Rene Carmille

Rene Carmille , born with Trémolat in the Dordogne in 1886 - died “for France” in deportation with Dachau (Bavaria) in 1945. Polytechnicien (X 1906), French Officer, General inspector of the Armies, creator under the Occupation of the National service of the statistics (SNS), which will become INSEE in 1946, and of the number of individual code which will become, with the Libération, the Social security number always used in France.

The clandestine mobilization

Pioneer of the administrative use in France of the calculators with perforated cards, ( Of data processing in the administrations , Sirey 1936), Carmille had proposed, as of December 1934, to facilitate the military mobilization of the successive age groups, a number number intended to be allotted to the boys as of their birth and their declaration for the civil statue. He undertook some experiments, the principal one with Rouen. Carmille also treated with the Court of Auditors reform of the chart of accounts of the Armée. It represented the ministry for the War in various commissions of Statistique, and taught at the Private school of Political sciences. One has of him a work entitled Vues economy objectifies and a conference of 1938 “ on Germanisme ”.

Came the Drôle from war and the rout. There was more than one million prisoners. The Armistice left with the France the right to maintain an army 100.000 men. The colonel Of Vigier and the Carmille general inspector proposed with the Vichy government and the Staff to create a holding civil service of the registers Mécanographique S of the population, for a possible clandestine mobilization. Rene Carmille obtained the creation (December 15th 1940) of the Service of Demography , attached to the Ministry for Finances (this fastening is always that of INSEE). This service recovered part of the personnel of the offices of recruitment and the essence of their Archives which it continued to update. It was affected for him hundreds of officers and demobilized warrant officers. The central workshop was located at Lyon, six regional managements in southern zone, in Paris, others with Algiers, Tunis, Rabat. Three manufacturers then shared the French market of the “statistical machines”: Bull, the Company electro-accountant (CEC), subsidiary of IBM, and Samas-Powers, of English origin. Rene Carmille passed from significant markets with Bull. Did its relations with the Company electro-accountant cease quickly, because the most important European subsidiary company of IBM was the Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen, AG), the German subsidiary company, that Carmille had gone to visit (espionner?) pre-war period and whose several frameworks had become Members of the Commission of implementation of the agreements of Armistice.

Three operations of great width

To have a file usable in the event of re-mobilization, it was necessary

to create a Punched-card file soldiers and military personnel, including the prisoners;
to allot a number of identity to the whole of the Population;
To count population of active age, in particular to raise of them the professions, trade S and qualifications.

For the prisoners, Vichy negotiated with the Wehrmacht via the International committee of the Red Cross. Carmille noted whereas the number that he had imagined would have been much less cumbersome of number of characters and much surer as for the homonymy than the name and first name and the number number of use, of different type according to the weapons.

For " identifier" the population, i.e. to allot a number to each individual, one thus made proceed to the statements Birth certificates held by the Clerc's Offices of the courts, to equip with their number the million people born in France in the 65 last years. As it was a question of simulating an operation with civil purpose, one decided to raise the births of the two sexes, even if it means to add a thirteenth figure in first column, 1 for the men, 2 for the women. The future “Social security number” had been born. But the Minister for Justice Raphaël Alibert, in load of the " juive" question; , wished to distinguish the Juif S from the other inhabitants. Carmille pointed out that the civil statue did not make it possible to do it, except perhaps in Algérie. The statement took place finally from March to August 1941, without another code that the sex for the first column. The civil service charged with the quinquennial Recensement of the population was the general Statistique of France (SGF), directed by Henri Bunle. The censuses had taken place in 1931 and 1936, and the following should have taken place in 1941. Carmille made it replace by a Recensement, known as “of the community activities” (A.P.), with a nomenclature of the professions adapted to the possible mobilization. Not to have to submit the project to the authorities of Occupation, Carmille made limit the Recensement to the only “free zone”. Being oneself the Jews, they agreed to insert an additional declaratory question (n° 11): " Summers you of Jewish race? " , referring to the " statute of Juifs" promulgated on October 3rd 1940. The census took place on July 17th 1941. Was to be established a bulletin for each French or foreign person from 13 to 64 years. Neither the number of answers nor no result of this Recensement never were the subject of any publication.

National service of Statistics (SNS)

Henri Bunle and the SGF had obviously protested against the intrusion on their plat bands of camouflaged soldiers. The response did not delay. The Service of Demography absorbed the SGF, on October 11th 1941; the unit took the name of National service of the Statistics (SNS). Six new workshops were created in Northern zone. Future Regional managements of INSEE are set up thus.

