The Erler story...
The fact that a German spy was beheaded by Desfourneaux was unfortunately mentioned too many times in books, and that's when I found actual documents that I was able to know it was a big fat lie.
Erler's death certificate appears in archives of the city of Ivry-sur-Seine, where military sentenced had to be executed after June 1939.
The case file, detained by the military archives of Le Blanc, say the same : he was shot by a firing squad.
Why bother to create such a conspiracy just to hide the fact Erler was guillotined, even if Germans were about to conquer France ? After all, death was death, and in 1940, the Third Reich already was cutting heads of political opponents and murderers without distinction...
No conspiracy there, and no mistake too... It was deliberate.
In fact, the first to speak about Erler's last morning seems to be Me Albert Naud, in his books against death penalty.
He said that nine terrorists were decapitated at la Santé on May 1st, 1944 and "executioners were wading in blood".
That is an invention too.
In the 50's, if French justice was already trying to abolish death penalty step by step, people were still attached to that sentence, and Naud, as one of the leaders of the abolitionist movement, knew it.
So, he exaggerated stories about the guillotine to make it even more unbearable that it already was, just to shock readers and inducing changes in their barbaric mentality.
And since he particularly hated Desfourneaux, who beheaded his client Michel Watrin in 1950, it was a way to show how ruthless and obedient the executioner was... no more better than a nazi...
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"Les humains, pour la plupart, ne se doutent de rien, sans envie ni besoin de savoir, ça leur va comme ça, ils croient avoir de l'emprise sur les choses.
- Mh... pourquoi en avoir fait un secret ? Ils peuvent comprendre, ils sont intelligents...
- Une personne, sûrement, mais en foule, on est cons, on panique comme une horde d'animaux, et tu le sais."