Tag: Abwehr

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The Rasputin of the Abwehr

Throughout history, con men have preyed on unsuspecting victims. Like a chameleon (or a good salesperson), they can change their colors at a drop of a dime and gain the confidence of whomever they have targeted as a “mark.” These people range from the sinister (e.g., Rasputin) all the way to those lovable “grifters,” Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the movie, The Sting.

Grigori Rasputin. Photo by anonymous (date unknown). PD-Russian Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.
Grigori Rasputin. Photo by anonymous (date unknown). PD-Russian Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.

Today’s blog centers around a Catholic priest who was employed by the Abwehr (German military intelligence) for the purpose of infiltrating, betraying, and ultimately, destroying French Resistance networks. Unlike Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) who ingratiated himself into the Russian Tsar’s family for status and power, Abbé Robert Alesch (1906-1949) sold his services to the Nazis for money, art, and a life of luxury. Normally, confidence scheme targets give up their money or jewelry. Many of Alesch’s victims gave up their lives.

Robert Alesch. Photo by anonymous (date unknown). Prologue – Quarterly of the National Archive; Volume 26, No. 1 – Spring 1994.
Robert Alesch. Photo by anonymous (c. 1948). Prologue – Quarterly of the National Archive; Volume 26, No. 1 – Spring 1994.

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Captain Jack

During the weeks leading up to the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944, local French résistants were at a distinct disadvantage: they lacked guns and ammunition. Another disadvantage they and their fellow Frenchmen faced was the increasing brutality of the occupiers and collaborators, both of whom knew their days of occupying Paris were numbered (known as la grande fuite des Fritzs or, the great flight of the Germans). The last military governor of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz (1894-1966) was appointed by Hitler on 7 August 1944 to defend the city at all costs or destroy it. Facing increasing resistance each day, von Choltitz gave the orders to his troops on 15 August to “repress by all means and if necessary, mercilessly the partisan insurrection.”

After the Allied invasion in Normandy on 6 June 1944, the Germans stepped up their surveillance and arrests of resistance members, actual or suspected. During the next two and a half months, murderous retaliation by the Wehrmacht, the Schutzstaffel (SS), Gestapo, and the Milice (French paramilitary collaborationist organization) grew with each passing day.

Today’s story is about a French traitor ⏤ collaborationist is probably a nicer term ⏤ and the role he played in the massacre of forty-two young résistants less than ten days before the liberation of Paris.

Monument to the executed résistants. Photo by Remi Jouan (March 2008). PD-GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later. Wikimedia Commons.
Monument to the executed résistants. Photo by Remi Jouan (March 2008). PD-GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later. Wikimedia Commons.

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