Alexandre Parodi

Alexandre Parodi (1 June 1901 – 15 March 1979) [aliases Quartus and Cérat] was a French senior civil servant, a member of the French resistance, General de Gaulle's appointee in charge of the French provisional government during World War II, a politician, permanent representative to the United Nations and NATO and the first French ambassador to Morocco.

Biography He was the son of Marie Emilie Hélène Vavin (known as Hélène) and Dominique Parodi, who was a philosopher and a member of the Institut de France. His grandfather Dominique-Alexandre Parodi was a poet and dramatist. The family was a republican one. Parodi became an auditor for the Conseil d'État (France) in 1926. From 1929 to 1938 he was deputy secretary-general of the Conseil national économique (National Economic Council), now the Conseil économique, social et environnemental. He married Anne-Marie Vautier on 2 January 1931 in Switzerland. In 1938 he became Maître des Requêtes, a high-ranking legal administrative officer, for the Conseil d'État (civil service), a technical advisor for the ministry of labour and the following year the director-general of labour and manpower.

Although he was a lieutenant in the infantry reserve upon the outbreak of World War II, he was not called up because of his civil-service role. In October 1940, he was dismissed by the Vichy régime which suspected him of anti-Vichy feelings ("mal penser") and returned to the Conseil d'État now in the Puy de Dôme. From 1942, he made frequent trips to Haute Savoie and also visited his wife who was unwell in Switzerland nearby. At this time, his brother, the magistrate René Parodi, part of the Liberation-Nord resistance movement, was arrested by the Gestapo; he was found hanged in his cell in April 1942. In Haute Savoie, Parodi met two politically-active professors of law, François de Menthon and Paul Bastid (the latter also dismissed by Vichy), and lawyer Robert Lacoste; the four founded, at Jean Moulin's suggestion, the Comité des Experts, which became the Comité général d'études at the end of 1943. Using the name Quartus, Parodi and his collaborators discussed post-occupation administrative arrangements.

In summer 1943, following the seizure of general-delegation documents by the Gestapo in Paris, he went into hiding. In September 1943, he was appointed head of the commission clandestine de la Presse et de l'Information. He also took part in the creation of the comité financier de la Résistance. In March 1944, Charles de Gaulle replaced Jacques Bingen with Parodi as the general delegate of the Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN), the provisional administration coordinating resistance and making preparations for government after liberation from the Nazis.