Jean Moulin

Monument to Jean Moulin

Jean Moulin (20 June 1899 – 8 July 1943) was a high-profile member of the Resistance in France during World War II.^[1] He is remembered today as an important symbol of the Resistance, owing mainly to his role in unifying the French resistance under Charles de Gaulle and his death while in Gestapo custody.

Before the war[edit]

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Jean Pierre Moulin was born at 6 rue d'Alsace in Béziers (Hérault), son of Antoine-Émile Moulin and Blanche Élisabeth Pègue. He was the grandson of an insurgent of 1851. Antoine-Émile Moulin was a lay teacher at the Université Populaire and a Freemason at the lodge Action Sociale. Jean Pierre Moulin was baptized on August 6, 1899^[2] in the church of Saint-Vincentin Saint-Andiol (Bouches-du-Rhône), the village where his parents came from. He spent an uneventful childhood in the company of his sister Laure and his brother Joseph (who died of pneumonia in 1907). In Henri IV high school of Beziers, he was an average student.^{[citation needed]}

Later, as his father had been before him, he was elected general counsel of the Herault in 1913 under the radical-socialist banner.

In 1917, he enrolled at the Faculty of Law of Montpellier, where he was not a brilliant student. However, thanks to the influence of his father, he was appointed attaché to the cabinet of the prefect of Herault under the presidency of Raymond Poincaré.

Mobilized April 17, 1918, Jean Moulin was assigned to the 2nd Regiment of Engineering (based in Metz after the victory). After an accelerated training, he arrived in the Vosges at Charmes on September 20th and was preparing to go to the front lines when the armistice was proclaimed. He was posted successively to Seine-et-Oise, to Verdun, then to Chalon-sur-Saone; he worked as a carpenter, a digger and later a telephonist for the 7th and 9th Engineer Regiments. He was then demobilized and resumed his duties at the Prefecture of Montpellier on 4 November 1919.

After World War I, Moulin resumed his studies and obtained a law degree in 1921. He then entered the prefectural administration as chef de cabinet to the deputy of Savoie in 1922, then as sous-préfet of Albertville, from 1925 to 1930.

After being rejected by Jeanette Auran, Moulin, aged 27, married a professional singer, Marguerite Cerruti, 19, in the town of Betton-Bettonet in September 1926. Cerruti quickly became bored with the marriage and Moulin responded by offering her further singing lessons in Paris whereupon she disappeared for 2 days^[3] Biographer Patrick Marnham cites one of the causes of the divorce being Moulin's mother-in-law, who had wanted to prevent her estate passing under Moulin's control upon Cerruti's 21 birthday. Moulin attempted to hide his rejection by the bourgeoisie by excusing his wife's disappearances and only informing his family after the divorce.^[4]

Moulin was appointed sous-préfet of Châteaulin, Brittany in 1930, but also drew political cartoons for the newspaper Le Rire on the side under the pseudonym Romanin. He also illustrated books by the Breton poet Tristan Corbière, including an etching for La Pastorale de Conlie, Corbière's poem about Camp Conlie where many Breton soldiers died in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. He also made friends with the Breton poets Saint-Pol-Roux in Camaret and Max Jacob in Quimper.^[5]

In 1932, Pierre Cot, a Radical Socialist politician, named Moulin his second in command or chef adjoint when he was serving as Foreign Minister under Paul Doumer's presidency. In 1933, Moulin was appointed sous-préfet of Thonon-les-Bains, parallel to his function of head of cabinet of Pierre Cot in the Air ministry under Albert Lebrun. On 19 January 1934, Moulin was appointed sous-préfet of Montargis, but he did not assume this office and chose to remain under Pierre Cot. In the first half of April Moulin was appointed to the Seine préfecture, and, 1 July, took his place as secretary general in Somme, in Amiens. In 1936 he was once more named chief of cabinet of Pierre Cot's Air ministry of the Popular Front. In this capacity, Moulin was involved in Cot's efforts to assist the Spanish Republic by sending them planes and pilots. For the Istres-Damas-Le Bourget race he presented the winners with their prize; Benito Mussolini's son was one of those winners. He became France's youngest préfet in the Aveyron département, based in the commune of Rodez, in January 1937. It has been claimed that during the Spanish Civil War Moulin assisted with the shipment of arms from the Soviet Union to Spain. A more commonly accepted version of events is that he used his position in the French aviation ministry to deliver planes to the Spanish Republican forces.

