In the same year, other operations of the same kind took place throughout the country. They are less known than the previous one. But in his War Memoirs, the leader of the Free France estimated at fifteen billion francs the amount of "funds requisitioned by local chiefs pressed by necessity".

Very quickly, however, most of the hoards escaped the control of the armed Resistance. A few post-war national elected representatives called for investigations, but the reports disappeared, the judges dismissed the case, the most determined parliamentarians were exhausted.

However, everything was written, everything existed well. In order to know, it was therefore important to go to research and discover hundreds of files hidden in public or private archives, to meet witnesses long neglected.

Sixty years after the fact, Jean-Jacques Gillot and Jacques Lagrange, already authors of L'épuration en Dordogne selon Doublemètre, had accomplished this journey. Now, new elements are coming to complete their initial work to reveal the faces of politicians and unscrupulous businessmen who had acted underhand.

The authors

Jean-Jacques Gillot is the eldest son of a very young sailor of the Free France at the time when his grandparents supported the Secret Army. Master of Law, graduate in political science, doctor in contemporary history and reserve officer, he was a senior manager and director of institutions of a large public company. Author, co-author and research director of a dozen books appreciated by renowned academics, he is a founding member of the Association for a Scientific and Critical History of the Occupation (HSCO).

Jacques Lagrange was the son of a railway worker and precocious resistance fighter who resigned from the Communist Party after the war. As a teenager, he had lived through the times of the Occupation and those of the Liberation. Recently deceased, he was an author anxious to go further in the search for historical truth, a publisher of excellent reputation and a pillar of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord as much as he was a journalist, business leader and deputy mayor of Périgueux in charge of heritage for three successive mandates. This edition is a new tribute to his memory.

Preface by Jean-Michel Adenot