Michel Hollard

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Michel Hollard (July 10, 1897 in Epinay, Eure–July 16, 1993) was a French colonel, who was a famous resistant during World War II.

1 His spy network
2 The V-1 launching ramps
3 The arrest
4 Distinctions
5 Family
6 External link
7 Bibliograghy

[edit] His spy network

In 1941, he constituted the spy network AGIR, rattached to the S.I.S. and composed of one hundred agents, under cover of managing a company producing gas generators.

[edit] The V-1 launching ramps

In the summer 1943, one of his agents, an engineer of railways in Rouen, signaled that several building-yards of an unusual complexity had appeared in Haute-Normandie. Hollard went to Rouen, in disguise as a parson, and persuaded a local responsible to communicate to him the list of building-yards. They were building V-1 launching ramps.

He communicated the information to the British (MI6) by the Embassy of Great Britain in Berne, going through the Swiss border 98 times (49 trips).

In the end of December 1943, the 103 launch sites of V-1 in France, that formed an arch of circle going from the Basse-Normandie to Pas-de-Calais, were systematically bombed by the RAF.

[edit] The arrest

In 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris, tortured, imprisoned in Fresnes Prison and sentenced to death.
He was deported to the concentration camp of Neuengamme. He was saved from the sinking of SS Cap Arcona by the Count Folke Bernadotte who, informed by the British Intelligence, had saved the lifes of some french-speaker deportees aboard this ship.