The Resistance[edit]

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Dr. Dugoujon's house, where Moulin was arrested. (The house has been restored since this picture was taken.)

Tribute to Jean Moulin in the Imperial train station of Metz, in which he is believed to have died.

In 1939, Moulin was appointed préfet of the Eure-et-Loir département.^[6] and was dismissed by the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain November 2, 1940^{[dubious – discuss]} along with all other left-wing préfets. He then began writing his diary, First Battle, where he relates his resistance against the Nazis in Chartres; this was later published at the Liberation and prefaced by General de Gaulle.

The Germans arrested him on 17 June 1940 after his extreme left-wing views led them to suspect him of being a communist.^[7]

After interrogation, Moulin attempted suicide by cutting his throat with a piece of broken glass.^[8] This left him with a scar he would often hide with a scarf—the image of Jean Moulin remembered today. He was discovered by a guard and taken to hospital for treatment.^[9]

On 3 November 1940, the Vichy government ordered all préfets to dismiss left-wing elected mayors of towns and villages.^[10] When Moulin refused, he was himself removed from office on 16 November 1940.^{[dubious – discuss][11]}

He then went to live in Saint-Andiol (Bouches-du-Rhône), and joined the French Resistance. He reached London in September 1941 under the name Joseph Jean Mercier, and met General Charles de Gaulle on 24 October, who gave him the assignment of unifying the various Resistance groups. On 1 January 1942, he parachuted into the Alpilles and met with the leaders of the resistance groups under code names Rex and Max:

• Henri Frenay (Combat)
• Emmanuel d'Astier (Libération)
• Jean-Pierre Lévy (Francs-tireurs)
• Pierre Villon (Front national, not to be confused with the present-day Front National political party).
• Pierre Brossolette (Comité d'action socialiste)

He succeeded to the extent that the first three of these resistance leaders and their groups came together to form the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR) in January 1943. The following month, Moulin returned to London accompanied by Charles Delestraint, head of the new Armée secrète which grouped together the MUR's military wings. He left London on 21 March 1943 with orders to form the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR), a difficult task since the five resistance movements involved (besides the three already in the MUR) wanted to retain their independence. The first meeting of the CNR took place in Paris on 27 May 1943.

In his work in shepherding the Resistance, Moulin was aided by his private administrative assistant Laure Diebold.

On 21 June 1943, he was arrested at a meeting with fellow Resistance leaders in the home of Dr. Frédéric Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire, a suburb of Lyon, as were Dugoujon, Henri Aubry (alias Avricourt and Thomas), Raymond Aubrac, Bruno Larat (alias Xavier-Laurent Parisot), André Lassagne (alias Lombard), Colonel Albert Lacaze, Colonel Émile Schwarzfeld (alias Blumstein), and René Hardy (alias Didot).

He was, with the other Resistance leaders, sent to Montluc Prison in Lyon, in which he was detained until the beginning of July. Interrogated extensively on a daily basis in Lyon by Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo there, and later more briefly in Paris, Moulin never revealed anything to his captors and died near Metz on a train headed for Germany^[12] from injuries sustained in a suicide attempt.

Barbie alleged that suicide was the cause, and Moulin biographer Patrick Marnham supports this explanation.

Homosexuality[edit]

Jean Moulin's private life has been a subject of debate^{[13][better source needed]}, and he has been called a gay apostle.^[14] In 2003, the Dictionary of Gay and Lesbian Cultures, supervised by Didier Eribon, evoked "the possible homosexuality or bisexuality of a great resistance member, like Jean Moulin", also pointing out the predispositions of homosexuals of the time to enter the Resistance, emanating from clandestine activity in their private life. Jean-Paul Sartre in a 1949 article recalled the predispositions of Parisian homosexual circles to collaboration. In Jean Moulin, the ultimate mystery, Pierre Péan and Laurent Ducastel dedicate a chapter on this subject, "Was it?", evoking "a seducer, tasting carnal pleasures with girls, possibly with boys, noting that the official voices of the Liberation will always try to deny the presence of homosexuals in the Resistance, an image that was long not very consistent with the idea of French heroes". Both a friend of Jean Moulin, the poet Max Jacob, were confirmed homosexuals while his secretary, Daniel Cordier, a homosexual 20 years his junior, interviewed for the book of Pierre Péan, claims not to have read the chapter devoted to his sexuality, contenting himself with saying that "he was a ladies' man". The Jean-Moulin museum contains a text saying that Moulin was "a ladies' man, seducer with that – a real 'ladykiller'", while the historian Thomas Rabino, in The other Jean Moulin (2013) can provide only three female relationships during his life, including one with Marguerite Cerruti, his 'bored' wife who deserted him between 1927 and 1928. In 2013, a remembrance ceremony in France attended by the prime minister was disturbed by anti-gay protestors,^[15] and a piece of theatre The Evangelical Jean Moulin again discusses this point.^[16]

