Le Cawa d’AdmiNet
(Source : http://www.csonline.net/moulinte/moul-g.htm)
Jean Moulin
The man slowly climbs the steps of the Paris metro station. Today - 9 June 1943 at exactly 9 o’clock in the morning - he is to meet with another member of the Resistance.
His bearing is stern and military ; hardly surprising, given that he is a general in the French army. But Charles Delestraint, using the pseudonym "Vidal" and very much aware of the responsibilities he bears, is also the head of the "Secret Army" created on Jean Moulin’s initiative late in 1942. Today’s rendezvous, at the Muette metro station is with René Hardy, alias "Didot", an influential member of the "Iron Resistance" group. A man approaches : "General, if you’re waiting for Didot, he can’t come ; in his opinion it’s too dangerous, so he’s waiting for you at the Passy metro station."
The general is unworried : "Okay, but first I have to meet two of my officers not far from here." He follows his guide to a parked car and they move off, but "Vidal" is quick to notice that they are not going in the right direction. Then he freezes as he hears the driver speak in German and realizes that his guide is none other than "K30" - Robert Moog, a Frenchman working for both German military intelligence and the Gestapo.
Delestraint’s arrest was part of a large-scale operation which was to
be very damaging to the Resistance movement. Jean Moulin - alias "Max"
did not learn of the event until the evening of June 14, but since January
2, 1942, when de Gaulle had sent him back to France to organize the Resistance,
he had had to get used to this kind of disaster. He had already seen many
of his comrades fall into German hands and this new loss emphasized his
feeling of isolation. The next day he prepared a message for de Gaulle :
"I have the sad duty of informing you of Vidal’s capture by the Gestapo."
In spite of the setback Moulin continued his contacts with other Resistance
chiefs and had indicated to André Lassagne of the "Libération"
group in Lyon that a safe house was needed for an imminent meeting.
On the 17th, in Lyon’s Tête d’Or park, Moulin made contact with Claude Serreules, parachuted in from England to help strengthen the movement. For two years Serreules had been de Gaulle’s private secretary. They brought each other up to date and agreed to meet the next day to discuss the meeting that was coming up. The main item on the agenda would be finding a replacement for Delestraint. Lassagne, however, expressed doubts : he had planned to hold the meeting in the apartment of a teacher friend, but the friend had had to leave for Paris and it would be dangerous to have people coming and going in an apartment known to be empty. Moulin saw the logic of this and told Lassagne to keep looking ; he urged extreme prudence, feeling that the Gestapo were never very far away.
Moulin sent out calls for urgent meetings with various high-ranking Resistance members, but one of them could not be found : Henri Aubry, alias "Thomas", the Secret Army’s chief of staff. Aubry represented Henri Frenay, head of the "Combat" Resistance group, who had just left for London to iron out longstanding disagreements with de Gaulle. It was not until the 19th that Aubry learnt that Moulin was trying to get in touch.
The same day Lassagne found what seemed to be a suitable venue for the meeting, a house belonging to his friend Dr Dugoujon in the Lyon suburb of Caluire. Dugoujon knew nothing about the character of the meeting or the identity of those attending. He simply warned his housekeeper that on the 21st, in the early afternoon, monsieur Lassagne would be arriving with a group of patients and that she should take them upstairs.
The 20th was to prove an eventful day in Lyon. First of all there had been a meeting on the Morand bridge between Aubry and René Hardy, one of Aubry’s most reliable associates in the "Combat" group. Hardy explained that in Paris he had just escaped from the Germans by the skin of his teeth, but that Delestraint, who had been waiting for him, had fallen into a trap. Aubry only listened with half an ear - he had other things on his mind. The two continued their discussion in a restaurant, where Aubry told Hardy of the proposed meeting with Moulin and indicated that discussion could be heated. After talking with one of Frenay’s associates, Aubry said, he felt it best that Hardy should be at the meeting, even if he had not been invited : the more there were of them, the better the chances of convincing "Max" to see things their way, especially where finding a successor for Delestraint was concerned. Hardy agreed to come. Aubry said he did not know where the meeting was to be held and that they should meet their guide next day opposite the Croix-Pâquet funicular station.
