Jean Moulin

Jean Moulin united the French Resistance under de Gaulle and died in German custody in 1943 without giving up a name. He was a career prefect, the youngest in France, and was arrested at Chartres in June 1940 for refusing to sign a German document blaming Senegalese troops for a massacre of civilians the Wehrmacht had committed; he cut his own throat with a piece of glass in his cell rather than risk breaking, survived, and wore a scarf over the scar for the rest of his life. Dismissed by Vichy in November 1940, he made his way to London through Lisbon and met de Gaulle in October 1941. He was parachuted back into France on New Year's Day 1942 with the task of merging the main southern movements - Combat, Liberation-Sud and Franc-Tireur - into a single organisation answering to de Gaulle rather than to the Americans or to themselves. The movements distrusted each other and their leaders, Henri Frenay in particular, resented taking orders from a civil servant, so the work was as much negotiation as conspiracy; money and radio links from London were his leverage. The National Council of the Resistance met for the first time in Paris on 27 May 1943, with eight movements, six parties and two trade-union federations represented, which is what allowed de Gaulle to claim to speak for occupied France. Moulin was arrested at Caluire near Lyon three weeks later, betrayed by someone never conclusively identified, and interrogated by Klaus Barbie. He died on a train to Germany in July. His ashes were transferred to the Pantheon in 1964 with a speech by Andre Malraux that is still taught in French schools. Rene Hardy was tried twice for the betrayal at Caluire and acquitted twice, and Barbie named Hardy again in 1972. Barbie himself was extradited from Bolivia in 1983 and convicted of crimes against humanity in Lyon in 1987.

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