''Réseau Morhange'' ("Morhange network") was a French resistance group created in 1943 by Marcel Taillandier in

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

. The group organised direct action and counterintelligence against the German occupiers and collaborators of

Vichy France Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the Battle of France, ...

The Morhange Group

The group was constituted of 82 agents officially engaged in the conflict against

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. Morhange was a Counterintelligence organisation against the counterintelligence of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

and the

Abwehr The (German language, German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', though the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context) ) was the German military intelligence , military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ...

. In 1940, Commandeur Paillole was responsible for the counterintelligence services of the Vichy army. However he continued to work with the British services against the German intelligence

whose objective was to track down French resistance fighters. In November 1942, when Nazi Germany invaded Vichy France, Paillole fled to Spain before reaching London where he was welcomed by members of the

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

before being transferred to

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

. Paillole orders reached Marchel Taillandier who led the Morhange group and the French resistance in Toulouse against the German occupier.

Connections with other groups

The Morhange Group operated with other groups in the Toulouse area: *The groups of

Marie Dissard Marie-Louise Dissard, (6 November 1881 – July 1957) (code named "Françoise"), was a member of the French Resistance during the German occupation of France in World War II. She initially worked with the Pat O'Leary Line, a network which helpe ...

and of

Albert Guérisse Major General Count Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse (5 April 1911 – 26 March 1989) was a Belgian Resistance member who organized French and Belgian escape routes for downed Allied pilots during World War II under the alias of Patrick Albert ...

who hid and smuggled allied soldiers all across France into Spain via the

Pyrenees The Pyrenees are a mountain range straddling the border of France and Spain. They extend nearly from their union with the Cantabrian Mountains to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean coast, reaching a maximum elevation of at the peak of Aneto. ...

*The socialist group "Libérer Fédérer" of

Silvio Trentin Silvio (, ) is an Italian male name, the male equivalent of Silvia. Sílvio is a variant of the name in Portuguese. It is derived from the Latin " Silvius", meaning "spirit of the wood," and may refer to: People * Silvio Benítez (born 1935), f ...

, an anti-fascist Italian. *The VIRA group. *The Franc-Tireur movement. *

Libération-sud ''Libération-sud'' ( French for "Liberation-South") was a resistance group active between 1940-1944 and created in the Free Zone of France during the Second World War in order to fight against the Nazi occupation through coordinated sabotage a ...

. *The Combat French resistance group. *The

Armée secrète The armée secrète was a French military organization active during World War II. The collective grouped the paramilitary formations of the three most important Gaullist resistance movements in the southern zone. History In mid-1942, in ...

The Lost Airman

Seth Meyerowitz in his book The Lost Airman (Atlantic Books, London) writes about his grandfather Arthur Meyerowitz, who was in the crew of a B-24 bomber Harmful Lil Armful during a bombing run over occupied France. The B-24 was badly damaged by German anti-aircraft 88mm cannons and Arthur parachuted out of his stricken plane over Nazi-German-occupied France, eventually escaping with the help of the resistance through Spain and Gibraltar back via Bristol, England to the United States. Arthur was indebted to many that helped him and the Morhange resistance, especially Marcel Taillandier. The book ends with 18 pages of carefully researched notes relating to France during the period December 1943 to June 1944.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reseau Morhange French Resistance networks and movements