However, the drama was already under way. There had been witnesses to the conversation on the bridge, among them Lyon Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie himself, sitting on a bench behind an open newspaper. Members of his staff were discreetly in position not far away. It must be said at this point that contrary to the version Hardy long offered, he had in fact been arrested as he was getting ready to leave for Paris by train on the night of June 7. He was interrogated by Barbie in person, then released after some kind of bargain had been struck. The cat and mouse game had started, but with Barbie holding the trump card.
Among Barbie’s closest assistants was Robert Moog, born in Paris in 1915. This exemplary spy had been recruited by the Abwehr - German military intelligence - then "lent" to the Gestapo, where he really made himself a reputation. He managed to infiltrate the Resistance via an operation in Toulouse, then followed the thread of a network all the way to Lyon, effecting many arrests along the way. He then made Lyon his base, working with the help of various branches of the Nazi police and sometimes with Resistance traitors. In the enormous operation being prepared for Paris Moog was in fact a much more important figure than Barbie. He had even set up a team of his own, made up of thorughly unscrupulous but highly gifted agents.
One of these agents was Lucien Doussot, a criminal who had managed to get himself out of prison after the arrival of the Germans and set up a lucrative business as an escape organizer and smuggler along the demarcation line. He was on such good terms with the Nazis that he found a job with Barbie and Moog that kept him up to date on all the big anti-Resistance operations, including Caluire. But since he was smart enough to realize that the tide was turning and offered himself to the Resistance as a double agent.
On the afternoon of the 20th Jean Moulin spoke with Raymond Aubrac. Aubrac was head of military affairs in the Secret Army and Moulin revealed that he had been considering him to replace Delestraint. Aubrac later related that "Max" seemed preoccupied and that Delestraint’s arrest had created a climate of uncertainty the leader was anxious to dispel. Moulin explained the aims of the meeting and made a rendezvous with Aubrac for the next afternoon, in the centre of Lyon. The word "Caluire" was to be pronounced as infrequently as possible and not written down at all. Moulin made contact with the others : the young officer Bruno Larat, in charge of Fighting France’s parachuting and landing operations ; and colonels Lacaze and Schwartzfeld, members of the France First movement who had not yet had any major missions in the Resistance. Moulin was unaware that a seventh person had been invited : René Hardy.
"Max" did his best to put the odds in his favour. At 10 in the morning on the 21st he called Aubry in for what turned out to be a stormy conversation. Moulin was very anxious after Delestraint’s arrest and still did not know who should replace him ; but with Frenay absent in London, Aubry was unwilling to take any major decisions. He told Moulin they would talk about it again at the meeting, but that Resistance members could not accept authoritarian decisions taken without their consent.
The main item of information was still being witheld : at no time had Aubry revealed to Moulin that he had invited Hardy. Moulin had been aware of the latter’s presence in Lyon since the 15th and found it surprising, given that Delestraint was supposed to be meeting Hardy when he had fallen into the German trap. Moulin had warned his closest associates to avoid all contact with "Didot" - not knowing that their paths were soon to cross.
That same morning a young woman was led into a room in Gestapo headquarters on the Avenue Berthelot. Her name was Edmée Deletraz and she had been arrested two months before by the omnipresent Robert Moog. After her arrest she agreed under constraint to play the German game ; but her own game was a double one, since she regularly informed her Resistance network of what the Gestapo wanted from her. Now Moog introduced her to a "Frenchman who has seen the light" - none other than René Hardy - and she was ordered to follow him to an important Resistance meeting at a location as yet unknown. There was no way of refusing.
Towards midday Moulin joined Maurice de Graaf, one of his liaison men, in a city-centre restaurant and checked that Colonel Schwartzfeld had been told to be ready at the funicular station. At half past one André Lassagne took a look around the vicinity of the Dugoujon house ; everything seemed to be in order and he left to pick up Henri Aubry.
