The réseau Gloria SMH (Gloria network) was a

French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

network under the

German occupation of France during World War II The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...

. The Gloria network was founded by Gabrielle Picabia, alias "Gloria", who was running it with Jacques Legrand (

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

). It counted among its members Alfred Péron, '' normalien'' and English professor at the ''

Lycée Buffon The Lycée Buffon is a secondary school in the XVe arrondissement of Paris, bordered by boulevard Pasteur, the rue de Vaugirard and the rue de Staël. Its nearest métro station is Pasteur. It is named for Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffo ...

''. The network depended on the British

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

, in conjunction with the

SOE SOE may refer to: Organizations * State-owned enterprise * Special Operations Executive, a British World War II clandestine sabotage and resistance organisation ** Special Operations Executive in the Netherlands, or Englandspiel * Society of Opera ...

. The network's mission was to gather military and naval information about the occupiers. Its members were

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...

s, managers, and artists including an engraver who was very useful for producing

false documents A false document is a technique by which an author aims to increase verisimilitude in a work of fiction by inventing and inserting or mentioning documents that appear to be factual. The goal of a false document is to convince an audience that what ...

. The Gloria network was infiltrated by Father

Robert Alesch Robert Alesch (6 March 1906 – 25 January 1949) was a Catholic priest and collaborator with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Biography Alesch was born 6 March 1906 in Aspelt, Luxembourg. He claimed that his father was a Lorraine Frenc ...

and was decimated in August 1942. Most of the operatives, including Péron, were arrested by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

and his companion

Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil Suzanne Georgette Anna Déchevaux-Dumesnil (Argenteuil 7 January 1900 – Paris 17 July 1989)Nathalie Sarraute in the free zone. In total, more than 80 members of the network were deported and many never returned from

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ...

or Buchenwald. The head of the network, Jacques Legrand, died in Mauthausen, and Péron died in Switzerland two days after his return from Mauthausen.

References

Sources

* Bureau Résistance and family archives * * Davies, William (2020). ''Samuel Beckett and the Second World War''. London: Bloomsbury. 1942 disestablishments in France Organizations disestablished in 1942 French Resistance networks and movements {{World-War-II-stub