To understand the objectives of the German secret services in France, we need first to look briefly at the general framework of Nazi policy in the country, a policy that naturally shared some of Hitler’s conceptions. It does not matter what Governments have ruled or will rule in France, whether Bourbon or Jacobin, Napoleonic or Bourgeois-Democratic, Clerical Republican or Red Bolshevik, their foreign policy will always be directed towards acquiring possession of the Rhine frontier and consolidating France’s position on this river by disuniting and dismembering Germany.” More importantly she was trying to crush Germany: “Finally we must be quite clear on the following point: France is and will remain the implacable enemy of Germany. Moreover, he described France as contaminated by its colonial contacts with the peoples of Africa: “France is racially becoming more and more Negroid, so much so that now one can actually speak of the creation of an African State on European soil.” He was particularly critical of French foreign policy, writing of “France’s unbridled lust after hegemony.” It was not just that France, as he saw it, was trying to dominate Europe. As a racist he believed the French were inferior to what he saw as the “Aryan” master race of Nordic stock. The result of that important original research, The Hunt for Nazi Spies is a distinguished and skillfully written work.”-Julian Jackson, author of France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944Īn excerpt from The Hunt for Nazi Spies Fighting Espionage in Vichy France Simon KitsonĪdolf Hitler in his famous Mein Kampf, first published in 1925, was scathing in his comments about France. Kitson is the first person to have tested these accounts against the historical record deriving from the rich body of archives recently repatriated to France from the former Soviet Union. “Previous historians of Vichy espionage have had to rely largely on the (often-self serving) memoirs of French secret agents. “The pungent details give Kitson's book a particular force: the incidents of head-shearing, the intimations of torture, the leakages back to the German authorities of the places where the spies were held, the contempt of the Vichy secret services for British agents.”-Rod Kedward, Times Literary Supplement, on the French edition Paxton, author of Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order We can now see more clearly how Vichy France tried (ultimately unsuccessfully) to collaborate with Nazi Germany as a sovereign and neutral state, master of its own territory and administration.”-Robert O. “Simon Kitson has drawn from intensive study of French archives the first full picture of Vichy's counterintelligence activities.
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