Joseph-Napoléon-Henri Bourassa was a French Canadian political leader and publisher. In 1899, Bourassa was outspoken against the British government's request for Canada to send a militia to fight for Britain in the Second Boer War. Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier's compromise was to send a volunteer force, but the seeds were sown for future conscription protests during the World Wars of the next half-century. Bourassa unsuccessfully challenged the proposal to build warships to help protect the empire. He led the opposition to conscription during World War I and argued that Canada's interests were not at stake. He opposed Catholic bishops who defended military support of Britain and its allies. Bourassa was an ideological father of French-Canadian nationalism. Bourassa was also a defining force in forging French Canada's attitude to the Canadian Confederation of 1867.
Lacombe, Lucien is a 1974 French war drama film by Louis Malle about a French teenage boy during the German occupation of France in World War II.
Montrouge is a commune in the southern Parisian suburbs, located 4.4 km (2.7 mi) from the centre of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe. After a long period of decline, the population has increased again in recent years.
Alexandre Villaplane was a French football player who played as a midfielder. He appeared in the France national team in the 1928 Summer Olympics and captained the national team at the 1930 FIFA World Cup. Villaplane was also a Nazi collaborator who was arrested and executed for his actions during World War II.
Jacques Desoubrie was a double agent who worked for the Gestapo during the German occupation of France and Belgium during World War II. He infiltrated resistance groups, such as the Comet Line, and was responsible for the arrest of several leaders and more than 100 members of organizations. The lines helped Allied airmen who had been shot down or crash-landed to evade German capture and escape occupied Europe. After the war he was tried, convicted, and executed in France.
Karl Bömelburg was an SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and head of the Gestapo in France during the Second World War. He notably had authority over section IV J, charged with the deportation of the Jews, for which Alois Brunner was responsible. His aliases included Charles Bois, Mollemburg, and Bennelburger.
Henri Lafont was an underworld figure who headed the Carlingue, French auxiliaries for the German security services, during the German occupation of France in World War II.
Pierre Loutrel, better known by his nickname of "Pierrot le fou" was France's first "public enemy number one" and one of the leaders of the Gang des tractions.
The Gang des Tractions Avant was a criminal gang in the Pigalle quarter of Paris, made up of surviving members of the Carlingue militia, lapsed police officers and criminals from the French Resistance. Most of them had moved from collaboration with the German occupiers to the Resistance, and then moved into organised crime—though even if their milieu changed, their behaviour and methods remained the same. The gang was named after its preferred vehicle, the Citroën 11CV "Traction".
Joseph Joanovici was a French scrap metal merchant who supplied Nazi Germany and funded the French Resistance with the proceeds during the German occupation of France in World War II.
Pierre Bonny was a French police officer. As an inspector, he was the investigating officer in the 1923 Seznec case, and was accused of falsifying the evidence. He was once praised as one of the most talented police officers in the country, and helped to solve the notorious Stavisky financial scandal in 1934. In 1935 he was jailed for three years on corruption charges.
During the Second World War, the Special Brigades were a French police force in Vichy France specializing in tracking down "internal enemies", dissidents, escaped prisoners, Jews and those evading the obligatory labour service. It was dependent on the Direction centrale des Renseignements généraux (RG) and worked in direct collaboration with the German civil, secret and military police, the Geheime Feldpolizei. It was based in room 35 on the first floor of the Paris Prefecture of Police. The Special Brigades was known to commit torture.
John Multon, alias Lunel, was a defector from the French Resistance who became an agent of the SIPO-SD (Gestapo) of Marseille.
Illa Meery was a Russian-born French adventuress, singer, film actress and possibly Soviet spy who became involved in the French black market under German occupation.
The city of Paris started mobilizing for war in September 1939, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland, but the war seemed far away until May 10th 1940, when the Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army. The French government departed Paris on June 10th, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14th. During the occupation, the French government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by the German military and by French officials approved by the Germans. For Parisians, the occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and the prices higher. A million Parisians left the city for the provinces, where there was more food and fewer Germans. The French press and radio contained only German propaganda.
The One-Two-Two was one of the most luxurious and illustrious brothels of Paris in the 1930s and 1940s. The name was taken from the address, 122 Rue de Provence, 8th arrondissement of Paris. The numbers were translated into English to ensure that foreign tourists would be able to find the brothel and as a password for French people.
Louis Paul André Chack,, was a French Navy officer, author and Nazi collaborator. He served in the Navy during the First World War and spent the interwar period writing books on naval history and agitating at the far right. During the Second World War, he eagerly collaborated with the Nazis and presided a so-called "Comité d'action antibolchévique". At the Liberation, he was arrested, tried for treason and executed by firing squad.
Mohamed El-Maadi was an Algerian fascist, ardent anti-semite, and Germanophile.
The countesses of the Gestapo were elite adventuresses of the Paris demimonde protected by the French Gestapo and large-scale black marketeers during the German occupation of France. The Gestapo countesses led extravagant lives despite the misery prevalent in Vichy France at the time. They were French or foreign former actresses or runway models, sometimes in fact truly aristocratic, who engaged in a variety of lucrative practices such as the confiscation of Jewish assets, espionage or black market operations.
The Orion Network was a French Resistance network during World War II that originated from the la chaine Franco-Belge that was created by Henri d'Astier de La Vigerie and Georges Piron de la Varenne in the autumn of 1940. After being compromised in northern France, it was integrated with the Saint-Jacques network and most operations were moved to the south. Its leaders were at the vanguard of the Allied invasion of Provence.
