Michel Hollard

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Michel Hollard (July 10, 1897 in Epinay, Eure–July 16, 1993) was a colonel and a member of the French Resistance during World War II.

1 His Spy Network
2 The V-1 Launching Ramps
3 The Arrest
4 Distinctions
5 Family
6 External links
7 Bibliograghy

[edit] His Spy Network

In 1941, he founded the spy network AGIR. It was attached to the S.I.S. and composed of one hundred agents. He worked under the cover of managing a company producing gas generators.

[edit] The V-1 Launching Ramps

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

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

At the end of December 1943, the 103 V-1 launch sites in France, that formed a circular arc from the Basse-Normandie to the 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 Neuengamme concentration camp. He was saved from the sinking of the SS Cap Arcona by Count Folke Bernadotte who, informed by British Intelligence, had saved the lives of some French-speaking deportees aboard this ship.