Carte network

The Carte network or Carte circuit or Carte organization was an early and illusory attempt at organizing French resistance to the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The creator of Carte, André Girard, claimed to have "plans in hand for preparing first sabotage teams, then larger guerrilla groups, and finally a private army some 300,000 strong" to liberate France. Girard's army existed mainly on paper and in the minds of a community of artists, musicians, and students living on the French Riviera. Girard persuaded the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive, (SOE) that his plan merited British help. Carte was eventually suppressed by the Germans and many of its members ended up in concentration camps or were executed.

Carte and SOE

The Carte network was the brainchild of André Girard, an artist living in Antibes on the French Riviera in 1941. Girard took the code name Carte which also became the name of his resistance network. In April 1941, he persuaded Henri Frager, an architect, to be his second in command and the pair set about recruiting intellectuals, soldiers, and others to become members of the network. Girard envisioned the recruitment of an army from anti-Nazi officers and men serving in the army of Vichy France to rise up against the German occupiers of France. For SOE headquarters in London it seemed "that they had found what they were looking for; a ready-made secret army which only needed arms and orders before it was ready to co-operate in throwing the Germans out of France."

SOE agent Francis Basin made a first contact with Girard in late fall 1941 and agent Peter Churchill was sent to Antibes in January 1942 to assess Girard's claims and the viability of Carte.