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The executive director of the institute for the study of war and democracy here at the National World War Ii Museum we are the humble group of scholars that bring your programs such as this and it is our actual pleasure to have paul with us here tonight. The institute, what do we . Do apologize to the veterans that here this every few weeks but the institute serves as the Research Corps in the Higher Education center of the museum, we like to call us as a community of scholars, our job is to build bridges to academics and other authors and experts around the world to help make them part of the Museum Family and plug them into the program such as this. To produce college of our own as our multiple Award Winning Senior Historian has done with him who is not here he celebrating a 60th birthday tonight hes done that with all ten of his. Books we also offer a wonderful new service the World War Two veteran Research Project and service would you cannot find on the website. We can trace the individual history of world war ii participant throughout the war, put that package together from archival documents and create a, unique customized biography to help your family connects world war ii, we are really proud of that one. Another program we are exceptionally proud proud of his or Public Programs which is tonight, to meet the author. Exceptionally we are lucky to have great friends and connections to help us bring the world for most and best authors and frankly the most interesting presenter is to come here to the stage and talk to us. Let me start by our usual traditional we recognize that we have any do we have any world war ii veterans or confront workers with us tonight . The please rise. [applause] and veterans of any other areas. [applause] thank you all and i hope you will indulge me is i think my very favorite veteran my wife sarah who i hope is watching from home. Many of you have been here for a large number of these wonderful meet the author events. This is a great milestone for us in the history of this program, this illustrious an important speaker series. For the first time, we have a sponsor and were very grateful to welcome the Straight Foundation from houston. We want to certainly thank the Straight Foundation and george w. Straight junior for their generous support of the 2018 2019 with the other series. We hope they will continue that relationship for many years to come. applause tonight speaker for me is an example of the two things i always urge everybody who comes to me for a speaker to. Find youre gonna bring me somebody who can deliver quality scholarship. Its got to be top quality, best work, best research hard work, delivers a beautiful narrative. Its got to be well written, the book has just got to be good. And then the thing i am personally guilty, of it cant be boring. We have got to be able to deliver a great presentation. Were very proud to say thats a nice presenter, paul kix the Deputy Editor of espn the magazine, is heavily involved in the content for ethiopians platforms i challenge anyone to call espn. More you might have seen is writings in the new yorker, gq, mens journal and wall street journal, just to name a. Few i hope you all have heard of. Those paul was originally from iowa, was in boston are now resides in connecticut with his wife sonia who is an exceptionally nice person, who has actually been helping out with the event tonight, you cant beat that, and their three wonderful children. Tonight paul is going to present for us on a really great book about one of those fascinating characters. I wont steal his thunder. It sounds like this has got to be a movie. And maybe it will be. And if it is, were going to invite you to the premiere of that at the National World War Ii Museum. Not to talk about his book, the salvatore, the aristocrat who became france is most daring anti nazi commando, please join me in welcoming paul paul kix to our stage. Got applause thank you everybody for coming tonight. This is fantastic, it is great to see this many people here, its great to see this many people interested about world war ii in general about france in particular. It was great to when i was asked months ago to come down here on the citys 300th anniversary. It seems fitting for me and thankfully was fitting as well for the museum. I want to start actually with a question that i, get i will be taking questions after awhile, but one of the first questions i get is wait a minute, how exactly does a guy who edits and writes about sportss how does he do a book on that guy . And what is that guys name . So we will take the second part first which is that guys name is Robert Delarosa foucault. And how i got into it, one day in 2012 i was reading the New York Times just flipping through on my phone, and i saw an obituary and the obituary said world war ii command dough and spy who dressed as non who sabotaged his way across Southern France and worked for a secret group of british commandoes dies at 88. And i said, well im going to keep breeding that obituary. The story of robert even an obituary form was remarkable. It was so good that National Public radio did a story based on the obituary that appeared in the times. It was so good that there is a website called and you have to excuse the language for a second, there is a website called bad but of the week that said this guy is the greatest bad but we have ever had. So, the thing that interested me was, this is a guy whose family