SECRET ARMIES
36
government buildings)
indicate supervision by high military
officials.
When
outs,
enormous loads of arms smuggled
Italian borders,
trained in pistol,
when thousands
rifle
back
far
as
across
dug
German
of people are drilled
and machine-gun
practice,
that the competent French Intelligence Service
Nationale should not get wind of it.
As
for
butchers and bakers lorries rattle over ancient cob
blestones with
and
buy enormous quantities of cement
contractors
when
it is
and
impossible
and the Surete
September, 1936, the Surete Nationale knew
some leading French industrialists with the cooperation of
the German and Italian Governments were building a military
that
organization within France. Nevertheless it quietly per
mitted fortresses to be built and stocked with munitions. The
fascist
French Army, from reports of Intelligence
Italy, knew that those countries were
arms into France, but they permitted it to go on. The
smuggling
General Staff knew that some eight hundred concrete fortresses
were being built under the supervision of M. Anceaux, a build
General
Staff of the
men
Germany and
in
ing contractor of Dieppe, and that skilled members of the Secret
Committee for Revolutionary Action had been recruited for the
building and sworn to secrecy under penalty of death. They
knew that these fortresses were equipped with sending and re
ceiving radios, knew that some were within the shadow of mili
tary centers, knew that the Cagoulards had a far-flung espionage
system. But the French General Staff made no effort to stop it.
The Popular Front Government was in power at the time,
and heads of the Supreme War Council apparently preferred a
fascist France to a democratic one. In fact, officers and reserve
officers of
cooperated with secret agents of their
Germany, to build up this formidable secret
the French
traditional enemy,
Army
army.
The
investigating authorities, stunned
by
their discoveries
and