Who betrayed Moulin?[edit]

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René Hardy was caught and released by the Gestapo, who had followed him to the meeting at the doctor's house. Some^[who?] believe him guilty of a deliberate act of treason; others think he was simply reckless. Two trials found him innocent. A recent TV film^[when?] about the life and death of Jean Moulin depicted Hardy as collaborating with the Gestapo, thus reviving the controversy. The Hardy family attempted to bring a lawsuit against the producers of the movie.^{[citation needed]}

There have been many suppositions in the postwar years that Moulin was a communist. No hard evidence has ever backed up this claim. Marnham looked into the assertions, but found no evidence to support them (although Communist Party members could easily have seen him as a "fellow traveller" because he had communist friends and supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War). As préfet, Moulin even ordered the repression of communist 'agitators' and went so far as to have police keep some of them under surveillance.^[17] At the trial of Klaus Barbie in 1987, his lawyer Jacques Vergès made much out of speculation that Moulin was betrayed by either Communists and/or the Gaullists as part of an attempt to distract attention away from the actions of his client, by making the true authors of Moulin's arrest his fellow rèsistants rather than Barbie.^[18] Vergès failed in his effort to acquit Barbie, but he did succeed in creating a vast industry of various conspiracy theories, many very fanciful, about who betrayed Moulin.^[19] Leading historians such Henri Noguères and Jean-Pierre Azéma rejected Vergès's conspiracy theories, in which Barbie was somehow less culpable than the supposed traitors who tipped him off.^[19]

The British intelligence officer Peter Wright in his 1987 book Spy Catcher wrote that Pierre Cot was an "active Russian agent" and called his protege Moulin a "dedicated Communist".^[20] Clinton wrote that Wright based his allegations against Moulin entirely on secret documents that he claimed to have seen, which no historian has ever seen, and on conversations that he is supposed to have had decades ago with others long dead, which made his case against Moulin very "dubious".^[20] Henri-Christian Giraud, the grandson of General Henri Giraud who had been outmaneuvered by de Gaulle for the leadership of the Free French movement hit back in his two volume work De Gaulle et les communistes published in 1988 and 1989 which outlined a conspiracy theory suggesting that de Gaulle had been "manipulated" by the "Soviet agent" Moulin into the following the PCF's line of "national insurrection" and thereby eclipsed his grandfather, who he maintained should have been the rightful leader of Free France.^[21] Taking up Giraud's theories, the lawyer Charles Benfredj argued in his 1990 book L'Affaire Jean Moulin: Le contre-enquête that Moulin was a Soviet agent who had not been killed by Barbie, but had been allowed by the German government to go to the Soviet Union in 1943, where Moulin supposedly died sometime after the war.^[22] Benfredj's book was published with an introduction with Jacques Soustelle, the archaeologist of Mexico and wartime Gaullist whose commitment to Algérie française had made him a bitter enemy of de Gaulle by 1959.^[22] The essence of all the theories about Moulin the alleged Soviet agent was that because de Gaulle had agreed to co-operate with the Communists during WW II (which was apparently all Moulin's work), that this had set France on the wrong course and led to de Gaulle granting Algeria independence in 1962, instead of keeping Algeria as a part of France as he should have done.^[23]

