Pierre Bonny

Pierre Bonny (25 January 1895 – 26 December 1944) was a French corrupt police officer. As an inspector, he was the investigating officer on the 1923 Seznec case, in which he has been accused of falsifying the evidence.[2][3] He was once praised as one of the most talented police officers in the country, helping to solve the notorious Stavisky financial scandal in 1934.[4] In 1935, he was jailed for 3 years on corruption charges.

Pierre Bonny
Pierre Bonny in 1934
Born25 January 1895[1]
Bordeaux, France
Died26 December 1944 (1944-12-27) (aged 49)
Arcueil, France
Cause of deathExecution by firing squad
OccupationPoliceman
Allegiance Nazi Germany
 Vichy France

During World War II, France was occupied by Nazi Germany. Bonny became a collaborator and joined the French Gestapo, known as the Carlingue. Upon the Liberation of Paris he was put on trial and later convicted on war crimes. He was executed by firing squad on 26 December 1944 alongside career criminal Henri Lafont and footballer-turned-crook Alexandre Villaplane.[5]

Beside the overwhelming memory of a traitor and unscrupulous collaborator, he is commonly seen as incarnating the figure of a corrupt man; the executor of the lower works of the Vichy regime.

He is held to be the basis for the character of Monsieur Philibert in Patrick Modiano's wartime novel La Ronde de Nuit (The Night Watch).[6]

Early life

Bonny was born on January 25, 1895 in Bordeaux, France. His parents were farmers. After finishing his secondary education in Bordeaux, he briefly found office work at a Peugeot branch, and then at the Compagnie générale transatlantique (or the French Line). In December 1915, he was drafted and became a POW shortly thereafter, during the Battle of the Somme. He remained imprisoned for the majority of the war. Repatriated to France in 1918, he was posted as secretary to the general staff of the Bordeaux military region, with the rank of corporal.[7]

Police work (1920-1927)

In 1919, Bonny took the police exam and became an inspector in the provisional police force that was operating in liberated regions. He married Blanche Émie in 1920,[8] and worked in Somme, France, before being transferred to the oversight unit of the Sûreté générale's forensic investigation services in Paris on August 11, 1922. He would spend the rest of his career there, working under divisional commissioners Vidal, Granger, and then Hennet until his termination in January, 1935. The Sûreté, nicknamed "The Secret", was under the command of the Minister of the Interior, and was located on the rue des Saussaies. Their jurisdiction was expansive, and included the policing of gambling, associations, syndicates, and other groups with potential to cause civil unrest, surveillance of foreigners and counter-espionage, as well as business, press, and publishing. Although they were responsible for the entire region, the Sûreté's budget was limited compared to that of its rival, the Paris Prefecture of Police and its Directorate of Judicial Police.[9]

Assignment to counterintelligence

This is a period of uncertainty in Bonny's career. It is thought that during this period, Bonny was temporarily dispatched to work in counterintelligence for the Minister of War. According to his son, Jacques Bonny, he resolved a number of leaks which supposedly earned him favor with General Maud'huy.[10] The date of these events is uncertain. Maurice Garçon believes they took place before Bonny's entrance into the police force,[11] but Jacques Bonny, drawing from an anonymous article in Détective magazine from the early 1930s, places these events in the early 1920s.[12] The following is Bonny's principal biographer's (Guy Prenaud) comment on the subject: "one wonders whether it was not at that time, having then acquired the reputation of a particularly capable man, that some people thought of employing Pierre Bonny for work that was rather confidential, but undoubtedly a little undesirable because it was on the borderline of legality."[7], whereas Jacques Bonny is quoted saying the following: "No sooner had he joined the police force than, thanks to luck and his special skills, he unconsciously got his dick caught in the wringer, perhaps the most dangerous one of all: 'parapolitics', so as not to say politics in general."[8]

The Seznec Affair

In January 1923, Bonny obtained the grade of trainee inspector at the Sûreté générale.[7] Posted as a "clerical secretary" to Commissioner Achille Vidalin June 1923, he became involved in the Seznec Affair where he played only a minor role. The case cited over 500 meeting minutes/other records, and Bonny's name appeared in only four minutes (only one of which he drew up himself), and in five reports.[13] Bonny did not discover the famous typewriter, which was one of the key pieces of evidence in the Seznec Affair, however, he was assigned to transport the typewriter to Paris so that it could be examined as part of the investigation.[7]

Bonny's presence in the investigation took on considerable importance much later. Joseph Marie Guillaume Seznec's post-war defense, based on late testimonies, makes Bonny out to have orchestrated the conspiracy and to be the author of allegedly false witness statements against Seznec. After the request for revision made in 1955 at the direction of the journalist Claude Bal, it is one of the arguments formed by the lawyer Denis Langlois in 1977, and is among those newly presented in 2001 by Jean-Denis Bredin.

References
  1. "Pierre Bonny entry at France Justice". Archived from the original on 2009-01-26. Retrieved 2008-05-28.
  2. Between Justice And Politics: The Ligue Des Droits De L'Homme, 1898-1945, William D. Irvine, Leland Stanford Jr University, 2007
  3. The French Against the French: Collaboration and Resistance, Milton Dank, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1974, p.214
  4. Mug shots: an archive of the famous, infamous, and most wanted, Raynal Pellicer, Abrams, 2009, pp.125-127
  5. The French Against the French: Collaboration and Resistance, Milton Dank, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1974, p.221
  6. Golsan, Richard Joseph (June 12, 2000). Vichy's Afterlife: History and Counterhistory in Postwar France. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803270941 – via Google Books.
  7. Penaud, Guy. (2011). L'inspecteur Pierre Bonny : le policier déchu de la gestapo française du 93, rue Lauriston. Paris: Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-55108-4. OCLC 726817784.
  8. Bonny, Jacques (1975). Mon père l'inspecteur Bonny. ROBERT LAFFONT. pp. 32, 65–66. ISBN 2221016068.
  9. Berlière, Jean-Marc (2007), "The Difficult Construction of a 'Republican' Police: The French Third Republic", Policing Interwar Europe, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 19–22, doi:10.1057/9780230599864_2, ISBN 978-1-349-54365-6
  10. Bonny, Jacques. (1975). Mon père, l'inspecteur Bonny. R. Laffont. pp. 32–33. OCLC 370754118.
  11. Garçon, Maurice (1957). Histoire de la justice sous la IIIe République, vol 1. Paris: Fayard.
  12. décembre 1934, Détective, n° 320, 13 (1934-12-13), Français: La silhouette fictive de Bonny lors d'une mission secrète au ministère de la guerre remontant aux années vingt illustre une double page du magazine Détective du 13 décembre 1934.Légende: au ministère de la guerre, il s'affublait en faux sergent pour débusquer des espions., retrieved 2020-07-30
  13. Rouz, Bernez, 1953- (2006). L'affaire Quéméneur-Seznec : enquête sur un mystère (Nouv. éd. rev ed.). Rennes: Apogée. ISBN 2-84398-238-3. OCLC 421546596.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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