The French Resistance (French; La Résistance française) is the name used to denote the

collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German
occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II.
Résistance cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis in rural
areas),[2][3] who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of
underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and
maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind
enemy lines. The men and women of the Résistance came from all economic levels and
political leanings of the French society, including émigrés; from conservative Roman
Catholics (including priests), from the Jewish community, and from the ranks of liberals,
anarchists, and communists.

The French Résistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance
through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, and the lesser-
known invasion of Provence on 15 August, by providing military intelligence on the
German defenses known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders
of battle. The Résistance also planned, coordinated, and executed acts of sabotage on the
electrical power grid, transportation facilities, and telecommunications networks.[4][5] It
was also politically and morally important to France, both during the German occupation
and for decades afterward, because it provided the country with an inspiring example of
the patriotic fulfillment of a national imperative, countering an existential threat to
French nationhood. The actions of the Résistance stood in marked contrast to the
collaboration of the regime installed at Vichy.[6][7]

After the landings in Normandy and Provence, the paramilitary components of the
Résistance were organized more formally, into a hierarchy of operational units known,
collectively, as the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Estimated to have a strength of
100,000 in June 1944, the FFI grew rapidly, doubling by the following month, and
reaching approximately 400,000 by October of that year.[8] Although the amalgamation of
the FFI was, in some cases, fraught with political difficulties, it was ultimately
successful, and it allowed France to rebuild a reasonably large army (1.2 million men) by
VE Day in May 1945.[9]

The cemetery and memorial in Vassieux-en-Vercors where, in July 1944, German forces
executed more than 200 in reprisal for the Maquis's armed resistance.[10] The town was
later awarded the Ordre de la Libération.[11]
Further information: German occupation of France during World War II

Following the fall of France and the second French-German armistice, signed near
Compiègne on 22 June 1940, life for many in France continued more-or-less normally.
However, the German occupation authorities and the collaborationist Vichy régime soon
began employing increasingly brutal and intimidating tactics to ensure the submission of
the French population. Although the majority of civilians neither collaborated nor overtly
resisted, the occupation of French territory[12][13] and the German authorities' draconian
policies inspired a discontented minority to form paramilitary groups dedicated to both
active and passive resistance.[14]

One of the conditions of the armistice was that the French pay for their own occupation;
that is, the French were required to cover the expenses associated with the upkeep of a
300,000-strong army of occupation. This burden amounted to approximately 20 million
German reichsmarks per day, a sum that, in May 1940, was approximately equivalent to
one million French francs.[15] (The artificial exchange rate of the reichsmark versus the
franc had been established as one franc to twenty marks.)[15][16] Because of this
overvaluation of German currency, the occupiers were able to make seemingly fair and
honest requisitions and purchases while, in effect, operating a system of organized
plunder. Inflation soared,[17] leading to widespread food shortages and malnutrition,[18]
particularly among children, the elderly, and members of the working class engaged in
physical labor.[19] Labor shortages also plagued the French economy because hundreds of
thousands of French workers were requisitioned and transferred to Germany for
compulsory labor under the German program known as the Service du Travail
Obligatoire (STO).[2][20][21] The shortage of labor was worsened by the fact that a large
number of the French were also held as prisoners-of-war in Germany.[22] Beyond these
hardships and dislocations, the occupation became increasingly unbearable. Onerous
regulations, strict censorship, incessant propaganda, and nightly curfews all played a role
in establishing an atmosphere of fear and repression.[16] The sight of French women
consorting with German soldiers infuriated many French men, but sometimes it was the
only way they could get adequate food for their families.[23][24]

The ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Limousin region of the Massif central

As reprisals for Résistance activities, the authorities established harsh forms of collective
punishment. For example, the increasing militancy of communist resistance in August
1941 led to thousands of hostages being extracted from the general population.[25] A
typical statement of policy read: "at each further incident, a number, reflecting the
seriousness of the crime, shall be shot."[26] During the occupation, an estimated 30,000
French civilian hostages were shot in order to intimidate others who were involved in acts
of resistance.[27] Occasionally, German troops engaged in massacres, such as the
destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane, where an entire village was razed and the population
murdered because of persistent resistance in the vicinity.[28][29]

In early 1943, the Vichy authorities established a paramilitary group, the Milice (militia),
to combat the Résistance. They worked alongside German forces that, by the end of
1942, were stationed throughout France.[30] The group collaborated closely with the
Nazis; it was the Vichy equivalent to the Gestapo security forces in Germany.[31] Their
actions were often brutal and included torture and execution of Résistance suspects. After
the liberation of France in the summer of 1944, the French executed many of the
estimated 25,000 to 35,000 miliciens[30] for their collaboration. Many of those who
escaped arrest fled to Germany, where they were incorporated into the Charlemagne
Division of the Waffen SS.[32]

The French Résistance involved men and women representing a broad range of ages,
social classes, occupations, religions, and political affiliations.

