René Hardy
French resistance member (1911–1987)

René Hardy (31 October 1911 – 12 April 1987) was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. Hardy was born in Mortrée, Orne. In spite of having rendered dedicated and valuable service as a member of the resistance group, Combat (French Resistance), he was still suspected of being instrumental in the arrest of Jean Moulin, General Charles Delestraint and other members of the resistance. Despite later being acquitted in 2 separate trials, those suspicions never went away.
Treason
In January 1943 Hardy was seduced by the 20-year-old Lydie Bastien, described by one journalist as a great "French beauty" whose true loyalty was to her German lover, Gestapo officer Harry Stengritt. Hardy was arrested on 7 June 1943 when he walked into a trap laid by Bastien. Bastien, a devotee of the occult and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, had taken Stengritt as her lover and was paid for her work for the Gestapo in the form of gems that Stengritt had confiscated from French Jews before deporting them to Auschwitz. In turn, Stengritt worked for Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon". Bastien recalled: "I was already working for the Germans and they told me how to find and get to know Hardy, whom I met and seduced at their request". Hardy fell madly in love with her, and Bastien later mentioned: "He was soon obsessed with me. Very quickly he was telling me all his secrets and I had complete access to his secret files." Bastien loathed Hardy and slept with him only out of her loyalty to Strengritt and the gems he paid her.
The public source identifies “René Hardy” as french resistance member (1911–1987). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around René, Hardy and French.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q567029. VIAF identifies the subject as 100241733. The Library of Congress control number is n85083135. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1987 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “René Hardy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.