1. Jean Moulin served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance from 27 May 1943 until his death less than two months later.
40 Facts About Jean Moulin
1. 2.
Jean Moulin was tortured by German officer Klaus Barbie while in Gestapo custody.
3.
Jean Moulin was born at 6 Rue d'Alsace in Beziers, Herault, son of Antoine-Emile Moulin and Blanche Elisabeth Pegue.
4.
Jean Moulin was the grandson of an insurgent opposing the coup d'etat of 2 December 1851.
5.
Jean Moulin's father was a lay teacher at the Universite Populaire and a Freemason at the lodge Action Sociale.
6.
Jean Moulin spent an uneventful childhood in the company of his brother, Joseph, and his sister, Laure.
7.
Jean Moulin was mobilised on 17 April 1918 as part of the age class of 1919, the last class to be mobilised in France.
8.
Jean Moulin was assigned to the 2nd Engineer Regiment of Montpellier.
9.
Jean Moulin saw its aftermath on the battle fields and the devastation of villages.
10.
Jean Moulin helped to bury the war dead in the region around Metz.
11.
Jean Moulin wrote home expressing his shock at seeing the starved state of British prisoners of war who had just been freed.
12.
Jean Moulin worked as a carpenter, a digger and later a telephonist for the 7th and 9th Engineer Regiments.
13.
Jean Moulin was de-mobilised in November and, on 4 November 1919, resumed his post as attache at the prefecture of Herault, in Montpellier.
14.
Jean Moulin then entered the prefectural administration as chief of staff to the deputy of Savoie in 1922 and then sous-prefet of Albertville from 1925 to 1930.
15.
Cerruti quickly became bored and Jean Moulin responded by offering her further singing lessons in Paris, where she disappeared for two days.
16.
Jean Moulin attempted to hide this rejection by excusing his wife's disappearances and not informing his family until after his divorce.
17.
Jean Moulin illustrated books by the Breton poet Tristan Corbiere, including an etching for La Pastorale de Conlie, Corbiere's poem about Camp Conlie where many Boon soldiers died in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War.
18.
Jean Moulin made friends with the Breton poets Saint-Pol-Roux in Camaret and Max Jacob in Quimper.
19.
In 1933, Jean Moulin was appointed sous-prefet of Thonon-les-Bains, parallel to his function of head of Cot's cabinet in the Air Ministry under President Albert Lebrun.
20.
On 19 January 1934, Jean Moulin was appointed sous-prefet of Montargis, but he did not assume the office and chose to remain under Cot.
21.
In that capacity, Jean Moulin was involved in Cot's efforts to assist the Second Spanish Republic by sending it planes and pilots.
22.
Jean Moulin became France's youngest prefet in the Aveyron departement, based in the commune of Rodez, in January 1937.
23.
In January 1939, Jean Moulin was appointed prefect of the Eure-et-Loir department, based in Chartres.
24.
Jean Moulin was arrested by the Germans on 17 June 1940 because he refused to sign a false declaration that three Senegalese tirailleurs had committed atrocities, killing civilians in La Taye.
25.
Jean Moulin then began writing his diary, First Battle, in which he relates his resistance against the Nazis in Chartres, which was later published at the Liberation and prefaced by de Gaulle.
26.
Jean Moulin travelled to London in September 1941 after passing through Spain and Portugal.
27.
Jean Moulin summarised the state of the French Resistance to de Gaulle.
28.
Jean Moulin gave Moulin the assignment of co-ordinating and unifying the various Resistance groups, a difficult mission that would take time and effort to accomplish.
29.
On 1 January 1942, Jean Moulin parachuted into the Alpilles and met with the leaders of the resistance groups, under the codenames Rex and Max:.
30.
Jean Moulin succeeded to the extent that the first three of these resistance leaders and their groups came together to form the United Resistance Movement in January 1943.
31.
The next month, Jean Moulin returned to London, accompanied by Charles Delestraint, who led the new Armee secrete, which grouped together the MUR's military wings.
32.
Jean Moulin succeeded in this task by obtaining unanimous adoption of a unified 'Program' and recognition of Charles de Gaulle as their leader by disparate elements of the French resistance, including by various resistance units as well as by outlawed labour unions and political parties.
33.
On 21 June 1943, Jean Moulin was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst while holding a meeting with fellow Resistance leaders in the home of Dr Frederic Dugoujon in Caluire-et-Cuire, a suburb of Lyon, as were Dugoujon, Henri Aubry, Raymond Aubrac, Bruno Larat, Andre Lassagne, Colonel Albert Lacaze and Colonel Emile Schwarzfeld.
34.
Jean Moulin was beaten until his face was unrecognizable and he fell into a coma.
35.
The question of who betrayed Jean Moulin has attracted a great deal of research, speculation, judicial scrutiny and media coverage.
36.
Jean Moulin was injured during the escape, and he managed to escape from his hospital, scaling a high wall despite having his arm in a cast.
37.
The British intelligence officer Peter Wright, in his 1987 book Spy Catcher, wrote that Pierre Cot was an "active Russian agent" and called his protege Jean Moulin a "dedicated Communist".
38.
The essence of all theories about Jean Moulin, the alleged Soviet agent, was that because de Gaulle had agreed to co-operate with the Communists during the war, all of which was Jean Moulin's work, he had set France on the wrong course and led to him granting Algeria independence in 1962, instead of keeping Algeria in France.
39.
Jean Moulin alleges that communists at times betrayed non-communists to the Gestapo and that Aubrac was linked to harsh actions during the purge of collaborators after the war.
40.
In 1998, the French historian Jacques Baynac, in his book Les Secrets de l'affaire Jean Moulin, claimed that Moulin was planning to break with de Gaulle to recognise General Giraud, which led the Gaullists to tip off Barbie before that could happen.