Bezen Perrot

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Bezen Perrot
La Formation Perrot (Perrot Group)

Bezen Perrot.gif

Flag of the Bezen Perrot
active 1944 to 1945
Country France ( Brittany )
Armed forces Auxiliary force of security service (SD) from Breton volunteers partially into the weapon SS taken
Strength about 80 men
Location Château des Rohans in Pontivy ( Morbihan department );
then Manoir de Ker-Riou Gouézec ( Finistère ) and finally Colombier barracks, Rennes
Nickname "The Breton Arms Association of the SS"
"The Breton SS"
Butcher Second World War

Bezen Perrot (also known as the Breton Weapons Association of the Waffen-SS ) was a unit of Breton nationalists that was deployed as an auxiliary force by the Security Service (SD) in Brittany in 1944 . The predecessor organization was the Breton nationalist Lu Brezhon ( Breton Army ), which in turn emerged from Kadervenn .

Predecessor organizations

Cadre Venn

In 1936 the militant Breton nationalist Célestin Lainé founded the Kadervenn as a paramilitary organization and the nucleus of a future Breton army, following the model of the IRA with a dozen like-minded people . The organization trained newly admitted members and held paramilitary exercises in the Monts d'Arrée in 1937 and in the Landes de Lanvaux in 1938 . By 1938 the number of members had doubled. In the same year, the Kadervenn founded an intelligence service, the Service Spécial . On the night of August 8th to 9th, 1939, he took over a load of weapons that had been smuggled to the Breton coast with the fishing boat Gwalarn .

Lu Brezhon

On the occasion of a meeting of Breton nationalists in Pontivy on July 3, 1940, Lainé and his supporters occupied the Château des Rohan there in order to use it as the headquarters of his future Breton legion (approx. 40 people, instead of Kadervenn under the name Lu Brezhon ). Since the castle was attacked on July 24, 1940 by angry residents of Pontivy, the Manoir de Ker Riou in Gouézec , Département Finistère , was chosen as the new quarter . There, too, the presence and behavior of the group met with open rejection from the local population. Lainé was therefore summoned by Olier Mordrel , who reminded him that his association was still part of the Parti national breton (PNB) and was subject to its instructions. Above all, the behavior of the group in public should change and peace and quiet return to Gouézec. When Lainé refused to control Mordrel, the latter initially threatened to reduce the PNB's grants to the group and finally ended the supply of this Service Spécial . Lainé then dismissed his troop and moved with a few supporters on to la Trinité-sur-Mer , Département Morbihan . From there, in December 1940, weapons collection began in smaller towns across Brittany. After enough weapons and explosives were available, Lainé began to build the organizational structure for a future Armée de Liberation de la Bretagne (Breton Liberation Army) from the beginning of 1941 . The command staff (" pendall ") was in Rennes . The army was divided into a number of base units (" bodoù ") of 5 men each, who were under the command of a caporal-chef (" kentour "). In each case 4 " bodou " formed a " ker ", at the head of which stood a lieutenant (" kerrenour "). Under the leadership of local representatives, more than a dozen recruitment and training centers were located, mainly in Brittany : Rennes, Nantes , Quimper , Saint-Brieuc , Vannes , Lannion , Guingamp , Ploërmel , Châteauneuf-du-Faou , Landerneau , Plouguerneau , Landivisiau and Paris . There was also a "security group" (" Kevrenn ar Surentez ") to secure and protect the Armée secrète, as well as a military court based in Saint-Brieuc, chaired by a well-known law professor and fanatical supporter of nationalisme breton . The role of Lainé himself and his subordinates was primarily to provide military training to volunteers for the next Breton uprising on the basis of the infantry and cavalry manuals of the French army. The training in the quick and precise execution of commands was based on the training in the Irish IRA .

