of top quality writing by distinguished authors that continue to challenge, to inform
and to inspire, These are books that possess those subtle but intrinsic elements that mark them out as something exceptional.
The Colophon of Tauris Parke Paperbacks is a representation of the ancient Egyptian ibis, sacred to the god Thoth, who was
himself often depicted in the form of this most elegant of birds. Thoth was credited in antiquity as the scribe of the ancient
Egyptian gods and as the inventor of writing and was associated with many aspects of wisdom and learning.
ARMY OF THE NIGHT
The Life and Death of Jean Moulin, Legend of the French
Resistance
Patrick Marnham
New paperback edition published in 2015 by
Tauris Parke Paperbacks
An imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
London New York
www.ibtauris.com
This edition taken from The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost published in Great Britain by Pimlico in 2001.
Introduction taken from Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance
published in the United States by Random House in 2002.
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2004, 2015 Patrick Marnham
The right of Patrick Marnham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78453 108 9
eISBN: 978 0 85773 966 7
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
‘Les Français sont tellement différents les uns des autres,
comprenez-vous, tellement prêts à se déchirer!
Il fallait bien leur trouver un dénominateur commun.
Ce ne pouvait être que la patrie …’
CHARLES DE GAULLE
(The French are so different from each other, you see,
so quick to tear each other apart.
It was essential to find some common cause.
It had to be patriotism …)
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Legend
Caluire
Into the Panthéon
Part I: Life
1 A Republican Cradle, 1789–1899
2 Growth of a Senior Civil Servant, 1899–1919
3 A Secret Man, a Complex Man, 1919–1934
4 Moulin Rouge, 1934–1939
Part II: War
5 The Prefect of Chartres, 1939–1940
6 Zones, 1940–1941
7 Life on Half-Pay, 1940–1941
8 An Envoy to London, 1941
Part III: Death
9 Life Underground, 1942–1943
10 Vive la Nuit! November 1942–June 1943
11 An Urn and a Pot of Jam, June–July 1943
Part IV: Resurrection
12 The Machinery of Insurrection, 1943–1944
13 Murdering History, 1945–1949
14 The Doctor’s Waiting Room, 21 June 1943
Postscript
Postscript to the New Edition
Glossary
Chronology
Notes
Select Bibliography
Illustrations
Maps
France
Lyon
Plates
1 The schoolboy in Béziers, c. 1912.
2 Antonin, father of Jean Moulin, schoolmaster, anticlerical and republican.
3 Blanche Pègue, Jean’s mother, a Catholic and a good housekeeper.
4 Jean (back row, centre), still a model pupil at the Collège Henri IV, in the class
of Monsieur Ain, c. 1907.
5 Jean Moulin’s caricature of Monsieur Maury, the science teacher, as the nation’s
‘last line of defence’, 1915.
6 April 1918: Jean is called to the colours, but the war ends before he sees action.
7 Law student on the beach at Valras-Plage in 1920.
8 Sub-prefect at Albertville, c. 1927.
9 Cartoon of the cafés of Montparnasse in the 1930s. The caption ran: ‘Well, at
least as a Foujita look-alike he can get the Americans to buy him the odd drink.’
10 ‘The widow prepares for a fashionable funeral at the Madeleine.’ The figures in
the background are professional mutes. Moulin’s first (broken) engagement had
been due to end in a fashionable Parisian wedding.
11 Jean Moulin with his minister, Pierre Cot, at Megève in 1935.
12 Cycle tour of the Gorges du Tarn in summer 1938. Moulin is the prefect of the
Aveyron. Pierre Cot (right) is out of office. André Labarthe (left), an official in
the air ministry, is already a paid agent of Soviet military intelligence. Also
present are Andrée Chatain (left) and Néna Cot.
13 Moulin with Gaston Cusin, customs official and arms smuggler.
14 Louis Dolivet.
15 Henri Manhès.
16 Pierre Meunier.
17 Raymond Aubrac (Raymond Samuel).
18 Laure Moulin and Jean, c. 1939, outside La Lèque, the shepherd’s hut they
bought in a remote corner of Les Alpilles.
19 Prefect’s identity card with disguised photograph. Moulin’s moustache grew
quickly.
20 Antoinette Sachs, dressed down for the beach.
21 Gilberte Lloyd on the occasion of her remarriage, 1943.
22 Pierre Brossolette, in London, 1942.
23 Souvenir photograph of the prefect of Chartres with Colonel F.K. von Gütlingen
and the colonel’s dachshund in the gardens of the prefecture. The white scarf
conceals the wound in Moulin’s throat.
