French resistance hero Jean Moulin was murdered by the Gestapo July 8, 1943.

Moulin managed to unite the disparate factions resisting the Nazis into a coordinated organisation. He served as the first President of the National Council of the Resistance until his death. 

“It would be insane and criminal, in the event of Allied action on the continent, not to make use of troops prepared for the greatest sacrifices, scattered and unorganized today, but tomorrow capable of making up a united army of parachute troops already in place, familiar with the terrain and having already selected their enemy and determined their objective.”
Jean Moulin 1941

Jean Moulin 1899-1943
Resistance Heroes series
Issued 1957 by France
Designer and engraver: René Cottet

 

Jean Moulin Memorial
Issued 2009 by French post office
Designer and engraver: André Lavergne

Based in Lyon, operating under the code name “Max,” traveling throughout France and keeping one step ahead of the Gestapo and the despised Vichy milice police force, Moulin organized the Press and Information Bureau, a Resistance press service; the General Study Committee, a rudimentary brain trust charged with studying post-liberation reforms; a service that oversaw radio communications with London; another service that organized vital parachute drops and clandestine air transport between England and France; and a secret army, a pool of the paramilitary forces of the three major Resistance organizations whose actions were coordinated by London. His greatest triumph was the creation of the National Council of Resistance on May 27, 1943, a sixteen-member organization that precariously brought together representatives from eight Resistance groups, five political parties, and two trade unions. In a secret meeting held in Paris, its first action was a vote to recognize de Gaulle as the head of a French provisional government.
The Death of Jean Moulin: The French Resistance Gets Its Greatest Martyr | Defense Media Network

Moulin was betrayed to the Gestapo and arrested June 21, 1943. He endured 3 weeks of torture at the hands of Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon. ‘In Jean Moulin, the biography of her brother, Laure Moulin wrote, “Jeered at, savagely beaten, his head bleeding, his internal organs ruptured, he attained the limits of human suffering without betraying a single secret, he who knew everything.”’ (Ibid).

Read more about Jean Moulin Jean Moulin Memorial – Caluire et Cuire | The town of Caluire et Cuire makes you discover the Jean Moulin memorial

Last year’s stamp was devoted to Romantic poet, playwright, radical, free thinker and all around rogue Percy Bysshe Shelley