If the clandestine mobilization is the central objective of Carmille, the SNS largely exceeds what the secret services usually do for a “cover”. Carmille applies from now on an elaborate program pre-war period, so that in three years it equips France with a civil statistical office powerful, managing files of individuals, companies and establishments, practitioner surveys and investigations, recruiting at the Polytechnic school of the executives which lend oath to respect a strict professional secrecy, having a School of application, which will become ENSAE in 1962. Blow, if the statisticians of the SGF consider this soldier with mistrust, the soldiers conversely always do not include/understand this Officer who largely overflows the missions that the army entrusts to him. As for the public, he regarded the Occupant as the inspirer of the census of the community activities. The SNS was durably compromised by it. It is however established today that neither census AP, nor the Carmille number had any role in the arrests, Déportation S and racial spoliations; no forever announced “bur”. The question n°11 " Summers you of Jewish race? " had other uses only to exclude - to exempt - Chantiers from youth some people who had declared themselves Jewish.

It is true that census AP of July 1941, bearing on population of zone Southern, was almost simultaneous with operation of police services of June 1941, bearing on only Jews, said by way of posters “census of Jews” and who resulted to documents that the services of the SNS of Clermont-Ferrand and Limoges were invited “to identify”, i.e. in supplementing by the identification number, for a punched-card exploitation. Carmille did not refuse anything explicitly but accumulated the difficulties. It as much as possible delayed the exploitation by oral instructions leading to a kind of “work-to-rule strike”, all the more easy to apply that many the people concerned had been born abroad or in Alsace annexed and had thus not had an allotted number of identity. It made so that coding requested does not lead, after three years of excuses, than in a “numerical state of the French and foreign Jews listed in June 1941”, in single specimen, which was not finished in February 1944, during the arrest of Carmille. They are anonymous tables , by sex and department, of the listed number of Juif S, classified by Nationalité and community activity, and where there is hardly but of the 0 and of the 1: how much Rumanian Jews of the male sex, followed in June 1941 the occupation of metal worker in the Eastern Pyrenees?

The police services did not need the file S of Carmille. They organized raids and deportations starting from their own manual files (cf Rene Bousquet), adapted that put to the point pre-war period at the Police headquarter to supervise the carried out communist ones; in the same way, the General police station with the Jewish questions carried out spoliations while doing without mechanization: at least the statisticians of the SNS, neither directly by their work, nor indirectly by the use of the number of identity, of share in had carried out criminal of the alleged one the Vichy government.

The mobilization in Algeria

The Algérie was the great hope of those which waited the moment to take again the fight against the invader. Y coexisted of the citizens French, abroad and the Arabs, “prone” Moslems, and prevailed there a Antisémitisme diffuse, on behalf of the " small blancs" Europeans and of the Arabs jealous of the Decree Crémieux of 1870, which “had declared citizens French the indigenous Jews of the departments of Algeria”. The Census S of population, until that of 1936, deducted separately Européen S, Juifs and Moslems. October 7th 1940, in the tread of the “statute of the Jews”, the Vichy government had repealed the Crémieux decree. The Jews of Algeria became again of the " sujets" , like the Arabs, and were excluded from the Public office and the public schools.

Rene Carmille had made there pass, at the end of June 1940, the material of the office of recruitment of Rouen, including a prototype of tabulator transported by plane. In May 1941, it meets with Algiers the General Weygand, Acting general in French Africa. One can suppose that Carmille exposes to Weygand the provisions envisaged in the event of mobilization and the advantage of the equipment Mécanographique S. But on November 8th 1942 begins the unloading of Allied in North Africa. December 26th, the allied command names the Général Giraud “commander-in-chief civil and soldier in Africa”.

In fact De Gaulle takes the ascending policy gradually and, thanks to Jean Monnet, organizes the rearmament of the French Army. (See Mode of Vichy in released Africa (1942-1943)). December 5th 1942, the free French Forces seize the branch of the SNS of Algiers. This one is requisitioned by the military authorities and its director, the Braconnot Administrator, is mobilized on the spot with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Thanks to the tabulators and the files of Perforated cards of Carmille, the men of De Gaulle were able to organize with an extraordinary speed the mobilization of thousands of French.

DR. of Algiers of the SNS will remain under military statute until September 1st 1946.

Service of obligatory work (STO)

The Gestapo, which intensified hunting for the Résistant S and the Jews, required of Vichy to make compulsory and general the declaration of change of residence which was hitherto imposed only on the mobilizable ones. Carmille was opposed to it more the possible for a long time, preferring to update the addresses of its files by spontaneous declarations, for example by using the requests for charts of tobacco. But it finally had to be inclined in front of the German ultimatum. The corresponding “law”, dated May 30th 1941, was published in the OJ only on February 28th 1942. The evil was fact which generated a durable taboo: for a long time in France, the State cannot make any more compulsory the declaration of change of residence.