history, im assuming there are some people here who have been to france, right . Are there just by show of hands, how many people here are familiar vaguely with the Robert Delarosa foucault name. For those of you who arent, the Robert Delarosa foucault family is the fourth oldest family in france. Its lineage literally shaped france. My favorite story of what delarosa family, is imagine yourself in 1789 in versailles and he sees the pitchforks coming. And he turns to innate and he says is this a revolt . And the eighth says no sigh or this is the revolution. And that aid was roberts great great great great grandfather the de la Roche Foucault family has a street named after them in paris the de la Roche Foucault family spruced writes extensively about the de la Roche Foucault family, they have been idolized within the military, they have been recognized by the Catholic Church for the roles they played during the reign of terror there have been de la Roche Foucault who have it martyrdom. It is a very rich, very old family. Some of this is in that obituary that im reading in the New York Times. I didnt do anything with it though, and thats because i was an editor at espn, the magazine. My wife and i had three kids including twin boys who were probably less than six months old at the time. And perhaps most importantly, i didnt speak french. So i thought there is no way i could actually do this book, the summer of 2012 becomes the fall of 2012 and you have to understand something, i just love really good stories for the sake of stories, and i have been wanting for sometime to tell, to write my first book. Ive been wanting to write books since i was about seven years old. And so by the fall of 2012, i cant get this story out of my. Head and so i went to my wife when i said ive got to do it. The very first step during for me trying to do it was to find roberts memoir. He had written a memoir about his war it had never been translated in english and the very first thing my wife and i did was we founded on amazon and it cost about 200 euros it was rare at the time its now not as rare. And we said about trying to figure out how to pieces together, but of course, neither was spoke french, so we used cocoa translate. We [laughter] how many people here have used it for more than a sentence or phrase . What do you start to see when you do . That you see that, boy, you have really no sense of what is going on here. That is what happened. Page after page i would get back, and it was very hard for me to figure out what was going on. So we retransmitted. What we would throwing it back into the Google Translate mushy until finally we had something that i thought was about 85 , i could understand about 85 of roberts story. And i said okay, this story is unbelievable, and then the cynical journalist in me kicked in. And i thought, wait a minute, this story is literally unbelievable. Before i wrote a proposal, before the book was optioned by dream works and we can talk about that afterwards if youd like, i had to figure out all right, is this a story that is even worth doing . I had some friends in boston who had friends in paris. They were journalists. I said okay well roberts is at the end of the book that he received all of these commendation from the french government. If he actually received them, if there is a paper trail that i can follow at least he has been vetted by the french government. So at least i can start. Now who here has been to france . Oh we actually iraq asked this question. Who here has dealt with french bureaucracy . Who here knows what is . Like and again this became a very labourious process almost as labourious as transiting the book itself but ultimately. After four months. I got a call and sophie was her name, the journalist helping in france and she said paul it is wonderful, he is who he says he is and im, like he is. And she sends me the email, he actually received all the accommodations that he said that he received and the memoir. Then the real work began. So let me tell you a little bit about the. Im going to sort of talk a little bit about roberts life and then im going to read a short snippet of the book itself. Robert comes from a very prestigious family very rich family, and one of the first things that i had to try to figure out is why does he choose to fight . Because he couldve done something that the mass majority of the french did, which was absolutely nothing. Scholars have later contended that perhaps as few as 80 , perhaps as much as 90 of the french populace neither aided the allies nor aided the fascists. About 10 of the french populace were openly collaborating with the nazis. A much smaller percent of that, perhaps as few as 2 of the french populace according to scholarly estimates, were active in the resistance. Robert was one of them but what really fascinated me was he did not he did not have to. Be again, the money along, the connections alone couldve meant that he couldve gone to neutral, spain couldve meant that he couldve found a nice farm in english countryside, couldve meant that he couldve had the wherewithal to get to the states without too much problem, but he did not do that. He did the hardest thing possible, which was to actively participate in the resistance, and to do so would mean if they were captured by the, germans they were killed. They were not treated like prisoners of war. In fact, it was far worse than an immediate death. It was torture. It was excruciating torture. So . Why why does robert do . This