Alias Caracalla, by Daniel Cordier
“The relations between a Minister and his Secretary are, or at least should be, among the finest that can subsist between two individuals. E xcept the married state, there is none inwhich so great a confidence is involved, in which more forbearance ought to be exercised, or more sympathy ought to exist.” Benjamin Disraeli
Why Alias Caracalla?
The French writer Roger Vailland calls Cordier “Caracalla” in his 1945 novel Drôle de jeu [English title Playing with Fire], a barely fictional account of their relationship between 1943 and the end of the war. In it, Caracalla is the code name for a “23-year-old Gaullist chief” with a penchant for long philosophical disquisitions on the “defeat,” patriotism, power, the harsh realities of life as a resister, isolated and far from the community of men.1
For Daniel Cordier, “This imaginary pseudonym has my preference over all those ascribed to me in the Resistance.”
Readers of this memoir will surely concur with Vailland’s characterization.
Cordier published Alias Caracalla in 2009, almost seven decades after the events related, although he started working on it almost a decade earlier. Apart from the opening chapter on his early life, the book is written in the form of a reconstituted diary. He chronicles events, discussions, and provides rare insight into the lived experience of the agent on the ground. Professor Julian Jackson has described the book as a Bildungsroman2, a coming-of-age story that traces the author’s personal growth from his early right-wing, royalist sympathies—imbibed from his family circle—to wholehearted adherence to the French Republican values of freedom, humanism, tolerance.
Alias Caracalla covers three main periods between May 1940 and June 1943: the author’s youth in southwestern France; his instantaneous rejection of Pétain and exile in England, one of the very first to rally to General de Gaulle, where he trains as a saboteur and wireless operator for Georges Bidault, a Resistance leader and later Prime Minister of France. He was parachuted into occupied France on July 24, 1942. A week later in Lyon he was introduced to Jean Moulin, who appointed him his secretary. Throughout their eleven months’ together, Cordier knew Moulin solely as Rex and later Max, learning his identity only after the Liberation.
Singlehanded, with scant help from resisters on the spot, the 22-year-old Cordier recruited typists, couriers, found lodgings for himself and premises for meetings, visited Moulin twice daily for briefings, arranged rendezvous with agents, resistance leaders, political figures and generals; at night he encoded and decoded cables for London, organized wireless transmissions… He was present at key meetings to thrash out ideas and decisions critical to the future course of relations between France and the Allies.
Frequently, too, he listened to Moulin’s private musings and outbursts about politics, the future of France, or the incompetence of this or that organization. As their relationship grew closer, Cordier occasionally ventured his own views, only to be sharply rebuked for his ignorance or misguided opinions.
So close had they become on a professional level that when Moulin left for consultations in London in February 1943, he entrusted his secretary with the coordination of Free French and Resistance activity in Lyon and the disbursement of funds. Cordier demurred, arguing that in his subordinate position he was ill-placed to cope with the prickly resistance leaders, many years his senior. Moulin replied, “You’re my secretary; as such you are the centre of communications and the only person who knows what’s going on.”3
In later life Cordier acknowledged his homosexuality, and he recounts his early homoerotic experiences at his boarding school in Les feux de Saint-Elme, published in 2014.4 He mentions them in the chapter on his youth in Alias Caracalla at the moment he falls in love with a boyish girl.5 This has prompted speculation that there may have been a homoerotic element to the relationship between Daniel Cordier and Jean Moulin. As if to throw us off the scent, the book contains sporadic references to beautiful, sometimes dazzlingly beautiful, and courageous young women.
The reconstituted diary entries draw a touching picture of the author’s admiration and affection for his boss: he presents him with a slim volume of poetry at Christmas, while Moulin returns the attention with the gift of a blue cashmere scarf brought back from London in February. A powerful relationship had grown up that transcended normal hierarchies.
Like some of his Free French comrades, Cordier shunned the role of “resistance figure” in the post-war era, not wanting to mimic the self-important Great War veterans he had known in his youth. Daniel Cordier began collecting contemporary art in the 1950s and 70s, opening galleries in Paris, Frankfurt, and New York. Those familiar with this aspect of his life will smile at his initial reactions when Jean Moulin sought to introduce him to the subject. Taken to an art gallery in Paris, in 1943, he encountered modern art for the first time in his life, “Rex stopped at a handful of Kandinsky’s paintings, some like the gouaches at the show. Minus their colours, I thought they didn’t add up to much, though I refrained from saying so.”6
In a now celebrated 3-minute flare-up on French television in 1977 Henri Frenay, who founded the Combat resistance movement in Unoccupied France, claimed that Moulin was a crypto-communist. Outraged, Cordier, who had dealt daily with his boss for eleven months and had heard the latter’s views on the communists, was outraged: he had documents to refute Frenay’s allegation. The founder of Combat shot back, “you were on the administrative side only […] political matters were above your level.”7
Realizing that he knew almost nothing about the man he had served and admired for eleven months during the war, he wanted to establish the truth behind the myths and polemics. In middle age the author embarked on a new career as an historian.
