©THIS DAY IN WORLD WAR II: JULY 8, 1943 – THE BETRAYAL OF FRENCH RESISTANCE LEADER AND HERO JEAN PIERRE MOULIN

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

A scarf swept around his neck and fedora angled rakishly over his dark brow, he was a fit character for a John Le Carré espionage novel. But World War II French Resistance leader and hero Jean Pierre Moulin was no figment of a writer’s imagination. He was the real deal! He was not the cute kid or the ace student one would pick to rise to the top of any walk of life of his choosing. He was the son of an influential father instead, who pulled strings. And the tilt of his head and swagger of his body in photographs suggest charm, courage, wit. That he was also lucky, was a sure bet—until he wasn’t lucky!

Gentle civil service doors opened for him. World War I ended while he was still in training to do battle that he never saw. An advantageous law degree sharpened his pedigree. Returned to the civil service, a rapid rise earned him a spot as prefect (regional administrator) of Chartres, the youngest holder of such an office in France.

A homosexual by some accounts, but an uncompromised lady’s man as sworn to by those who knew him best, at twenty-seven, his marriage to a young professional singer soon soured. His politics turned, as well, leaning to the left to the point that there were and are to this day allegations that he was a Communist, although no hard evidence has shed light on the claim. Through the interwar years, his was a rising star in various influential government posts. It is tempting to conclude that he caught the resistance bug when as chief of cabinet of the air ministry he allegedly delivered airplanes to the Spanish Republican Forces in their battle against the authoritarian Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.  

Swept up in the Nazi overthrow of France in June, 1940, the Gestapo pummeled his office door, arrested and tortured him as a suspected Communist, and for refusing to sign a document falsely asserting French army atrocities. Thrown into prison, he tried to commit suicide by slashing his own throat with a piece of broken glass, a desperate act suggestive of a marked man choosing to die rather than to collaborate with the enemy. Found by a guard and hospitalized, he recovered. The ubiquitous scarf around his neck thereafter masked the scar left by his failed suicide attempt. He slipped underground and joined the French Resistance through “Free France,” the government-in-exile and its military forces, led by Charles de Gaulle, headquartered in London, England, where de Gaulle had sought asylum. It was also the official organizing arm of the resistance in occupied France.  

From the outset of the Nazi takeover of France, opposition groups formed. But it was also a fact of life that savage reprisals against the civilian population by the occupying forces was the inevitable reply for every act of resistance. The helter-skelter approach amplified the danger. Unanimity among the various resistance groups was a must. By way of a circuitous route planned around meetings with the leaders of the separate resistance groups, Moulin was smuggled into London, met with de Gaulle, apprised him of the status of the resistance, and offered to do the job of coalescing the groups. De Gaulle was impressed with Moulin’s networking and political skills, and assigned him to the hard and dangerous mission. As of that day, there was a target on his back as big as France itself. Code-named “Rex” or “Max,” Moulin parachuted into southern France and got to work creating a cohesive anti-German underground.

Moulin lived incognito for a year and a half, traveling around France, spurred on by great successes and undeterred by some letdowns. The arrest of a senior colleague left a gap that needed filling. Moulin called a clandestine meeting with fellow resistance leaders for that purpose at the home and presumed cabinet médical (doctor’s office) of Dr. Frédéric Dugoujon in a suburb of Lyon on June 21, 1943. As the men assembled in the doctor’s waiting room, Klaus Barbie, the malicious local Gestapo chief, and his men stormed in. They had been tipped-off. Moulin and the seven others were arrested and imprisoned.

Interrogated hour-by-hour and day-by-day by the pitiless Barbie into early July, Moulin was not broken. He revealed nothing to his torturers. Taken to Paris and subjected to further interrogation, Moulin still held out against the enemy. Placed finally on a train to Germany, he died just outside of Metz. The date was July 8, 1943. In his trial for crimes against humanity years later, Barbie claimed that Moulin died of self-inflicted wounds—in other words: of suicide.  

This man Jean Pierre Moulin, about whom books have been written, and films produced; for whom French streets and institutions are named; this model of French resistance, civic virtuousness, moral rectitude, and patriotism is a man of mystery in the end, a man who continues to inspire questions about his personal life, his politics, and about the identity of his betrayer, and why he was betrayed. We are also left to wonder how he really died. Did he meet his end at the vicious hand of a Nazi, or at his heroic own?

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available at Amazon.com.