Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance [Hardcover]

Patrick Marnham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2002

“Enthralling and intelligent, a masterly exploration of
the sinister labyrinth that was wartime France . . .
It is a remarkable book, utterly fascinating.”
—Allan Massie


Not long after 2:00 p.m. on June 21, 1943, eight men met in secret at a doctor’s house in Lyon. They represented the warring factions of the French Resistance and had been summoned by General de Gaulle’s new envoy, a man most of them knew simply as “Max.”
Minutes after the last man entered the house, the Gestapo broke in, led by Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon.” The fate awaiting Barbie’s prisoners was torture, deportation, and death. “Max” was tortured sadistically but never broke: he took his many secrets to his grave. In that moment, the legend of Jean Moulin was born.
Who betrayed Jean Moulin? And who was this enigmatic hero, a man as skilled in deception as he was in acts of heroism? After the war, his ashes were transferred to the Panthéon—France’s highest honor—where his memory is revered alongside that of Voltaire and Victor Hugo. But Moulin’s story is full of unanswered questions: the truth of his life is far more complicated than the legend conveniently manufactured by de Gaulle.
Resistance and Betrayal tells for the first time in English the epic story of France’s greatest war hero, a Schindler-like character of ambiguous motivation. A winner of the Marsh Prize for biography, praised by Graham Greene and Julian Barnes, Patrick Marnham is a brilliant storyteller with a keen appreciation for the complex maze of moral compromises navigated in times of war. Told with the drama and suspense of the best espionage fiction, Resistance and Betrayal brings to life the dark and duplicitous world of the French Resistance and offers a startling conclusion to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Second World War.

Praise for Patrick Marnham

Fantastic Invasion

“An exhilarating Swiftian excursion into human folly —
a brilliant book.” —Doris Lessing

“A writer afoot with a ruthless vision and armed with a literary style which burns away the surface of what it describes . . .
His main strength lies in his genius as a storyteller.”
—Jonathan Raban

The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret

“I doubt if there will be a better, or better-written, portrait of Simenon for a long time.” —Julian Barnes

“I can confidently say there will never be a better book on this subject. It makes absolutely compulsive reading.”
—A. N. Wilson

“Excellent, penetrating, fully researched and very well written . . . Adds to our understanding not only of Simenon’s art but of
the art of the novel itself.” —Muriel Spark

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"As far as he was concerned, the entire world was on a `need to know' basis," notes journalist and biographer Marnham (The Man Who Wasn't Maigret: A Portrait of Georges Simenon) of his notoriously secretive subject, celebrated French Resistance leader Jean Moulin. Here Marnham chronicles the life of the civil servant who escaped to London in 1941 and became General DeGaulle's emissary to the Resistance, charged with organizing a collection of scrappy political factions into a cohesive movement. This he did until he was arrested by Klaus Barbie in 1943; despite subsequent torture, Moulin revealed no information and was soon killed. The partisan, whose private life largely remains a mystery, is both a hero and lightning rod in France, where he's been pilloried for his Communist sympathies and where there is still much speculation about who betrayed him to the Gestapo. Marnham has put together a lively and nuanced account, elaborating the role that Moulin's staunchly republican, anticlerical upbringing played in his later political activities.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

In 1943, the Gestapo captured Jean Moulin, de Gaulle's chief envoy in France, at a Resistance meeting in Lyons. He was tortured, and he died in captivity. After the war, he became an icon of Resistance courage—in the words of André Malraux, "the face of France." But Marnham's intricate and suspenseful reconstruction suggests that the resemblance was not entirely flattering. Moulin—a shrewd civil servant, sometime Freemason, fellow-traveller, and arms smuggler—embodied several of the political crosscurrents of interwar France, and his betrayal was probably the result of complex power struggles within the Resistance itself. Perhaps tellingly, the coffin placed with great ceremony in the Panthéon in 1964 did not contain Moulin, whose body was never found: "Lacking a body they reburied a ghost, and a patriotic legend was born."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1St Edition edition (March 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037550608X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375506086
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Invention, May 21, 2002

By 

William J. Rigby - See all my reviews

This review is from: Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance (Hardcover)

Marnham admits that the character and personal life of Jean Moulin are at best vague and little of these aspects of the man are known. He then proceeds to build a highly speculative picture of Moulin, largely derived from secondary sources, and drags in the usual "was he a communist agent or was he not?" nonsense. Having just completed a reading of "France: The Dark Years 1940 to 1944" by Julian Jackson, by far the best comprehensive coverage of that miserable era in French history, I found Marnham's book, journalistic and amateurish. It adds nothing new and revives a few red herrings.
What lacks is a framework for the events related For example, much is made of Moulin's reception of the Germans as a Prefet, when he acted 'correctly' and cooperatively. No mention is made by the author of the terms of the armistice whereby officials were constrained to behave 'correctly'. Another important element in the situation of France in 1940 that goes unexplained or remarked is the reliance France had placed on having an agreement with the Soviet Union to protect, as in WW1, against a 100% German effort dircted against her. The mission to effect this, with the Brits as partners, was delayed and delayed due to British dragging of feet. Stalin found it was easier to gain the time he needed by making an agreement with the future enemy. However, the desire to have a mutual defense pact with the USSR renders the behavior of people like Pierre Cot explicable in terms other than 'communist agent' or betrayal. I find the lack of background and framework leads to inconclusiveness and even an element of misinterpretation of events and people. It detracts considerably from whatever value the book may have. In the first 20 pages, I found several errors of fact and in later pages contradictions about Moulin himself. If anyone is interested, I will be happy to point them out.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This author has an ulterior agenda, March 25, 2003

By 

J. Woo "theilian" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance (Hardcover)

I was enthusiastic when I found this book since English books on Resistance are few, and books about Moulin are very rare. But I was to be disappointed.

