French Resistance

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This article is about the World War II resistance movement. For the professional wrestling stable see La Résistance (Wrestling stable), and La Resistance for the South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut reference.
The Croix de Lorraine, chosen by General de Gaulle as the symbol of the resistance.
The Croix de Lorraine, chosen by General de Gaulle as the symbol of the resistance.[1]

The French Resistance is the collective name used for the French resistance movements which fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy regime during World War II. Resistance groups comprised small groups of armed men and women (referred to as the maquis when based in the countryside),[2] publishers of underground newspapers, and escape networks that helped allied soldiers.[3]

In recent years some have stated that the French Resistance has not been afforded due recognition for its contribution to halting Hitler's march through France. In 1946 the Allied Forces acknowledged French heroics and declared that the resistance was not only central to diverting Hitler's forces away from an easy route across the English Channel, but also that France's reclamation of Paris ensured German forces were without a strong base during the last stages of the war.

Another contribution by French Resistance groups in their cooperation with Allied secret services (see Office of Strategic Services and Special Operations Executive), was the providing of intelligence on the Atlantic Wall and coordinating sabotage and other actions to contribute to the success of Operation Overlord. The Resistance was pulled from all layers and groups of French society, from conservative Roman Catholics (including priests), to liberals, anarchists, and communists.

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The ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane, in Limousin.
The ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane, in Limousin.
Further information: German occupation of France during World War II

The German occupation authorities and the collaborationist Vichy Regime did not hesitate to employ brutal means in order to subdue the French population, and from the terms of the Second Armistice at Compiègne to the racial laws that they implemented later on, many of the Germans' unpopular acts provoked active and passive resistance.

One of the conditions of the Armistice was to pay the costs of the three-hundred-thousand strong German occupational army, which amounted to twenty million Reichmarks per day. The artificial exchange rate of the German Reichsmark currency against the French franc was consequently established as one mark to twenty francs.[4] This allowed German requisitions and purchases to be made into a form of organised plunder and resulted in endemic food shortages and malnutrition, particularly amongst children, the elderly, and the more vulnerable sections of French society such as the working urban class of the cities.[5] Labour shortages also occurred due to hundreds of thousands of French workers being requisitioned and transferred to Germany for Obligatory Work Service (‘’Service du Travail Obligatoire or STO’’) and the large number of French prisoners of war being held in Germany. The occupation became increasingly unbearable with the numerous regulations, censorship and propaganda in place during the day, and the forbiddance to go out without authorization during the night. The amalgamation of all these factors, as well as a general jealousy or anger at the Germans for the theft of resources, culminated in increasing involvement in active resistance and an even greater amount of passive resistance. The risks were high for those involved in resistance and also for those surrounding them, since the Germans soon established practices of retaliation against innocents to punish anti-German activity.

  • The German military authorities would execute guerrillas and suspected guerrillas.
  • They would take hostages from among the general population to be executed in the event of resistance activity, executing several French people for a single German death. Sometimes, the hostages were taken from the same group as the presumed resistance fighters or saboteurs (e.g. railroad workers for railroad sabotage); a large number were among those accused by the Germans of being communists. Others, perhaps, were merely unlucky. The Gestapo and the SS tortured suspected guerrillas and sent them to concentration camps. Threats would also be made on the relatives of captured guerrillas; for instance, the Gestapo might threaten parents with torturing their children or sending off their daughters to be sex slaves in a military brothel.
  • Occasionally, German troops would engage in massacres, such as the destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane, where an entire village was razed and the population killed for resistance activities in the vicinity.[6]

In addition to the German forces stationed in both Northern and Southern France by the end of the war, the Vichy government established paramilitary groups, primarily the Milice, in order to fight the Resistance. These groups collaborated closely with the Nazis and were the Vichy equivalent to the Gestapo security forces in Germany. Their actions were often very brutal and included the torture and executions of suspected resistance members. After the liberation of France many of the estimated 35,000 Miliciens were executed themselves for collaboration, and the ones who escaped arrest were forced to flee into central Germany, where they were incorporated into the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen SS.