this actually became one of the animating questions and part of this was because of the storied family history. Roberts father was a decorated world war one officer, who was actually recommissioned at the outbreak of world war ii. He was captured after the battle for france was lost. In fact, captured five days after that battle, at a point where he was still fighting, so say eight his military records. So that gives you a sense of the de la Roche Foucault family there are other considerations to the family home and it was actually commandeered by the germans. And robert was an angry 17 year old man trying to find a way for himself in this new and scary world and he was confronted every day which are one officers who were literally in his home there was a third consideration and that was his mother his mother can swell adjust to give you a hint of sort of the character that she was there was a high ranking german army officer who was part of the nobility and germany and he came to stay at the family house this was while it was being wall so they were living among the care La Rochefoucauld and the story goes that he walked up the front steps. Can swallow was a short stocky woman and she doesnt take any gruff from anybody and she is standing there and she is scowling at the man and he is being his most chivalrous and he takes off his glove. He says madam de La Rochefoucauld, it is a great pleasure to stay in this wonderful home. Your name travels far beyond the french border. And as he extends his hand, she slapped some across the face. And there is another officer with them that says, madam an introduction like that could risk deportation. But she did not care, and neither did her 17yearold son, who wanted to find a way to fight. Of course by 1940, after the battlefronts was lost, everything had been turned over to the germans, all the way down to hunting knives, so roberts interest in joining the resistance could he could not actually do it. But on the bbc, there is one general who had fled france before the fall, and from the pulpit of the bbc he said every night, i want the battle for france to carry on. Robert listened in silence to those broadcasts. And that general was the most junior general in france and his name was charles de for gaulle. Robert was so taken with what de gaulle had to say, that he found a way to get to london. He had to do it by first sneaking his way south through spain because you could not actually cross the channel. There was no way that that could have happened. He gets there, and he is interrupted, as the british like to say. There was a new force whose colloquial name was the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare i. Am a big fan of british understatement and the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare is about as understated as what this organization actually did, it was not a special Operations Executive and ian fleming, the offer author james bond will ultimately base his character on the man the men and women of this only soe was not exactly beloved by the other secret agency in part because of what it did and what it did was anarchy by any means, as always jobs like anything the worlds had anything seen before. It would train for nationals and all legal and illegal means of warfare law parachute them back into their native lands, and then watch as they fomented revolution. Robert decided that even if well, he wanted to still fight for de gaulle, but he ended up deciding that perhaps the best way to do it was to align himself with the british. What he learned from the british was how to break thumbs, how to properly kick a man in the testicles, how to properly break his, back how to properly slice a knife across his throat, how to properly roll out of a train moving at 40 miles an hour how to do something called silent killing. Thiss tactic of silent killing so enraged hitler that he issued what was known as a commando order in 1942 and that commando order was directed at the british and if it said, if anyone is found to have been trained by them, these bandits of the british are to be killed immediately. Robert flew back to france in the summer of 1943, having been trained in all sorts of warfare, and he flew back confident, knowing that he had a skill set that so few people actually had. His First Mission was a very interesting one, he was to just simply sabotage facilities in france that were essential to the nazi war machine he carried it out with absolute aplomb, but the last mission of soe right before they got on the plane to get back was one of humility. Robert had to keep that in mind as summer of 1943 turned into the fall of 1943. Soe brass gave every soe agent a cyanide pill. They said, there have men many brave agents that have come before you, and you need to remember the odds will start to work against you after about six months in country, and if ever you are captured, swallow this quickly because we dont want you giving up any information. Fall of 1943 turns into late fall of 1943, and now robert sees what they mean. The nazis, in particular the gestapo, were very effective in infiltrating resistance cells in france in 1943. Robert was working for one known as noahs ark. It was actually run by a woman, and it was the largest resistance cell in all of france at the time. Marie ended up leaving france just as robert entered it, she ended up calling 1943 the terrible year because she literally forgot how many agents were arrested. Was it 300 . Was it 400 . Was it 500 . And