The journalist, Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, observed, in retrospect, that the

Résistance had been composed of social outcasts or those on the fringes of society,
saying "one could only be a resister if one was maladjusted."[33] Although many,
including d'Astier himself, did fit this description, most members of the Résistance came
from traditional backgrounds[34] and were "individuals of exceptional strong-mindedness,
ready to break with family and friends"[35] in order to serve a higher purpose.

Inevitably, there is the question of how many were active in the Résistance. While
stressing that the issue was sensitive and approximate,[36] François Marcot, a professor of
history at the Sorbonne, ventured an estimate of 200,000 activists and a further 300,000
who had substantial involvement in Résistance operations.[36] The historian, Robert
Paxton, estimated the number of active resisters to be "about 2% of the adult French
population (or about 400,000)", and he also noted that "there were, no doubt, wider
complicities, but even if one adds those willing to read underground newspapers, only
some two million persons, or around 10% of the adult population,"[37] had been willing to
risk any involvement at all. The postwar government of France officially recognized
220,000 men and women.[38]

[edit] The Gaullist resistance

Further information: Free French Forces, Gaullism, and 2nd Armored Division (France)

The doctrine of Gaullism was born during the Second World War as a French movement
of patriotic resistance to the German invasion of 1940. Men of all political stripes who
wanted to continue the fight against Adolf Hitler and who rejected the armistice
concluded by Maréchal Philippe Pétain rallied to general Charles de Gaulle's position. As
a consequence, on 2 August 1940, de Gaulle was condemned to death, in absentia, by the
Vichy régime.

Between July and October 1940, De Gaulle rejected the unconstitutional, repressive, and
racist laws instituted by Pétain, and he established his own bona fides as the principle
defender of republican values.

De Gaulle asked, in his Appeal of 18 June 1940, that every patriot who could reach
British territory should do so and join the Free French Army to fight in company with the
Allies. The Free French Forces also rallied the various French overseas colonies to fight
back against the Vichy régime. De Gaulle's approval of this link between the Résistance
and the colonials legitimized it.
Other gaullists, those who could not join Britain (that is, the overwhelming majority of
them), remained in the territories ruled by Vichy, and built networks of propagandists,
spies, and saboteurs to harass and discomfit the occupiers. Eventually, leaders of all of
these separate and fragmented Résistance organizations were gathered and coordinated
by Jean Moulin, under the auspices of the National Council of Resistance (CNR), De
Gaulle's formal link to the irregulars throughout occupied France.

During the Italian campaign of 1943, 130,000 Free French soldiers fought on the Allied
side, and, by the time of the Normandy invasion, Free French forces numbered
approximately a half-million regulars and more than 100,000 French Forces of the
Interior (FFI). The Free French 2nd Armored Division, under General Philippe Leclerc,
landed in Normandy, and, in the waning days of summer 1944, they led the drive towards
Paris. The FFI in Normandy and the Île-de-France region surrounding Paris began to
harass German forces intensely, cutting roads and railways, setting ambushes, as well as
fighting conventional battles alongside their allies.

The 2nd Armored Division rolled ashore in Normandy on 1 August 1944, and served
under General Patton's Third Army. The division played a critical role in Operation
Cobra, the Allies' "break-out" from its Normandy beachhead, where it served as a link
between American and Canadian armies and made rapid progress against German forces.
The 2nd Armored all but destroyed the 9th Panzer Division, and it mauled several other
German units as well. During the battle for Normandy, the division lost 133 men killed,
648 wounded, and 85 others went missing. The division's matériel losses included 76
armored vehicles, seven cannons, 27 halftracks, and 133 other vehicles.

Free French Generals Henri Giraud (left) and Charles de Gaulle sit down after shaking
hands in the presence of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Casablanca
Conference, on 14 January 1943.

The most celebrated moment in the unit's history involved the liberation of Paris. Allied
strategy emphasized destroying German forces retreating towards the Rhine, but, when
the French Résistance under Colonel Rol staged an uprising in the city, Charles de Gaulle
pleaded with General Eisenhower to send help. Eisenhower agreed, and Leclerc's forces
headed toward Paris. After hard fighting that cost the 2nd Division 35 tanks, 6 self-
propelled guns, and 111 vehicles, Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris,
surrendered the city in a ceremony at the Hotel Meurice. Jubilant crowds greeted the
French force, and De Gaulle conducted a famous victory parade through the city.

