Jean Moulin (resistance fighter)

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Jean Moulin (1937)
Monument to Jean Moulin in Les Clayes-sous-Bois ( Yvelines )

Jean Moulin (born June 20, 1899 in Béziers , Hérault , † July 8, 1943 near Metz , Moselle ) was an important leader of the French Resistance during the Second World War . For a long time France's resistance to the German occupiers was split up into numerous camps. The civil servant Moulin managed to unite the underground fighters - which made him the most wanted resistance fighter of the German occupiers and the Vichy regime.

Life

Pre-war period

Jean Moulin was born as the son of Blanche. Pègue (1867–1947) and Antoine Moulin (1857–1938) were born in Béziers. His father was a geography teacher and was politically active, was a member of the Association of Freemasons , the Parti Radical Socialiste and the League for Human Rights . His role model influenced the son, who was interested in history and the major political debates of his time. He enrolled at the University of Montpellier for the subject Law one. At the same time, thanks to the support of his father, he worked in the cabinet of the prefecture of the Hérault department . Jean Moulin was drafted into the French army in April 1918 , but the First World War ended before he could take part in combat. After the war he resumed his law studies and graduated in 1921. In 1922 he became head of cabinet ( chef de cabinet ) of the prefect of the Savoie department . From 1925 to 1930 he held the post of sub-prefect of Albertville . He was the youngest sub-prefect in France at the time.

In September 1926 he married Marguerite Cerruti (* 1907), from whom he divorced in 1928.

In 1930 he became sub-prefect of Châteaulin . In December 1932, he was appointed to the Foreign Service cabinet by his friend, Minister Pierre Cot , a pacifist with whom he shared a passion for skiing . A year later he went to Thonon-les-Bains as sub-prefect . At the same time he was appointed to the Ministry of Aviation by Cot from 1933 to 1936 during the Popular Front government. Its main task was the nationalization of the airlines, that is, the creation of Air France . In 1934 he took on the functions of Secretary General of the Somme Prefecture in Amiens .

During this time he wrote political satires and drew caricatures under the pseudonym Romanin in the magazine Le rire (the laugh). In 1936 Moulin supported the Spanish Republic in a number of ways, including sending an airplane and pilots.

In January 1937 he became the youngest prefect in France in Rodez in the Aveyron department . He was a rather unusual prefect for the time, as he practiced sporting activities such as tennis , sailing , swimming , cycling and skiing .

The Resistance

In 1939 he was appointed prefect of the Eure-et-Loir department (capital Chartres ). At first he wanted to serve as a non-commissioned officer in the reserve for the Armée de l'air , but the Minister of the Interior needed him more urgently in the civil administration and personally ordered him back to his post as prefect after 13 days from the 117th Battalion. After the German army broke through the Somme and Aisne fronts on May 10, 1940 and numerous refugees streamed into Chartres, Chartres was bombed in June 1940. During this time he had difficulties organizing the accommodation of the refugees. In June 1940 he became a member of the Freemasons Association .

Amiens was occupied on June 9, 1940 . The German occupiers arrested him that same month because - after he had protested against the murder of a French civilian at a Wehrmacht post - despite being beaten, he refused to sign a German document in which Senegalese members of the French army falsely claimed an alleged Massacres of civilians in Saint-Georges-sur-Eure were blamed. In reality, they were victims of the German bombing. The National Socialists also suspected him of being a communist . In prison he attempted suicide , probably thinking that his tormentors would beat him to death if he did not sign . He tried to cut his throat with a piece of glass. This later left a scar, which he covered with a scarf.

On November 2, 1940, the Vichy regime ordered all prefects to dismiss all mayors of the left in towns and villages. When Moulin refused, he was dismissed from office himself. Since then he has lived in his parents' house in Saint-Andiol ( Bouches-du-Rhône ). After discussions with Henri Frenay , the battle group Combat had founded, and Pierre Villon , who tried to organize the Communists to resist, he joined the Resistance in. Moulin quickly recognized the need to unite the domestic Resistance with de Gaulle's Committee for a Free France in London ( France libre ).

