The Hunt for Nazi Spies. Fighting Espionage in Vichy France

Abstract

It is often said that the best things come in the smallest packages, and this could certainly be applied to this latest book by Simon Kitson. In less than 200 pages he has managed to contextualize and survey a little-known, but nonetheless important aspect of the history of Vichy France in a highly accessible and lucid way. The opportunity to open this box of delights seems to have come from the relatively recent return of French security archives from the Soviet Union, where they had ended up after being seized by the Germans late in the Occupation. The fact that the Vichy government continued to run its counterespionage agencies after June 1940 may come as a surprise in its own right, but the fact that their activities were also directed against Germans as well as the British operating in the unoccupied zone is remarkable, not least because its agencies were precluded form engaging in any anti-German activities under the terms of the armistice. The fact that they continued to do so cannot be attributed purely to continuity from the pre-Occupation period, not least because, as Kitson so clearly points out, the context in which they operated had undoubtedly changed. Moreover, he also argues that this was not a case of agencies operating independently and without the knowledge of their political masters. In fact, it was the precise opposite, with the Vichy regime being fully in accord with the measures being taken and colluding with the arrest and punishment of those apprehended.