The Starr Affair
The British authorities tried to prevent the publication of Fuller’s incredible and well-sourced book.
The Starr Affair by Jean Overton Fuller, publishedf by Victor Gollancz in 1954.
How do you warn someone who doesn't want to be warned? What happens when you don't know whom to trust? Those two questions drive a knife into Captain John Starr during his service behind enemy lines. He is one of many British-trained agents parachuted into France during WW2. Starr lived in France before war with Germany was declared in 1939. Starr passed as French and volunteered for the British.
Following Starr's capture by the Nazis, treachery, betrayal and survival take over. We then journey through interrogations, attempted escapes and a trip to the Mauthausen extermination camp.
Perhaps you've read about the French Resistance, Perhaps you have visited battlefield monuments, cemeteries and other locations meaningful to our understanding of history. Those types of journeys can now be made without fear.
Starr made the journey not once, but twice.
His escape from the Gestapo onto the roof tops of Paris, was but one incident that British MI5 officials claimed - after the war - did not take place. In fact, the behavior of the Brisith intelligence community was a real blow to Starr. British officers tried to put it about that Starr had actually been a traitor because their own efforts to aid the French Resistance were a complete waste of time and agents.
During the war all communications between Britain and Resistance forces in France had already been compromised - though London continued to send messages along with air drops of couriers and supplies.
It was a terrible business, what with so many Allied agents already either in custody in Gestapo headquarters in Paris, or in concentration camps located much further east. Starr risked his life for Britain, but was given the cold shoulder by the same group of military advisors who had trained him.
Only through the efforts of Jean Overton Fuller was Starr finally cleared of all false allegations.
For the French, the end of the war meant a reckoning for those who had collaborated with the Nazis. Tribunals were held, investigations undertaken and Starr was cleared by French authorities, with a shrug of the shoulders.
The British conspired to place the burden of their own intelligence failures on Starr’s shoulders.
A burden he never fully shed.
Paris, 1940
The cover of the paperback edition. Why the publishers decided to dream up a drawing of a German solider with the grin of death is beyond me.
An excerpt from the book: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France by Charles Glass.
”The German occupation of France, as Dickens wrote of the French Revolution, was the best and the worst of times. The defeat of the French Army in June 1940 challenged Frenchmen and -women to choose between courage and cowardice, rebellion and compliance, freedom and slavery. The worst collaborated with their occupier to enjoy the rewards that power afforded. The best and bravest resisted, turning for support to the ancient enemy, England. The British sent arms and, just as important, men and women to organize disparate French ranks into effective forces.”