The result was a monumental, unfinished biography of de Gaulle’s representative in France, an abridged (1,000-page) version of the same, and other works on the subject. As works by historians and former resisters began to fill the bookshelves, Cordier gradually came to prominence as both witness and historian, mutually reinforcing postures, emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a kind of “gatekeeper of the truth,” arbitrating longstanding animosities and controversies. In confrontations between historians and surviving witnesses to the time, the one-time 22-year-old secretary now embodied both the living memory of those times and the rigour of the historian.
Yet, this position incurs the danger of being faulted on diverse points, and indeed Julian Jackson notably does so in a stimulating article reflecting on the treacherous connections between memory, documents, and postures.8 To divert attention from the occasional inaccuracy, he invokes the power of dusty archives to spark dormant memories back to life.
However, Yves Farge, the left-leaning journalist and resister who worked closely with the author from November 1942 onward, later a Commissaire de la République and Minister of Supply at the Liberation, vouches for Cordier’s keen memory and meticulous attention to detail, “He never wrote anything down: he knew everything. ‘Bonaventure, don’t forget you’re expected in Grenoble on the twelfth of next month, at nine am,’ and he’d stride away […] devilishly efficient.” 9
Why did Jean Moulin, General de Gaulle’s representative in the Free Zone, pick this young man (a Resistance leader sneered “So now the Resistance is being run by boy scouts!” when introduced to Cordier) to be his secretary? In late-July 1942 Moulin had already been in Lyon for six months and was still operating singlehanded. On the first day they met, Moulin invited Cordier to dinner and listened quietly as the latter vigorously expounded his far-right wing opinions. Though unversed in clandestine life and newly arrived in Lyon, Cordier combined passionate patriotism with organizational and leadership skills, having run his local Action Française chapter as a teenager. In the televised debate referred to above, Cordier remarks, “if Moulin was a communist, it’s surprising he took me, an ex-Action française, to be his secretary.”10 Perhaps Moulin saw Cordier’s far-right views served as a useful counterweight to his own left-leaning Republican stance.
As the story unfolds, Cordier paints vivid portraits of England at war in 1940-42, and of occupied France from 1942 through 1943, as well as of people he encounters. What gives the book its distinctive flavour is the picture that emerges of his personal development and the transformation of his own political outlook. Free French comrades and older figures such as Raymond Aron or Jean Moulin are prompt to point out the errors and inconsistencies in his thinking. Modestly, the author records all this with the wry amusement of hindsight.
Alias Caracalla is not a book “about the French Resistance,” although it necessarily plays a central role in the main section. What Daniel Cordier presents here is a mélange of highly personal memoir and documented account of a turning point in the emergence of General de Gaulle as the legitimate leader of not only Fighting France, but of the entire French people, the embodiment of their aspiration to freedom and democracy after the Liberation. From his unique vantage point, Cordier recounts the creation of Jean Moulin’s secretariat, and the arduous negotiations culminating in the creation of the Conseil national de la Résistance, the National Resistance Council, in July 1943. Eighty years later, the CNR, as it came to be known, is still regarded in France as emblematic of the Republic’s motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, a standard by which government policies continue to be measured, by the left especially.
Bringing together these disparate forces was Moulin’s great achievement. As Halik Kochanski puts it in her work on the Resistance in Europe, “Moulin’s skill as a negotiator, his extreme determination to have his way and to include the political parties in his council, and, above all, his position as de Gaulle’s accredited representative, ultimately led to success.”11
It is this skill and infinite tact that Cordier observed at close quarters, but also the outbursts of anger and frustration that Moulin vented when alone with his secretary.
The memoir ends with Moulin’s arrest on June 21, in circumstances never satisfactorily elucidated, the young man in despair at the loss of his “boss” and mentor. Cordier draws his own conclusion from the constant scheming of the Resistance leaders Frenay and d’Astier behind Moulin’s back, and their attempts to have him removed as head of the just-created Conseil national de la Résistance. Moulin’s capture left them in the driver’s seat with no one giving them orders.