robert in country there in central france, he is seeing the people that hes working with one day, and then he doesnt hear from them again, and so he has to imagine well he knows, that he will probably never see them again. Egg so paranoia sets. In am i next . Guilt sets in. Why have i not been captured . Hes still only 19 years old. But he has to start to think about this cyanide pill. He ends up moving to a barn hay in the small village, where he can hide some of the guns that have been parachuted down with him. Because he still thinking that maybe theres a way that i can carry out my work, even though his resistance cell had been decimated. And one night asleep in the barn, he was jostled awake. He saw a half circle of men around him in felt hats and leather jackets and then smiles on their faces. They said, how are you this evening . And then they started to beat him. They did not stop until he was tied up, he said, like a sausage. And then one of the gestapo agents went immediately to a corner of the barn where he had hit in the guns, and he said what is this . And robert said thats not mine. He smiles again and said yes, it is. Roberts initial fear of who gave me up, how did they know this . Was replaced by a much, much darker fear. Where am i being taken . And what is going to happen to me when i get . There says for those of you havent read the book yet, robert is taking to a prison dog and whatever you imagine the nazis doing to try to extract information from a resistance fighter like robert, it happened. I had a chance to look at the records from the prison roles, most inmates were there for one week or two weeks and they were released. And historians are spoken with in france, the local historians believe thats because the nazis gave them the information they wanted, and then they left robert was there for four months. Toward the end of that time, he went before a kangaroo court. And within ten minutes, his execution was ordered and he spent his last night in his cell and he sort of bemoan the fact that he had spent enough time in germany but the german priest what given him is last right, he did not understand a word the guy losing. That is where i would like us to continue our stories. Im gonna read a little eggs are now from the book. Just before 8 am, two guards escorted de La Rochefoucauld out of the b wing into the bed of awaiting truck. They told him to sit on the coffin line there. Robert saw another coffin next to him and here came a second prisoner pushed along by the guards onto the box that he, too, would soon fill. Robert did not know this man and as the guards hopped in the back, high powered rifles in their arms, he did not see the point in introductions. The truck belched into low gear, and the red doors that had closed behind de La Rochefoucauld four months earlier, party now to let him out. The trucks stopped before the citys main thoroughfare just beyond the prison whose northbound lane directed one to paris. The truck, however, turned right, south, toward the rural countryside. They were headed for a series of dirt paths, each narrower and better bumpier than the last, the terrain moving from uninterrupted wheatfields to groves of trees, to a fork in the road, where the right word path drove one ever deeper into the woods until the clearing came into view where the road ended. They are against three trees pockmarked with bullet holes, kim La Rochefoucauld would be told to stand, he would look out on the distant brush and listen to the birds on with the nazi guys took their aim. 43 people would be executed here during the war. As the truck started out on this path, passing a brown stone chapel on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, La Rochefoucauld had a thought. Why given to the nazis now . He had spent the last four months ignoring the bassist screams of his body because he could not yet fathom giving the germans anything they wanted. Now they wanted him dead. But he did not wish to die. He looked at the road beneath him rushing past and noticed the nazis one mistake, the germans had never learn much about, him which meant they never understood the extent to which he had been trained to trained to maine and kill. Rubber kept his eyes on his wrists. There were no handcuffs on him. He glance at the guards and saw their guns resting on their laps, if he could not succeed he thought he wanted to die as he had lived, fighting. He looked at the other inmates, who sensed robert calculating something. Even if it means being shot, robert said to the other frenchman i would rather be shot right. Away im getting. Out them the prisoner stated him. Astounded. Traffic was light and the truck moved at a brisk pace. The guards did not speak french at least did not hear La Rochefoucauld over the wind and the open air bed. Neither nazi stirred himself to attention. The other inmates said, you are crazy. It wont work. In a moment La Rochefoucauld sprang himself on the new regard plowing into him and then jumping in the truck and rolling in somersaulting just as hes been trade in england when his momentum stopped he shot to his feet he broke into a sprint, he heard angry shouts behind him and then an even latter reports of rifles. The first bullets missed, and he looked behind his shoulder to see the truck driver startled by the firing, slammed the the brakes. The sudden stop through the guards headfirst over the trucks hood. Robert sprinted down one street, then turned on to a second than onto a third. He did not know the city has spent the last four months interviewing sell so he just ran mindless lee and as fast as he could. He ran into this weekend legs burned and gulped at the air and then kept running. He ran until one street avenue victor hugo and came up on a guarded villa of sorts project in swastikas flags and banners. The local gestapo headquarters. La rochefoucauld stopped cold. Should he turn around the other way . If you, did with that be more suspicious than just trying to walk past the enemy hq . Had someone inside the building already seen . Him and where was the truck . La rochefoucauld decided to continue down the road despite his hearts drumming in his ribcage. He walked as casually as a man trying to escape his execution could walk. As he approached the building, he saw a sedan with swastikas pendant on the fender parked nearby. He stole a glance inside. Hes in the ignition. He looked around and saw driver, maybe 30 feet away, pacing back and forth waiting for someone to emerge from the building. Just, then La Rochefoucauld her distance shouting. The truck. Now. He had to decide now. He moved closer to the car and swung the door wide and threw himself. In he started the engine and peeled out before the show for realized what was happening. La rochefoucauld the quickly in the Rearview Mirror and saw the man draw pistol from his coat pocket and fire twice. But it was too late. Robert had escaped. The nazi penance whipping in the wind. Back through the streets now down one street, than another looking for something to direct him out of here, and then there a sign, paris, this way. The road was none other than root national and in a moment he saw the prison itself, and sped right past. It the open highway with the pedal to the floor and second becoming minutes and still no one truly. Him he might actually make. Could he had never felt so alive. More time past and robert even began to relax behind the wheel but soon he noticed traffic ahead of him slow and soft and saw in the distance. Roadblock wouldnt beam stretching across the highway. The germans must have put all neighboring jurisdictions on high alert, and now they planned to stop each vehicle that passed until they had their man. Robert edged closer and sought to heavily armed soldiers manning the blockade asking every driver for identification. Robert was in the garb he had warned for the last four months. He stank. He had a full beard, and cuts and bruises across his face and body. There was little hope of him fooling soldiers even in his nazi sedan, maybe especially and his nazi sedan if word of the vehicle being stolen and commandeered had spread, but he could not turn around turning around which are too much attention. He inched closer, shifting the car into second, the soldiers faces visible now seemingly inquisitive asking him to stop. That is when he gunned the engine, smashing into the blockade and one of the soldiers, who flipped over the hood. The second opened fire and La Rochefoucauld docked, the bullets ripping into the cars, frame robert kept his head low and his foot on the pedal. The sound of more angry shots followed the initial volley but the car sped ahead. When were barely at last set up the car was not smoking, was still on the road and just as important, was beyond the reach of the germans guns. He checked himself, somehow he was unharmed. For the third time that morning he had avoided german fire at something close to point blank range. He saw gravel road ahead and took a turn as fast as he could, plumes of dirt kicking up behind. Him he had to put distance between himself and the nazis. The roads soon rose and fell beneath him and La Rochefoucauld harmed over it, he noticed smoke billing from the hood but he kept on until the smoke grew corps sir and blacker and he had no choice but to slow the car. He saw a quarry up ahead, a mineral excavation site just off the. Wrote he stop before it and got out. He listened nothing, yet. The best thing to do was to crash the car in such a way that the germans might overlook it as they drove past, so he put the car neutral got behind it and pushed it into a quarry. The car fell, falling into one of the deepest voice and crashing in a plum in plumes of dust and smoke. When it cleared, he saw the island of a crumpled, charred mass. They never get this one, he thought. He ran off with a new into the nearby line of woods, his new plan to hide and await the nightfall that could not go fast enough. He spent the next hours in anxious solitude, and when starts at last filled the sky he made his way. Again a strong moon guiding him, but once more aimless. He did not know where he was. He walked under branches, through thickets, among rows of trees, he walked for what seemed like hours with the idea that he might find a resistant in a small town or some sympathetic family on the countryside or even another abandoned barn. Something that would serve as a temporary base where he could get a few hours sleep and perhaps a meal before sneaking his way by who knew what means, out of here. At last, in the distance, he saw lights. They multiplied as he walked toward them and became the nighttime view of a city. Maybe he knew someone here, he thought. Some La Rochefoucauld approached with caution and sauce on at the towns edge he was back where he started. I am happy to answer any questions about the book, my life, my wonderful wife tania, or the possible film adaptation of the book. Well go right here. The question is what percentage of agents actually took