Arrest of Jean Moulin at Caluire

On 21 June 1943 Jean Moulin attended a clandestine meeting at Caluire-et-Cuire near Lyon with senior Resistance figures. Moulin had been sent by Charles de Gaulle to help unify competing resistance movements and had recently become president of the National Council of the Resistance.

German security forces raided the meeting and arrested Moulin and several others. Klaus Barbie, head of the Gestapo in Lyon, became closely associated with Moulin’s interrogation and torture. Moulin died in German custody in July 1943.

Questions about how the Gestapo discovered the meeting became a lasting controversy within the history of the Resistance. Alex Gerlis’s Agent in the Shadows uses that atmosphere of betrayal as the foundation for a fictional British investigation in Lyon.