Further information: Operation Jedburgh
Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves
Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves

In July 1940, after the defeat of the French armies and the consequent surrender of France to Germany, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked the Free French government-in-exile of General de Gaulle to set up a secret service agency in the occupied territory, to counter the threat of Operation Sealion - the possible cross-channel invasion of Britain. Colonel André Dewavrin, who had previously worked for France's military intelligence service the Deuxième Bureau, took on the responsibility of creating such a network, with the main goal of informing London of German military operations on the Atlantic coast and the English Channel. The Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) was thus formed, and its actions were carried out by volunteers who were parachuted into France to create and unify local resistance networks.[7]

Of the nearly 2000 volunteers who were active by the end of the war, one of the most effective and well-known was the agent Gilbert Renault.[8] Known mainly under the pseudonym of Colonel Rémy, he returned to occupied France in August 1940, not long after its surrender. He went on to organize one of the most active and important resistant networks of the BCRA: the Notre-Dame Brotherhood. From 1941 onwards, multiple networks such as this allowed the BCRA to send weapons and armed parachutists into France to carry out missions on the Atlantic coast.

Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves was a naval officer who had created a network of 26 people in the occupied zone. He was arrested in May 1941 and was shot on August 29, 1941.

A group of resistants at the time of their joining forces with the Canadian army at Boulogne, in September 1944
A group of resistants at the time of their joining forces with the Canadian army at Boulogne, in September 1944

In determining the role of the French resistance during the German Occupation, or addressing its military importance alongside the Allied Forces during the liberation of France, it is difficult to give a direct answer. The two forms of resistance, active and passive, and the north-south occupational divide, allow for many different interpretations, but what can broadly be agreed on is a synopsis of the events which took place.

A significant example of the strength of the French resistance was reflected in September 1943, when the Corsican resistance, with the assistance of commandos from North Africa, began a movement which eventually liberated the island from the Kingdom of Italy's occupational forces.

On mainland France itself, from the onset of the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, the FFI and the communist FTP movements, theoretically unified under the commandment of General Kœnig, fought alongside the Allies to free the rest of France. In September of that year, with the continuation of unloading armies and supplies in Normandy, the Maquis and other sabotage groups intervened behind the lines, either by starting battles to fix German forces in one area, or by disorganizing communication networks used by the Germans. Several different plans were co-ordinated for sabotage; the green plan for railways, the purple plan for telephone lines and the blue plan for electric installations. The overall Paul plan was aimed at destroying German deposits of ammunition and fuel, to badger German reinforcements, and to generally prepare for the arrival of Allied troops.

Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division parading after the battle for Paris (August 1944)
Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division parading after the battle for Paris (August 1944)
A volunteer of the French resistance interior force (FFI), at Châteaudun, in 1944
A volunteer of the French resistance interior force (FFI), at Châteaudun, in 1944

The Liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, with the support of Leclerc's French 2nd Armored Division, was one of the most famous and glorious moments of the French Resistance. Although it is again difficult to determine their effectiveness, popular anti-German demonstrations, such as general strikes by the Paris Métro, the Gendarmerie and the Police, took place, and fighting between the opposing forces ensued. The liberation of most of the southwest, central France, and the southeast was finally completed with the progression of the 1st French Army of General de Lattre de Tassigny, which arrived in Provence in August 1944.

One source often referred to is General Eisenhower's comment in his 'Report on Operations of the Expeditionary Forces in Europe':

“ Our HQ estimated that at the moment, the value of assistance brought to the countryside by the FFI represented the equivalent of 15 infantry divisions, and thanks to their assistance, the speed of our advance in France was largely facilitated by them. ”

One infantry division (DI) represented about 10 000 men. The conversion of the resistance forces into infantry divisions had its limits, since the value of information the French resistance provided to the Allies could not be converted into military terms. A question which remains unanswered is whether the contribution of the resistance was so decisive that the D-day landings were not thrown back into the sea.

The majority of resistance groups in France were unified after Jean Moulin's formation of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) in May 1943. CNR was coordinated with the Free French Forces under the authority of the French Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle and their body, the Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN).

There were other resistance groups like Liberté and Verité (that merged with Combat) and Gloria SMH (that was betrayed). Later Combat, Franc-Tireur and Libération formed Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (MUR) which also had armed bands of its own.

USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses dropping supplies to the Maquis du Vercors in 1944.
USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses dropping supplies to the Maquis du Vercors in 1944.

The Special Operations Executive (SOE) began to help and supply the resistance from November 1940. Head of the independent (non Gaullist) 'F' or French section was Major subsequently Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, Intelligence Corps. They sent weapons, radios, radiomen and advisors. One of the section's agents was Peter Churchill (no such relation to Winston).

The Secret Intelligence Service and the Poles, Belgians and Dutch also sent agents into France in cooperation with the French in exile.

Because the US and British governments did not always agree with him, Charles de Gaulle organized his own intelligence organization Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA), led by André Dewavrin, a.k.a Colonel Passy and assisted by a high-profile intellectual and politician, Pierre Brossolette. There was also the Direction Général des Services Spéciaux (DGSS or Special Services Executive), headed by Jacques Soustelle.

The Resistance was opposed by the German Wehrmacht, Abwehr, Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst as well as the Milice, the Vichy France police force led by Joseph Darnand. Its methods were as brutal as those of the Gestapo. One particularly zealous—and successful—adversary was Abwehr Feldwebel Hugo Bleicher. He disabled the Franco-Polish Interallie intelligence network based in Paris and personally arrested its leader, Polish Air Force Major Roman Czerniawski cryptonym 'Armand' to the French and 'Walenty' to the Poles. (He ostensibly then became a German agent, cryptonymed 'Hubert' for the Germans who sent him to Britain for them but in actuality he volunteered to do this in order to become a British Double Agent; subsequently cryptonymed 'Brutus' by MI 5).

Francs-tireurs and Allied paratroopers reporting on the situation during the Battle of Normandy in 1944.
Francs-tireurs and Allied paratroopers reporting on the situation during the Battle of Normandy in 1944.

On January 1, 1942, Jean Moulin parachuted to Arles with two other men and radio equipment and continued to Marseille. De Gaulle had sent him to coordinate activities of different resistance groups. Many groups were not enthusiastic at first.

When the Germans initiated a forced labor draft in France in the beginning of 1943, thousands of young men fled and joined the Maquis guerrillas. SOE helped by sending more supplies. The American organization Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to send its own agents to France in cooperation with SOE.

In June 1943 the RF (Gaullist cooperation) Section of SOE sent Edward Yeo-Thomas for the first time to liaise between Gaullist BCRA and SOE activities in Paris. In February 1944 he was betrayed and the Gestapo arrested him.

Eventually Jean Moulin convinced Armée Secrète, Comité d'Action Socialiste, Francs-Tireur, Front National, and Libération to unify their efforts in the Conseil National de la Resistance (CNR or National Council of the Resistance) under de Gaulle's direction. Their first common meeting was in Paris on May 27, 1943. Moulin became a chairman.

Initially the American government supported Henri Giraud. However, at the Casablanca conference in June 1943, de Gaulle and Giraud were forced to reconcile and became joint presidents of the CNR. Giraud was outmaneuvered by de Gaulle and left in October 1943.

On June 7, 1943 the Gestapo captured resistance member René Hardy. Klaus Barbie tortured Moulin's whereabouts out of him and Moulin was arrested (alongside others) in Caluire on June 21. Moulin died after heavy torture on July 8, 1943. After that, Georges Bidault became president of CNR.

The Gestapo apparently let Hardy go. He was accused of collaboration after the war but was acquitted.

Operation Overlord was approaching. In the spring of 1943 COSSAC begun to direct SOE and OSS activities that were connected to the invasion plans. Eventually it took orders from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). Resistance members concentrated on information collection and sabotage against transportation and communication lines. They destroyed tracks, bridges and trains.

In 1944 a London HQ, named EMFFI for the Etat Major Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (FFI or French Forces of the Interior) was inaugurated under the command of General Marie Pierre Koenig as a part of the Allied armed forces. SOE sent three-men teams (codename Jedburgh)—planned as one US or British representative and one representative of the country concerned (although never actually achieved in practice and intended also for Holland) and including a radioman—to organize sabotage from D-day onwards. There were 93 Jedburgh teams all of which were named for English language boy's Christian names.

On June 5, 1944, the BBC broadcast a group of unusual sentences. The Sicherheitsdienst knew they were code phrases—possibly for the invasion of Normandy but their correct alert was ignored due to the welter of spurious data generated by the systematic and sustained deception efforts of the Allies aimed at confusing the Wehrmacht's intelligence staffs. All over France resistance groups had been coordinated. Various groups throughout the country increased their sabotage and guerrilla attacks. They derailed trains, blew up ammunition depots and attacked German garrisons. Some relayed info about German defensive positions on the beaches of Normandy to American and British commanders by radio, just prior to June 6.

Victory did not come easily. In June and July, in the Vercors plateau a newly reinforced maquis group fought 15,000 Waffen SS soldiers under General Karl Pflaum and was defeated with 600 casualties. On June 10 Major Adolf Diekmann (Otto Dickmann)'s troops wiped out the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in retaliation.

The resistance also assisted later Allied invasions in the south of France in Operations Dragoon and Anvil.

Allied troops fought alongside French partisans to retake their cities
Allied troops fought alongside French partisans to retake their cities

When Allied forces began to approach Paris on August 19, its resistance cells also activated. They fought with grenades and rifles and arrested and executed collaborators. Most of the Paris police force joined them. American forces sent troops to help—the first Allied troops arrived on August 24. The last Germans surrendered on August 25.

On August 28, de Gaulle gave an order to disband Free French Forces and the resistance organizations as such with those who still wanted to fight being embodied in the new French army.

Main article: List of people involved with the French Resistance

After the war, many Frenchmen falsely claimed to have had connections to the resistance. Some—like Maurice Papon—even manufactured a false resistance past for themselves.

In the immediate post-war period, most former resistance members went back to their everyday lives, and at the same time became ex-servicemen. The extreme right opinion of the time was to support the Vichy Government of Pétain, against the Allied "Victors" who were the old resistance members, using expressions such as the "mythe de la Résistance" (the myth of the resistance, following the "épuration sauvage" (wild purification). They were the last sudden starts to the civil war which shook the nation in the last years of the occupation and the liberation.

Because so many resistance members were shot there, it is at Mount-Valérien, in Suresnes, that the memorial of the France Combattante was installed
Because so many resistance members were shot there, it is at Mount-Valérien, in Suresnes, that the memorial of the France Combattante was installed

During the two following decades, the collective memory, expressed for example by textbooks, tended to propose a very much resistant France opposed to the Vichy government. According to the historian Henry Rousso, "From 1954 to 1971, the memory of Vichy was conflicting... but the French seemed to drive back this civil war, helped in that by the establishment of a myth dominating Résistancialisme"[citation needed].

Treating the resistance and the Vichy regime in a historical method did not prohibit the development and maintainment of the myths. The legendary myth was born in reality but had to give significance to an experiment considered to be revealing. It was in this category that it became necessary to classify all kinds of commemorative ceremonies, and to construct museums and monuments. The legendary myth feeds a multiform memory of the resistance, differing according to places, cultures, and moments. The myth retains only some elements of history which it standardizes. The poet Pierre Emmanuel, a resistant himself, asserted in 1945, "It is necessary to dare more, to proceed from the symbols to the myths... in the light of these large flashes of history which reveal the succession of the centuries and the sequence of civilizations". Thus, André Malraux, when he put in scene the ceremony of transfer of the ashes of Jean Moulin to the Pantheon, his tragic incantations concerned the development of a myth, that France identified with "the poor formless face" of a face torture victim.

After the war, the influential Parti Communiste Français (PCF) was dubbed "le parti des 75 000 fusillés" - "the party of the 75 000 shot". In reality the figure was considerably less, and it is now estimated that less than 5000 were shot, of whom an estimated 80-90% were communists.[10]

The French Resistance has had a great influence on literature, particularly in France. A famous example is the poem Strophes pour se souvenir, which was written by the communist academic Louis Aragon in 1955 to commemorate the heroism of the Manouchian Group, whose 23 members were shot by the Nazis.

French cinema of the post-war period testifies to a broad consensus of a resistant France, when members of the resistance were in fact a minority. The official Cinematographic Service with Armies (SCA) defend their thesis that the Pro-communist Committee for the Release of the French Cinema (CLCF), did sometimes embellish facts, in particular at the time of the Cold war, but always in the glorification of the resistance.

The traitors, played by Pierre Brewer in Jéricho (1946) or Serge Reggiani in The Doors of the Night (1946) have a hateful face and seem to be an exception. The STO was rarely evoked, and the French Militia never. The scenario writers like Clouzot or Cayatte sometimes created an image less realistic than what the FFI really was, Autant-Lara was not allowed to illustrate the black market and the general mediocrity in the Crossing of Paris (1956). At the same time, Robert Bresson, indifferent to the air of time, presented Un condamné à mort s'est échappé as a spiritual adventure and got away with it.