It has also been suggested, principally in Marnham's biography, that Moulin was betrayed by communists. Marnham points the finger specifically at Raymond Aubrac and possibly his wife, Lucie. He alleges that communists did at times betray non-communists to the Gestapo, and that Aubrac was linked to harsh actions during the purge of collaborators after the war. In 1990, Klaus Barbie, by then "a bitter dying Nazi", named Aubrac as the traitor.^[24] To counteract the accusations levelled at Moulin, Daniel Cordier, his personal secretary during the war, wrote a biography of his former leader.^[25] In April 1997, Vergès produced a "Barbie testament" which he claimed that Barbie had given him ten years earlier which purported to show the Aubracs had tipped off Barbie.^[26] Vergès's "Barbie testament" which was timed for the publication of the book Aubrac Lyon 1943 by Gérard Chauvy, which was meant to prove that the Aubracs were the ones who informed Barbie about the fateful meeting at Caluire on 21 June 1943.^[25] On 2 April 1998 following a civil suit launched by the Aubracs, a Paris court fined Chauvy and his publisher Albin Michel for "public defamation".^[27] In 1998, the French historian Jacques Baynac in his book Les Secrets de l'affaire Jean Moulin claimed that Moulin was planning to break with de Gaulle to recognize General Giraud, which led the Gaullists to tip off Barbie before this could happen.^[28]

Legacy[edit]

Drawing of Jean Moulin based on iconic photo with hat and scarf, cross of Lorraine in background

Ashes presumed to be his were buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and later transferred to the Panthéon on 19 December 1964. The speech given by André Malraux, writer and minister of the Republic, at the transfer site is one of the most famous speeches in French history.

The current French education curriculum commemorates Jean Moulin as a symbol of the French resistance and a model of civic virtuousness, moral rectitude and patriotism. As of 2015, Jean Moulin was the fifth most popular name for a French school^[29] and as of 2016, and his is the 3rd most popular French street name^[30] of which 98 percent are male.^[31] Lyon 3 university and a Paris metro station have also been named after him. Another member of the resistance, Antoinette Sasse bequeathed her will to found The Musée Jean Moulin in 1994.^{[32][better source needed]}

The fictional Jean Pierre Melville film Army of Shadows (based on a book of the same name) depicts, through the character of Luc Jardie, played by Paul Meurisse, several events in Moulin's war experience with some inaccuracy - in the film his homosexual male secretary is replaced by a female assistant.

In 1993, a commemorative French two-franc coin was issued showing a partial image of Moulin against the Croix de Lorraine, using a fedora-and-scarf photograph which is well recognised in France.

See also[edit]

• Lionel Floch

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Baynac, Jacques. Les secrets de l'affaire Jean Moulin: Contexte, Causes Et Circonstances. Seuil: Paris, 1998. ISBN 2-02-033164-0
• Clinton, Alan. Jean Moulin, 1899–1943: the French Resistance and the Republic. Palgrave: New York, 2002. ISBN 978-0-333-76486-2
• Daniel Cordier. Jean Moulin. La République des catacombes. Gallimard: Paris, 1999. ISBN 2-07-074312-8
• Hardy, René. Derniers mots: Mémoires. Fayard: Paris, 1984. ISBN 2-213-01320-9
• Marnham, Patrick. The Death of Jean Moulin: Biography of a Ghost. John Murray: New York, 2001. ISBN 0-7126-6584-6. Also published as Resistance and Betrayal ISBN 0-375-50608-X. 2015 edition published as Army of the Night, Tauris. ISBN 9781784531089
• Moulin, Laure. Jean Moulin. Presses de la Cité: Paris, 1982. (En préface le discours de André Malraux). ISBN 2-258-01120-5
• Noguères, Henri. La vérité aura le dernier mot. Seuil: Paris, 1985 ISBN 2-02-008683-2
• Péan, Pierre. Vies et morts de Jean Moulin. Fayard: Paris, 1998. ISBN 2-213-60257-3
• Storck-Cerruty, Marguerite. J'étais la femme de Jean Moulin. Régine Desforges: Paris, 1977. (Avec lettre-préface de Robert Aron, de l'Académie française). ISBN 2-901980-74-0
• Sweets, John F.. The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944: A History of the Mouvements Unis de la Résistance. Northern Illinois University Press: De Kalb, 1976. ISBN 0-87580-061-0
• Taussat, Robert (1998). Jean Moulin : la constance et l'honneur de la République. Rodez: Fil d'Ariane. ISBN 9782912470263. OCLC 49281909. 

External links[edit]

• Jean Moulin and the French Resistance (English)
• English translation of Malraux's speech
• Brief list of important dates in the life of Jean Moulin (English)
• JEAN MOULIN (1899 - 1943) -famous son of Béziers
• Short film about Jean Moulin (English)