Le crime d’espionnage face aux juges, d’une guerre à l’autre (France, 1914-1940)

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1940, the fight against espionage is undergoing major changes, firstly due to a changing context and the emergence of new threats. While the police, military and political aspects of this fight have been the subject of several works, this contribution aims at a synthesis on the judicial repression of espionage and related offenses. The military justice is mobilized during the First World War do to this. Despite a great severity and sometimes expeditious trials on the front, it nevertheless manages on several occasions to resist to the moral panics linked to spying. The return to peacetime is marked by the frustration of intelligence actors confronted to criminal courts whose sentences are not considered as sufficiently exemplary. This led to several legislative changes in the 1930s, along with an increase in the number of trials.

Keywords

• spies
• military courts
• criminal courts
• first world war
• interwar