On August 21, 1941, a young militant who called himself Colonel Fabien ( Colonel Fabien ) shot and killed Alfons Moser, an officer candidate for the German navy, from behind in the Barbès Rochechouart metro station in Paris . This attack acted like a beacon: the Gestapo and the police of the Vichy regime increased their efforts to break the resistance, while at the same time young militants formed the Maquis to prepare acts of sabotage.

With the help of an American diplomat in the unoccupied zone, Moulin traveled via Spain and Portugal to London in September 1941 under the code name Joseph Jean Mercier and met, in addition to André Dewavrin and other French exiles, General Charles de Gaulle , whom he explained about the scope and importance of an integrated internal resistance through a study written in October 1941 entitled The Activities, Plans and Requirements of the Groups formed in France . Initially undecided who among the French and British in exile he could trust, de Gaulle's patriotic attitude convinced him. The latter then sent him to the unoccupied zone as his personal representative in order to overcome the fragmentation of the various resistance groups and to unite them to form the Resistance. On the night of January 1st to January 2nd, 1942, he parachuted into the Alpilles near Avignon . He brought a radio and a large sum of money, which he u. a. used to build a resistance press, and met Georges Bidault and Albert Camus . Moulin established his headquarters in Lyon . He was supported by Laure Diebold , Daniel Cordier and Hugues Limonti .

From then on he lived under two legends : Under that of a farmer in St. Andiol he received rationing stamps. The other legend, under which he ran an art gallery under his former pseudonym Romanin in Nice , allowed him to travel. Under the battle name Rex and a year later Max , he met the various heads of the rival paramilitary resistance groups in the southern, unoccupied zone:

After they had initially rejected him as authoritarian, he was able to convince them of the need to unite in the Armée secrète (secret army) in preparation for the landing of the Allies .

On October 22, 1942, Moulin received a letter from de Gaulle in which he was appointed President of the Coordinating Committee, which officially made him the organizer of the resistance in France on the part of the de Gaulle government in exile. The Allied landings on November 8, 1942 in Morocco and Algeria ( Operation Torch ) accelerated the unification of the Resistance.

In a second step they merged

to the Mouvements unis de la Résistance (MUR; German United Movements of the Resistance).

In a third step he managed to unite with the most important resistance movements in the northern, occupied part of France:

At a conference of the Coordinating Committee (January 26, 1943), Moulin directed all the groups and overcame the resistance of Frenay, who, as Commissioner for Military Affairs , tried to assert his own position and gain control over General Charles Delestraint, the head of the new Armée Secrète . Moulin supported Delestraint in his intention to take direct action immediately, which Frenay dismissed as premature and too risky.

From February 13 to March 20, 1943, Moulin traveled with Delestraint to London to convey the idea of ​​creating a kind of underground parliament to the French exiles around de Gaulle. Like many other members of the Resistance, he thought the French parties that had been handed down from the Third Republic were out of date. But he knew that if the liberal and left forces did not integrate themselves into the political process, a French post-war government without their participation and that of the Resistance would be established. Conversely, through the integration process of the Resistance, de Gaulle succeeded more and more in enhancing the importance of his government-in-exile in London.

On March 21, 1943, Moulin returned as de Gaulle's personal representative for all of France with the task of forming the CNR, the Conseil National de la Résistance (National Council of Resistance). He jumped unrecognized from a plane over the Alpilles mountain range in the south of France . All eight armed resistance groups and the resurrected French parties and unions were to participate in this new resistance council - a difficult task as each group tried to maintain its political independence. The first meeting of the CNR took place on May 27, 1943 at 48 rue du Four in Paris , at which la France Combattante ("the fighting France") submitted to de Gaulle's leadership, who was thereby his, despite being rejected by Henri Frenay the Americans more popular rival, the higher-ranking General Henri Giraud , politically surpassed. The common political goal of all groups in the CNR was:

  • to actively fight against the German occupation,
  • not to be passively liberated from the outside (which would have reduced the French units in the British Army to an extra role),
  • The fate of a France that has been cleansed of collaboration , liberated and renewed by the decadence of the 1930s should not be determined by the victorious powers, but rather taken into their own hands.

