duty on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1944. In his absence, leadership of the PPF officially passed to a directorate. However effective leadership rested with Maurice-Yvan Sicard who resisted attempts to merge the party into a wider movement. The PPF attempted to aid German intelligence efforts and/or conduct sabotage activities in French territories occupied by the Allies. On 8 January 1943 a group of PPF militants originally from Maghreb, Germans and sympathetic Tunisians were parachuted into Southern Tunisia to conduct sabotage - but were arrested almost immediately. From 1943 to 1944, PPF and collaborationist agents were parachuted into North Africa, where, under codename Atlas, they were to transmit information on Allied military preparations and the local political situation to PPF agents in France, who in turn, were to pass this information to German intelligence. These intelligence activities occurred under the aegis of Albert Beugras, head of the PPF's clandestine Service de renseignment, and whose activities were unknown even to the political cadres of the Party. Not only did Atlas fail to transmit the desired political information, but the head of the network, Edmond Latham, a professional soldier and former member of Vichy's , went over to the Free French and ensured that Atlas broadcast misinformation to the PPF and German intelligence. Atlas broadcast that the Allies intended to invade Sardinia or Greece rather than Sicily in 1943, therefore reinforcing British intelligence's famous Operation Mincemeat, and spread misinformation that disguised the Allied invasion plans of Italy and Provence. Atlas continued transmitting misinformation from Allied occupied Marseilles and Paris in 1944. Doriot and Beugras did not discover the 'treason' until 1945. In 1944, Doriot moved to Germany where he competed for the leadership of the French government-in-exile with the members of the former Vichy regime based in the Sigmaringen enclave. The PPF based itself in Mainau, set up its own radio station, Radio-Patrie, at Bad Mergentheim and published its own paper Le Petit Parisien. The PPF was also involved in setting up training centres for French recruits to train operatives in conducting intelligence and sabotage activities, some of whom the Germans dropped by parachute into Allied occupied France. On 22 February 1945, Doriot, attired in his SS uniform and being driven in a Nazi officer's car, was killed by Allied strafers near Mengen, Württemberg, Germany, while en route from Mainau to Sigmaringen. The PPF movement did not survive the death of