After being recruited by the Nazis, petty criminal Henri Lafont became the most powerful Frenchman in occupied Paris. Lafont established the French Gestapo, a motley band that included ex-footballers, faded aristocrats, pimps, murderers, and thieves. The gang wore the finest clothes, ate at the best restaurants, and threw parties for the rich and famous, but as Christopher Othen explains here, when the Allies liberated France, Lafont and his cronies had to answer for their crimes.