ABSTRACT
Jean Moulin’s importance was threefold: it derived from who he was, who he had been, and who he was going to be. He was a man of fearless integrity, physically stocky and inconspicuous, yet with so commanding a presence and such gifts of drive and leadership that men would follow him far. Moreover he was a man on whom authority sat easily; for at forty-one he had been the youngest prefect in France at the time of the collapse. When it came, he stayed in Chartres to guide the fortunes of his department till Vichy dismissed him late in 1940 for not being pliant enough. He had no reason to love the Germans: they had thrashed him without mercy in June for refusing to sign an allegation of French atrocities he knew to be false. He had earned their grudging respect by trying to kill himself, sooner than be beaten up again;1 they had done nothing to earn his. He had retired after his dismissal to a hamlet near Avignon, and had systematically built up two false personalities for himself while he sounded out such resistance leaders as he could find in the Rhône valley. As early as April 1941 he was in indirect touch with SO2, through the United States consul in Marseilles;2 he left France on 9 September for Lisbon and London under his own steam, using one of his own false names, as the accredited representative of three new French movements, LIBERTÉ, LIBÉRATION NATIONALE, and LIBÉRATION. He described these bodies as ‘the main organizations of resistance to the invader’, and brought a message from them to the British and the Free French: that the French will to resist had already reached a point at which arms and cohesion could be usefully applied; to assist the nazis’ downfall when the time came, and to preserve civilised society – this was clearly a prefect’s point – at the stage of transition from a German-dominated regime to a free one. Only the communists could hope to benefit, he said, if the modest demands he brought with him, for money, communications, arms, and above all moral support, were not met.3
