The Carte Affair: A True story of a Con Man Fighting the Germans, the Gaullists, the Communists, and the Collaborationists
Publisher
:
Perrin
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782262026462
Number of pages
:
398
Description
The Carte network, an early clandestine organization in France during World War II, was built of the dreams of artists, musicians, and students and backed by the British government. This exciting account, based on personal testimonies and archives, is the first book to tell the dramatic story of the organization’s operations against the Germans.
Before the war, André Girard (1901–1968) was a highly respected and talented painter, apprenticed to such giants as Rouault and Moreau. By the time he was a young man, he was an accepted member of “le tout Paris,” a socialite if not a social climber. But when the war started, Girard, whose father had been killed by the Germans in World War I, responded at once. He became the leader of a small group of like-minded people, using the code name Carte for his clandestine activities.
Carte was able, at the start of the war, to convince someone at a high level in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) that he ran an army of hundreds of thousands of armed men ready for action and only needing weapons. Relations with Charles de Gaulle’s Free French were problematic for the British, and wanting another French contact, they accepted Carte’s totally untrue claims and readily agreed to provide him with supplies. Carte also led them to believe that he was in touch with the Vichy government’s General Maxime Weygand and told them the general was ready to talk with the SOE—talks that never took place. In 1943, after an uncoded list of potential members of the network was stolen by the Germans from one of Carte’s men, the SOE called Carte to come to England to meet with them. They quickly realized that Carte was a well-meaning fraud. Girard was sent to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1968, but the Carte Network that he had dreamed of—in a greatly reduce size—lived on under different leadership.
André Girard was one of history’s great con men. This is his fascinating biography, which is the core of a previously unknown chapter in the history of French resistance and British intelligence.
Author
Thomas Rabino : Thomas Rabino was a contributor to the Dictionnaire historique de la Résistance. This is his first book.
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