Pierre Brossolette

Pierre Brossolette (25 June 1903 – 22 March 1944) was a French journalist, politician and major hero of the French Resistance in World War II.

Brossolette ran an intelligence hub of Parisian resistance from a bookshop on rue de la Pompe, before serving as a liaison officer in London, where he also was a radio anchor for the BBC, and carried out three clandestine missions in France.

Arrested in Brittany as he was trying to reach the UK on a mission back from France alongside Émile Bollaert, Brossolette was taken into custody by the Sicherheitsdienst (the security service of the SS).

He committed suicide by jumping out of a window at their headquarters on 84 Avenue Foch in Paris as he feared he would reveal the lengths of French Resistance networks under torture; he died of his wounds at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital later that day.

In 1925 he graduated second to Georges Bidault after a small scandal on the dissertation themes for the final examination.

His passion for history had led him to choose this "agrégation" instead of the more usual and prestigious philosophy one.

During this time and while he was in his military service, he married Gilberte Bruel and had two children, Anne and Claude.

Instead of pursuing an academic career like most normaliens, he longed for action and decided to enter journalism and politics.

He joined the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), the main socialist party, in 1929, adhered to the LDH and LICA league and entered freemasonry.

He was a popular voice on the radio before the war and his chronicles on Hitler's rise led to being blacklisted early in the 1930s by the Nazis.

It did not take long before he was approached by his friend Agnès Humbert and introduced to Jean Cassou and the Groupe du musée de l'Homme, the very first resistance network.

He just had time to produce the last issue of the newsletter Résistance before narrowly escaping its dismantlement.

By then assuming a pivotal role in the ZO (Zone Occupée) Resistance, Brossolette coordinated contacts between groups such as Libération-Nord from Christian Pineau, the Organisation Civile et Militaire (OCM) and Comité d'Action Socialiste (CAS).

He finally obtained a liaison with London and General Charles de Gaulle when he was hired by conservative Gilbert Renault also known as Colonel Rémy as press and propaganda manager of Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND), by then the most important network in Northern France.

He worked as a journalist for Notre Temps, L'Europe Nouvelle, the party newspaper Le Populaire and the state-owned Radio PTT but was fired when he violently opposed the Munich Agreement on air in 1939.

In his newspaper columns, Brossolette had evolved from a resolute pacifist and europeanist, after Aristide Briand's ideals, to a denunciator of both fascism and communism.

When World War II broke out, he joined the army as a lieutenant of the 5th régiment d'infanterie; before the fall of France, he reached the rank of captain receiving two citations for the French War Cross for having retreated his battalion in an orderly way.

After the Armistice, when the Vichy regime forbade him to teach, Brossolette and his wife took over a bookstore specialised in Russian literature at the Rue de la Pompe near Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, where he had attended high school.

The bookstore became an intelligence hub of Parisian resistance where documents, such as Renault factory plans used for its bombing, were exchanged unnoticed, thanks to the extensive library available underground.

Already calling for deep rejuvenation of the political class before the war, he attributed French defeat in 1940 to the corrupt political system of the Third Republic.

As he politically structured the Parisian resistance, Brossolette succeeded in convincing the network leaders to create a temporary Resistance Party under De Gaulle's leadership after the war, focused on promoting ambitious social transformations while avoiding the predictable enmity and chaos of post-Liberation times.

In April 1942, Brossolette met De Gaulle in London as representative of the ZO Resistance and was hired to work on bringing political credibility to De Gaulle to back his recognition as the only Free French Forces leader by the Allies in his feud against Henri Giraud in Algiers.

At the same time, he was promoted to major (commandant) and awarded Compagnon de la Libération.

Brossolette created the civilian arm of the BCRAM intelligence service, which became the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA), in liaison with the RF section of the British side, Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Strong ties of camaraderie were forged between Brossolette (codenamed Brumaire, also known as Commandant Bourgat), BCRA's chief André Dewavrin (codenamed Arquebuse, also known as Colonel Passy) and SOE's Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas (codenamed Shelley, also known as The White Rabbit).

De Gaulle set up his Free French intelligence system to combine both military and political roles, including covert operations.

The policy was reversed in 1943 by Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (1900–1969), the Interior Minister, who insisted on civilian control of political intelligence.

The three friends were sent on a mission to France and united, under the CCZN (Comité de Coordination de Zone Nord), the various ZO Resistance groups which had been thoroughly divided by political views, including the communist-led Front National (mission Arquebuse-Brumaire); they were thus instrumental in the merging with the ZL (Zone Libre) Resistance similarly united by Jean Moulin under the MUR.

This led to the creation of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) by Moulin through the addition of the political parties and unions and ultimately to De Gaulle's unequivocal recognition as Free France's political representative to the Allies.

During this time, Pierre Brossolette resumed his radio chronicles on BBC with high-profile speeches to the "army of shadows", replacing Maurice Schumann as anchor (38 times).

In a speech at the Albert Hall on 18 June 1943, he famously praised the soutiers de la gloire (or "stokers of glory") in a reference to the fallen anonymous soldiers and resistants.

Brossolette also resumed his newspaper work through a series of articles on France's situation, including one in La Marseillaise considered by many to be the doctrinal founding of the Gaullisme de guerre movement.

In addition to journalism, Pierre Brossolette was also a politician.

He was a protégé of Léon Blum and was considered an up-and-coming star of the SFIO party, running elections on his Troyes (Champagne) base.

He assumed cabinet functions during the Popular Front government and as a political pundit on official Radio PTT he was considered the de facto foreign policy spokesman of the socialist government.

This political and social plan, including nationalisations and price controls, inspired the March 1944 Conseil national de la Résistance programme and was implemented after war.

On 27 May 2015, his ashes were transferred to the Panthéon with national honours at the request of President François Hollande, alongside politician Jean Zay and fellow Resistance members Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz.

Pierre Brossolette was born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris to a family deeply involved in the fights for laic schools in early 20th century France.

His father was Léon Brossolette, General Inspector for Primary Education; his mother Jeanne Vial was the daughter of Francisque Vial, Director of Secondary Education, responsible for making secondary education free in France.

Brossolette ranked first at the entrance examination to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure; throughout his education held the title of "cacique" which was internally attributed to the most brilliant student, ahead of intellectuals such as philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch and two years before Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron.