Daniel Cordier writes about his life and Jean Moulin

For most people who knew Daniel Cordier in post-war Paris – be they Jean-Paul Sartre, Picasso, or simply the people who walked past his art gallery – the debonair art dealer was a man with his fingers on the pulse of the market for modern art, a remarkable collector who was well known on both sides of the Atlantic. But Cordier’s sophisticated exterior concealed a shadowy past in the French Resistance.

Although he never mentioned it, Cordier had worked side by side with one of the most tragic and important figures in the Resistance – Jean Moulin. Moulin united the warring factions of the Resistance into a single bloc before being tortured by the SS murderer Klaus Barbie and dying of his wounds in June 1943. Although Moulin has come to represent the Resistance, a series of books have variously claimed that he was a Stalinist agent, a closet homosexual and, most recently, a US agent.

In 1977, Cordier finally broke cover when he decided to defend Moulin’s memory against what he saw as unfair allegations. Cordier’s monumental biography of Moulin eventually extended to over 4,000 pages. But although Cordier had been closer to Moulin than anyone else, he kept his own memories far from his work. Instead he focused on archival evidence to demonstrate that Moulin was simply what he claimed to be – a ferocious defender of the Resistance and a loyal Gaullist.

Now Cordier – a sprightly 88 year old with twinkling eyes, an amazing memory and an unfeigned modesty about his role in the Resistance – has finally told his side of Moulin’s story. His memoirs, “Alias Caracalla”, have just been published in Paris. Written with the power of a psychological thriller, Cordier’s book is probably the last to appear from a member of the Resistance. He not only casts a fascinating light on the day-to-day activity of the most important figure in the Resistance, he also encapsulates the transformation of the Resistance from its patriotic and right-wing beginnings to a mass, socialist-influenced movement.

As Cordier cheerfully admits, he was not a particularly attractive character at the beginning of the war. A far-right activist who yearned for the return of the French monarchy, Cordier’s casual, ingrained anti-Semitism was shared by all his family and friends. In June 1940, France fell under the Nazi onslaught and the ageing Marshal Pétain decreed a policy of “collaboration” with the German occupiers. Cordier, aged only 19, was outraged and made his way to London, were he was one of the first to rally to General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French.

All Cordier wanted to do was “to kill Huns”, and to his joy he was selected to carry out dangerous missions in Occupied France. After 18 months training in the secret arts of spying – coded radio transmissions, sabotage and hand-to-hand combat – the young Cordier was parachuted into Vichy France where he was to act as a radio operator for the Resistance.

But no sooner had he arrived in Lyons – the capital of the Resistance – than his mission was abruptly changed, without the agreement of London. For the next 15 months Cordier acted as Jean Moulin’s secretary, organising clandestine meetings, coding and decoding hundreds of his messages and keeping track of the millions of francs that Moulin doled out to the Resistance movements.

To his intense frustration, Cordier (like Moulin) never harmed a hair on the head of a single German soldier. The parts of the Resistance he was involved in were more like a mixture of an office job and student politics than a guerrilla army, but with the continual threat of arrest, torture and deportation to add spice to the affair.

The rules that governed Cordier’s life in Occupied France were learned in Britain. After intensive training in spy techniques at various Special Operations Executive (SOE) schools, Cordier’s tradecraft was tested in the suburbs of Manchester. He was sent to stay with an unwitting English family, who thought he was a Free French soldier on leave. He had to set up a clandestine radio station in his bedroom and broadcast to his SOE handlers. They sent him coded instructions – he had to go and pick up a secret message that was hidden behind a painting in the Manchester City Art Gallery. And all the time, he was being secretly watched by his teachers, ready to pounce on the slightest mistake, just as the Nazis would.

Once in France, Cordier managed to avoid arrest – just. On one occasion in Lyons he was walking up the stairs to a meeting in a flat when he saw the alarmed eyes of the person he was to meet staring out at him from a window. Realising that he was walking into a trap, he tip-toed back down the stairs to safety.

One of Cordier’s fellow radio-operators, Maurice de Cheveigné, escaped arrest in an even more dramatic fashion. De Cheveigné was broadcasting to London when he heard a noise on the staircase; quickly hiding the aerial and the suitcase-size radio, he lay on the bed. Just as two German officers burst in, said de Cheveigné in unusually vulgar language, “I had a crazy idea – I started to have a wank! If you could have seen the Huns! They didn’t know where to look, they were like girls they were so embarrassed. What a joke, eh?”

Within a year of working in Occupied France, all Cordier’s right-wing political certainties began to crumble, battered by the revolutionary implications of the Resistance and its armed movements. His anti-Semitism was shattered by his first encounter with two Jews wearing the yellow Star of David, as required by the Nazis.

Even today, nearly 70 years later, Cordier can barely speak about this chance meeting, on the Champs Elysées – “One of the most important events of my life”, as he calls it. His voice cracks with emotion when he describes the horror he felt as he realised the implications of a vile policy that he had learned at the family dinner table.

Cordier wanted to show his solidarity with these victims of Nazi barbarity; however, his secret mission made it impossible to do so. Twice previously, back in Vichy France, Cordier had broken the rules – first he had sheltered a British airman, then he had offered a roof to a young Jew fleeing the Nazis. On neither occasion did he speak a word to his guest. But in Occupied Paris even the slightest gesture could attract the attention of the Gestapo. Cordier carried on his way, his heart breaking.

The most important part of what Cordier can tell us is about the life and work of Jean Moulin. Amazingly, Cordier had no idea who the man he called “the Boss” really was. He knew Moulin only by his code names – “Max” or “Rex”. And he knew nothing of Moulin’s life.

He did not know that Moulin had been a left-wing high-ranking civil servant, or that he had tried to commit suicide in June 1940, rather than sign a false Nazi declaration that French African troops had committed war crimes.

He did not know of Moulin’s escape from Vichy France via Portugal, his arrival in London and how a single meeting with de Gaulle convinced him to work with the Free French rather than British Intelligence.

He did not know of Moulin’s double life as an art dealer on the Côte d’Azur, his talent as an amateur artist, or of his affairs with a number of women.

To Cordier, Moulin was simply “the Boss”.

Over the months Cordier came to be utterly devoted to the Resistance leader, who turned into a father-figure to the young man – ““The man who helped me discover life”, as Cordier says. Moulin introduced Cordier to modern art, revealing a world that Cordier could only barely understand, but in which Moulin seemed surprisingly at ease.

It was only after the war was over that Cordier discovered the true name of “Rex”. The result was an anti-climax –“Jean Moulin” meant nothing to Cordier, and despite the young man’s war-time musings, “Rex” turned out to have been neither a famous painter, nor a general, nor a politician. Just as Cordier’s biography has demonstrated, Moulin undoubtedly had secrets, but they were not to do with his politics.

Cordier saw at close range Moulin’s endless conflicts with the Resistance leaders, who were frustrated by the lack of money and arms from London and focused their fury on de Gaulle’s chief representative in France – Moulin. They were especially infuriated by the scarcity of supplies being given to the bands of young men – the maquis – who had taken to the hills rather than face labour conscription to Nazi Germany.

The Allies claimed that all their planes were involved in massive bombing raids on Germany. In reality neither Churchill nor Roosevelt nor de Gaulle wanted the Resistance to take armed action against the Nazis before D-Day. And they wanted to be certain that any offensive that was launch was entirely under their control. All three men agreed that the Resistance was not to have any independent role in the Liberation of France.

The result was that the maquis went hungry and unarmed, and at the end of June 1944, 326 maquisards and 130 civilians in the mountainous Vercors region near Grenoble were massacred by over 10,000 crack Nazi troops, casualties of the Allies’ refusal to arm the maquis with heavy weapons.

Although the maquis was partly Moulin’s idea, he never lived to see D-Day. A little less than a year before the Allied invasion he was at a Resistance summit meeting in Caluire, a tranquil suburb of Lyons. The meeting was raided by Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo, following the betrayal of René Hardy, who had agreed to work for the Nazis. Moulin and a host of other Resistance leaders were taken off to their doom.

Barbie knew that “Max”, the head of the Resistance, was in his clutches, but he did not know which of the men it was. Eventually, one of the captives cracked and told Barbie. Moulin was horribly tortured, but did not talk. He eventually died en route to the hell of Nazi Germany.

Today, Cordier has his own ideas about which of the men gave away Max, but he refuses to say who he thinks it was. As he says, “What would I have done? I don’t know. One résistant can’t accuse another of being afraid, of failing to withstand torture. We were all afraid. When you are tortured, then you find out who you are.”

When Cordier heard of Moulin’s capture – he was at a secret meeting in a Paris metro station – his world fell apart. As he recently put it, “Suddenly this man disappeared, without me being able to say ‘Thankyou’”.

Cordier dreamt of launching a commando attack to rescue “the Boss” but this vain hope soon evaporated. At the time he bitterly thought that the Resistance leaders would not help because they were secretly pleased at the disappearance of the man de Gaulle had sent to take control. The reality was different – they had no idea where Moulin was being held, and although rescue raids of minor figures did occur, there was no instance of a Resistance leader being saved from the clutches of the Nazis.

With Moulin dead, Cordier simply had to get on with his job – helping Moulin’s successor to hold the Resistance together and keep it supplied with as much money and weapons as the Allies were willing to give. Eventually, the Gestapo got too close for comfort and Cordier had to flee to safety across the Pyrenees. When D-Day eventually came, he was back in London, in charge of parachute operations for French agents.

Moulin shaped the whole of Cordier’s life. Not only did those 15 months together provide Cordier with a model of rigour, professionalism and a left-wing outlook on the world, they also planted seeds for his future. After the end of the war, Cordier received 2 years’ back pay for the time he had spent in Occupied France. Unconsciously following Moulin’s lead, Cordier spent his money on a painting, launching a collecting career that eventually allowed him to donate over 500 works to French art galleries.

Nearly 70 years after the dramatic events, Cordier’s memory still burns brightly. Like many survivors of the war, he finds it difficult to make sense of what happened to his life: “It is difficult to live, afterwards… I have been very lucky, I had chances that I did not deserve, that other people deserved more...”

By devoting the last 30 years of his life to Moulin’s memory, Cordier has amply repaid the chances given to him by history. Now, by giving his own side of the story, he has stepped into the spotlight and shown how a bigoted young man, confident in his terrible prejudices, was transformed by the horror of war and the tensions of the Resistance into a cultivated, sophisticated human being with a generous spirit and an internationalist outlook, a man who embodies the best of the Resistance.