Jean Mouin Main Page
JUDAS AMONG US
Who Betrayed Moulin?
The Case Against Hardy
The Case For Hardy
The Hardy Trial
The Case Against Hardy
The evidence against him seems overwhelming. There are even documentary evidences.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner in his second report to Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop on June 29, 1943, as a followup to his May 27 report, wrote:
Questioned after his arrest, Hardy, alias Didot, chief of railroad sabotage, made a full confession... Since Hardy gave us detailed information and was willing to collaborate with us, we used him several times with success to arrange meeting. He reconstituted for our services the plan to sabotage the railroads. Thanks to a plan Hardy lent himself to, the SD of Lyon, in collaboration with special units, succeeded in surprising in Lyon a meeting of the leaders of the Secret Army, which led to a number of arrests.
The second document is a report found in the SS archives in Lyon after the Germans fled in August 1944. The arrest of the resistance leaders was code-named "Flora". The Flora report, which erroneously dated the Caluire arrest on June 25, 1943 and stated:
Thanks to the surveillance of the mail drop of the railway sabotage section, Multon learned of a planned meeting on June 9 in Paris. Thus Multon made possible Didot's arrest on the train and turned him over to the Lyon section, where he was subsequently used as a counteragent. This led to the arrest in Lyon, of Moulin, Jean, personal delegate of General de Gaulle.
When the French secret service (DST) came across the Flora report in December 1945, Hardy was arrested. [8]
Other than these documents, both of which are flawed by some inconsistencies, evidences against Hardy are mostly circumstantial evidence or rather unreliable testimonies of the German agents including Klaus Barbie.
In 1948, Barbie, who was then protected by the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) having been hired as their intelligence asset, testified to the French investigators: "Hardy, alias Didot, informed me that a Resistance leaders' meeting was scheduled for June 21, 1943 in Lyon, but when he revealed this to me he still did not know where it would be, and who would be taking part. Hardy gave this information four or five days before the date . . . It was via a document arriving in his letter-box from Paris that Hardy found out the details already mentioned . . . Every evening before the meeting I saw Hardy, and each time he gave me further details, obtained from his liaison agent. In that way he told me that Max would be at the meeting. Hardy revealed to me the true identity of Max, and told me his name was Moulin."
As we will see later, Barbie did not know the identity of Max at Caluire. It is not hard to guess why Barbie would tell lies about a former Resistance leader and obstruct French investigation.
However, the are testimonies of other Gestapo agents that also point a finger at Hardy. Of these, the most interesting testimony is that of EDMÉE DELETRAZ, a sort of triple agent for the Gestapo and Resistance.
A triple agent's evidence
Her exact position between the Gestapo and the Resistance still remains unclear. Deletraz was a Resistance member who agreed to help the Germans when she was arrested. After her release, she regularly informed her Resistance network what the Gestapo wanted from her.
On June 21, the German agent Moog told her, "Come with me, I'll show you a Frenchman who's understood." A man introduced was Didot (Hardy). Moog told her, "Some resistance men are holding an important meeting. The delegate of General de Gaulle will be there. Didot will be there. The rendezvous is at two o'clock at the Roix-Rousse funicular. From there, he doesn't know. You will follow him and come back and tell us where he went."
According to Deletraz, Didot said, "If the meeting is in an apartment building, this woman will not be able to tell at what floor and in what apartment I've gone." There was a moment of silence, then Didot said: "Give me a pack of cigarettes. I'll empty it and leave the pack on the doormat." The Germans laughed, and one of them threw Didot a pack of cigarettes. [10]
Deletraz added, "He didn't seem like a man who was being forced to do something he didn't want to. [8]
She thought, "I've got to warn these people." She went to a mail drop and left a message for one of her contacts, Jean Cambus. She proceeded to the French Red Cross, where another contact, Colonel de la Brosse told her, "Don't worry, we'll take care of it." She visited a third contact, then she went to the Gestapo headquarter, where the Germans came to take her to the funicular. Yet none of them was able to make contact with the meeting's organizers.