De Gaulle not only kept the patriotic resistance alive; he also did everything possible to
re-establish the French claim to independence and sovereignty. As a leader, the American
and British governments preferred the less popular, but less abrasively vindictive,
General Giraud to Charles de Gaulle, but, for the French population, de Gaulle was,
almost universally, recognized as the true leader in their victory. These events forced
Roosevelt to recognize, finally and fully, the provisional government installed in France
by De Gaulle.
Communist prisoner in France, July 1944

After the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of World War II in
1939, the French Communist Party (PCF) was declared a proscribed organisation by
Édouard Daladier's government.[39][40] Many of its leaders were arrested and imprisoned or
forced to go underground.[41] The PCF adopted an anti-war position under orders from the
Comintern in Moscow,[42][43] which remained in place for the first year of the German
occupation, mirroring the relationship between Germany and the USSR.[44] Conflicts
erupted within the party, as many of its members opposed collaboration with the
Germans while others toed the party line of cooperation as directed by Stalin in Moscow.
[45]
On Armistice Day in November 1940, communists were among the university
students demonstrating against German repression by marching along the Champs-
Élysées.[46] It was only when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 that French
communists began to actively organize a resistance effort.[47][48] They benefited from their
experience in clandestine operations during the Spanish Civil War.[41]

On 21 August 1941, Colonel Pierre-Georges Fabien committed the first overt act of
communist resistance by assassinating a German officer at the Barbès-Rochechouart
station of the Paris Métro.[42][49] The attack, and others perpetrated in the following weeks,
provoked fierce reprisals, culminating in the execution of 98 hostages after the
Feldkommandant of Nantes was shot on 20 October.[50]

The military strength of the communists was still relatively feeble at the end of 1941, but
the rapid growth of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), a radical armed movement,
ensured that French communists regained their reputation as an effective anti-fascist
force.[51] The FTP was open to non-communists, but it operated under communist control,
[52]
with its members predominantly engaged in acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare.[53]
By 1944, the FTP had an estimated strength of 100,000 men.[54]

Towards the end of the occupation, the PCF had reached the height of its influence,
controlling large areas of France through the Résistance units under its command. Some
in the PCF wanted to launch a revolution as the Germans withdrew from the country,[55]
but the leadership, acting on Stalin's instructions, opposed this and adopted a policy of
co-operating with the Allied powers and advocating a new Popular-Front government.[56]

Many well-known intellectual and artistic figures were attracted to the Communist party
during the war, including the artist Pablo Picasso and the writer and philosopher Jean-
Paul Sartre.[57]

The Affiche Rouge (red placard) is a famous propaganda poster that was distributed by
the Vichy French and German authorities in the spring of 1944 in occupied Paris. It was
intended to discredit a group of twenty-three Franc-Tireurs known as the "Manouchian
group". After the group's members were arrested, tortured, and publicly tried, they were
executed by firing squad in Fort Mont-Valérien on 21 February 1944. The poster
emphasised the group's membership, many of whom were Jews and communists, in order
to discredit the Résistance as not being sufficiently "French" in its fundamental allegiance
and motivations.[58]

Before the war, there were several organizations in France, such as the monarchist, anti-
semitic, and xenophobic Action Française.[59] Another among the most influential
factions of the right was Croix-de-Feu (Cross of Fire).[60] Croix-de-Feu gradually
moderated its positions during the early years of the war, and it grew increasingly popular
among the aging veterans of the Great War.[61]

Despite some differences in their positions on certain issues, these organizations were
united in their opposition to parliamentarism,[62] a stance that had led them to participate
in demonstrations, most notably the so-called riots of 6 February 1934.[63] At about the
same time, La Cagoule, a fascist paramilitary organization, launched various actions
aimed at destabilizing the Third Republic; these efforts continued until La Cagoule could
be infiltrated and dismantled in 1937.[64]

Like the founder of Action Française, Charles Maurras, for whom the collapse of the
Republic was famously acclaimed as a "divine surprise",[65] thousands welcomed the
Vichy régime[66] and collaborated also, to one degree or another. However, the powerful
appeal of French nationalism drove others to engage in resistance against the occupying
German forces.

In 1942, after an ambiguous period of collaboration, the former leader of Croix de Feu,
François de La Rocque, founded the Klan Network, which provided information to the
British intelligence services.[67] Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Marie-Madeleine
Fourcade, who had both supported La Cagoule, founded the Alliance Network, and
Colonel Groussard, of the Vichy secret services, founded the Gilbert Network. Some
members of Action Française engaged in the Résistance with similar nationalistic
motives. Some prominent examples are Daniel Cordier, who became Jean Moulin's
secretary, and Colonel Rémy, who founded the Confrérie Notre-Dame. These groups also
included Pierre de Bénouville, who, together with Henri Frenay, led the Combat group,
and Jacques Renouvin, who founded the group of resisters known as Liberté.