The possibility suggests itself that, deliberately or not, leaders of the major resistance movements in the southern zone somehow had a hand in the capture of de Gaulle’s representative. In Cordier’s view, at least, they were relieved to see the back of him.
Daniel Cordier uniquely and engagingly embodies the philosophical, political, and internal personal dilemmas facing Frenchmen and women in the wake of the military collapse of June 1940 and Pétain’s surrender. He recounts in personal terms the dichotomy between Free French and resisters. Well before the Liberation, the distinction had become blurred, which is why the author came to be referred to as a “resistance fighter” or “resistance hero.”
Notes on translation and presentation
Translating a book that contains so many historical references and terms, for historians and the general reader alike, I have tried to reconcile the atmosphere of the 1940s with the need for readability today. At the same time, the messages, cables, and speeches cited here are translated literally in order to convey the flavour of the original French.
Code names or noms de guerre feature heavily throughout the main part of Alias Caracalla, which takes place in occupied France from July 1942 through July 1943. To aid readers, a list of these code names and their corresponding real-life names is provided at the beginning of the book. Given that Cordier was writing long after the event, he might simply have referred to everyone by their names. As he explains in a long note, however:
I had to choose between various solutions in referring to Resistance members: either I could use their true identity, add their pseudonym to that identity, or use just the pseudonym by which they were best-known. I have opted for the latter, at the risk of confusing the reader. Despite this drawback, I have preferred to present names this way because clandestine life was a life of mystery and pseudonyms were its shield. I have placed an asterisk in front of the pseudonyms to help distinguish them from people’s real names. […]. Two lists [at the front of the book] link pseudonyms to names and vice versa. I believe this approach accurately conveys the murky atmosphere of this tragic drama.
Many of the leading protagonists in Alias Caracalla take on more than one code name for added security. His own code name in France was Bip.W (Bureau d’Information et de Presse, wireless operator to Bip, i.e. Georges Bidault). For himself, he chose the nom de guerre Alain in honour of the French philosopher of that name. Since many of the names—code and real—will mean little to the English-speaking reader, it is perhaps best to focus on the unfolding events and to refer to the lists later.
The book abounds with references to French organizations and bodies and is peppered with acronyms. Although complete consistency is desirable, I prefer to refresh the reader’s memory from time to time by spelling out acronyms and giving English translations for the sake of clarification.
Brief biographical notes of some of those mentioned are provided in Translator’s notes at the end of the book along with succinct descriptions of certain political movements and events.
Regarding presentation, square brackets in the text are mine, where I have tried to clarify an ellipse in reported conversations. Cordier uses round parentheses in some places and square brackets in others. To reduce the confusion (while not altogether eliminating it), I have replaced his square brackets by parentheses. I hope this nowhere distorts the author’s intentions.
The use of upper and lowercase to refer to political currents, parties, as well as mooted and constituted bodies is another potential source of confusion. Capitalized words refer to the latter, lowercase to the former.
Also, given the abundance of acronyms in the last part of the book, I have frequently spelled out in full the parties or committees referred to, where Cordier confined himself to acronyms only.
1 Playing with Fire, R. Valland, Chatto & Windus, London 1948/
2 Archives, Memories and Masks in Writing the History of the French Resistance: the Case of Daniel Cordier, Jackson, Julian, French Historical Studies, vol 45, Issue 1, February 2022. Duke University Press.
3 Jean Moulin to Daniel Cordier, Wednesday February 10, 1943, p. xxx
4 Les feux de Saint-Elme D. Cordier, Gallimard, Paris 2014.
5 Alias Caracalla, D. Cordier, p. yy.
6 Alias Caracalla, D. Cordier, Thursday May 27, 1943 p. zzz. This was the day on which the Conseil national de la Résistance was born. Moulin had accomplished his mission.
7 Video: Débat entre Henri Frenay et Daniel Cordier sur Jean Moulin, in Les dossiers de l’écran television discussion, October 11, 1977 (Archive INA). https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/i20328036/debat-entre-henri-frenay-et-daniel-cordier-sur-jean-moulin.
8 Jackson, Julian, op. cit.
9 Alias Caracalla, D. Cordier, p. xx.
10 Les dossiers de l’écran, op. cit.
11 Resistance, Kochanski, H. Allan Lane, London, 2022.
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