For the success of his mission it must have been decisive that de Gaulle and Moulin were politically far-sighted enough to respond to the political demands of the Resistance leadership, especially the Communists, who quickly tried to infiltrate the CNR with their people. At the same time, de Gaulle tried to lure them with the logistical support from Great Britain. Meeting the high demands of the Resistance leadership, Moulin built special technical services like the

  • SOAM, the Services des Opérations Aériennes et Maritimes , a service for air and sea connections to London,
  • WT, the radio service,
  • GDP, the Bureau d'Information et de Presse , Georges Bidault's press and information office on propaganda,
  • CGE, the Comité Général des Etudes , the program committee

under the control of Moulin. He used financial resources ( affaire de Suisse 1943) and the intelligence service of France libre in a targeted manner to compensate for the political preponderance of the communists who dominated Paris and at the same time to reduce Giraud's influence in favor of de Gaulle.

Arrest and death

The house of Dr. Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire

Jean Moulin was arrested on June 21, 1943 in Caluire-et-Cuire on the outskirts of Lyons ( Département Rhône ) in the house of Doctor Frédéric Dugoujon , where a meeting of nine high-ranking Resistance members was to take place, who had to decide on the successor to General Delestraint because he was arrested at a meeting in Paris on June 9th. The absurd situation arose that the high-ranking Resistance members were waiting in the waiting room of the largely unsuspecting doctor between other patients to be called by him for an "examination" when the Gestapo surprised them. Jean Moulin was named "Martel" together with Raymond Aubrac , the military chief of the Armée Secrète, whom he had wanted to appoint inspector of the northern zone, and André Lassagne , a member of the Liberation group of Lyon, whom he wanted to make inspector of the southern zone Arrested , the two Colonels Lacaze and Schwartzfeld (from the France d´abord movement ), the Chief of Staff of the Armée Secrète Henri Aubry (accompanied by René Hardy, both from Combat ) and Bruno Larat , in charge of the paratrooper operations and an envoy from London with Moulin and held in Fort Montluc prison . That is why the Gestapo initially searched for "Max" without realizing that they had already arrested Jean Moulin. A few days later the Resistance met to discuss plans to liberate Moulin. But no attempt was made to free him.

Memorial plaque for Jean Moulin in Metz train station

By Klaus Barbie , the head of Department IV of the Gestapo at the Commander of the Security Police and the SD (KdS) in Lyon, who is known for his brutality, first in Lyon in the école de santé , then in the Avenue Foch in Paris, finally in a villa in Interrogated Neuilly , Moulin did not reveal anything to his tormentors. When they gave him a pen to write down names, he drew a caricature of the torturer. For Barbie, Moulin's arrest was a success, as he was the highest representative of the Resistance in France. During the daily "interrogation routine" in Lyon, Moulin had both arms and legs and most of his ribs broken. Later in Neuilly, after weeks of continued interrogation and serious injuries, he was on the verge of a coma . He died of heart failure on July 8, 1943 at the age of 44, probably near Metz on a train from Paris to Berlin that was to take him to a concentration camp .

Jean Moulin's position in the CNR was taken by the aforementioned history professor Georges Bidault , who was elected with 12 out of 16 votes in the CNR. At his side came Jacques Bingen , who united and advanced the military branch of the Resistance, the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI). In August 1944, Bidault issued the order for the general mobilization of the Resistance when the capital was liberated.

His performance

It was Moulin's achievement, the initially weak, isolated Resistance groups that were under the double pressure of a manhunt by the German Gestapo and the French Vichy police as well as the Milice française , in a France that was still on the verge of being in the 1930s Civil war and whose self-confidence was severely weakened by the German Blitzkrieg to give the self-confidence and unity with which the Resistance saved France from the fate of a civil war similar to that in Greece , Poland and Yugoslavia .

The Hardy controversy

René Hardy , alias Didot , an influential member of the Résistance de Fer group (resistance in the area of ​​the French state railways) and a specialist in railroad sabotage, was arrested by the Gestapo on June 7, 1943 and after being interrogated by Barbie in the notorious torture room of the Hotel Terminus released. On June 21, the Gestapo followed him to the above-mentioned meeting at the doctor's house in Caluire, to which Hardy was actually not invited, and was thus led to Jean Moulin, who had not heard of Hardy's presence beforehand. Everyone present was arrested, only Hardy escaped. The Germans opened fire on him, but he was only slightly injured. He received medical attention in the hospital and escaped the Gestapo guards a second time.

