Few careers can match that of Colonel Paul Paillole of the French intelligence service. At the end of 1935 he entered the old offices of the Service de Renseignement at 2 bis Avenue de Tourville, off the famous Invalides in Paris. Then a young officer, he served his country in his specialty of counterintelligence until November 1944, after ten epic years in the history of France, and indeed the world. France's traumatic defeat in June 1940, Vichy and the occupation, collaboration, resistance and liberation?at last?swept away many brave men and women into the brutal cauldron of world conflict that lasted for five years. This book is filled with fascinating operational and organizational details, with references and descriptions of literally hundreds of espionage and counterespionage cases taking place before and during the Second World War. The catastrophic defeat of 1940 was the defining moment for French officers and soldiers. For the professionals like Paul Paillole, what almost all military experts had considered unthinkable as of May 9, 1940 suddenly turned into the awful reality of the furious battles that began the next day and cost France the war and its position as a world power. Over sixty years after those momentous events, historians are still arguing whether that defeat was indeed inevitable or if a set of favorable circumstances handed Hitler a victory he never dreamed of achieving so easily. This memoir offers some answers from someone directly affected by that outcome. The story told in Fighting the Nazis is more than another interesting World War II intelligence biography. Paillole's assiduous application and articulation of counterintelligence principles demonstrates their universality while making it clear that it is the people who make the difference.