Gilbert Renault
Gilbert Renault (born August 6, 1904 in Vannes ; died July 29, 1984 in Guingamp ) was a French resistance fighter during the German occupation of France in World War II .
Renault was born the oldest of nine siblings. His father, a teacher of English and philosophy and later general inspector of an insurance company, died in 1925. The mother Marie, b. Decker, was a granddaughter of the composer Théodore Decker . Gilbert attended the Collège Saint-François Xavier in Vannes and studied law in Rennes after graduating from high school . In 1924 he entered the service of the Banque de France , at the end of the 1930s he tried unsuccessfully to work as a film producer. In 1939 he was the father of four children.
In June 1940 he refused to accept the armistice with the German Reich . First he tried to get to North Africa , but then reached Great Britain from Le Verdon-sur-Mer on board a Norwegian cargo ship on June 22, 1940, the day the armistice was signed .
Immediately after his arrival, he became involved in the Forces françaises libres (FFL), which continued to fight on the side of the Allies against Nazi Germany , its allies and the Vichy regime . He returned to France via Spain at the beginning of August as head of the second rank of the FFL intelligence service . Charles de Gaulle had given him the task of spying on the movements of German enemies on the Atlantic coast from Brittany to the Spanish border.
To this end, Renault launched the Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND) in November 1940 . This organization quickly spread over the entire occupied zone and into Belgium . The CND, which finally had 1682 employees, worked with the Civile et Militaire (OCM) organization headed by Alfred Touny , whose findings they passed on to the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action (BCRA) of the FFL. 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 1941 Renault adopted the cover name Rémy. At the end of February 1942 he set out for England in a Westland Lysander aircraft , from where he returned in the same way at the end of March. During Rémy's absence, François Faure, alias Paco, ran the CND. To avoid persecution by the Gestapo , Rémy fled and on June 17, 1942, crossed with several family members from Pont-Aven on a fishing boat to Great Britain. With him he carried a plan of the section between Cherbourg and Honfleur of the German defense system Atlantic Wall . This map served as the basis for the preparations for Operation Neptune , the landing of the Allied forces on June 6, 1944 in Normandy .
The Gestapo retaliated for Rémy's escape by arresting his mother, brother and five of his sisters. The sisters Maisie and Madeleine (both via several intermediate stops in the Ravensbrück concentration camp ) as well as the brother were deported , his brother did not return.
Back in France, Rémy organized initial contacts between the resistance groups France Combattante and Francs-tireurs et partisans and the underground Communist Party (PCF). In January 1943 he accompanied Fernand Grenier , the representative of the PCF, to London . The CND was largely destroyed by the betrayal of two radio operators in November 1943; Rémi was able to flee to England again. In the following month, Marcel Verrière alias Lecomte formed - under the name "Castille" - still active cells, its successor organization Confrérie Notre-Dame Castille (CND-Castille).
When Paris was liberated , Rémys was given the task of confiscating the headquarters of the German military commander in France , the Hotel Majestic in Paris, headed by around 60 officers , setting up the news center of the Direction générale des services spéciaux and securing the German archives.
After the war, Renault was a temporary employee of the de Gaulle staff and organized the large gatherings of the newly founded Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) party. However, he mainly worked as a writer and wrote a. a. numerous biographical works as well as espionage and crime novels. La Ligne de démarcation was filmed by Claude Chabrol , Le Monocle noir by Georges Lautner . His book Les Caravelles du Christ (The Caravel of Christ) was published in German in 1955 .
Renault received numerous awards and was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor and Compagnon de la Liberation .
Remarks
- ↑ Colonel Roulier and Jean-Luc are known as further cover names for Renault
Web links
- Gilbert Renault at ordredelaliberation.fr
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Gilbert Renault at ordredelaliberation.fr, accessed on February 3, 2020
- ↑ Alfred Touny at ordredelaliberation.fr, accessed on February 3, 2020
- ↑ Le réseau at cnd-castille.org, accessed February 5, 2010
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Renault, Gilbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French resistance fighter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 6, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vannes , Brittany |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 29, 1984 |
| Place of death | Guingamp , Brittany |