Jean Moulin - Who Betrayed Moulin?

Who Betrayed Moulin?

René Hardy was caught and released by the Gestapo, who had followed him to the meeting at the doctor's house. Some believe him guilty of a deliberate act of treason; others think he was simply reckless. Two trials found him innocent. A recent TV film about the life and death of Jean Moulin depicted Hardy as collaborating with the Gestapo, thus reviving the controversy. The Hardy family attempted to bring a lawsuit against the producers of the movie.

There have been many allegations in the postwar years that Moulin was a communist. No hard evidence has ever backed up this claim. Marnham looked into the allegations, but found no evidence to support the assertion (although Communist Party members could easily have seen him as a "fellow traveler" because he had communist friends and supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War). As préfet, Moulin even ordered the repression of communist 'agitators' and went so far as to have police keep some of them under surveillance.

It has also been suggested, principally in Marnham's biography, that Moulin was betrayed by communists. He points the finger specifically at Raymond Aubrac and possibly his wife, Lucie. He claims that communists did at times betray non-communists to the Gestapo, and that Aubrac was linked to harsh actions during the purge of collaborators after the war. In 1990, Klaus Barbie, by then "a bitter dying Nazi", named Aubrac as the traitor.

To counteract the accusations leveled at Moulin, Daniel Cordier, his personal secretary during the war, wrote a biography of his former leader.