Records Are Dangerous: When Paris Went Dark

We may have mentioned in the past that the records of a government, or a business, aren't guaranteed to remain in the correct hands forever. That's why records of any kind are dangerous. This passage from Ronald C. Rosbottom's 2014 book, When Paris Went Dark, The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 illustrates why.
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Langeron (Paris chief of police, Roger Langeron) surmised that his guest must be from the Gestapo. Sitting down at his desk, the chief watched as the smug bureaucrat, whom he had left standing, grew more and more agitated at this lack of respect. Finally the German sat down and asked if Langeron still believed himself to be under the orders of that "Jew Mandel." The man added, "We know you are anti-German, Monsieur Langeron." Earlier, in September of 1939, when the German diplomatic delegation was leaving Paris for Berlin at the beginning of hostilities, the head of the legation had offered his hand to the Parisian police chief, who had refused to take it. That minor sign of resistance had been noted in the Gestapo's files. Langeron was amused at the pettiness of his new bosses, but then the German asked a much more serious question: "Where are the police files?" Langeron wrote that his heart beat faster with pleasure, for he had outsmarted this pompous secret policeman and his cohort. A few days before, the French police had loaded onto two barges, docked at the Quai des Orfevres, right alongside the Prefecture, a large consignment of the police files; on one boat were those of foreigners, on another those dealing with delicate matters of espionage and politics. The barges had proceeded downstream, loaded with explosives in case of capture. He told the agent that the police files had been evacuated with other official dossiers when the government decamped to Tours and Bourdeaux, and he had no idea of their whereabouts. Red-faced and blustering, the agent demanded to see Langeron's department heads. Brought in, they repeated the same story. When the German official left, in more than a huff, Langeron was quite delighted at his initial effort at resistance but also sadly aware that the tone of the Occupation would change inexorably from one of genteel accommodation to one of mutual suspicion.
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When one government takes over another, they want the records. They want to know what the previous government knew. In the case of occupied France, these records were recorded in paper files, which could be hidden, transferred or ultimately destroyed. This won't be the case with records stored on multiple servers and hard drives and cloud services. There will be no hiding or destroying them.