When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, the Catholic Church was widely seen as a refuge for the hunted. But one priest used that trust as cover for a double life that would make him one of the most dangerous collaborators in occupied France. Robert Alles was born on March 6, 1906, in Aspelt, Luxembourg. His father was a French patriot from Lorraine, a border region long contested between France and Germany.
According to later accounts, the elder Alles was allegedly tortured by Germans during the First World War. Robert Alles took a different path. He studied theology in the Swiss city of Fribourg and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1933. By 1935, he had moved to the Parisian suburb of La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, where he served as assistant vicar before becoming vicar of the parish.
His openly anti-Nazi sermons and pro-Allied rhetoric earned him the trust of his congregation, particularly women drawn to his confidence and charisma. His public hostility toward the occupiers seemed genuine, and that perception would prove devastating. When France fell in June 1940, the country was split between a German-occupied zone and the collaborationist Vichy regime in the south. German intelligence expanded its search for informers who could penetrate communities the authorities struggled to reach.
Churches became prime targets for infiltration. In 1942, Alles was formally hired by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Bilingual in French and German, he acted not out of ideological conviction, according to postwar assessments, but from personal ambition and a desire for self-enrichment. He maintained an apartment in the affluent 16th arrondissement of Paris, where he lived with two mistresses, Geneviève Guégan and Renée Audouard, both described as devoted accomplices.
His instructions were to infiltrate resistance groups, make himself indispensable, and report the names of fighters to his superiors. One of his most significant victims was Germaine Tillion, a leading member of an early resistance network that cooperated with the Gloria network, founded by Gabrielle Picabia and led in the field by Jacques Lecompte-Boinet. Alles infiltrated Tillion’s circle during this period, persuading members with his confident manner and apparent hatred of the Nazis. He was entrusted with carrying messages from Paris to Lyon.
Instead of delivering them, he passed everything directly to the Abwehr. His actions crippled communications between the networks and opened the door to a wave of arrests. Tillion’s group was also in contact with a network led by Pierre de Vomécourt, one of the early organizers of armed resistance in France. The Abwehr had arrested de Vomécourt in 1942 and held him in prison.
Alles claimed he could secure the cooperation of a German officer if the resistance paid him 300,000 francs. The resistance paid the money. Alles kept the entire sum and then denounced everyone involved to the Abwehr. De Vomécourt remained in prison.
On August 13, 1942, Jacques Lecompte-Boinet, Germaine Tillion, her mother, and the main leaders of the Gloria network were arrested. Over the rest of the month, roughly 80 members were taken into custody. They were held in Paris prisons, subjected to long interrogations and, in several cases, torture. They were later transferred to the camp at Fort de Romainville, then deported to the concentration camps of Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Ravensbrück.
Lecompte-Boinet, his deputy, and many others did not return from deportation. Germaine Tillion’s mother, Émilie Tillion, a French writer and art critic, was murdered at Ravensbrück. Throughout this period, Alles continued supplying information to the Nazis, receiving 12,000 francs per month, the salary of a high-ranking officer, along with bonuses for each person he betrayed. Alles also set his sights on Virginia Hall, the American-born agent working for the British Special Operations Executive.
Her operations in Lyon played a crucial role in linking resistance groups to London. By May 1942, she had agreed to transmit messages from the Gloria network to the British, unaware that Alles was already preparing to insert himself into her contacts. In August of that year, he presented himself as a courier connected to Gloria. Hall doubted him at first, especially after learning that Gloria had been dismantled.
When questioned about his slight German accent, he claimed he was from Alsace and reinforced the story with emotional claims about his father being killed by German soldiers. He delivered what appeared to be extremely useful intelligence on the Atlantic Wall, the massive coastal fortification project Hitler hoped would prevent an Allied landing. After winning Hall’s confidence, Alles slipped into her network of couriers and wireless operators, setting off a chain of arrests and sending false messages to London in Hall’s name. Many of those captured did not survive.
Alles was then sent to Normandy with orders to infiltrate local resistance groups involved in sabotage or intelligence activity. According to postwar documents, he was responsible in that region for 34 arrests followed by shootings or deportations. Twenty-eight resistance members were either executed or did not return from the concentration camps. The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945.
Three months later, Alles was arrested in Brussels by American authorities and handed over to the French police. During questioning, he offered a partial confession but repeatedly tried to minimize his responsibility. At his trial before the Court of Justice, where he appeared alongside his two mistresses, his behavior was described as particularly odious and arrogant. At one point, the presiding judge pressed him to confirm whether he had been born in Luxembourg.
After twice refusing to answer, he declared: “I was a Luxembourger. I became a German. Constrained and forced, I did my duty as a German and a soldier. ”
He then argued that a miscarriage of justice had occurred and attempted to delay proceedings, claiming that after-effects of the Spanish flu he had contracted in 1918 should be considered a mitigating circumstance.
Court-appointed psychiatrists rejected the argument, concluding that he was perfectly aware of his actions. The judges noted that Alles showed perfect lucidity of mind. The court ruled that his crimes had been committed with full knowledge of the facts by an intelligent, skillful, and deceitful accused, and that no mitigating circumstances could apply. While one of his mistresses received a prison sentence and the other was acquitted, Alles was found guilty of intelligence with the enemy and condemned to death.
He was executed by firing squad on January 25, 1949. He was 42 years old.
