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Gilbert Norman

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Gilbert Maurice Norman
Born(1915-04-07)7 April 1915
Saint-Cloud, Paris, France
Died6 September 1944(1944-09-06) (aged 29)
KZ Mauthausen, Austria
Allegiance United Kingdom
Service / branch British Army
SOE
Years of service1940–1944
RankMajor
Service number156759
UnitPhysician/Prosper circuit
Battles / warsWorld War II
AwardsMention in Despatches[1]
Médaille de la Résistance

Gilbert Maurice Norman (7 April 1915 – 6 September 1944[2], code name Archambaud, was a British Army officer who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. SOE was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local resistance movements during World War II. Norman was the wireless operator and second in command of Prosper, SOE's most important network in France. He was captured in Paris by the Germans in June 1943 and executed in September 1944.

After his capture, Norman is alleged to have made an agreement with the Germans to assist them in the dismantling of Prosper and the arrest of many of its agents and the confiscation of tons of military equipment in exchange for the Germans agreeing that captured agents would not be executed. If such an agreement was made, it was not observed by the Germans who executed many of the captured agents.

Early life

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Norman was born in 1915, in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, to an English father and a French mother and was educated in France and England. He joined the army, receiving a commission in the Durham Light Infantry in November 1940 and was subsequently recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE).[3] Norman was considered an "ideal recruit" for SOE with "great qualities of leadership and physical endurance." He was "handsome, gray-eyed and swarthy, mustacioed and capable." [4]

Prosper

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The Prosper or Physician network was SOE's most important network in France. Based in Paris, Prosper's three core members were Francis Suttill, the organizer or leader, Norman, the wireless operator and second in command, and Andrée Borrel, the courier whose French was better than either Suttills or Normans. Borrel and Suttill preceded Norman to France.[5][6] Borrel and Norman reputably became lovers in France.[7]

On the night of 31 October/1 November 1942, Norman parachuted into France near Saint-Laurent-Nouan, about 150 km (93 miles) southeast of Paris. Norman carried with him a poison pill to kill French resister Pierre Culioli. SOE agent Raymond Flower had accused Culioli of being a double agent. Neither Norman nor other SOE agents was willing to administer the pill. Culioli subsequently created the small Adolph Network which became a sub-network of Prosper.[8]

Based in Paris, the Prosper network enjoyed success in attracting French resisters to Nazi occupation over a large area of northern France. Within a few months almost 30 SOE agents and hundreds of French resisters were working under the Prosper umbrella. Hundreds of containers of weapons and military equipment were dropped by the Royal Air Force to arm the resistance and to prepare for the invasion of France by American and British armies. (The invasion did not occur until June 1944.) However, the network grew too large to be secure; the leaders had too much contact with each other and other members of Prosper; security was poor. It was a case, said author Vance, of professional policemen [the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD)] chasing amateur agents. The Germans apparently had been aware of Prosper for several months before they finally decided to suppress the organization.[9][10]

The capture and captivity of SOE leaders (Suttill, Norman, and Borrel) has been the subject of many historians with different interpretations, including conspiracy theories, of the events. The British government was close-mouthed for many years about Prosoper and the fate of SOE agents, although the facts were slowly teased out during the 1950s by author Jean Overton Fuller and politician Irene Ward. The official history, SOE in France authored by M.R.D. Foot, was first published in 1966 and later revised.

Capture and captivity

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Norman changed his addresses in Paris frequently, living for a time with Borrel's sister and later with a childhood friend named Laurent. On the night of 23 June 1943, Borrel and Norman were captured by the Germans while coding messages in the Laurent's apartment near the Rue de la Pompe metro station. They had been followed there by the SD. The Germans also captured Norman's wireless and his codes which would enable them to communicate with SOE headquarters in London. Suttill was captured the next morning.[11]

As high value prisoners, the Germans took Norman, Borrel, and Suttill to 84 Avenue Foch, the headquarters of Josef Kieffer, SD leader in Paris. They were subjected to several days of intense interrogation. Kieffer's interrogation tactics were to break down a prisoner's resistance to providing information by demonstrating how much he knew about SOE; greeting prisoners by both their real and code names, which were supposedly known only to SOE headquarters; showing them a wall chart of SOE's organization; suggesting that the Germans and British had a common interest in fighting communism; and planting in prisoner's minds the notion that they had been betrayed by infiltrators in high places in SOE.[12]

The British government's official SOE historian, M.R.D. Foot, said that one of the agents "cracked" and the evidence pointed to Gilbert Norman.[13] The Germans wanted to conceal the fact that Prosper was being destroyed. They used captured wirelesses to misinform SOE headquarters with messages supposedly from SOE agents. Feigning cooperation, Norman attempted to notify SOE that he had been captured. On 29 June he helped the Germans send a wireless message to London. To show the authenticity of messages, wireless operators had two "checks" they inserted into messages. Norman omitted one of the checks, the secret "true check". If the true check was missing, it meant that the agent was either not the transmitter of the message or was transmitting the message under duress. Instead of believing what the missing check signified, SOE instead responded by chastising Norman for forgetting to insert the true check and telling him to do better next time.[14] The egregious error by SOE headquarters, according to Josef Goetz, SD's wireless expert, was what pushed Norman "over the margin of doubt and into practical co-operation" with the Germans.[15]