According to Deletraz, she and Moog tailed Hardy as he went to the Caluire meeting. Moog told her, "See them over there with Didot, the two others? Follow them and come back with your report." She hopped on the funicular and followed them to the doctor's house. She wondered what to do for a while. "By this time," she thought, "the resistance people have been warned, they know they've been betrayed." So she took the funicular back down to Croix-Rousse station where the Germans were waiting. Barbie told her to get into his car and said, "We've already lost half an hour. Show us the way." So, Deletraz again took the funicular and when they reached the top, she said, "They got off here. And then I lost them." Barbie told her to go home. The Germans were further delayed in finding the doctor's house. [10]
(But another account says that she played for time by pretending not to be sure of her way, but faced with their growing anger, that she finally brought them to the Dugoujon house.) [8]
Deletraz' testimony, which she gave at Hardy's trial, offers an explanation for the Gestapo's late arrival at the Caluire meeting. Yet her very own involvement in the Caluire affair makes her motive suspect. She could be telling a lie to shift all the blame to Hardy. Deletraz' superior, Colonel Georges Groussard informed London on June 23, 1943 that Hardy betrayed the Caluire meeting on the basis of informatiion given by Deletraz. Groussard, a former Vichy official and a fasict member of Cagoules, most likely disapproved Moulin and he and Deletraz could have something to hide about, who knows? As Henri Noguères, a leading historian of the Resistance commented, "one can only express surprise . . . that when she reached the villa, knowing she had left the Gestapo well behind, Madame Delétraz never thought to go inside and warn them." [8]
Besides, her account contradicts a fantastic story given by Barbie himself.
Barbie's evidence
When Barbie applied for an intelligence job with the American CIC in 1947, he wrote an account of his capture of Jean Moulin for Special Agent Robert S. Taylor as a way to establish his expertise in the field. The gullible (and cynical) Americans were so impressed with this account of the crackdown on the Resistance that they hired the wanted war criminal who was responsible for torture and death of 4,000 Jews and Resistance members. In this report, Barbie wrote:
Shortly after midnight[on June 7], the Kommando in Chalon reported to me that René Hardy had been arrested. The next day I went to Chalon in my car to pick him up. A cell door opened and before me stood a slender, somewhat pale man in middle age. His hair shone a light red. I approached him with the words: "Good morning, Mr. Hardy, your game is up."
. . .
A small incident brought us, as humans, somewhat closer together. Hardy had his glasses on. I knew that he carried them merely as camouflage. I asked him to lend them to me for a moment, as I had forgotten mine. He looked at me with astonishment and mistrust, but handed them to me. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the glasses off with exaggerated gestures. Hardy laughed with embarrassment as I returned the glasses and said: "Hardy, your eyes this time were just as bad as your glasses, otherwise I would not have caught you."
"You are quite right," he replied, "the next time I will be fitted with with better glasses." I am not sure if it was this incident that caused Hardy to confide in me, but he suddenly stretched out his hand and assured me that he had no fears about his future . . . I decided at that moment to win Hardy over in order to penetrate the leading circles of the resistance, but for the time being I kept these plans to myself. [10]
This account is most unlikely. By all accounts, Barbie was a brute who enjoyed inflicting physical pain on his victims. I doubt that even the CIC could be fooled that this was how the head of the Gestapo in Lyon conducted his business. However, in the same report, Barbie explains how the Caluire arrest was arranged in more realistic terms.
"Hardy spent the evening of the June 20th with me," Barbie went on. "I went over all the details of the raid with him, in particular assuring him again that he would be given his freedom. One technical difficulty existed, as to how the meeting place should be determined without mistake. I assumed the meeting, because of its importance, would last two or three hours. Thus I would have time. Hardy suggested to me that he be followed in a sort of echelon, with men posted at various corners . . . In order to be wholly certain, I gave Hardy a piece of yellow chalk. With this he was to mark the steps and doors which led to the meeting place.