the cyanide pill. I dont have a firm number on that. I do have anecdotal evidence to suggest that there were surprising number of them, some of whom were among the most decorated for what they did. It was absolutely it was absolutely brutal in some of these interrogations. A lot of times they did it because they couldnt not trust their mind. Their body had been weekend to the point where if if i am questioned one more time, that might be the time that i break. So it is better for me to still protect my comrades. Then break it. I had a chance to speak last night, i want to add a brief followup to that, i had a chance to speak last night with some High School Students who are actually going to be going to normandy, and what i told them was for a lot of resistance fighters, it wasnt just to the interrogation and the torture itself, but if the germans could figure out who your family, was they a lot of times would bring them to the Interrogation Room and say, we will shoot him or slit her throat if you dont tell us. And its those sorts of absolutely awful situations that some resistance fighters chose to escape. Were going to go back here. What did he do after the war . After the, war he ends up serving as a commando of sorts for the next 20 years. He is in the french indochina, war and he ends up serving in various smaller battles, and after that, he was a mayor of a small town in france for about 30 years. His whole life was dedicated to public service. What type of commando raids did he conduct exactly . What type of commando rates, im going to give on unsatisfying answer because the type of commando raids are found in the book so laughter what i would say is if you want to read the full scope of what he did during the war its on sale back there. laughter two questions actually, your book and what you are describing, was all of that has been more . No. Is that something you just imagined . No. Oh, okay. Im gonna squirrel this away and then you have a second question. This is the first time i heard that the french were so and involved in the war. Im just amazed. I will go in order here. You know, i wasnt imagining it. I spent my career as a journalist for a reason, which is i love stories that just happen to be true. The primary sources for the book were his memoir but then also, i got lucky. There was an audio recording of his life that he made with his family, and that was a two disk audio recording. Some of those episodes were not included in his memoir. I addition to that, there was a dvd that his nephew, a budding documentary filmmaker mate, of just the entire La Rochefoucauld family. Those im using his primary sources, but im also independently verifying it against his military record and against the military history of the resistance cells with which he worked. In the end, i say this in the notes of the book, i dont blame you for not reading it reading them, because they can become kind of tedious, but i say in the notes that i spent four years researching this book and five countries because i wanted to get everything right to the extent, get everything is absolutely accurate as i. Could the second part of your question is just about you do know the level of apathy . A lot of the french didnt either, right after world war ii, there is this myth that de gaulle perpetuates, which says every frenchman was a resistance fighter and it took a lot of different episodes, number one there was a film in the late 1960s called, its english equivalent is the sorrow and the pity, and it is the first look at what mom and dad and grandpa and grandma actually did during the war. Its sort of woke the french populace up to this notion that the vast majority of them did nothing they didnt all resist. Subsequent pieces of academic research, subsequent popular books, movies, and up further dispelling that. Mid i have a followup to the followup. You told me yesterday your book will be released in french i believe, next year. Correct. Are you concerned about any blow back that the french heroic myth may be shattered . And not to dissuade your french publisher, but how are you going to answer them by saying no we were all heroes . Thats a great question. Asked the french now have a term for world war ii which is the black years, so translates to the black ears, or the dark ears, and they say that for good reason. It is a very complicated history in france to answer your question, at this point, the real history is engaged, right . But its in no way seen as the good war in the way that World War Two is seen here in the states. Its very complicated. Were going to stay in the far back. Right you invited at the start to talk about dream works, if you would. This was kind of strange, before i had written a word, i have an agent in new york who subcontracts with a nation in l. A. Film rights. And i remember distinctly, the day i was sitting down, and my agent called me and said paul, anita sit down. I said, okay. He goes, i want you to know that harvey wants team is looking to option your book. Harvey weinstein was a monster. We just didnt know it. Then and i said wow, thats amazing. Weve got to do that. He said no, no, no, i think we can get more interest. I said no, lets go with them this is great. About eight month passes and i get another call for my age. And he says, paul, i need you to sit down. And he goes Stephen Spielberg wants to buy the movie. And i said oh. I was actually at espn when i got that call and i was supposed to be editing a story on the Pittsburgh Pirates of