Tag: Nazis

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The French Gestapo

 

Flag of the Milice. Wikipedia
Flag of the Milice. Wikipedia

Why did the French government collaborate with the Germans during the four years of occupation? Why did the politicians carry out and many times exceed the German directives and expectations (especially for the deportations of Jews)? Why did French organizations form to terrorize their own citizens? Finally, why did individual French citizens denounce their fellow countrymen and women knowing full well the victims would likely not survive?

These are very complicated questions with no simple answers.

Two of the most feared collabo (collaborationist) French organizations were La Carlingue and the Milice.

The Bonny-Lafont Gang

93 rue Lauriston, Paris

Formally known as La Carlingue or the French Gestapo, this group of criminals was better known to the Parisians as the Bonny-Lafont Gang. The Nazis called them Active Group Hesse (after the Gestapo SD officer placed in the gang), Lauristondienst (Lauriston Service), the Gestapo française, or Bande de la Rue Lauriston.

After the Gestapo established itself in Paris, they formed two special units: the Intervention-Referat (teams of killers to do the jobs the Gestapo didn’t want to be identified with) and a unit of Frenchmen for training auxiliary agents. Members of these units were primarily convicted criminals purposely released from prison. One of the principal recruiters was a career criminal who could not read or write: Henri Chamberlin aka Henri Lafont (1902–1944). Read More The French Gestapo

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The Sussex Plan and a Very Brave Woman

Insignia of Plan Sussex 1944. Photo by Sussex 44 (2016). With gratitude to Dominque Soulier and Collection SUSSEX 1944 – MM PARK – 67610 La Wantzenau. PD-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.
Insignia of Plan Sussex 1944. Photo by Sussex 44 (2016). With gratitude to Dominque Soulier and Collection SUSSEX 1944 – MM PARK – 67610 La Wantzenau. PD-Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.

Remember the “rabbit hole” I talked about in a recent blog post (click here to read Curious George Flees the Nazis)? Well, I went down the rabbit hole for a week and popped back up with the relatively forgotten story of The Sussex Plan and its one hundred twenty brave agents. What initially grabbed my attention was the address in Paris of an established safe house used to shelter more than forty agents. It will be a stop in my new book.

The story and memory of The Sussex Plan and its agents are kept alive by Dominique Soulier and the MM Park France Museum (twelve miles north of Strasbourg France). M. Soulier is the son of Georges Soulier, a former Sussex Plan agent.

SOE and Resistance Efforts

By mid-1943 the Nazis had successfully infiltrated and crippled the efforts of the British run Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization (click here to read Women Agents of the SOE). The same could be said for some of the larger French resistance networks when their leaders were arrested, interrogated, and tortured. If these men and women survived the torture, they were either killed by the Gestapo, committed suicide, or deported under the Nacht und Nebel decree (click here to read Night and Fog).

About this time, General Eisenhower and Prime Minister Churchill had agreed upon an invasion of Europe for some time in 1944. To plan properly for the invasion, Eisenhower needed information on German troop movements and other surveillance facts, particularly in northern France. However, the SOE and its agents in France could not be counted on to accomplish what was needed. So British MI6 created a new organization called The Sussex Plan and its mission was to gather information to assist in the planning of D-Day. Read More The Sussex Plan and a Very Brave Woman