Bagadoù Stourm

In the course of 1941, the Parti National Breton commissioned Célestin Lainé and his officers at Lu Brezhon with the military training of their security service, the Bagadou Stourm, under the leadership of Yann Goulet . On one weekend a month, the Lu Brezhon executives train young nationalist recruits in their training centers. The course contents are theoretical training - training in Morse radio , shooting lessons - handling of war gases - practical exercises. The influence of Lainé's group on the members of the Bagadou Stourm soon led to violent tensions. The head of the security service, Yann Goulet, felt compelled to remind Lainé that " teaching and leading are two different things" and that in military training it is not permissible for "an instructor to assume authority ". The leader of the Parti National Breton, Raymond Delaporte (successor to Olier Mordrel ) and Goulet finally prevailed as the main authorities of the security service. From then on, the members of the Lu Brezhon and the volunteers of the Bagadou faced each other with open suspicion until the formation of the Bezen Perrot . In July 1941, German troops confiscated the Lu Brezhon arsenal, which had been built up since 1939 .

Bezen Cadoudal

Since he rejected the waiting policy of the PNB under Raymond Delaporte , Lainé put together a troop of separatist volunteers under the name Bezen Cadoudal in 1943 , who were ready to work in German uniform not only as Compagnie Bretonne en guerre contre la France (Breton company in the war against France) to fight against the French, but also against the other enemies of the Third Reich . Some young members of the Bagadou Stourm let themselves be enlisted in the conviction that they were acting in the interests of Yann Goulet ; others joined the Resistance in the Saint-Nazaire area . The Bezen Cadoudal was not recognized by Raymond Delaporte, who denied him any national and legal basis, and the double membership in Bagadou Stourm and Bezen Cadoudal was then quickly forbidden by the PNB management.

Bezen Perrot

On December 15, 1943, at the suggestion of one of its leaders, Ange Pierre Péresse , the newly founded Breton Arms Association named itself Bezen Perrot (Perrot Militia) in memory of Abbé Perrot, the priest who was murdered on December 12, 1943 by a communist resistance fighter and leading member of the Breton militia. The communists had previously slandered him as a collaborator and informer.

Half of the original members of the Kadervenn (about a dozen men) were still in the Bezen Perrot . The strength of the troop probably never exceeded 100 men. Most of them were young men between 18 and 25 years of age, the oldest known member of the militia was 37 years old. It is noteworthy that around half of the men had or were about to graduate from the Baccalauréat . Their ideological convictions ranged between fanatical Catholicism and atheism. They shared Breton nationalist views.

In 1944 the group was stationed in the Colombier barracks in Rennes . The task of the Bezen Perrot was to guard the Gestapo building in Rennes and those imprisoned in it, to interrogate and execute resistance fighters, associations of the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI) and the communist Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) in ambushes to lure and attack and to set up sabotage and guerrilla groups for use in the areas that had already been liberated by the Allies after the invasion . The men wore the gray and green uniform of the security service with the skull cap. Militarily, the group was subordinate to Hauptscharführer Hans Grimm , code name Lecomte , from the security service (SD) in Rennes. The direct line in the operations against resistance fighters lay with the Obersturmbannführer Hartmut Pulmer . The active use of the Bezen Perrot only lasted about six months.

On the run

As early as June 1944, important people in the French collaboration had begun to leave for Germany . On August 1, the individual Bezen groups gathered in Rennes and, after negotiations with Pulmer , a first group of 30 Bezen members and a group of Gestapo members made their way east on the evening of August 1 . On August 2, the rest of the troops followed along with other Breton nationalists and separatists, shortly before the American VIII Army Corps occupied Rennes on August 3, 1944, which had been given up by the Wehrmacht . There were numerous desertions in the greater Paris area : some militiamen joined the FTP , others the FFI and still others simply put on civilian clothes and went into hiding .

