I saw Netflix's "A Call To Spy." Here is the Good and the Bad - starting with the Bad:
Robert Alesch
(March 6, 1906 – January 25, 1949) was a Catholic Priest and Collaborator with
Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Biography Alesch
was born March 6, 1906 in Aspelt, Luxembourg. He claimed that his Father was a
Lorraine French Patriot, who was tortured by the Germans in 1917.
Priesthood Alesch
relocated to Freiburg to study theology and was ordained in 1933 and settled in
France in 1935. He was named Vicar at La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, Parish of
Saint-Maur, in the Paris region. From the beginning of the Nazi occupation, he
passed himself off as an opponent of the Germans, particularly during his
Sunday sermons. He saw the Occupation, however, as an opportunity to earn money
and offered his service to the Gestapo in 1941.
Collaboration
with the Nazis Alesch became an Agent of the Abwehr, German Intelligence Organization.
He gained entry into Resistance Circles and won the confidence of the
ethnologist Germaine Tillion, who put him in touch with Jacques Legrand, the
chief executive of the Réseau Gloria and with Gabrielle Picabia (whose nom de
guerre was "Gloria") founder and head of the network.
Alesch was
paid for his information by the Germans and lived a double life. Priest during
the day, he lived with two Mistresses on Rue Spontini in the 16th Arrondissement.
August 13, 1942, Legrand, Tillion and the main leaders of the network were
arrested. Around 80 people found themselves imprisoned over the month of
August. Detained in Fresnes Prison and Prison de la Santé, they were subjected
to long interrogations and in some cases, torture, by the German Police. After
being moved to the Camp at Fort de Romainville they were mostly deported to the
Concentration Camps of Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück. Jacques Legrand,
his second, Thomasson and a number of others did not return from Deportation. Alesch
pursued his activities as double agent for the Nazis, encouraging young people
to resist then delivering them to the occupiers. He was paid 12,000 Francs
monthly, about the salary of a high-ranking Officer at the time, and earned a
bonus for each person he informed on.
His victims
also included Virginia Hall, an American-born Agent of the British intelligence
service SOE. After worming his way into her confidence, Alesch discovered her
section's activities in Unoccupied southern France. In May 1942, as Organiser
of the Heckler circuit in Lyon, Hall agreed to have messages from the Gloria
Network to be transmitted to SOE in London. Alesch infiltrated Gloria in August
leading to its leadership being captured by the Abwehr. Alesch then made
contact with Hall claiming to be an Agent of Gloria and offering intelligence
of apparently high value. She had doubts about Alesch, especially when she
learned that Gloria had been destroyed, but was persuaded of his bona fides, as
was the London Headquarters of SOE. Alesch was able to penetrate Hall's network
of contacts, including the capture of Wireless Operators and the sending of
false messages to London in her name. Many of those captured did not survive.
After the war,
Alesch fled to Brussels. He was handed over to the French Authorities and tried
by the Court of Justice (order of June 26, 1944) of the Seine Department. The surviving members
of the network, Tillion (who invoked the memory of her Mother Émilie Tillion,
murdered at Ravensbrück), Picabia and Pierre Weydert were also there to witness
at the trial. Former Abwehr colleague, Hugo Bleicher, also testified against
him.
Alesch was
sentenced to death and held in Fresnes Prison before being executed by firing
squad on January 25, 1949 at Fort de Montrouge in Arcueil.
He is
portrayed by Joe Doyle in Netflix’s “A Call To Spy.”
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