One of the main historians of the Communist Party, Philippe Robrieux, confirms that Moscow had asked Jacques Duclos, the real leader of the party during Thorez' absence, not to engage the party at the start of the uprising. He also notes that at the beginning of August 1944, Duclos left an unanswered message for Charles Tillon, urging him to encourage the uprising.
Charles Tillon
20
Finally, I must say that as the great planned events approached [the Liberation], we
had difficulty in the southern zone due to the resistance of the main Communist Party leaders, Mauvais and Guyot, in carrying out the guidelines laid out by the FTP leaders for the national uprising. The commander of the CMZ, the feeble Jacquot, declared his agreement with both parties. I knew that Guyot was parachuted into France in late 1943, but how could I have imaged the serious mission that he was charged with, such as carrying a message for Duclos, which justified the importance of the trip. Stalin’s advice was to minimise the military role of the party in the national uprising, leaving the Allies to take on the majority of the struggle to free the country. A concern that I would only be able to explain much later on.
We know that despite Boulanger’s links with the Gestapo and with Klaus Barbie, he continued to work as a Comintern agent. However, in May 1944, three weeks before the Normandy Invasion, he slavishly obeyed orders from Moscow by denouncing his comrades and eliminating the entire staff of the FTP in the southern zone. While the fact that he did not hesitate to betray his own communist comrades can be seen as abominable, it has to be understood that it was deemed necessary in order to preserve his sinister secret.
Chapter 4
The Red Fox
Truth or fiction... when it comes to espionage; nothing is certain. What may seem clear at first instead belies another more tortuous truth underneath. In the secret world of intelligence there exist covert operations, underhand dealings, in short, a world beyond the mirror. Yet is it not some fantastical wonderland that one discovers there.
However, before discussing the career of the mysterious Dr Fuchs, we need some historical background. A few years ago, a master spy for Mossad,Yehuda Gil, was arrested in Israel. He was considered to be one of the best connoisseurs of Arab nations, particularly Syria, where for many years he had been responsible for a mole within President Hafez el-Assad's government. He also instructed young recruits in the Israeli intelligence services, teaching them the art of lying convincingly. After all, in the world of espionage, deceiving your enemy is just as important as uncovering his secrets.
Yehuda Gil was an expert. Indeed, his mole (a Syrian general), never actually existed: Gil invented all the top secret information that this superior officer was supposed to have told him. The pretence lasted for years, without Mossad ever suspecting that it was a hoax.
This is all the more surprising as it was this deception that nearly caused a war between Israel and Syria. In 1996, Yehuda Gil revealed that Damascus was massing troops at the border and that a surprise attack on Golan was imminent. The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) would have to be mobilised immediately in response. Fortunately, the defence minister kept his cool, despite the opinions of some senior Mossad members. This was the beginning of the end for Yehuda Gil and it would soon be discovered that the information he had provided was completely false. Had he been drugged? Had his mole lied? After repeated questioning, he finally confessed: he had made the whole thing up and his ‘agent' had never existed.
This case clearly shows the limits of the confidences that can be placed on a ‘contact'. In this instance, he was more of a puppeteer; manipulating his creatures and inventing new ones at any moment, in case one should happen to fail. For security reasons, it is much easier if there is only one point of contact for the spy, or in this case, the puppet...
End of the history lesson. The man who practically handed the atomic bomb to Stalin was called Klaus Fuchs. Yet this spy was also a distinguished scientist and idealist, who somehow got lost in the crooked world of espionage.
In 1940 the Soviets learned that the Allies had decided to study the production of high-powered weapon-based uranium 235.The man who gave them this information was called John Cairncross: the legendry spy and the fifth man in the famous Cambridge Five, including Philby, Burgess, MacLean and Blunt,21 although Cairncross had been exposed in recent years.
Stalin immediately understood the importance of the information and knew that the
Soviet Union could not stay out of such a discovery. It was not just about the Second World War, into which the USSR would soon be drawn, but also about the inevitable competition that would exist between the East and West after the fall of the Third Reich. However, Soviet scientists were behind in nuclear research. This meant that in order to catch up quickly and overcome these shortcomings, they had to use any means possible to unlock the secrets of the Allied atom.
It has been estimated that over 200 agents operated outside of the USSR in this gigantic espionage operation (including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, of whom we now know that Julius at least was guilty). Many others have slipped through the cracks and have never been exposed by western intelligence services.
There are two possible reasons for this: the first is that the Allies, and the Americans in particular, have been reluctant to recognise how their ranks had been infiltrated, especially when it came to international scholars. The second, much bigger reason, is that the secret still exist today.
To look inside this particular dossier, we must first go back in time.
Stalin had been warned early on by both his intelligence services and by Cairncross that the British and Americans were working on a new atomic weapon: a terrifying super bomb.
The Kremlin