May 1st 1942, Fritz Sauckel requires Vichy government 250.000 workmen for the Germany. Laval meets it on June 16th and hopes to draw some with volunteers: the 22, it institute the “Changing”, which envisages the return of a prisoner against the departure of three voluntary workers for Germany. It is here that is placed the broadcast speech where he recognizes that it “wishes the victory of Germany”. In front of the failure, the Service of obligatory work is finally instituted, on September 4th. In its memories, Alfred Sauvy evokes a phone call of the minister Jean Bichelonne to know until one can wait, in the event of mobilization, of the Perforated cards of the statistical service. It returns the call to Carmille, in Lyon. The stake, from now on, is to know if, thanks to the Perforated cards, one were going to mobilize young French to send them in Germany, or to put them at the service allied armies, Frenchwomen and, who were to unload, no one did not know where.

In November 1942, gives it exchange: the invasion of the southern zone deprives the Vichy government of its last attribute of Souveraineté. The army of armistice is dissolved and its officers create what will become the Organization of resistance of the army (O.R.A). “It is then an organization strong being wary with regard to the Gaullisme, near to the giraudism” written Jean Lacouture, in his biography of De Gaulle. The reasons which had led Carmille to limit census AP to the free zone - not to put an address file of mobilizable men under the eyes of the enemy - were worth from now on for all the Metropolis. December 4th 1942, Carmille makes visit with the marshal Pétain the regional management of the National service of the statistics in Clermont-Ferrand. According to a testimony of 1975 of the General inspector of INSEE R. Gaudriault, “at the conclusion of the visit, the Marshal, Mr. Carmille, Mr. Rabache, Regional director, Mr. Roques, (chief of the engineering service) and me, we isolated ourselves in a part and Mr. Carmille described in detail operation and the possible use of its file S. Mr. Carmille stating that one could join together the elements of several divisions, the Marshal required " how much? " ”. Rene Carmille then decides at the same time to develop the civil activities of the SNS, but to camouflage those completely related to the mobilization. The codes (" tables of connections" in the Punched-card technique ) and the essential file S is hidden with the Séminaire Jésuites of Montgré, close to Villefranche on the Saone. Member of the resistance network Marco Polo , Carmille makes an effort, throughout the year 1943, to coordinate his action with Algiers and London. Three liaison officers are sent to Algiers. September 4th 1943, on its instructions, Andre Caffot, thanks to the Network Jade-Amicol, flies away of a ground of fortune of the surroundings of Rheims for London, to give to the Intelligence Service the model of the indentity card that Vichy has just founded, as one of the machines intended to perforate the charts in the Préfecture S. Of the announcementes of death received to the SNS are used to put " true-fausses" indentity cards at the disposal of resistant, deserters German and of Jewish S.

In front of the unwillingness of Carmille, Jean Bichelonne dream to replace it with the head of the SNS by its Saint-Salvy assistant, considered favorable to collaboration, but it is the latter which must leave the SNS, on March 1st 1943. Carmille tergiversates but cannot prevent that the official texts organizing the STO quote the National service of the Statistics in the administrations concerned, nor that the drawing of the number of identity is reproduced on the forms. But one found forever the number actually transcribed on any form of convocation to the STO. Approximately 875.000 necessary French will work in Germany but conversely of tens of thousands of young people take the maquis, pass to Spain, and in any case enlarge the rows of the Résistance, which seeks to sabotage the organization of the STO.

Epilog

February 3rd 1944 at midday, Rene Carmille is stopped in Lyon, with its principal private secretary Raymond Jaouen, and is led to the Terminus hotel where he is questioned by Klaus Barbie, which tortures it two days during. It is interned in Montluc. Klaus Barbie makes transfer the two prisoners to Compiegne. From there they leave for Dachau by the “train the mort" from the 2 July 5th 1944, the last convoy of deportees. Jaouen dies choked during the way, Carmille dies of the Typhus on January 25th 1945. Gestapo at least gained on this point: the unloadings of Normandy (June 6th 1944) and of Provence (August 15th 1944) are unaware of completely, except some isolated cases, the mobilization of the specialists whom had envisaged and organized Carmille.

But in 1945, the " Carmille" number; will become the Social security number; and in 1946, the SNS will become INSEE. Thus the work of Rene Carmille remains.

See too

"Clandestine mobilization (1940) with the project Safari (1974) " INED - Seminars of Valorization of research - Meeting of September 20th, 2000
Robert CARMILLE French statistical Services during the Occupation (study) 64 p. (Available to the Foundation of Resistance)
" The use of the administrative in demography, sociology and statistical sources sociales" - Files and research , INED, n° 86, p. 23-34 * Bulletin of History of the Social security , n° 48, July 2003, p. 10 - 28
the number of identity, Population and companies , bulletin of the INED, nº 232, February 1989 * Edwin Black IBM and the Holocaust Robert Laffont, 2001

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