Overview

From 1940 to 1942, French secret agents arrested more than two thousand spies working for the Germans and executed several dozen of them—all despite the Vichy government’s declared collaboration with the Third Reich. A previously untold chapter in the history of World War II, this duplicitous activity is the gripping subject of The Hunt for Nazi Spies, a tautly narrated chronicle of the Vichy regime’s attempts to maintain sovereignty while supporting its Nazi occupiers. Simon Kitson informs this remarkable story with findings from his investigation—the first by any historian—of thousands of Vichy documents seized in turn by the Nazis and the Soviets and returned to France only in the 1990s. His pioneering detective work uncovers a puzzling paradox: a French government that was hunting down left-wing activists and supporters of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces was also working to undermine the influence of German spies who were pursuing the same Gaullists and resisters. In light of this apparent contradiction, Kitson does not deny that Vichy France was committed to assisting the Nazi cause, but illuminates the complex agendas that characterized the collaboration and shows how it was possible to be both anti-German and anti-Gaullist. Combining nuanced conclusions with dramatic accounts of the lives of spies on both sides, The Hunt for Nazi Spies adds an important new dimension to our understanding of the French predicament under German occupation and the shadowy world of World War II espionage.

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9780226438931

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Reviews

""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.... All these elements make an English edition of the book a necessity."" - Rod Kedward, Times Literary Supplement, on the French edition ""Simon Kitson has drawn from intensive study of French archives the first full picture of Vichy's counterintelligence activities. 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. Paxton, author of Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order""

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.... All these elements make an English edition of the book a necessity. - Rod Kedward, Times Literary Supplement, on the French edition Simon Kitson has drawn from intensive study of French archives the first full picture of Vichy's counterintelligence activities. 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. Paxton, author of Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order

Author Information

Simon Kitson is a senior lecturer in French studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Experiencing Occupation in Western Europe, 1940-45. Catherine Tihanyi is a translator and research associate at Western Washington University.

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