It was then suspected that he was released after betraying the others, not least because he was the only one who had not attended the last-minute meeting in Paris on June 9th. There is the thesis that Hardy was arrested since June 7th and released in a cat and mouse game by Klaus Barbie. According to others, René Hardy was just too carefree. Two trials in 1947 and 1950 sought to convict René Hardy as a traitor, and both concluded that he was innocent.

The myth

Jean Moulin's cenotaph in the Paris Pantheon
Monument to Jean Moulin in his native city of Béziers.

Moulin's body was first cremated by the Nazi occupiers and buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris . After the war, Moulin was highly honored in France. His urn was transferred to the Panthéon on December 19, 1964 . Culture Minister André Malraux gave a speech that is still used in many French schools today. Malraux described Moulin, who had neither carried a pistol nor blew up bridges or trains, with the words: “He did not create regiments, but he did create an army.” The Paris Musée Jean Moulin documents his life.

Many schools and countless streets in France as well as the University of Lyon III were named after Jean Moulin. 1993 coined France a two francs - coin with his portrait.

exhibition

  • 2013: Redécouvrir Jean Moulin . Jean Moulin Museum, Paris.

See also

Works

  • First fight: Diary of the Prefect of Chartres, 14.-18. June 1940. ( Premier combat , 1947). In: Lettre International , Edition 121, 2018, pp. 14–26.

literature

  • Lucie Aubrac : heroine for love. A woman is fighting the Gestapo. From the Frz. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7632-4643-6 ( Outwitting the Gestapo 1995, ISBN 0-8032-5923-9 ).
  • Jean-Pierre Azéma : JM Le rebelle, le politique, le résistant. Pertin, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-08-068017-X (French) ( DNB not listed) (French).
    • ders., Ed .: Jean Moulin, face à l'histoire. Flammarion, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-08-068017-X (proceedings of a congress in Paris 1999) (French).
  • Daniel Cordier : Jean Moulin. La République des catacombes. Gallimard, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-07-074312-8 (French).
  • Henri Frenay : L'énigme Jean Moulin. Robert Laffont, Paris 1977, French; exp. New edition ibid. 1990, ISBN 2221067401 .
  • Christine Levisse-Touzé: Jean Moulin. Artiste, Préfet, Résistant , with a foreword by Jean-Pierre Azéma and an afterword by Daniel Cordier. Éditions Tallandier, Paris 2013.
    • dies., Ed .: Jean Moulin, face à l'histoire. Flammarion, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-08-068017-X (proceedings of a congress in Paris 1999) (French).
  • Patrick Marnham: The Death of Jean Moulin. Biography of a ghost. Pimlico, London 2001, ISBN 0-7126-6584-6 .
    • ders .: Resistance and Betrayal. The Death and Life of Jean Moulin. The Greatest Hero of French Resistance. Random House, 2002.
  • Laure Moulin: Jean and Max. To my brother Jean Moulin's diary. In: Lettre International , Edition 121, 2018, pp. 13/14.

Web links

Commons : Jean Moulin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrike Rückert: The Army in the Shadow . In: The Second World War. Part 2, 1943-1945. GEO Epoche, No. 44, Gruner + Jahr, Hamburg 2010, pp. 34–35, here: p. 34.
  2. ↑ Alan Clinton: Jean Moulin, 1899-1943. The French Resistance and the Republic . S. viii. (Accessed September 16, 2018).
  3. ↑ Los Angeles Times: The Mystery of Jean Moulin (September 1, 2002) by Douglas Johnson (accessed November 22, 2012).
  4. ↑ Ligou, Daniel: Dictionnaire de la Franc-maçonnerie ISBN 2-13-048639-8 (1998).
personal data
SURNAME Moulin, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Romanin (pseudonym); Mercier, Joseph Jean (code name); Rex (battle name); Max (fight name); Martel (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter, head of the French Resistance during World War II
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Beziers
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1943
Place of death at Metz