disappointment of the group's members. The Cagoule tried to infiltrate the International Brigades for the same purpose. Organised along military lines, the Cagoule infiltrated parts of the French military via Georges Loustaunau-Lacau's Corvignolles as a means to acquire weapons. It prepared to overthrow the Popular Front government in November 1937 to install a fascist government. The group initially intended to make Philippe Pétain chief of state, but he refused its overtures. The Cagoule chose Marshal Louis Franchet d'Esperey as their future chief of state. It was infiltrated by the French police. On 15 November 1937, Marx Dormoy, Minister of the Interior and the highest officer of law enforcement, denounced its plot and ordered wide arrests of members. The French police seized 2 tons of high explosives, several anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, 500 machine guns, 65 submachine guns, 134 rifles and 17 sawn-off shotguns. Some of the arms were of German or Italian origin, and about 70 men were arrested. Deloncle had boasted that he had 12,000 men under his order in Paris, and 120,000 in the provinces, but it is likely there were no more than 200 men who knew much about the organization and its structure, and another several hundred who were more loosely affiliated with the group. Reactions to the plot and the revelations by the French government about the Cagoule varied among the international media. In the United States, the editors of the New York Times were initially suspicious of the accounts. The journalists of Time magazine likened La Cagoule to the American Ku Klux Klan, a right-wing group that had a widespread revival from 1915 and reached its peak of influence in 1925, with members elected to political office in midwestern cities and states as well as the South. At the outbreak of World War II, the French government released imprisoned Cagoulards to fight in the French Army. Some entered the Milice, such as Jacques de Bernonville. During the Occupation of France in 1940, the Vichy government arrested Dormoy, as he had refused to vote for full powers for Pétain, and it eventually interned him under house arrest at Montélimar. He was assassinated on 26 July 1941 by a clockwork bomb set off at the house. It was believed to have been done by Cagoule terrorists in reprisal for Dormoy's arrests in 1937 and his attempt to suppress the organization. Organization Premier Bureau: Eugène Deloncle and