Sometimes contact with others in the Résistance led some operatives to adopt new
political philosophies. Many gradually moved away from their anti-semitic prejudices
and their hatred of 'démocrassouille', 'dirty democracy' (which many equated with mob
rule), or simply away from their traditional roots-based conservatism. Bénouville and
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade became députés in the French parliament after the war;
François Mitterrand moved towards the left and joined the Résistance, Henri Frenay
evolved towards European socialism,[68] and Daniel Cordier, whose family had supported
Maurras for three generations, abandoned his views in favor of the ideology of the
republican, Jean Moulin.

The historian, Jean-Pierre Azéma, coined the term vichysto-résistant to describe those
who at first supported the Vichy Regime (mostly based on the patriotic image of Pétain
rather than the Révolution Nationale) but later joined the Résistance.[69] The founder of
Ceux de la Libération ("Those of the Liberation"), Maurice Ripoche, initially defended
Vichy, but he soon placed the liberation of France above all other goals, and, in 1941, he
opened his movement to leftists. In contrast, many extremist members of the Résistance,
such as Gabriel Jeantet and Jacques Le Roy Ladurie, never renounced their tolerant
attitudes towards Vichy.

[edit] Jews

The Vichy régime had legal authority in both the north of France, which was occupied by
the German Wehrmacht, and the southern "free zone", where the régime's administrative
center, Vichy, was located.[70][71] Vichy voluntarily and willfully collaborated with Nazi
Germany[72] and adopted a policy of persecution towards the Jews, demonstrated by the
passage of antisemitic legislation as early as October 1940. The Statute on Jews, which
legally redefined French Jews as a non-French lower class, deprived them of citizenship.
[73][74]
According to Philippe Pétain's chief of staff, "Germany was not at the origin of the
anti-Jewish legislation of Vichy. That legislation was spontaneous and autonomous."[75]
The laws led to confiscations of property, arrests, and deportations to the concentration
camps.[76] As a result of the fate they were promised by Vichy and the Germans, Jews
were over-represented at all levels of the French Résistance. Studies show that although
Jews in France only amounted to one percent of the French population, they comprised
about fifteen to twenty percent of the Résistance.[77] Among these were many Jewish
émigrés, such as Hungarian artists and writers.[78]

The Jewish youth movement, Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs israélites de France (EEIF),

equivalent to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in other countries, had, during the early years of
the occupation, shown support for the Vichy regime's traditional values,[79] but it was
banned in 1943. Its older members soon formed armed resistance units.[80] A militant
Jewish Zionist resistance organisation, the Jewish Army (Armée Juive), was founded in
1942 by Abraham Polonski, Lucien Lublin, David Knout, and their wives.[81] They
continued armed resistance under a Zionist flag until liberation finally arrived. The
Armée juive organised escape routes across the Pyrenées to Spain, and they smuggled
about 300 Jews out of the country during 1943 and 1944. They distributed millions of
dollars from the American Joint Distribution Committee to relief organizations and
fighting units within France.[80][82] In 1944, the EIF and the Jewish Army combined to
form the Organisation Juive de Combat (OJC). The OJC had four hundred members by
the summer of 1944,[80] and they also participated in the liberations of Paris, Lyon,
Toulouse, Grenoble, and Nice.[83]

In the southern occupation zone, the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (roughly, Children's
Relief Effort), a French-Jewish humanitarian organization commonly called OSE, saved
the lives of between seven and nine thousand Jewish children by forging papers,
smuggling them to neutral countries, and sheltering them in orphanages, schools, and
convents.[84]
Artist's impression of a meeting of the PCF (Parti communist francais) central committee
at Longjumeau, 1943. Left to right: Benoît Frachon, Auguste Lecoeur, Jacques Duclos,
and Charles Tillon.

[edit] Women

Although inequalities persisted under the Third Republic, the cultural changes that
followed World War I allowed the differences in the treatment of men and women in
France to gradually narrow,[85] with some women assuming political responsibilities as
early as the 1930s. The defeat of France in 1940 and the appointment of the Vichy
régime's conservative leader, Philippe Pétain, undermined feminism,[86] and France began
a restructuring of society based on the "femme au foyer" or "women at home" imperative.
[87]
On at least one occasion, Pétain spoke out to French mothers about their patriotic
duty:

Mothers of France, our native land, yours is the most difficult task, but
also the most gratifying. You are, even before the state, the true educators.
You alone know how to inspire in all [of our youth] the inclination for
work, the sense of discipline, the modesty, the respect, that give men
character and make nations strong.[88]

