Free French agents and Resistance fighters

In September 1944, the Directorate-General for Special Services (DGSS) was installed in Paris. The archives, which up until then had been kept largely in London and Algiers, were returned to France. Part of the documentation, no longer of operational or administrative interest, was deposited in the National Archives, while part of it was kept by the special services that succeeded the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action (BCRA). These archives reflect the activities of the networks and, more generally, of the services of Free France. They consist of two series, comprising thousands of individual files of BCRA agents: the first, compiled in London, is in alphabetical order by agent’s surname; the second, produced later in Paris, contains documents listed by network. The BCRA archive comprises reports of interrogations carried out by the counter-espionage section, collections of telegrams and cables exchanged with agents working in France, and all of the BCRA’s financial and accounting records.