The author claims to seek the real man behind the legend of Jean Moulin, who became the symbol of French Resistance, and it is a very worthwhile objective indeed except that it is impossible. So after he admits that very little is known about Moulin, he proceeds to fill these unknowns with conjectures built on conjectures, and it soon becomes clear that the purpose of this book is not to find the human and real Moulin, but to discredit the left-wing of Resistance at his expense.

Jean Moulin is French JFK. Now universally admired, he is shadowed by circumstances of his betrayal and death, and numerous conspiracy theories have crept up. Only difference is: here in America, a crackpot theory that LBJ is behind the plot wouldn't get any ink in the mainstream. But in France, most ridiculous assertions are taken seriously because Moulin is used by both the right and left wing to discredit one another. So in recent years, it has been alleged that Moulin is a Soviet agent, an OSS(pre-CIA) agent, an anti-Gaullist, etc with the most tenuous "evidence". While Moulin has not yet been accused of being a Nazi mole, the author insinuates possibility that Moulin betrayed himself (along with 7 other Resistance leaders) in this book. So finally, the whole ground is covered.

His right-wing tendencies and contempt toward the Republic and all it stands for is quite obvious from the first pages and color the whole presentation. His most assertions are easily refutable by anyone familiar with Resistance history, but unfortunately this book is most likely to be the first book on Resistance to most of readers, and that's why I'm getting riled.

I'll give just a few of many examples.
Simply put, the author's assertion that the communist party is most likely betrayer of Moulin just doesn't hold water. I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory that royalists betrayed Moulin either, but at least that theory has some basis if only tenuous one. So in order to bolster his theory, the author strives to make Moulin a crypto-communist, which is solely based on Moulin's connection to Pierre Cot.

The author makes a big deal of Moulin's contact with Cot's associates after the Fall of France. Considering that Moulin spent most of his career in local governments and his only stint in national politics was with Cot in Air Ministry, it is not surprising that Moulin met Cot's associates for informations on resistance organizations nationwide. But to the author's mind, this is a proof that Moulin was interested only in communist organizations. The author admits that even if all his assertions turn out to be true (and they are not) that it doesn't mean that Moulin was a communist. However, later in the book, he flatout states that Moulin was more concerned with the future of Soviet Union than France.

There is no doubt that Mouin was a left-wing republican, sympathetic to the cause of Spanish republic. He even smuggled French aircrafts to Spanish republic to aid their cause (in what is close to our Iran-Contra scandal). However, we simply cannot know what Moulin's opinion was regarding communism and Soveit Union at the time. What is definitely known is that when Germany and Soviet Union signed Non-Aggression Pact, Moulin as a prefect, clamped down on the communists. When Vichy government decreed anti-Jewish laws, Moulin dragged his feet in enforcing it and interned no one, but when it came to communists, he showed less reluctance.

The author mentions these facts, as well as the fact that a Soviet informer reportedly incorrectly that Moulin was an OSS informer, but they are not taken into account when he insinuates that Moulin provided sensitive information to Soviet Union. Nor does he find it contraditory to claim that this Soviet informer was close associate of Moulin.

Secondly, the author is skeptical of veracity of biographical or personal accounts - including Moulin's - and rightly so, yet he loses objectivity when it comes to negative accounts made by Henri Frenay This is even more surprising since these accounts are from Frenay's book that was specifically written to discredit Moulin long after Moulin's death.

No same courtesy is shown to Moulin. The author admits that Moulin's accounts (about his time as a prefect) are all true in the areas that can be verified by facts. But when it come to areas that can't be verified, like what went on in Moulin's mind when he cut his throat, the author is skeptical and ready to assume the worst.

I could go on and on. And maybe I will when I finish the book, if only because this book is a most widely available book on Moulin, and that's a shame.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exposing the myths surrounding French resistance..., July 6, 2006

By 

Al Lindner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance (Hardcover)

This book along with Ted Morgan's AN UNCERTAIN HOUR, should be on your must reading list if France during the Nazi occupation is of any interest.

Exposing the many competing factions that made up the resistance movement and how even the common German enemy could not prevent them from working for their own interests first and France's second.

His chapter dealing with excesses of the resistance forces during the L'epuration was the most interesting to me, as the french populace had no time to rejoice for the removal of fascist terror, as they were immediately confronted with communist inspired terror led by the resistance. The many acts of terror comitted by the resistance have never received the condemnation that they deserve, as well many Vichy police officials were able to segue smoothly into the new french government apparatus and were able to avoid any examination of their wartime activities.

This book was disturbing to me, in that as in life as well as war, many people acclaimed as heroes were not heroic, and that sadly many of the real heroes will never get their just recognition for their own bravery and selflessness.

Marnham's style makes this read more like a detective novel and less like the non-fictional historical book that it is.