Despite opposing the collaborating regime, the French Résistance generally sympathised
with its antifeminism and did not encourage the participation of women in war and
politics, following, in the words of the historian, Henri Noguères, "a notion of inequality
between the sexes as old as our civilisation and as firmly implanted in the Résistance as it
was elsewhere in France."[89] Consequently, women in the Résistance were less numerous
than men and represented an average of 11% of the members in the formal networks and
movements.[90][91] Those who were involved in the Résistance were usually confined to
subordinate roles.[92] Lucie Aubrac, the iconic resister and co-founder of Libération-Sud,
was never assigned a specific role in the hierarchy of the movement.[92] Hélène Viannay,
one of the founders of Défense de la France, who was married to a man who shared her
political views, was never permitted to express her opinions in the underground
newspaper, and her husband took two years to arrive at political conclusions she had held
for many years.[93]

A volunteer of the French Résistance interior force (FFI) at Châteaudun in 1944

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was the only female leader in the Résistance, head of the
Alliance network.[94] The Organisation Civile et Militaire had a female wing headed by
Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux,[95] who took part in setting up the Œuvre de Sainte-Foy to
assist prisoners in French prisons and German concentration camps.[96] No women,
however, were chosen to lead any of the eight major Résistance movements, and, after
the liberation of France, the provisional government appointed no women as ministers or
commissaires de la République.[97]

[edit] Networks and movements

Main article: List of networks and movements of the French Resistance

In this context, it is customary to distinguish the various organizations of the French

Résistance as movements or networks.

A Résistance network was an organization created for a specific military purpose, usually
intelligence-gathering, sabotage, or aiding Allied air crews who had been shot down
behind enemy lines.[98][99] A Résistance movement, on the other hand, was focused on
educating and organizing the population,[99] "to raise awareness, and to organize the
people as broadly as possible."[98]

German military and résistants, July, 1944

Further information: Operation Jedburgh

In July 1940, after the defeat of the French armies and the consequent armistice with
Germany, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, asked the Free French
government-in-exile (headed by General Charles de Gaulle) to set up a secret service
agency in occupied France to counter the threat of a German operation code-named
Operation Sealion, the expected cross-channel invasion of Britain. Colonel André
Dewavrin (also known as Colonel Passy), who had previously worked for France's
military intelligence service, the Deuxième Bureau, took on the responsibility for creating
such a network. Its principal goal was to inform London of German military operations
on the Atlantic coast and in the English Channel.[100] The spy network was called the
Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA), and its actions were carried out
by volunteers who were parachuted into France to create and nourish local Résistance
cells.[101]

Of the nearly two thousand volunteers who were active by the end of the war, one of the
most effective and well-known was the agent, Gilbert Renault, who was awarded the
Ordre de la Libération and later the Légion d'honneur for his deeds.[102] Known mainly by
the pseudonym, Colonel Rémy, he returned to France in August 1940, not long after the
surrender of France. There, in November 1940, he organized one of the most active and
important Résistance networks of the BCRA, the Confrérie de Notre Dame (Brotherhood
of Our Lady), which provided the Allies with photographs, maps, and important
information on the German defenses known as the Atlantic Wall.[103] From 1941 on,
networks such as these allowed the BCRA to send armed parachutists, weapons, and
radio equipment into France to carry out missions.

Another important BCRA operative, Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, a naval officer,
developed a network of twenty-six people in France. He was betrayed, arrested in May
1941, and shot on 29 August 1941.

Christian Pineau, one of the founders of the Libération Nord movement also had BCRA
roots. During his trip to London in April 1942, Pineau was assigned by BCRA the task of
creating two new intelligence systems, one called Phalanx, and the other called Cohors-
Asturies. These networks proved vital later in the war.

Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (Unified Movements of the Resistance, MUR) was a

French Résistance organization, resulting from the regrouping of three major Résistance
movements ("Combat", "Franc-Tireur", and "Libération-Sud") in January 1943. Later in
1943, the BCRA and the United Movements of Résistance merged their intelligence
networks.

Another BCRA appendage was called Gallia, an intelligence network specializing in

military intelligence and police activities. Its importance increased throughout the second
half of 1943 and into the spring of 1944, until it became the largest BCRA network in the
Vichy zone, employing about 2500 sources, contacts, couriers, and analysts. Gallia's
work did not stop after the 1944 landings in Normandy and Provence; it provided
information to the Allies that allowed for the bombing of military targets in the wake of
the retreat of the German armies.