all things but i didnt do a whole lot for the rest of the. Day so to answer questions directly, dream works optioned the film. As anybody seen the first season of the hbo show true detective with what he harrison . The guy who cowrote and directed that entire first season is on tap to direct the movie. The producer is michael sugar, whose last major credit was spotlight, which won best picture a couple of years ago. Spotlight is a story of the Catholic Church scandal in boston in the boston globe reporters who unearthed it. There are good people attached to it, i have been waiting since that day for the thing to actually be made and such as the land of hollywood that we are still where we were five or six years ago. Im still waiting. Moderators prerogative here, where might that film be premiered . laughter hint. Another question in the back. Following your subjects training, and he actually went back into france, did he maintain any contact or was he under the control of the s. O. T. At all . This is fascinating, a soy supportive spiritual grandfather is it is teay lawrence v. Lawrence of arabia. And what he did in world war i soe basically skills it for world war ii, and what i mean by that is they say okay guys, go into these foreign lands. You will have a handler of sorts, robert had a british handler his code name was henry, but your missions are largely, they can be influenced by french intelligence. In fact, robert believed that he was working as much for the french and its secret services as he was for the british, and that was by design. Because to go back to lawrence in 1917, he wanted to the freedom to sort of figure out what would be the best operation, like which real car would be the best to sabotage, there were handlers, but they needed to have a certain amount of operational freedom on the ground, to make decisions in realtime for what they thought would be the best for the. Allies rut what would you say that soe stood for . Special Operations Executive. A name that doesnt really mean a whole lot and i think that was by design. When are the dates that he escaped . The dates that he escaped . As a matter of fact we do. This was another one of those little eureka moments. When i was in france goring through the prison rolls, it lists imprisonment, as i said a minute ago. Next to La Rochefoucauld entry is a very strange pencil mark from the germans and it said, he escaped. And it says it on march 20th, 1944. When i saw that, i was like, again, the cynical journalist in me is like, wow that is amazing. The local historians with whom i was working, they had heard of him, but it wasnt until we actually went through the prison rolls that we saw that level of independent confirmation, so it was pretty interesting. Film question online from dave. Back to your aspirations for this to be a major motion picture. Who would you cast to play the lead . The producer and director there was a guy who starred in a movie called called me by your name that came out last. Year did anybody happen to see . It the league in that is a young frenchman by the name of timothy chalamet. He was up for an oscar for best actor. His father is french, his mother is english, they have sent him the book. As all things move in hollywood this was sent months ago. And he is quote, considering it. So that is where we are with that. If anybody sees that movie, he is very slight, he would have to bulk up a little, bit and probably would have a least a goatee or something, like robert, there he needs a cigarette. You need something to toughen him up a little bit. This might be off target somewhat, but in regard to be thought that perhaps 90 of the french were not fighting against the nazis, with this be in any way related to their experiences of world war i . Oh yes. I read that maybe 75 of man between 15 and 75 were killed or something . That is a great question, and the answer is overwhelmingly east. When you have, there are many battles that took place in world war one on french soil. In fact, the La Rochefoucauld estate outside france swift saw france was taken and retaken by the french of the germans 11 times over the course of one week and robert grew up with the massive artillery perhaps the best way to sum it up is this, robert grew up, his acreage was a working farm and until the mid 19 thirties, the soil was too hot to till, from all of the bombs and artillerys and Everything Else even into the 1940s the hands felt they couldnt work it because of the grenades that they might come across that were still there absolutely there was an editorial that circulated in one of the biggest french duties at the time and it was from the world war one veteran and he said in 1939, rather servitude than war. Rather servitude than war and that is how deeply the french were scarred by what happened world war one. By any chance during your research did you come over any French Resistance that was working for the nazis . Yes, part of the way that rubber was captured and that cell that i talked about, noahs arc was, for the way it was infiltrated was through a French Resistance fighter named john paul lyons and jay p lyons worked for comp path and for any literary that was the organization with with with which albert camus was aligned during the war. Lyons is rising higher and higher in the ranks of combat when the germans get to him and i dont know exactly what happens, the historical record is a little bit unclear whether he was interrogated, there was actually a fair amount, a surprising