Pierre Brossolette

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Pierre Brossolette (June 25, 1903 - March 22, 1944) was a French socialist, journalist and member of French Resistance.

Pierre Brossolette was born in Paris, France. He graduated from l'École Normale Supérieure in 1925 and joined the French Socialist Party in 1929. He worked as a journalist for Notre Temps, L'Europe Nouvelle and the socialist party paper Le Populaire. He also worked for Radio-PTT but when he opposed the Munich Agreement in the air in 1939, he was fired.

When the World War II broke out, he joined the army as a lieutenant and reached the rank of captain before the fall of France. He disapproved of the Vichy Regime and participated in the founding of the resistance groups Libération-Nord and the Organisation civile et militaire in the Vichy area. He later joined the Comité d'Action Socialiste. When the Vichy regime forbade him to teach, Brossolette and his wife opened a bookstore in Paris. The store became a resistance meeting place.

In April 1942 Brossolette left France clandestinely and met with Charles de Gaulle as a representative of the resistance. He worked for the Free French Secret Service, BCRA (Bureau Central de Renseignement et d'Action), in liaison with the SOE, and was eventually parachuted back into Paris with André Dewavrin (a.k.a le Colonel Passy), BCRA's chief.

When he returned to Paris the second time, the Gestapo had gotten his name from an arrested resistance member (René Hardy) and kept him under surveillance. He escaped arrest many times. In September 1943 he tried to return to Britain by boat but the vessel shipwrecked and the Germans captured him. Initially the Gestapo did not recognize him without papers but he was eventually arrested and taken to the Gestapo HQ on Avenue Foch in Paris. Subjected to heavy torture and afraid that he would implicate others, he jumped to his death from a lavatory window on the HQ's sixth floor on March 22, 1944.de:Pierre Brossolette fr:Pierre Brossolette pl:Pierre Brossolette