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over all anti-Axis French forces, was deliberating on the future of French clandestine services. He alerted the British Minister of State in Algiers, Harold Macmillan, to the importance of SIS’s relationship with the Fighting French. ‘Since 1940,’ signalled Menzies, ‘have maintained close collaboration with de Gaulle’s special Bureau here known as B.C.R.A. [Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action].’ ‘Organization’, he continued, ‘built up in France with much difficulty in collaboration my service and B.C.R.A. has now reached stage where most important results being obtained.’ He quoted a letter he had just received from the Director of Military Intelligence ‘saying that the intelligence supplied by this joint French-British service has been of greatest value to General Staff particularly during last month’, adding that the War Office ‘would view with great misgiving any action which might interfere with our relations with B.C.R.A. and perhaps decrease the flow of military information’.

Menzies, evidently worried that SIS’s liaison with the Gaullists in London (and its monopoly of the information produced by the link) might be jeopardised by some new arrangement based in North Africa, naturally emphasised the productivity of joint espionage operations in France, while not unduly troubling Macmillan with any of the accompanying problems. There was a universal expansion of clandestine activity in France during 1943, but that of SOE and resistance organisations, who concentrated on special operations more than intelligence, often cut across SIS’s information-gathering networks. There were also continuing and overlapping tensions between different groups, including Gaullists, anti-Gaullists, conservatives, Communists, former Vichyists and those with ostensibly no politics at all. Internal French political competition, moreover, was sharpened as victory over the Axis became more likely and also as the Gaullists began to get the upper hand in the battle for acceptance as the legitimate French government-in-waiting.

One of the most important Free French networks in the early part of the war, the Confrérie de Notre-Dame, remained important in north-west and northern France, but by the summer of 1943 London reckoned that the network was in some trouble. Fearing that he knew too much and was a security risk in France, Dewavrin had brought the inspirational leader Gilbert Renault out, but in his absence rivalries among the hierarchy undermined the organisation. In March 1943, moreover, ‘Espadon’, a former port employee in Bordeaux, who had been providing shipping intelligence and helping to courier information about coast defences in Brittany, was arrested after helping two British fighter pilots to escape.11

There was better news of the ‘Davis’ group, based around Nice, which had originally been associated with the Confrérie, but had become an independent outfit by mid-1943 when a journalist with the cover name ‘Chavagnac’ took charge. A handful of his original telegrams still remain on file, giving a flavour of the material coming from the network, and also illustrating the difficulty of disentangling intelligence from special operations. In late July 1943 Chavagnac offered to blow up railway locomotives which the Italians were trying to remove from Nice. On 28 July he noted the arrival in Nice of Field Marshal von Rundstedt, commander of the German Army Group West, and two days later gave precise details of his journey back to Paris by special train, information which could have been used to inform an attack on the general. But the timings were very tight. Chavagnac’s 30 July telegram noting that Rundstedt’s train ‘will leave Sete on the first of August at 1525 hrs. and will arrive in Paris (Gare de Lyon) on the second of August at 0925 hrs.’ took over a day to be processed and was passed to the Air Ministry only at 7.45 p.m. on 1 August. On 2 August Chavagnac reported that three German divisions were moving out of the Montpellier-Port Vendres region, and were thought to be going towards Italy. On 14 August he signalled that