[edit] Foreigners in the Résistance

[edit] Spanish maquis

Main article: Spanish Maquis

Following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War in early 1939, about a half-million
Spanish Republicans fled to France to escape imprisonment and execution.[104] On the
north side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps such as Camp
Gurs and Camp Vernet.[74][104] Although over half of the refugees had been repatriated to
Spain (or elsewhere) by the time Pétain proclaimed the Vichy Regime in 1940,[105] the
120,000 to 150,000 who remained[106] became political prisoners, and the foreign
equivalent to the Service du Travail Obligatoire, the Compagnies de Travailleurs
Etrangers (Companies of Foreign Workers) or CTE, began to pursue them as slave
laborers.[107] The CTE permitted prisoners to leave the internment camps if they agreed to
go work in factories in Germany,[108] but as many as sixty thousand Republicans who
were recruited to the labor service managed to escape, and, instead, they joined the
French Résistance.[105] Thousands of suspected anti-fascist Republicans were,
nonetheless, deported to concentration camps in Germany.[109] Most were sent to
Mauthausen, where, of the ten thousand Spaniards registered, only two thousand survived
the war.[110]

Many Spanish escapees joined French Résistance groups; others formed their own
autonomous groups, which became known as the Spanish maquis. In April 1942, Spanish
communists formed an organization called the XIV Corps, an armed guerrilla movement,
which had a force of about 3400 combatants by June 1944.[106] Although the group at first
worked closely with the Franc Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), it re-formed as the Agrupación
de Guerrilleros Españoles (Spanish Guerrilla Group, AGE) in May 1944.[111] The name
change was intended to convey the group's composition: Spanish soldiers, who were
ultimately advocating the fall of General Francisco Franco.[106] After the German army
was driven from France, the Spanish maquis refocused on Spain.

[edit] German anti-fascists

From spring 1943, German and Austrian anti-fascists, who had fought in the International
Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, fought in Lozère and in the Cévennes alongside
the French Résistance in the Franc Tireurs et Partisans.[105] During the first years of the
occupation they had been employed in the CTE, but following the German invasion of
the southern zone in 1942 the threat increased and many joined the maquis. They were
led by the militant German communist Otto Kühne, a former member of the Reichstag,
who had over 2000 Germans in the FTP under his command by July 1944. He directly
fought the Nazis, as in the battles of April 1944 in Saint-Étienne-Vallée-Française, where
they destroyed a Feldgendarmerie unit, or in an ambush of the Waffen-SS on June 5,
1944.[112]

[edit] Luxembourgers

400 Luxembourgish men, often men who refused to serve, or who deserted the German
Wehrmacht left Luxembourg, in order to continue their resistance in the French maquis,
where they were particularly active in the regions of Lyon, Grenoble, and the French
Ardennes. A considerable amount of Luxembourgish members of the French maquis
were killed during the war. Others, like Antoine Diederich, became high ranked
resistance fighters. Antoine Diederich (who was only known as "Capitaine Baptiste") had
77 members of the maquis under his command and is best known for attacking the prison
of Riom where he and his fighters freed all of the 114 death-sentenced inmates.[113]

[edit] Hungarians

Many Hungarian émigrés, including those were Jewish, were artists and writers working
in Paris at the time of the occupation. They had gone to Paris in the 1920s and 1930s to
escape repression. Many joined the Resistance, where they were particularly active in the
regions of Lyon, Grenoble, Marseille and Toulouse. Jewish resisters included Imre
Epstein in the Hungarian group at Toulouse; György Vadnai, the future rabbi of
Lausanne, at Lyon; the writer Emil Szittya at Limoges. Also participating were the
painter Sándor Józsa, the sculptor István Hajdú (Etienne Hajdu), the journalists László
Kőrös and Imre Gyomrai; the photographers Andor (Andre) Steiner, Lucien Hervé and
Ervin Marton. Tamás Elek (1924–1944), Imre Glasz (1902–1944) and József Boczor
(1905–1944) were among 23 persons executed for their work with the legendary
Manouchian Group. The Germans executed nearly 1,100 Jewish resisters of different
nationalities during the occupation. Others were killed in action.[78][114]

[edit] Italian anti-fascists

On March 3, 1943, representatives of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian
Socialist Party, who had taken refuge in France, signed the "Pact of Lyon", which began
their participation in the Résistance. The Italians were particularly numerous in the
Moselle industrial area, which had been annexed by Adolf Hitler, where they played a
determining role in the creation of the département's main resistance organisation,
Groupe Mario.[115] Vittorio Culpo is an example of Italians in the French Resistance.

[edit] Polish resistance in France during World War II

Main article: Polish resistance in France during World War II

The majority of the Polish soldiers and some Polish civilians who failed to evacuate from
France after the German victory in 1940 as well as one Polish pilot shot down over
France, one of many Polish pilots flying for RAF, did join the French Résistance.
Examples: Tony Halik and Aleksander Kawałkowski.

[edit] Beginnings of a coordinated resistance

Resistants from Huelgoat.

From 1940 to 1942, the first years of the German occupation of France, there was no
thoroughly-organized Résistance capable of fighting in a coordinated fashion throughout
France. Active opposition to the German and Vichy authorities was sporadic and carried
out only by a tiny and fragmented set of operatives.[116] Most French men and women had
faith in the Vichy government and its figurehead, Marshal Pétain, who continued to be
widely-regarded as the "savior" of France,[117][118] and this generous opinion of Vichy
continued until its unpopular policies and collaboration with the foreign occupiers
became broadly apparent.

The earliest Résistance organizations had no contact with the western Allies and received
no material aid from London or anywhere else. Consequently, most focused on
generating nationalist propaganda through the distribution of underground newspapers.
[119]
Many of the major movements, such as Défense de la France, were centered on their
newspapers, and, although their activities intensified, propaganda and the cultivation of
positive morale remained, until the very end of the war, their most important concerns.[120]
Early acts of violent resistance were often more motivated by instinct, a fighting spirit,
than by any formal ideology,[121] but, later, several distinct political alignments and
visions of post-liberation France developed among the Résistance organizations. These
differences sometimes resulted in conflicts, but the differences among Résistance factions
were usually papered-over by a shared opposition to Vichy and the Germans.[122] Over
time, the various elements of the Résistance began to coalesce.

Many of the networks recruited and controlled by the British and Americans were not
perceived by the French as being especially interested in establishing a united or
integrated Résistance operation, and the guerrilla groups controlled by the communists
were only slightly more engaged by the idea of a Résistance "umbrella" organization.
Nonetheless, a contact between envoys of De Gaulle and the communists was established
at the end of 1942. The liberation of Corsica in September 1943, a clear demonstration of
the strength of a communist insurgency, was accomplished by the FTP, an effective force
not yet integrated into the Secret Army and not involved with General Henri Giraud, the
Free French, or the political unification of the Résistance.

In 1941, the French Résistance began to gel. This was evidenced by the formation of
movements in the Vichy zone centered on such figures as Henri Frenay (Combat),
Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie (Libération-sud), and François de Menthon, (Liberté),
each of whom was, independently, an agent of the Free French. Formal consolidation was
accomplished through the intervention of Jean Moulin.

Prefect of Eure-et-Loir in 1939, Jean Moulin was subsequently a part of the Air Ministry
of Pierre Cot. In this context, he had forged a strong network of relationships in
antifascist circles. After November 1940, he had the idea of teaming up with his former
colleague, Gaston Cusin, to identify and contact a number of potential Résistance
"centers of influence", but only during the summer of 1941 was he able to make the most
critical contacts, including contact with Henry Frenay, leader of the movement not yet
called Combat, but the National Liberation Movement. He also established contact with
De Menthon and Emmanuel d'Astier.

In the report he wrote for De Gaulle, he spoke of these three movements and the
possibility of bringing them together under the acronym, "LLL".

[edit] Jean Moulin's intercession

The majority of resistance movements in France were unified after Jean Moulin's
formation of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) in May 1943.[41][123] 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).

The 30 September 1943 issue of the Résistance newspaper, Défense de la France

[edit] Economic resistance

By June 1941, 81% of the miners of the national coalmining company, Charbonnages de
France, were on strike, slowing deliveries of coal for the German war industry.

[edit] Clandestine press

The first action of many Résistance movements was the publication and distribution of
the clandestine press. This was not the case with all movements, as some refused civil
action and preferred armed resistance, such as CDLR and CDLL. Most clandestine
newspapers were not consistent in their issues and were often just a single sheet, because
the sale of all raw materials – paper, ink, stencils – was prohibited.

In the northern zone, Pantagruel, the newspaper of Franc-Tireur, had a circulation of

10,000 by June 1941, and was quickly replaced by Libération-Nord which reached a
circulation of 50,000. By January 1944, Défense de la France was distributing 450,000
copies.[124]

In the southern zone, François de Menthon's newspaper Liberté merged with Henri
Frenay's Vérité to form Combat, in December 1941, which grew to a circulation of
200,000 by 1944.[125] During the same period, Pantagruel published 37 issues,
Libération-Sud published fifty-four issues and Témoignage chrétien published fifteen.

The underground press of France published books as well as newspapers through

publishing houses such as Les Éditions de Minuit (the Midnight Press)[35] which had been
begun in order to circumvent Vichy and German censorship. The novel Le Silence de la
Mer was written in 1942 by Jean Bruller, and quickly became a symbol of mental
resistance through its story of how an old man and his niece do not speak to the German
officer occupying their house.[126][127]

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

[edit] Intelligence

The intelligence networks were by far the most numerous and substantial of Résistance
activities. They collected information of military value, such as coastal fortifications of
the Atlantic Wall or Wehrmacht deployments. There was often competition between the
BCRA and the different British intelligence services to produce the most valuable
information from their Résistance networks in France.[103][128]

The first agents of the Free French to arrive from Britain landed on the Brittany coast as
early as July 1940. They were Lieutenant Mansion, Saint-Jacques, Corvisart and Colonel
Rémy, and did not hesitate to get in touch with the thousands[citation needed] of anti-Germans
in the Vichy military, such as Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Georges Groussard.

