André Dewavrin

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André Dewavrin (born June 9, 1911 in Paris , † December 20, 1998 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a French officer who built the military intelligence Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) of the French Free Forces .

As the son of an industrialist, Dewavrin attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and the École polytechnique , which he finished as an engineer between 1932 and 1934. He then graduated in law and joined the army as a lieutenant in the 4th pioneer regiment in Grenoble , where he 1938-39 as an instructor in the military academy Saint-Cyr taught. Like Marie-Pierre Kœnig, Dewavrin was involved in the Franco-British attempt at an operation in Norway in Narvik in 1940, from where he returned to Brest on June 17, 1940 under General Antoine Béthouart and together with his division the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle in England joined.

Promoted to the rank of major , Dewavrin was tasked with setting up his own French military intelligence service, which was initially called the Bureau Central de Renseignement et d'Action Militaire (BCRAM). It was founded without agents and without means of communication. Dewavrin and André Manuel from Service de Reseignement (SR) quickly built an organization out of this

  • an action militaire (AM) section and prepared future agents for landing operations and parachute jumps,
  • a section documentation militaire , which had the task of collecting and sifting through all militarily relevant information of the SR in order to gain information for one's own military planning (green, blue, purple),
  • a section non-militaire , which should deal with the various political questions and advise the provisional government on domestic political issues and
  • a section counterintelligence .

Under the name of Colonel Passy , he organized the Resistance in France , supported by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) . In this capacity, he collected information from the Resistance, traveled to France on secret paths to speak to agents of the Resistance and planned the operations and acts of sabotage of 350 agents who parachuted over France .

Dewavrin and his deputy Pierre Brossolette jumped over France by parachute on February 23, 1943 to take part in the consultations with Jean Moulin , which in May 1943 led to the establishment of the "Resistance Parliament" Conseil National de la Resistance CNR.

In June 1943, the BCRA was merged with the remnants of the Deuxième Bureau of the Vichy Army of General Henri Giraud to the Direction Générale des Services Spéciaux (DGSS), which was under Jacques Soustelle . For the next six months, Dewavrin worked as a Soustelle technical advisor in Algiers . Dewavrin then left the DGSS and in February 1944 joined General Marie-Pierre Kœnig , commander of the Force Français de l'interieur (FFI) and Force Français en Angleterre, whose chief of staff he became after the Allies landed in Normandy . In October 1944 he was appointed back to the head of the DGSS. He was actually sent by de Gaulle with numerous special assignments to America , India , the Republic of China and Indochina now with the rank of colonel.

Dewavrin became head of the secret service of de Gaulle's Provisional Government until de Gaulle resigned in January 1946. Shortly thereafter, Dewavrin was accused by de Gaulle's successor of embezzling funds intended for the Resistance for his own purposes. He was detained in Vincennes for four months before the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence. British historian Antony Beevor suspects that Dewavrin may have tried to put money aside in the event of a communist coup attempt.

In 1947, 1948 and 1951 Dewavrin published his memoirs, became a technical advisor to Banque Worms in 1953 and between 1963 and 1972 he was General Director Europe of the American textile group DHJ. Between 1967 and 1976 he was also Chairman of the Board of Japy.

From 1981 to 1991 he was a member of the Legion of Honor .

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personal data
SURNAME Dewavrin, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colonel Passy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French founder of the Free French Intelligence Service
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1998
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine