[1] René Carmille served in the French Army in the First World War, initially as a battery commander and later in the Second Office (i.e. the espionage service).

He demonstrated the value of identifying individuals with what become the social security number but also the value of codes for geographical areas, economic activities and professions.

After the outbreak of World War II, Carmille and Colonel du Vigier proposed the creation of central records of French civilians.

As most of France was under German occupation, this was presented as a purely civil matter, but secretly the plan was to use the data to rapidly mobilize an army when required.

This included records of demobilised soldiers as well as a census of the entire working-age population, to identify occupations, trades and qualifications.

As this was officially a civilian operation, births of girls as well as boys were recorded, by adding a thirteenth digit to the initial registration number: 1 for men, 2 for women.

In January 1941 a contract worth 36 million francs was signed between Bull and the Ministry of Finance to create an administrative statistical information system.

Lieutenants Colonel Henri Zeller and Georges Pfister instructed Carmille to prepare for the clandestine remobilization of the French Army.

During the winter of 1941-42, Carmille identified the names of 220,000 trained veterans living in the free zone, controlled by the Vichy government, and grouped them by locality and by unit.

The statistical service under Carmille was ordered to use its registration number scheme to assist the identification of Jewish people in France.

This was made easier as many of the people concerned were born abroad or in the annexed Alsace region and therefore had never been assigned an identity number.

This passive disobedience was so effective that the "Digital report on the number of French and foreign Jews counted in June 1941" had still not been completed by the time of his arrest in February 1944.