"La Gerbe" was subsidized, and in some sense created, by the German embassy, with Châteaubriant serving as a front for the ambassador Otto Abetz. As the only French newspaper created by the German occupants, it was meant to replace "Candide" and "Gringoire". Some of the newspaper's last editorials referred to the Allied bombings as terrorism. After the Liberation of Paris the police searched the offices of "La Gerbe" in Rue Chauchat, which were then taken over by a newspaper of the French Resistance.