America blamed for Resistance hero's capture
AMERICAN incompetence and not betrayal was blamed yesterday for the capture of France's Resistance hero, Jean Moulin, tortured and killed by the Germans in 1943.
Jacques Baynac, a historian, has used newly available archive evidence to disprove the widely held theory that Moulin - the best known French victim of Klaus Barbie, "the butcher of Lyons" - was betrayed by a fellow Resistance member. M Baynac claims that the Resistance co-ordinator was a "victim of circumstances", who inadvertently led the Germans to a crucial meeting of top Resistance leaders at Caluire, near Lyons, after being shadowed for two days.
The Germans caught up with Moulin - the representative of the Free French leader, General de Gaulle - on June 19 in Avignon. He had gone there to meet Frederic Brown, an agent of the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The meeting was not secure: the Germans learnt of it through a junior OSS agent and immediately had Moulin trailed. According to M Baynac, the Americans were aware of the role played by their agents in Moulin's capture, sacking both Brown and his boss and then colluding in a cover-up designed to divert blame on to the most convenient scapegoat, René Hardy, a Resistance official.
Hardy, the only Resistance member present at Caluire to escape capture, has long been the prime suspect as Moulin's Judas, an accusation he denied until his death. M Baynac is particularly harsh on the American authorities, whom he accuses of protecting Barbie and perpetuating a lie for half a century.
By Susannah Herbert in Paris, The Daily Telegraph, Wednesday, 18 November 1998