Colonel Lacaze was the first to arrive, at 2.15 : Lassagne had given him the address the previous afternoon. All morning he had been bothered by doubts and had almost decided not to attend the meeting. Dr Dugoujon’s faithful housekeeper Marguerite let him in and took him upstairs. Just on 2.30 Bruno Larat rang the doorbell and joined Lacaze.
Henri Aubry had lunched alone and it was 1.40 when he arrived at the Croix-Pâquet funicular station, on the road up to the Croix-Rousse. René Hardy was waiting for him and Lassagne arrived by bicycle a few minutes later. He was probably surprised to see that Aubry was not alone, but made no objection to Hardy’s coming with them ; he asked only that they take the train after his, then the number 33 tram as far as the Place Castellane, where he would be waiting to take them to the rendezvous.
The investigation undertaken after the Liberation makes it clear that before following Hardy, Edmée Deletraz had tried to warn her commanding officer Jean Cambus and two other Resistance agents of Hardy’s imminent betrayal of his comrades. But luck was on the German side : none of them was able to make contact with the meeting’s organizers. So she set out behind Hardy and saw him signal discreetly to her to take the same tram as himself and Aubry. After getting off the tram and seeing Lassagne, Aubry and Hardy entering Dr Dugoujon’s house, she retraced her steps. The Germans, led by Klaus Barbie, were waiting for her at the funicular ; leading them more or less in the right direction, she played for time by trying to get them lost, but faced with their growing anger, she finally brought them to the Dugoujon house.
In another stroke of bad luck, her delaying tactics had played into the Germans’ hands. Raymond Aubrac later related how he had met up with Moulin as arranged, but that Schwartzfeld was inexplicably half an hour late at the funicular. Edmée Deletraz’s delaying tactics had served no purpose. Moulin, Aubrac and Schwartzfeld arrived around 3.00, but the housekeeper, thinking all the special patients had already arrived, put them in the waiting room on the ground floor.
A few minutes later Aubry heard movement in front of the house, looked out the window and realized at once what had happened. "We’re done for," he called to the others, "it’s the Gestapo !" The trap had closed.
Of the nine men involved in the Caluire meeting, Larat and Schwartzfeld were never to return from their concentration camps. Lassagne survived, but his health was broken and he died in 1953, aged 42. In October Raymond Aubrac was freed by a Lyon Resistance squad during a transfer of prisoners. Dr Dugoujon, Colonel Lacaze and Henri Aubry were liberated by the Germans.
René Hardy had many difficult years ahead of him. Immediately after the incident at Caluire he slipped away from the Germans under circumstances that have never been made clear. Wounded in the arm, he was picked up by the Gestapo but escaped once more, this time from the German-guarded Lyon hospital where he was being treated. A few months later he turned up in North Africa. He was to go on trial twice in France : a civil court found him not guilty in 1947 ; charged by a military tribunal in 1950 with "non-disclosure of acts of espionage", he was acquitted by 3 votes to 4, a "favorable minority decision" in the language of French military justice. He was to die in 1987, not long before the opening of Klaus Barbie’s trial in Lyon.
The details of Jean Moulin’s fate remain uncertain. It is known that after a tough interrogation by Barbie he was taken to Gestapo headquarters in Paris, then to a house in the suburb of Neuilly. There, although he was in a state verging on coma, further efforts were made to get information out of him.
In 1946 Heinrich Meiners, a German police official, outlined how Moulin was transferred to Berlin, apparently in the hope of getting him back into a fit state to talk. An ambulance took him to Paris’s Gare de l’Est station, where he was put into a special compartment on a train bound for the German capital. He was accompanied by a male nurse named Millitz. Just before the train pulled into Frankfurt, probably on the 7th or 8th June 1943, Jean Moulin suffered a fatal heart attack. The body was immediately taken off the train and the order given to burn it, so as to leave no trace. Information later provided by Ernst Misselwitz, the German officer in charge of the Caluire dossier in Paris, indicated that in all probability urn no. 10137 at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris contained Moulin’s ashes. In 1964 the urn was transferred to the Pantheon, last resting place of France’s greatest men.
Gérard Chauvy
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