After de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, the portrayal of the resistance renewed itself. The commercial cinema converged in a 'Gaullienne' vision which was not afraid to make a pact with the communist memory. In Paris brûle t-il? (1966), Ainsi said, "the role of the resistant is revalued according to his later political trajectory". One can underline a shy reappearance of the image of Vichy, as in the Le Passage du Rhin(1960), in which a crowd acclaims successively Pétain then de Gaulle. The comic form of films such as La Grande Vadrouille (1966) widened the image of the heroes to average Frenchmen, which ended after May 1968 and the withdrawal of the General.

The most famous, and critically acclaimed, of these movies is Army of Shadows (L'armee des ombres), which was made by French film-maker Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969, who himself was a member of the Resistance. The film was inspired by Joseph Keesel's 1943 book, as well as memoirs of Melville's experiences, such as his participation in Operation Dragoon. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the French news magazine L'Express repeatedly called it "perhaps the best French film ever made on the [French] Resistance."

The honest manner of the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity in (1971) pointed the finger on anti-Semitism in France and denounced the confiscation of resistance ideals in the official history. TIME magazine's positive review of the film said that director Marcel Ophüls "tries to puncture the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans."[11]

Cassenti, with L'Affiche Rouge (1976), Gilson, with La Brigade (1975), and Mosco with the documentary Des terroristes à la retraite at the time directed their films on resistant foreigners of the EGO, who were relatively unknown. In 1974, Lacombe Lucien of Louis Malle caused scandal and polemic because of his absence of moral judgment with regards to the behavior of a collaborator. The same man later depicted the resistance of Catholic priests who protected Jewish children in Au revoir les enfants. In the more alleviated 1980s, one can cite Blanche et Marie (1984), as an example of the resistance of working women. Later, Un héros très discret (1996), left the revelations on the past of François Mitterrand, suggesting that many heroes were imposters. One year later, Claude Berri took as a starting point a mythical figure of the resistance to carry out Lucie Aubrac in the manner of American biopics.

  • In the British television sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, René Artois is a French café owner who also helps out the French Resistance, which is led by a woman called Michelle, who often thinks up very far-fetched plots.[12] For much of the series, the Resistance are primarily concerned with helping two British airmen get home to Britain. In the latter part of the series, they are concerned with spreading propaganda messages to the local French people. The town also boasts a chapter of the all-female communist Resistance, who are much more ruthless than the de Gaulle Resistance. Allo Allo is a parody of the Belgian-set BBC drama Secret Army.
  • In the multi-platform game Call of Duty 3, the player can fight as a Special Air Service member alongside the French Resistance and the Maquis taking part in sabotage and rescue missions.

  1. ^ (French) francelibre.fr. "Croix de Lorraine". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
  2. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. "Definition of maquis". Retrieved on 2007-12-14. from Dictionary.com website
  3. ^ Encarta Encyclopedia. "History of France - The Resistance". Retrieved on 2007-11-18.
  4. ^ The American Historical Association. "Book Review of Morts d'inanition: Famine et exclusions en France sous l'Occupation". Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
  5. ^ Marie Helen Mercier and J. Louise Despert. "Effects of War on French children". Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
  6. ^ Michael Williams. "Oradour-sur-Glane". Retrieved on 2007-11-11.
  7. ^ (French) france-libre.net. "Les réseaux du BCRA". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
  8. ^ TIME magazine. "Gilbert Renault - Family Man and Spy". Retrieved on 2007-12-15.
  9. ^ Terry Crowdy, French Resistance Fighter p. 12
  10. ^ (French) liberation.fr. "Le parti des 75 000 fusillés". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
  11. ^ TIME magazine. "Truth and Consequences". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.
  12. ^ BBC Comedy. "'Allo 'Allo!". Retrieved on 2007-12-14.

  • Harry R. Kedward, In Search of the Marquis, Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944, Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-821931-8.
  • Frida Knight, The French Resistance, 1940-44, Lawrence and Wishart,1975. SBN 85315 335 3
  • Ian Ousby, Occupation: The Ordeal of France, 1940-44, London: Pimlico, 1999. ISBN 0-7126-6513-7
  • David Schoenbrun, Soldiers of the Night, The Story of the French Resistance, New American Library, 1980. ISBN 0-452-00612-0
  • John F. Sweets, The Politics of Resistance in France, 1940-1944 : A History of the Mouvements unis de la Résistance, Northern Illinois University Press, 1976.

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