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Overlooked Important WWII Figures from History

Khalid Elhassan October 20, 2019 31 min

27. Joining the French Resistance

French Resistance fighters in Wimelle, September, 1944. YouTube

Harold Cole managed to escape from the Germans, and made his way to Lille. There, he got in touch with the French Resistance, claiming to be a British intelligence agent sent to organize escape lines to get stranded and escaped British military personnel back home. The French believed him, and for some time, Cole actually did positive work, escorting escaped personnel across Nazi-occupied territory to the relative safety of Vichy France, from which they slipped into Spain and a ship back home.

However, Cole also embezzled from the monies intended to finance Resistance operations, in order to fund a high society lifestyle of nightclubs, pricey restaurants, expensive champagne, fast cars, and faster girls. When his thefts came to light in 1941, the Resistance arrested and locked Cole up, but while they were deliberating just what to do about him, he escaped.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.