As Norman did not survive the war to defend himself, most of the evidence that he collaborated with the Germans came from post-war statements by his German captors. Interviewed after the war, Kieffer said only that Suttill "did not want to make a statement", but Norman "had not the integrity of Prosper".[16] Wireless expert Josef Goetz said that Norman "had been quite helpful..., especially as regards the moral effect his appearance on apparently good terms with his captors, had on agents captured later."[17]

Kieffer and Norman (and possibly Suttill) allegedly concluded a "pact" for Norman's cooperation with the Germans. The terms of the alleged pact were that the Germans would allow all captured SOE agents to live if Norman would identify the agents and French collaborators in the Prosper network and lead the Germans to stores of arms and military equipment that had been parachuted into France by SOE. Whether or not such a pact existed, several SOE agents recorded incidents of Norman cooperating with the Germans. For example, Andrée Borrel's bother-in-law, Robert Arend, said that Norman came to his home with three Germans, confiscated his wireless, and sent him to prison in Buchenwald concentration camp. Foot estimates that the total number of people captured by the Germans may have reached 400. If a pact existed, the Germans did not observe it for long. Many of those captured in 1943 were executed in 1944 or 1945 or died in German concentration camps.[18]

Several captured SOE agents said that Norman told them that Suttill had approved of the "pact" although there is little evidence that Suttill approved or even knew of the pact. While Norman was given access to other captured SOE agents, Suttill was kept in isolation and sent to Germany about 8 July.[19]

By mid-July 1943, SOE realized that Suttill, Borrel, and others had been captured by the Germans, but believed that Gilbert Norman was still free because of the wireless messages received ostensibly from him. On 23 July SOE Deputy Nicolas Bodington and radio operator Jack Agazarian arrived in France by clandestine aircraft to investigate the status of Prosper. They were met on the ground by Henri Déricourt, a double agent whose SOE code name was "Gilbert." The coincidence of two Gilberts has caused problems for historians. Bodington and Agazarian proceeded to Paris. Through radio contacts and notes supposedly from Norman, Bodington and Agazarian set up a meeting with Norman at a Paris apartment. Suspicious of treachery, only Agazarian went to the apartment where Germans met and captured him. After Agazarian's capture, Bodington stayed in Paris for another two weeks and made contact with a few surviving SOE agents in Paris, although most were also soon captured. Agazarian was later executed.[20][21]

During the winter of 1943-44, Norman was transferred from 84 Avenue Foch to Fresnes Prison in Paris. During the transfer, he attempted to escape and was shot in the leg.[22] He was later transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany, where he was executed on 6 September 1944.[23]

Major Gilbert Norman is honoured on the Brookwood Memorial in Surrey, England, and is also on the "Roll of Honour" on the Valençay SOE Memorial in the town of Valençay, in the Indre departément of France.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "No. 37450". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 January 1946. p. 750.
  2. ^ Suttill, Francis J. (2014). Shadows in the Fog. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press. p. 142. ISBN 9780750957625. Kindle edition.
  3. ^ Vance, Jonathan F. (2008). Unlikely Soldiers. Toronto: Harper Collins. p. 170. ISBN 9780002007351.
  4. ^ Rose, Sarah (2019). D-Day Girls. New York: Broadway Books. p. 82. ISBN 9780451495099.
  5. ^ Vigurs, Kate (2021). Mission France. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 78. ISBN 9780300208573.
  6. ^ Vance 2008, p. 144.
  7. ^ Vance 2008, p. 181.
  8. ^ Suttill 2014, p. 38.
  9. ^ Foot, M. R. D. (2004). SOE in France. London: Frank Cass. pp. 134, 231, 252. ISBN 0714655287. Revised edition.
  10. ^ Vance 2008, pp. 182–189.
  11. ^ Foot 2004, p. 280, 290.
  12. ^ Helm, Sarah (2005). A Life in Secrets. New York: Anchor Books. pp. 115–118. ISBN 9781400031405.
  13. ^ Foot 2004, p. 281.
  14. ^ Vance 2008, pp. 202–210.
  15. ^ Foot 2004, p. 291.
  16. ^ Helm 2005, p. 359.
  17. ^ Foot 2004, p. 282.
  18. ^ Foot 2004, pp. 281–285.
  19. ^ Suttill 2018, pp. 302–319.
  20. ^ Suttill 2018, pp. 251–256.
  21. ^ Verity 2017, pp. 113, 211.
  22. ^ Fuller, Jean Overton (2023). The German Penetration of SOE. Sapere Books. pp. 141–142.. Kindle edition. Originally published in 1975.
  23. ^ Vance 2008, p. 266.

Bibliography

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