amount of French Resistance fighters who actually fascist leanings. Perhaps he was just able to to be preceded to join the germans. In any case, he does, and that flipping him, and it up just tearing apart all of knows. Arc was in the Center Section to your left. Did you ever learn what happened to the second . Prisoner i have, yeah. The historical, the prison rolls, i had this in an earlier draft. It wouldve been one of two other men and i have his name and and in an earlier draft, i included it and i excluded it because i didnt have it absolutely for certain that he was the one the sites of the execution that day with robert, i say that because there wasnt an execution that actually ended up happening as you might imagine the germans are like im, is this guy so we saw about this. Once this would take care of him. I was able to isolated to those two, but i couldnt say for certain which two he wouldve been. In the front of the right police. I read your book, i enjoyed it. Its quite complicated, you end up a lot of the French Resistance with the story, when you end up with him going to the trial, in a nutshell its thats a complicated. This is what im would do my best to keep this briefing brief and not give away too much, maurice popon works for the vichy regime outside bordeaux and in the he is found to put his cattle cars to deport juice out of bordeaux. And its his signature that has them leaving. A criminal trial takes 20 years or so to actually reach the Court Dockets at last that trial is heard the historian who first unearthed maurice popon signature, by 1998 says he did not believe that maurice popon deserves to be tried for these crimes, and why was that . Because in vichy, he was a local small bureaucrat and his job was to put his signature on orders of men who ranked above him both of those men by 1998 when those that trial actually took place where did it. But the french because kind of what i was alluding to earlier, the french populace was by this point well aware of the very sordid and twisted and frankly truly truly complicated history of what happened during the war and they were looking for a essentially a scapegoat, who can we nail for this . And that became maurice papon. And the trial lasted six months and i wont say exactly how robert is involved because again the book is right back there for purchase but robert becomes involved. What did you get to speak to any of Roberts Family what you were researching this . Yes, i did. I was very fortunate, all of roberts children his three daughters his son, they all agree to speak with me and that actually was a mixed blessing. It was wonderful of course because i came to know the man. It was not so great because robert was from a certain culture, and was born and raised in a certain time when you didnt talk about the truly those painful moments of your life, in fact, robert received late in life the legion of honor, the highest military commendation one can receive, in france and at that ceremony his Adult Children were like dad, what did you do because they had only hurt snippets of the war. So its actually in response to him receiving that, that audio cd that i mentioned a minute, ago robert worked with a journalist journalist in paris to put it together so his family would finally have a full account of it. The family was great because i came to really understand the culture of the family the dynamics of the family but they didnt have a whole lot of insight into what it was like for robert except for a few small episodes im grateful for those episodes all the same but they were small one. Paul, ive got the last question for you. If you are at liberty if you feel comfortable amongst friends what is your next project . I actually am choosing between three so what will sort of do quick is quick span here is who is interested in want. One is a cia contractor and what happens to him after he returns in afghanistan, the second is about a politician who served in world war ii among the most decorated regiment in regiments in u. S. Army history, and then a politician who whom nixon absolutely despised during watergate, and the third is a preacher in birmingham, alabama, who was about a half generation older than Martin Luther king and greatly influenced what candidate. This picture was absolutely brave beyond measure, you talk about how brave robert was, this guy was his equal. Im so im going to give myself a second half of the year to figure out which is which. Who wants the contractor . Who wants the war hero turned politician . And who wants the preacher . See its about split. So the thing i say about this book is it was easily the hardest thing i ever had to do because i literally had to learn another language, but it was also easily the most professionally satisfying thing i have ever done. So i cant wait to start in on my next one, the benefit of the next one is that there will be any international travel, all three of these characters are americans. Thank you buddy. The best news of the night is that paul has left a book up here. Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating story with us. I would also just like to take a chance to say thank him he did a double duty for us last night. We will he taught alam the normandy battlefield last night. And i hope you will join us again on wednesday june 27th. For one of the most recognized scholars of the holocaust. Anatomy of the genocide. Thank you very much for coming comebacks in

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