The contradictions among these testimonies damage their credibility. Yet the testimonies of other Gestapo agents such as Barbie's aide Henry Stengritt agree in generality that Hardy supplied information on the Caluire meeting. [10]
A Jar of Poisoned Jam
Even before these evidences were known, several Resistance leaders were convinced of Hardy's betrayal on circumstantial evidences.
He attended a meeting to which he was not invited; he was the only man not to be handcuffed, the first man to be taken out of the house, and the only man to escape from the Germans, who did not bother to pursue him.
Was the escape planned as Barbie alleged? Aubrac recalled that he heard maximum of two or three shots even though the Germans had machine guns.
Yet Hardy was wounded in the left forearm, and a question arose whether or not he inflicted it on himself to avoid suspicion. Even here contradictions abound.
The four doctors who examined him on June 21 after his arrest by the Vichy police all took the view that the bullet had not been fired from close range. They noted an entry and an exit wound and a broken radial bone. An examination of his coat sleeve showed no trace of burn marks. Yet in 1949, in preparation for his second trial, a second forensic report discovered belatedly traces of power on the sleeve of the jacket. [2]
Some resistance leaders who now suspected that Hardy also betrayed Delestraint, decided to execute Hardy as a traitor. LUCIE AUBRAC, Raymond's wife sent Hardy a small jar of jam laced with cyanide when he was in the military hospital before he escaped. Hardy anticipated it and asked his jailers to test all outside food in the laboratory. In Aubrac's mind, Hardy's vigilance was a further proof of his betrayal. [4]
To complicate the matter, Hardy was at the time in love with Lydie Bastien, who had reputation of a femme fatale and was suspected of having been a Gestapo agent even before she met Hardy. Arrested with a letter in his pocket addressed to her at her parents' address in Lyon, it has been argued that Hardy was desperate to protect her even if it meant leading Barbie to Caluire.
The Case For Hardy
Yet until his arrest by the Gestapo, Hardy was a genuine resistance hero who ran one of most important sabotage teams. His lawyer Maruice Garçon claimed that "this great resistance hero should be decorated, not jailed." For some, it was an outrage that a Resistance leader should be prosecuted on the basis of Nazi evidences. Morever, there were testimonies from Resistance leaders who defended Hardy.
MAX HEILBRONN, a fellow Combat member who worked in railroad sabotage, disliked Hardy. He recalled, "It was dislike almost at first sight. We worked together in a common cause but were hostile to each other. We were also highly competitive rivals. Hardy and his group of men were engineers of the SNCF, the national railway system, whereas I was an army engineer. Each thought of himself as better qualified than the other."
Heilbronn was arrested on June 12, two days after Hardy was released, an important day in Heilbronn's view:
As soon as Hardy and I finished talking on June 12, The Gestapo came and arrested me. They took me down the cellar room and began punching and beating me. They kept asking me to admit that I was Didot. I was badly hurt, felt faint, and realized I had better fall down and pretend to pass out before I was crippled. I think they were glad to see me faint, for it was a very hot day and they were sweating profusely from beating me up.
Someone came in and threw water on me. I moaned and pretended still to be semiconscious. I heard them speaking and understood every word, for I am fluent in German. I heard a key phrase: "Es war der andere."(It was the other guy) I knew then that they were after Hardy and had thought that I was Hardy. This proved to me that Barbie did not know exactly who Hardy was when he interrogated him on June 10. It proves to me, too, that Hardy had not been released as a double agent. I took a terrible beating on Hardy's account . . .
I had plenty of time to think of what had happened. I did not like Hardy personally. I thought he made many mistakes, but I could not believe that he was a traitor. [4]
However, the aforementioned Kaltenbrunner report stated that "the Jew Heilbronner, alias 'Arel,' thanks to the help of Hardy, was arrested at a rendezvous." Heilbronn's testimony exposed flaws in the Kaltenbrunner report, which was the most damaging evidence against Hardy. (Barbie claimed that Heilbronn's interrogation was a subterfuge to cover Hardy, but it makes no sense since Heilbronn was deported to a concentration camp.)
Also Hardy's friend and liaison agent, Roger Bosse, testified that Hardy had been with him at the time which Deletraz claimed that she had seen Hardy at the Gestapo headquarter. (However, this testimony is now believed to be perjury.)
Other important Combat leaders including Frenay, GUILLAIN DE BÉNOUVILLE, and Claude Bourdet testified as well on behalf of Hardy. After he was released by the Gestapo, Hardy met a large number of leading men in the movement including Pierre de Bénouville, Claude Bournet, Jacques Baumel, René La Combe, Marcel Degliame-Fouché among others. If Hardy was truly a double agent, they would all have been arrested. Hardy could have dismantled the entire Combat apparatus. Since none of them were arrested, it was argued that Hardy was not working for Barbie.
It is a good point, except for the counterargument that Barbie was looking for Jean Moulin and did not want to alert him by moving in on lesser members. [4]
In any case, it is worth noting that if Hardy was a traitor, Caluire was the only casualty of his treason.
No Other Exit
Hardy always insisted that what led the Gestapo to Caluire was no treason, but secruity lapses. After all, Delestraint's arrest looked to be Hardy's doing in all appearance; yet it was established that Hardy had nothing to do with it. Indeed in both cases, there were security lapses on monumental scale.
It must be clear by now that the meeting in Caluire was arranged with shocking offhandedness. As the organizer of Caluire, Lassagne chose a house with no back entrance owned by a man whose brother was in the Milice, Vichy's anti-Resistance paramilitary organization.
Strangely enough, for such a high-level Secret Army meeting, no provision was made for armed guard by its soldiers. Moulin's secretary, Tony de Graaf asked Moulin when he had lunch with him on June 21. "Are you sure you've got the security buttoned up?" Max replied, "The Secret Army was handling it. It should be good."
Aubry, who was the man most responsible for Delestraint's arrest, continued his bumbling ways into June 21. Just back from Marseille, where his wife was serious ill, it was not until June 19 he found that Moulin, Hardy, and others were urgently looking for him leaving many messages. Aubry spoke about the meeting with several of his colleagus in Combat, breaking another rule about never discussing a meeting with someone who has not been invited to it. Then he forgot to tell Moulin that Hardy would be coming. [8]
And way too many people knew about the Caluire meeting. Only the organizers and attendees of the meeting were supposed to know about it, yet its news started circulating in resistance circles in Lyon.
Marcel Riviére, a top man in the Combat, said in 1972, "I knew a highly important meeting was scheduled in the Lyon suburbs. I said: 'That's crazy, you must have guards.' The idea was turned down."
Gaston Deferre also had a lengthy talk with Moulin. "He mentioned his rendezvous that afternoon. I earnestly advised him against going there because it was my impression that someone had acted unwisely. Jean Moulin said he would go anyway, even though it seemed dangerous."
PIerre de Bénouville, Frenay's deputy also knew about the meeting. In fact, he instructed Aubry and Hardy that the latter should tag along.
Whereas one person showed up uninvited, another person invitied didn't show up.
Claude Bouchinet-Serreulles was supposed to attend the Caluire meeting, but being unfamiliar with Lyon, he took a wrong funicular and got lost. The preparations were certainly very slapdash. [8]
Weight of Shadow
Forrest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas
French Resistance is full of stories of brave men and women who were undone by their lack of sense of security. Henri Noguères wrote of them, "They were devoid of imagination." To trick the Gestapo, they merely changed the name of the quay or bridge for the meeting. Forrest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas, a British SOE agent was also amazed by recklessness displayed by some of resistants. "I advised [Claude Bouchinet-Serreulles] of this and warned him that I left my house because it was dangerous - in spite of this, about 48 hours later he held an important meeting there!"
On another occasion, Yeo-Thomas and Brossolette noticed that Jacques Bingen, de Gaulle's interim delegate was being trailed by no less than three men. "He had not realized it and would not believe us so we proved it by walking fast, turning down Rue d'Argenson and again into Rue de la Boëtie and waiting just round the corner in a big arched doorway; one by one our three followers came tearing round the corner and left us in no doubt as to their intentions." [5]
If the Gestapo put a surveillance on any one of them, they would have found the meeting with or without Hardy.
Incidently, both Aubry and Lassagne were worried that they were being followed. After the arrest, Aubry supposedly told Dugoujon, "Barbie has been following me for weeks." Apparently by June 1943, Lassagne and Aubry were too tired to arrange clandestine meetings. Exposure to constant danger dulled their vigilance. It has been said that the resistants were under such a constant stress that some actually felt relieved when they were finally captured.
The Hardy Trial
The Hardy affair is significant because it was later transformed into an ideological battlefield in postwar politics.
Having fled Lyon, René Hardy stayed with Lydie Bastien for some time in Paris, and in 1944 reached Algiers, where he surrendered to French military intelligence on the advice of Henri Frenay. Frenay believed Hardy when he said that he was not responsible for Caluire disaster. After a lengthy interrogation Hardy was released and joined Frenay's staff on the Gaullist commission for prisoners of war and deportees. However, in December 1945, when the French Secret Service (DST) came across the Gestapo report on the Caluire arrest, Hardy was arrested on a charge of treason. It was the start of the Hardy affair which went on for many years and was never resolved. [2]
The Frist Trial
Maurice Garçon
The first trial of Hardy on the capital charge of high treason opened in January 1947. The Communists saw an opportunity in this to discredit Hardy's boss Henri Frenay, the leading anti-communist figure and his Combat movement, which was a rival for the Resistance glory. The communist paper, L'Humanité made no bones about it declaring Hardy "guilty" on the first day of the case.
At the first trial, Hardy flatly denied that he was ever arrested by the Gestapo before the Caluire meeting and there was no documentary evidence to show otherwise. Hardy's lawyer Maurice Garçon discounted testimonies of the chief prosecution witness Deletraz and others. After a week's hearings, Hardy was acquitted. [2]
The verdict was a victory for Frenay and his Combat. But the Caluire victims who were convinced of Hardy's guilt were outraged. The Communists organized a "people's tribunal" in a public hall, which was presided over by an aggrieved Laure Moulin. A writer in L'Humanté demanded that "the Resistance of bourgeoisie" should be exposed and "Judas be punished" while adding that the communists had been "the first members of the Resistance." [2]
The Hardy trial clearly became a battle for the legacy of the Resistance and thus for power in postwar politics.
The Second Trial
Two months after the verdict, Hardy was rearrested. In the archives of the couchette division of the national railroad, a report dated June 8, 1943, had been found. Filed by the conductor of the Paris-Lyon express, it stated that a passenger of by the name of René Hardy was arrested on June 7 by the Germans at Chalon-sur-Saône and taken off the train. Once again, there was a prolonged judicial inquiry, and Hardy spent three years and two months in prison. Since he was acquitted in the civil court, he was charged in the military tribunal this time. The second trial began in May 1950.
Hardy could not deny his arrest by the Gestapo any more. His case now was that, having been arrested by Barbie, he had agreed to work for the Gestapo in order to protect his lover Lydie Bastien and her parents, but that he had given no important information in return.
By four votes to three, seven judges of the military tribunal found Hardy guilty. Since a guity verdict required a margin of two votes, he was legally acquitted. [2]
After his acquittal, Hardy became a prolific author winning the Deux Magots literary prize for his 1956 book Bittery Victory. (It became a Hollywood movie, directed by Nicholas Ray.) Yet he never lived down the suspicions that he betrayed Moulin.
Hardy said bitterly, "I spent 6 years in jail. I've tried to make a new life honestly. On leaving prison, I was ruined and had tuberculosis. Yet I started over. I had only $30 when I left prison. Today I feel enough is enough." [15]
After leading reclusive life for years, Hardy died in April 14, 1987.
After the second Hardy trial, Albert Camus wrote in Combat, "Had [Hardy] stayed at home like so many other people, had he not chosen the hard rod, he would live an honored man today . . . We cannot be the judges of this man. He must judge himself." [2] I think that is a fair epitaph.
However, de facto hung jury and unsolved mystery surrounding Hardy's actions on July 21, 1943 only ensured that the Caluire affair would continue to haunt the memory of Resistance to this day. The search for who betrayed Moulin has continued ever since, and conspiracy theories filled the void left by history.
Femme Fatale
Before we examine idealogically-motivated conspiracy theories, two theories that emerged recently are worth mentioning.
In a biography of Moulin published in 1999, French historian Pierre Péan alleged that Hardy's mistress, Lydie Bastien, was the architect of Caluire.
This thoery is based on the the supposed confession of Bastien to her songwriter friend, Victor Conté, who in turn revealed it to Péan after her death.
According to Péan, Hardy was besotted with Bastien, who despised Hardy. In fact, it was a love affair sponsored by the Germans from the start. "I was already working for the Germans and they told me how to find and get to know Hardy, who I met and seduced at their request," Bastien allegedly told Conté. [17]
Bastien said: "He was soon obsessed with me. Very quickly he was telling me all his secrets and I had complete access to his secret files."
Having fallen in love, Hardy was then arrested on June 7, 1943 by the Gestapos on a train to Lyon, for which Bastien had bought the ticket.
"The fool even thought I was coming with him," she remembered. "I warned the Germans he was on his way. Then Barbie called me to Lyon where they had taken Hardy and I told him that he had no choice. He had to collaborate with Barbie or my parents and myself would be arrested as well."
Fatally besotted with Bastien, Hardy agreed to help the Gestapo and worked under Harry Stengritt, Klaus Barbie's deputy and Bastien's lover, with whom she had begun love affair before she met Hardy.
Enjoying access to Hardy's secret files and other confidential information, Bastien orchestrated the arrest of Hardy and Moulin with the help of Stengritt. For her services, the Germans paid Bastien in diamonds and gems stolen from Jews, which she wore until her death in 1994.
To avoid a long and painful death at the hands of Barbie's thugs, Hardy gave the Nazis the information they required and an escape was staged. Hardy shot himself in the arm to pre-empt accusations of treachery, but he was forever suspected of his complicity in Caluire. [17]
Unlike Hardy, Bastien enjoyed carefree postwar life. A Nietzsche-reading occultist, she lived in Bombay as a Buddhist mystic; several years later, she landed in the United States, where she befriended former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and founded a research center that concerned itself with "the nature of man." It was more than 40 years later that Bastien was on her deathbed and revealed her secrets to Conté.
However, this theory is solely based on the recollections of Victor Conté, who inexplicably waited for five years to reveal her confessions even though he was supposedly granted permission by Bastien.
Yet for Péan, Conté's description of a photograph of Bastien between two German soldiers - the existence of which was known only to Péan and one other witness - was confirmation of the authenticity of his account.
Also some Resistance figures including Frenay had been deeply suspicious of Bastien long before the Hardy affair.
Hardy himself seemed to think that he had been deceived by Bastien. When he was snubbed by an old Resistance comrade in 1971, he shouted angrily: "You had the good fortune never to meet Lydie Bastien! She was a divinity sent from Hell." [17]
The American Connection
There is yet another theory about Moulin that is worth noting because it involves Americans. Expounded recently in 1997 by a radical historian Jacques Baynac, it alleged that American incompetence and not betrayal was behind the arrest of Jean Moulin.
In his book The Secrets of the Jean Moulin Affair: Context, Causes and Circumstances, Baynac claimed that Moulin was a "victim of circumstances", who inadvertently led the Gestapo to Caluire after being shadowed for two days.
According to this theory, Moulin met an American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent, Frederic Brown in Avignon on June 19. The Germans learned of this meeting through a junior OSS agent and immediately had Moulin trailed.
According to 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.
Baynac also accused American authorities of protecting Barbie and perpetuating a lie for half a century. [18]
Baynac claimed that this information was obtained from newly available documents, but this theory is simply absurd. The Gestapo did not know the identify of Moulin for two days after the Caluire arrest.
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