Célestin Lainé and the remains of the Bezen Perrot reached Oedsbach near Oberkirch in Baden via Alsace in October 1944 . There the men were awarded SS ranks and badges. The head of the south-west control center of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) , Hermann Bickler , tried to reactivate the group for re-deployment in French territory. In view of the constantly advancing allies, the group eventually withdrew to Tübingen . Members of the group were put there before the election in which defense take part in training courses or as a radio operator or sabotage training for subsequent return to France to SS troops under Otto Skorzeny to join. Lainé and his management staff retired to Marburg in April 1945 , where Leo Weisgerber and Friedrich Hielscher provided them with shelter and forged papers. Lainé lived underground in Germany for a while before he finally managed to escape to Ireland. The majority of militiamen were arrested after the fighting ended when they tried to return to France.

process

The Bezen Perrot case and other cases of collaboration were heard before the Cour de Justice , established in Rennes in 1944 . Its responsibilities were transferred on February 1, 1951 to the Tribunal Permanent des Forces Armées in Paris , which was charged with reviewing all cases. Of the dozen Bretons who were still in exile in Germany between 1946 and 1948, five were sentenced to death in absentia. Some were able to hide permanently in Germany (e.g. Ange Pierre Péresse), but most of them, like Lainé, managed to flee to Ireland with forged papers.

literature

  • Philippe Aziz: Histoire secrète de la gestapo française en Bretagne. 2 volumes. Éditions Famot, Geneva 1975.
  • Kristian Hamon : Le Bezen Perrot. 1944, the nationalist bretons sous l'uniforme allemand. Yoran Embanner, Fouesnant 2004, ISBN 2-9521446-1-3 .
  • Ina Schmidt: The Lord of Fire. Friedrich Hielscher and his circle between paganism, new nationalism and resistance against National Socialism. SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89498-135-0 (At the same time: Hamburg, Hamburger Univ. For Economics and Politics, Diss., 2002).
  • Pierre-Philippe Lambert, Gérard Le Marec: Les Français sous le casque allemand. Grancher, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-7339-1098-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P.-P. Lambert & G. Le Marec 2009, p. 231.
  2. ↑ HistoQuiz. Le Site de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale et des Conflits Contemporains : Le Bretonishe weapons association of the SS "Bezzen Perrot" ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Last checked on October 24, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.histoquiz-contemporain.com
  3. ↑ according to P.-P. Lambert & G. Le Marec 2009, p. 232 a former policeman from Alsace who spoke perfect French and Breton
  4. ↑ Lawyer, deputy Head of the Tilsit Stapo Office ; Leader of a task force during the attack on Poland, 1939–1943 head of the Stapo branch in Zichenau , March 1943 – August 1944 commander of the security police and SD (KdS) in Rennes. Due to his previous area of ​​activity, Pulmer was considered an experienced and unscrupulous expert in the fight against local resistance movements. Despite (and partly because of) brutal operations by the security police and the Wehrmacht , Brittany developed into a center of the Resistance during Pulmer's activities. From November 12, 1944, Pulmer was then head of the Nuremberg Stapo control center. Sources: Peter Lieb : Conventional War or Nazi Weltanschauungskrieg ?: Warfare and Fight against Partisans in France 1943/44 , pp. 65–66 and 72. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007. ISBN 978-3486579925 ; Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex: The National Socialist Crimes in France , p. 157. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004. ISBN 978-3892446934 ; Bernd Kasten "Good French". The French police and the German occupying power in occupied France 1940-1944 , pp. 155–157, 211 and 246. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1993. ISBN 3-7995-5937-X
  5. ^ Philippe Aziz 1975, Histoire secrète de la gestapo française en Bretagne.
  6. ↑ P.-P. Lambert & G. Le Marec 2009, pp. 235-236; Daniel Leach 2008, Bezen Perrot: The Breton nationalist unit of the SS, 1943-5
  7. ↑ Schmidt The Lord of Fire. Friedrich Hielscher and his circle between paganism, new nationalism and resistance against National Socialism. , P. 266
  8. ↑ HistoQuiz. Le Site de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale et des Conflits Contemporains : Le Bretonishe weapons association of the SS "Bezzen Perrot" ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Last checked on October 24, 2010; Yann Fouéré: La maison du Connemara , p. 273. Coop Breizh, Spézet 1995. ISBN 2909924378 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.histoquiz-contemporain.com