Gestapo by Lucas Saul

Gestapo by Lucas Saul

Author:Lucas Saul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcturus Digital


Destruction of the Prosper Network

The British Special Operations Executive’s largest Resistance network in occupied France was the ‘Physician-Prosper’ (or simply ‘Prosper’) network. It was set up in 1942 and headed by Francis Suttill, a London barrister with a British father and French mother. Suttill succeeded in establishing a large and highly effective group of anti-Nazi partisans and throughout the early part of 1943 arms and agents flowed into France from Britain at a prodigious rate. As the group grew in influence, however, the risks of its discovery grew too. On 12 June 1943 an arms drop went badly wrong when a container exploded, and a local collaborator reported the event to the Gestapo. The area was flooded with over 500 Gestapo and SS men, who conducted house-to-house searches and arrested anyone they suspected of aiding the arms drop. Despite this, the British elected to parachute a further two SOE agents into the area just eight days later.

The SOE operative sent to meet the parachutists was Yvonne Rudelatt, the first female SOE agent parachuted into occupied France in the Second World War. An interior decorator from Kensington, London, Rudelatt was recruited while working as manageress of a London hotel at which many senior members of the SOE stayed. The SOE were keen to use women as agents as they were less likely to draw the suspicion of the Gestapo than men of military age out of uniform. Rudelatt quickly became vital to the SOE network in France and played a key role in several of the Resistance’s most significant, and dangerous, operations. On 20 June 1943 she was tasked with picking up SOE agents Frank Pickersgill and John McAlister. The Germans were waiting for them. As the agents sped away from the drop-point, their car was showered with bullets and Rudelatt was struck twice. The bullet that lodged in her brain was too dangerous to remove, but her injuries were not life-threatening. She revealed nothing during her interrogation and was transported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She died of typhus there shortly after the camp was liberated. At the time of her death she was still using her cover-name of Jacqueline Gautier and was buried in a mass-grave without being identified as an SOE agent.

A further wave of arrests and interrogations followed in the wake of the capture of the SOE agents, however, and the information gleaned from them led the Gestapo to Francis Suttill. He was arrested, along with other key members of the Prosper network such as Andrée Borrel and Gilbert Norman. All were interrogated and Suttill was singled out for especially severe torture at the Gestapo headquarters at 84 Avenue Foch. After several days of brutal punishments he was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin where he was held in solitary confinement until his execution in March 1945.

Some writers have claimed that Suttill agreed to provide the Germans with information, while others maintain it was Gilbert Norman who cracked. Whatever the truth, hundreds of local agents were arrested



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