The various Résistance movements in France had to understand the value of intelligence
networks in order to be recognised or receive subsidies from the BCRA or the British.
The intelligence service of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans was known by the code letters
FANA[129] and headed by Georges Beyer, the brother-in-law of Charles Tillon.
Information from services such as it was often used as a bargaining chip to qualify for
airdrops of weapons.

The transmission of information was first done by radio transmitter. Later, when air links
by the Westland Lysander became more frequent, some information was also channeled
through these couriers. By 1944, the BCRA was receiving 1,000 telegrams by radio every
day and 2,000 plans every week.[130] Many radio operators, called pianistes, were located
by German goniometers. Their dangerous work resulted in them having an average life
expectancy of around six months.[131] According to the historian Jean-François
Muracciole, "Throughout the war, it was communications which constituted the principal
difficulty of intelligence networks. Not only were the operators few and inept, but their
information was dangerous."[132]

[edit] Sabotage

Allied troops fought alongside French partisans to retake their cities.

Sabotage is a form of resistance that was taken by groups who wanted to go further than
the distribution of the clandestine press. Many laboratories were set up to produce
explosives. In August 1941, the Parisian chemist France Bloch-Serazin assembled a small
laboratory in her apartment to provide explosives to communist Résistance fighters.[133]
The lab also produced cyanide capsules to allow the fighters to evade torture if they were
arrested.[133] France Bloch was arrested in February 1942, tortured, and deported to
Hamburg where she was decapitated with an axe in February 1943. In the southern
occupation zone, Jacques Renouvin engaged in the same activities on behalf of groups of
francs-tireurs.

Eventually, stealing dynamite from the Germans became preferred to handcrafting

explosives. The British Special Operations Executive also parachuted tons of explosives
to its agents in France for their essential sabotage missions.[134] The railways were a
favourite target of saboteurs, who soon understood that removing the bolts from the
tracks was far more efficient than using explosives.

Train derailment strategies varied considerably in their effectiveness. In level farming

regions, the Germans managed to repair the tracks quickly, with the salvage of some
matériel a relatively easy proposition. However, unbolting a connector plate on the
outside rail in a mountainous area (a higher speed, downhill grade section) could result in
the derailment of an entire train with considerable amounts of front-ready matériel strewn
far down the mountainside. Following the invasions of Normandy and Provence in 1944,
the sabotage of rail transportation became much more frequent and was effective in
preventing German troop deployments to the front and in hindering their retreat later.[135]

Generally, the sabotage of equipment leaving armaments factories and derailment in

areas where equipment could not readily be salvaged was a more discreet form of
resistance and probably at least as effective as the bombings. Available Allied military
aircraft was far less vulnerable, as well, remaining available for combat support. It was
also preferred as it caused less collateral damage and civilian casualties than Allied
bombing.[136]

[edit] Guerrilla warfare

After the invasion of the Soviet Union, guerrilla warfare was undertaken by communists,
who attacked German forces at the hearts of French cities. In July 1942, the Allies' failure
to open up a second front resulted in a wave of guerrilla attacks being carried out by
communists, with the intention of maximising the number of Germans deployed in the
West in order to relieve the USSR.[137]

The assassinations that took place during summer and autumn 1941, beginning with
Colonel Pierre-Georges Fabien's shooting of a German officer in the Paris Métro, caused
fierce reprisals and the executions of hundreds of French hostages. As a result the
clandestine press was very discreet about the events and the communists soon chose to
end the assassinations.

From July to October 1943, groups in Paris engaging in attacks against occupying
soldiers were better organised. Joseph Epstein was assigned responsibility for training
Résistance fighters across the city, and his new commandos of fifteen men allowed a
number of attacks that would not have previously been possible to be carried out. The
commandos were composed of the foreign branch of the Franc Tireurs et Partisans, and
the most famous of them was the Manouchian Group.

[edit] Role in the liberation of France

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 Résistance 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,[138] and the north-south occupational divide,[139] allow for many different
interpretations, but what can broadly be agreed on is a synopsis of the events which took
place.

Following the Italian surrender in September 1943, a significant example of Résistance

strength was displayed, when the Corsican Résistance, with the assistance of the Free
French, began a movement which liberated the island from General Albert Kesselring's
remaining German forces.[140]

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
command of General Pierre Kœnig,[141] fought alongside the Allies to free the rest of
France. Several colour-coded plans were co-ordinated for sabotage, with the most
important being Plan Vert (Green) for railways, Plan Bleu (Blue) for power installations
and Plan Violet (Purple) for telecommunications.[142][143][144] To complement these
missions, smaller plans were prepared: Plan Rouge (Red) for German ammunition
depots, Plan Jaune (Yellow) for German command posts, