What I Am Reading: "Jean Moulin, 1899-1943" by Alan Clinton

It seemed like one of those grand historical coincidences when I read (on Wikipedia, of course) that Jean Moulin had been Pierre Cot’s chief of staff when he was a Minister. I knew Moulin slightly as the romantic, somewhat mysterious hero of the French Resistance, and here he had worked for the Popular Front leader I was most interested in beside Léon Blum. I perused the book reviews for Moulin biographies, and this one came recommended. I also intend to prove by the end of this review (fine, “blog post”) that Moulin was history’s wokest man.

The story doesn’t end well. Moulin died after being captured by the Nazis. I hadn’t understood what exactly it meant to be the “organizer” of the French Resistance until I read my previous book: much of the Resistance sprung up spontaneously after the Fall of France, often from existing political organizations. De Gaulle at the start was just another minor official, and wasn’t vested with any great degree of de facto or de jure political power. Jean Moulin brought about a change in both paradigms.

Moulin received a conventional Republican upbringing in rural France, with a father active in the Radical Party. Jean was a soldier at the end of WW1, but did not see any fighting. Despite a primary interest in art, he went into a steady career in the French civil service. He rose through the ranks of the prefecture system, being shipped off to various corners of the country as his position rose. The French state at this time had eighty prefectures, with each Prefect (and several subprefects) centrally appointed and having some control over their local and regional governments; a sort of Jacobin version of the nobility. Moulin eventually slipped into a political role as many prefects had, becoming the patron of a politician named Danielou and looking after his interests in the home district.

Another politician Moulin came to befriend was Pierre Cot, elected to the parliament in a district near Moulin’s home turf in 1928. Cot, who had a close friendship with Moulin and often skied with him, took Moulin under his wing in his first Air Ministry under the Chautemps/Daladier government (this is prior to the Popular Front). Moulin would return to his subprefect position during the various times Cot was out of office. The book had a vivid scene of the fall of the first Daladier government at the hands of a right-wing mob, an event that led to the creation of the Popular Front.

During the first Popular Front government of Léon Blum, Moulin served as Cot’s Chief of Staff.  He worked in this capacity on the government’s under-the-table arming of the Spanish Republicans (1), as well as organizing the “Aviation Populaire” project to bring flying clubs to the French citizenry. Clinton does a good job in these segments and others of Moulin’s pre-war political career of giving a taste of the ceremonial occasions that Moulin partook in, without overwhelming us with all their banal glory.

After Cot left office, Moulin was appointed as a full Prefect, and remained as such for three years. His posting was on the German border, and he handled the rising tide of refugees fleeing into France before the war. He tried to accommodate these refugees, making sure that work was arranged for them at their next destination, and trying to make sure that families weren’t separated (2).  As the war began, he was rebuffed in his attempts to join the Air Force, ordered to remain in his post as a prefect. As such, he did not evacuate in the face of the advancing German army. One French commander told Moulin that he was the only Prefect that he found at his post between there and the Belgian border. When the Germans arrived, the first thing they did was take Moulin into custody and attempt to coerce him into agreeing that a unit of Senegalese French soldiers had been responsible for murders that the Germans had committed (I have read a couple of different versions of this story, but the details are basically the same). Moulin refused (3) and was beaten and imprisoned by the Germans. He cut his own throat in an attempt to commit suicide, but was nursed back to health and reinstalled as a Prefect when cooler heads prevailed. This received plenty of favorable attention from the French public.

Moulin did not storm out of his Prefecture, but instead waited for his inevitable dismissal for his refusal to enact Vichy policies. This came at the end of 1940, and Moulin spent most of the next year traveling France and making contact with the early Resistance groups. The southern part of France was not occupied by the Germans yet, and was under the control of the Vichy government. When he made it to Britain at the end of 1941 he was able to give de Gaulle a detailed report on the state of the Resistance, such as it was.

This book helped me to understand the importance of Moulin to de Gaulle. Prefect was a highrank, and the prefecture was the backbone of the French government. Moulin was the first Prefect to report to de Gaulle and the Free French. He lent state legitimacy to de Gaulle’s efforts, and de Gaulle quickly found him to be reliable. Moulin was (long story short) parachuted back into France in the beginning of 1942, with instructions to form an organization that would combine all the acting Resistance groups, right and left (with Communists separate at the beginning but eventually coming into the fold).

The Resistance at this time was not at a level to be ready for commando operations that the British wanted, so Moulin started small with propaganda efforts and the like. He worked assiduously at his organizing task; first making small asks of the groups, such as declarations of support for de Gaulle. This organizing came at a time when de Gaulle’s position was somewhat questionable, as the Americans evinced a preference for working with parts of the Vichy government. They left Vichy Admiral Darlan in charge when he surrendered Algeria to them, and for a time it appeared that Darlan would be able to compete with or overcome de Gaulle as the leader of the French. However, a convenient assassination removed him from contention, and de Gaulle was able to outmaneuver his successor, Giraud, by proving the loyalty of the Resistance within France.

This may seem like shallow political maneuvering, perhaps even like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. However, Moulin’s efforts to compose the Resistance would prove to have a large effect after the war. It was because of Moulin’s gradual drawing together of the Resistance movements that France’s post-war government, flawed as it may have been in many eyes, was a government of the Resistance, and not a government that involved the coopting of any elements of the Vichy state. The Resistance that Moulin created held popular support and involvement, and was not simply an elite military force. One of the large hurdles that had to be overcome was opposition in some quarters to the involvement of the remnants of the old political parties of the Third Republic, but Moulin knew that they had a lot to offer and conferred legitimacy. Eventually, a historic document was signed by the members of the largest Resistance groups, as well as civil society such as the CGT (under out old friend Jouhaux), a trade union that carried out labor-based opposition to the Nazi war machine. The organization of the Resistance was done with an eye to translation into a post-war government.

Moulin was also responsible for arranging the appointment of retired General Charles Delestraint as the compromise candidate to lead the military wing of the French Resistance. When Delestraint was caught by the Nazis, Resistance leadership had to meet to appoint a successor; and Moulin had to contend with trouble from Henri Frenay, leader of Combat, one of the larger right-wing Resistance groups. Frenay was constantly jockeying with Moulin for power, resenting centralized control. According to Clinton (though I know there are other theories as well), this politicking was what led to one of Frenay’s lieutenants to bring another Frenay supporter, Hardy to the meeting without being aware that Hardy had been compromised by the Gestapo. Moulin and the others were captured, and the Nazis didn’t take long to learn his identity as the Resistance leader. He was tortured and died on a train en route to Germany.

Moulin is a heroic figure in France, his remains interred in the Pantheon. He was a symbol to the Gaullists, and to the Socialist left as well; a group in his name organized to oppose the war in Algeria. Beyond the considerable theorizing as to exactly how his betrayal came about, as well as many tabloid-history efforts to portray him (and therefore de Gaulle and the subsequent French government) as a Communist tool.

I was conditioned well by my previous book to view Resistance history critically, but I think that the praise of Moulin is well-taken.  As I noted at the points numbered in the text, Moulin had several conspicuous occasions where he was on the right side of history, in his own time and in a way we would recognize in ours. He was not himself a combatant, or a glorious war hero, but was instead a studious organizer, a bureaucrat in action. He had not only to set up a bureaucracy from scratch but had to do it in completely clandestine conditions. His efforts had a wide-ranging effect on the war and on the peace after it.

Clinton clearly shares this feeling, and includes a segment at the end of the chapter on Moulin’s legacy where he passes on speculation as to how Moulin would have served the French government after the war, had he lived. The book did not have any major criticisms of Moulin, but was clear about mistakes made by the Resistance overall. I would not say, though, that it was a hagiography. I was occasionally put off by his speculation on how Moulin would have felt about certain political events, but the man did leave behind enough writing and correspondence that his politics can take some shape. He was circumspect about Moulin’s brief marriage and personal life, which reminded me of the vague indication that he might have been gay. This was definitely a worthwhile biography, especially in addressing some of the more spurious parts of the Moulin legend that have sprouted up (post-Liberation Resistance drama, Communist connections, and so on).

PIERRE COT RIDES AGAIN

Pierre Cot finally has his time in the sun in this book, though he is a secondary character. He was close friends with Moulin, with frequent social interaction. He is first seen in action during the events of February 1934, when a right-wing mob threatened the sitting parliament and brought about the resignation of Daladier’s government after some scandal. Cot was initially one of the supporters of a forceful dispersal, to prevent a French administration from being overthrown by street violence (it was this demonstration that scared the left enough to unite into the Popular Front).  

During his first term under the Chautemps/Daladier government, Cot helped create Air France, a partially state-owned company, and set the goal of the manufacture of 1010 modern French airplanes, When the PF came into power, Cot came back to the air ministry. This goal had not been met by his successors, and was not met under his ministry either. The government nationalized the aeronautics industry, but this did not seem to improve production. Some regarded him as politically or technically inept, but Clinton notes that the difficulties of the French Air Force were probably endemic by this time of the run-up to war. Cot viciously attacked by the conservative press, and was unpopular to the point of being toxic. He was a proponent of an independent air force and strategic air power; positions I do not always support in the modern day, but were definitely a necessary step to take in the WW2 era, and ones that France did not take. After the occupation, he was rebuffed by the Free French, and instead taught in America during the war. Despite his return to Parliament after Liberation, he did not claim a major part of the Moulin legacy, as others (such as Frenay) with a more pronounced political agenda muscled him out.

I am interested in Cot, who lacks an English biography. He made policy on the cutting edge of technology and industry in his time, and had the right instincts, even if he wasn’t always able to enact them. He armed the Spanish, and grew closer to Blum’s government than many in his own Radical party did (surely one of history’s most mediocre political parties). He is a bit of a mysterious figure who pops up when least expected, and his capture of my imagination spurred this entire course of study, even though it manifested in the lives of men more famous and politically important than he. That’s the way it goes sometimes.