Confrérie Notre-Dame
The Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND) was a news network of the French resistance during the German occupation of France in World War II .
The forerunner of the organization was founded in June 1940 by Louis de La Bardonnie , a winemaker from the Dordogne department . In November 1940 Gilbert Renault joined them, who had fled the Germans to Great Britain and was returning to France on behalf of Charles de Gaulle . The network was now called Confrérie Notre-Dame (Brotherhood of Our Lady), the name chosen was to place her under the protection of the Virgin Mary .
The CND worked for the London- based news and intelligence agency Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) de Gaulles. Information was collected about ship and troop movements on the Atlantic coast as well as about structures built there by the Germans such as submarine bunkers , docks and the Atlantic Wall defense system . The knowledge gained was transmitted to London by radio or in writing. Topics were also the political and economic situation, this information was disseminated on the radio of Free France .
The network began its activity in western France, where competent informants could be obtained in the port cities of Brest and Bordeaux . The news was initially brought to England by messengers via Madrid ; in March 1941 a first radio station was set up at de La Bardonnie in Saint-Antoine-de-Breuilh . From April to July of that year the broadcast was then from Thouars and Saumur . In September 1941, the CND expanded its activities to the entire occupied territory, and Renault set up a radio control center in Paris .
On November 16, 1941, de La Bardonnie was arrested and interned. Renault continued the CND under the cover name (Colonel) Rémy. Important employees were u. a. Paul Armbruster (alias Alaric), Pierre Beausoleil (alias Pierrot) and his wife Simone, Gaston Pailloux de Puisseguin (alias Alceste), Paul Dungler, the abbot Louis Charles de Dartein and François Faure (alias Paco), who ran the CND during Rémy's absence in February and March 1942. The CND now had employees who organized parachute jumps and secret flight connections with small Westland Lysander machines . The specially retrofitted Lysander III could land and take off on unprepared runways such as fields and roads as required, and even at night. Christian Pineau , founder of the resistance organization Liberation Nord , was able to meet with de Gaulle in London with the help of the CND.
In June 1942 and in autumn 1943 the network was decimated by arrests and deportations . To avoid persecution by the Gestapo , Rémy fled and crossed over to Great Britain on June 17, 1942 on a fishing boat. With him he carried a map of the section between Cherbourg and Honfleur of the Atlantic Wall. This map served as the basis for the preparations for Operation Neptune , the landing of the Allied troops on June 6, 1944 ( D-Day ) in Normandy .
Back in France, Rémy managed to maintain and renew the CND. After the betrayal by two radio operators , around 100 members of the organization were arrested in November 1943 and Rémi fled again to England. But as early as December Marcel Verrière (alias Lecomte) was able to rebuild the network from cells that were still active - under the name "Castille" - and thus formed the CND-Castille.
Regardless of any setbacks, the CND (-Castille) never stopped transmitting messages to London, with parachute-dropped radios playing an important role. Thanks to the information provided by the CND, the British were able to sink the German battleships Bismarck (1941) and Scharnhorst (1943) and severely damage the battleship Gneisenau (1942). In February 1942, their reports enabled Operation Biting , during which the British captured important parts of a German " Würzburg " radio measuring device , and in March Operation Chariot , an attack by the Royal Navy and British commandos on the port of Saint-Nazaire .
In the three and a half of its existence, 1,544 people joined the CND. 524 of them were arrested, 37 of whom were shot. 234 of the agents were deported, of which 151 were killed.
Remarks
- ↑ France libre (Free France) was the name of the exile government of Charles de Gaulle in London, in contrast to the État français (French state) of the Vichy regime under Philippe Pétain .
Web links
- Confrérie Notre-Dame / CND-Castille at gedenkorte-europa.eu
- Le réseau at cnd-castille.org