24 The doctor’s house at Caluire.
25 August 1944. Chartres celebrates ‘the Purge’. The mistress of a German soldier
has been shaved in public. The unsmiling man in a beret carrying a bundle of
clothes is the woman’s father. The baby’s father has departed with the retreating
German army. The flag in the background is flying over the gateway of Moulin’s
prefecture.
26 René Hardy, accused of betraying Jean Moulin to the Gestapo, with Maître
Maurice Garçon, at his first trial in Paris in 1947.
27 Henri Frenay takes the oath before giving evidence for Hardy at the second trial.
28 Pierre de Bénouville gives evidence for Hardy at the second trial.
29 Witness for the prosecution. Lydie Bastien, Hardy’s ex-mistress, ‘un bel animal’,
gives evidence against her former lover at the second trial.
30 Edmée Delettraz, who worked for both the Resistance and the Gestapo, and who
betrayed Berty Albrecht, gives evidence against Hardy at the second trial.
31 Malraux’s valediction on the steps of the Panthéon, 1964.

The author would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce
illustrations: Plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29,30 an 31,
Keystone/Corbis Sygma; 9 and 10, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Béziers; 17, ©
Nogues/Corbis Sygma; 25, © Robert Capa/Magnum Photos.
Acknowledgements
A mong witnesses of the occupation in Lyon I must first thank Dr Frédéric Dugoujon, one of
those arrested at Caluire, who provided me with a vivid account of the day in 1943 when
his house was raided by the Gestapo; we were at the time sitting in the room in which he
himself had been arrested. It was to be many years before I discovered that the account he gave
me that day differed substantially from the account he had given at a post-war treason trial in
Paris in 1947. Dr Dugoujon also introduced me to his housekeeper, Marguerite Brossier.
Secondly I must thank the late Claude Bourdet, one of the leaders of the resistance network
Combat, deported to Sachsenhausen, and the resister David Rousset, deported to Buchenwald,
as well as his wife Susie Rousset. Comte Jacques de Place, a former member of both the
Resistance and the Cagoule, showed me round the Quartier St Jean, in Lyon, using the skeleton
keys he had manufactured himself during the occupation, which still turned a surprising number
of locks. The sculptor Jean-Louis Faure, much of whose work has been inspired by his youthful
memories of the occupation, was generous with suggestions and research material, and
Madame Monique Gonthier was able to shed an unexpected light on what the occupation meant
for a teenage Jewish girl in hiding. Other witnesses of the period who assisted me include Mrs
Audrey Hooper who spent the war in Châteauroux and the late Sam White who, as a war
correspondent, witnessed the épuration in both Paris and the south of France. Like so many
who have written on France I am indebted to the late Richard Cobb who was a generous and
patient guide on the liberation period, which he participated in, and on Lyon which was one of
his favourite cities. Professor Cobb once told me that he could never really quite believe in
Jean Moulin, a judgement which deterred me from writing on the subject for some time.
In Lyon I was assisted by the historian Henri Hours, by Pierre Truche and by Maître Jacques
Vergès, and by the librarians of the Bibliothèque Municipale and the archivist of the Evêché; in
Paris by the librarians of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the librarian of the British Institute and
by C.L. Campos, editor of the Journal of Franco-British Studies. I am also grateful to the
director of the Musée Jean Moulin in Paris, the director of the Musée des Beaux Arts in
Béziers and the director of the Fondation Jean Moulin in Bordeaux as well as to the archivists
of the Délégation à la mémoire et l’information historique in the Ministère de la Défense.
My thanks are also due to the staff of the London Library and to Bodley’s Librarian in Oxford.
In Bordeaux I was assisted by Maître Bertrand Favreau, Maître Gérard Boulanger, Maître
Francis Vuillemin, Maître Arno Klarsfeld and Michel Slitinsky. Like many others I am
indebted to the researcher and lawyer Serge Klarsfeld for his early assistance, and to my
friends Sorj Chalandon and Vibeke Knoop Rachline. Antony Beevor and Dr Nicholas
Goodrick-Clarke have both been generous with their encouragement and advice.
The first person who spoke to me about her personal experience of resistance was Anne-
Marie de Bernard of the Prosper network, deported to Ravensbruck in 1943. She worked for
an SOE network and paid a terrible price, and I would like to acknowledge her courage and
strength. Her daughters, the late Moune Watson and Madame Béatrice Théry, have been most
helpful to me on many occasions over the years. At my publishers I.B.Tauris I would like to