Jean Moulin - The Resistance

The Resistance

In 1939, Moulin was appointed préfet of the Eure-et-Loir département. The Germans arrested him in June 1940 because he refused to sign a German document that falsely blamed Senegalese French Army troops for civilian massacres. In prison, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat with a piece of broken glass. This left him with a scar he would often hide with a scarf — the image of Jean Moulin remembered today.

In November 1940, the Vichy government ordered all préfets to dismiss left-wing elected mayors of towns and villages. When Moulin refused, he was himself removed from office.

He then went to live in Saint-Andiol (Bouches-du-Rhône), and joined the French Resistance. He reached London in September 1941 under the name Joseph Jean Mercier, and met General Charles de Gaulle, who gave him the assignment of unifying the various Resistance groups. On 1 January 1942, he parachuted into the Alpilles and met with the leaders of the resistance groups under code names Rex and Max':

• Henri Frenay (Combat)
• Emmanuel d'Astier (Libération)
• Jean-Pierre Lévy (Francs-tireurs)
• Pierre Villon (Front national (not to be confused with the present-day far-right French political party Front national)
• Pierre Brossolette (Comité d'action socialiste)

He succeeded to the extent that the first three of these resistance leaders and their groups came together to form the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR) in January 1943. The following month, Moulin returned to London accompanied by Charles Delestraint, head of the new Armée secrète which grouped together the MUR's military wings. He left London on 21 March 1943 with orders to form the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR), a difficult task since the five resistance movements involved (besides the three already in the MUR) wanted to retain their independence. The first meeting of the CNR took place in Paris on 27 May 1943.

In his work in shepherding the Resistance, Moulin was aided by his private administrative assistant Laure Diebold.

On 21 June 1943, he was arrested at a meeting with fellow Resistance leaders in the home of Dr. Frédéric Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire, a suburb of Lyon, as were Dugoujon, Henri Aubry (alias Avricourt and Thomas), Raymond Aubrac, Bruno Larat (alias Xavier-Laurent Parisot), André Lassagne (alias Lombard), Colonel Albert Lacaze, Colonel Emile Schwarzfeld (alias Blumstein) and René Hardy (alias Didot).

Interrogated extensively in Lyon by Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo there, and later more briefly in Paris, Moulin never revealed anything to his captors and died near Metz on a train headed for Germany from injuries sustained either during torture or in a suicide attempt. Barbie alleged that suicide was the cause, and one Moulin biographer, Patrick Marnham, supports this explanation although it is widely believed that Barbie personally beat Moulin to death.