Pierre Gaxotte, as well as some other members of his editorial staff, had begun his political career in the Royalist Action Française movement, but had apparently decided to strike out for himself and cut his own political tracks. Under Gaxotte’s direction, Je Suis Partout assumed a definitely pro-German attitude, arguing that France and Germany should come to an understanding between themselves as the two great continental powers, leaving England out in the cold. Paul Ferdonnet, who won fame later as the “traitor of Stuttgart” delivering propaganda broadcasts in French from the Stuttgart radio station during the war (he is now supervisor of the French radio in Paris), was also on the editorial staff until he went to Berlin to establish his permanent residence and his own press syndicate there. From that time on, he was the secret liaison agent between the German authorities and Gaxotte’s paper.
The German sympathies of Je Suis Partout were apparent enough, but no one bothered much about it, for circulation was low and the paper’s influence was considered to be negligible. This must have been the viewpoint of the Daladier government also, for except for friendly arguments with the censors, the paper was able to continue publishing unhampered even after the war broke out.
When Daladier resigned and Paul Reynaud came in, he appointed Georges Mandel Minister of the Interior, and thus head of the French police organization. Although Mandel, zealous, patriotic, and uncompromising, like his master Clemenceau whose secretary he had been during the last war, undertook to hunt down defeatists of all descriptions, Je Suis Partout continued to appear as usual. Mandel also apparently considered it too insignificant to be dangerous.
But one day a well-known French journalist brought to Mandel the proof that the principal members of the editorial staff of Je Suis Partout were simultaneously agents of the Deuxième Bureau. Mandel was astounded. He who knew all the undercurrents of French political life, who for years had kept secret files about all public figures, had not dreamed that any connection could have existed between this outspokenly pro-German magazine and one of the most influential departments of the French Army. He had put the editors of Je Suis Partout down as innocuous fools. He now realized that though the circulation of the paper was small, the private influence of its editors might have been both great and disastrous.
He did not hesitate an instant. He ordered immediately the arrest of five members of the staff. Among them was an obscure journalist, not generally known as a member of the staff, named Pierre Mouton, who some years before had founded a small press syndicate called Prima Presse in partnership with Ferdonnet. Mandel quickly obtained proof that the two men were still cooperating. Mouton, while maintaining permanent contact with Je Suis Partout, was also flooding the French daily press with cleverly prepared pro-German articles which were supplied to the newspapers free of charge.
With the known leaders of the Je Suis Partout group in jail, Mandel apparently thought that there was no immediate urgency for delving further into this particular case when so many other vital matters pressed for attention. The same attitude had been taken a few years before in regard to the Cagoulards, who seemed to have been set down as definitely muzzled because their figureheads had been imprisoned. Neither the stern and Spartan Mandel, who had arrested the Je Suis Partout group, nor the vivacious and epicurean Albert Sarraut, his predecessor, who had handled the Cagoulard case, imagined that either of these two groups had achieved a real and lasting penetration into the high command—a penetration which seems to have contributed largely to the debacle of May and June.
Possibly the two cases had never been laid side by side so that the telltale fact that both times a trail led to the Deuxième Bureau had not been observed. Perhaps also the two Interior Ministers had hesitated each time before venturing to have civilian authorities investigate the most powerful of the military departments. The Deuxième Bureau of the French Army was sometimes called “a state within the state.” It might more exactly have been called “several states within the state,” for it was a complicated organism with its own currents and undercurrents, comprising a number of competing groups. Somewhere within this complicated office existed the only link between the pro-German Je Suis Partout and the German-inspired Cagoulards; but on the surface, at least at the beginning, no relation seemed to exist between these two separate activities.
The Cagoulard movement, although it had started in the Deuxième Bureau, soon succeeded through the interlinking relationships of high officers, some of whom supported its activities, in putting out tentacles into the first and third bureaus of the army as well—those concerned respectively with direction of operations and supplies—in other words the two departments which in June were responsible respectively for the orders to retreat and for the failure of the front-line troops to receive ammunition and aid from the aviation.
It may be noted also that several of these high officers who were sympathetic to the Cagoulard movement were in particularly close contact with Marshal Pétain who had his own devoted followers in the army, just as all other first-rank military leaders, like Gamelin and Weygand, had also, whether they were on the active list or retired.
All this may seem incredible. It is difficult to believe that French officers of high rank should have acted in the interests of Germany during the war, thus contributing to bring about their country’s downfall. Even though the Cagoulards, an emanation of the Deuxième Bureau, may have maintained contact with the Germans several years before the war; even if unsuccessful newspapermen like Gaxotte may have made up for deficits by accepting subsidies from the Nazis, it still seems fantastic that the military leaders of France, whose patriotism no one has ever doubted, should have acted as traitors in time of war. It seems to be a moral impossibility.