Pierre Culioli (1912–1994), was a French tax officer who, during the World War II, led the ADOLPH resistance network in the region of Tours, Orléans and Vierzon.
He was arrested by the Germans in Dhuizon on 21 June 1943 at the beginning of the collapse of the Prosper network and was deported and held in various places, including Buchenwald, but managed to escape.
In appearance he was unprepossessing—a small, slight wiry man with a nervous manner, horn-rimmed spectacles, and a toothbrush moustache, allegedly grown in derision of Hitler's own.
He took part in the disastrous summer campaign of 1940, and was taken prisoner; however, he was soon repatriated on medical grounds and following his wife's death devoted himself to anti-Nazi activity in the middle Loire Valley.
Culioli posed as a forestry official, and settled down in a woodland cottage near Romorantin, now Romorantin-Lanthenay, in the Loire Valley, with his cover 'wife' Yvonne Rudellat (Jacqueline), who acted as a courier.
In mid-June 1943 they received a pair of Canadian SOE officers, John Kenneth Macalister and Frank Pickersgill, and all four of them set off on 21 June, in a car driven by Culioli, to catch a train from Beaugency to Paris where they were to meet Francis Suttill, who was by then organising the Prosper network.
Between Culioli and Rudellat on the front seat of the car lay a parcel containing incriminating material: wireless telegraphy equipment brought by the Canadians and unencrypted messages addressed to members of the Prosper network by their code names.