Munich is the site of the covert abduction of Antoine Argoud, a turning point in the OAS leadership struggle. The operation turns the city from a meeting place for OAS figures into the starting point of a clandestine transfer across the border: Argoud disappears from a hotel, then reappears bound and injured at the French Judicial Police headquarters in Paris.

The Abduction in Munich

In the mid-afternoon of February 25, Argoud returned to Munich from Rome, where he had met other OAS leaders. Rather than go directly to Unerdstrasse, he took a taxi to the Eden-Wolff Hotel, where he had booked a room, apparently for a meeting. He never reached it. Two men approached him in the hotel hall and spoke faultless German; believing them to be German police, Argoud reached for his passport.

The men seized both his arms, lifted him off his feet, and carried him outside to a waiting laundry van. When he fought back, they struck him, including a blow across the nose and one to the stomach, then pressed a nerve below his ear until he lost consciousness. The efficient violence of the seizure depended on a misreading: Argoud thought he was dealing with local police, while his captors were carrying out a French operation.

From Munich to Paris

The abduction followed a failed request for assistance from the German security organizations. With those organizations expecting French agents to pursue Argoud and other OAS leaders, the planned operation against him was to be carried out with maximum speed and discretion. The job went to the SDECE Action Service, which spirited him across the frontier during the night after his capture.

Twenty-four hours after the seizure, an anonymous caller claiming to speak for the OAS told the French Judicial Police that Argoud, tied up, was in a van behind its building at 36 Quai des Orfèvres. Officers opened the van and found him stumbling out. His eyes had been bandaged for the journey; dried blood covered his face, his nose had bled, and his mouth ached from the gag. Asked whether he was Colonel Antoine Argoud, he managed to answer yes. The call’s theatrical delivery of the captive to the police’s own parking area was presented as the Action Service’s private joke.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

Argoud was not released until June 1968. His removal caused enormous demoralization within the OAS, but it also cleared the way for his little-known deputy, Lieutenant-Colonel Marc Rodin, to assume command of operations aimed at assassinating Charles de Gaulle. The abduction therefore produced a reversal: an operation that removed a senior OAS figure helped elevate the man who would direct the assassination effort.

Munich’s role is concentrated in this brief but consequential episode. The city is not portrayed as the site of an open battle; its importance lies in the contrast between an apparently ordinary hotel meeting and a rapid, deniable cross-border seizure. The novel’s wider pursuit later depends on records and surveillance—including French archives containing millions of personal files and travel cards—but Argoud’s capture begins with physical force and a carefully timed extraction, rather than with those bureaucratic systems.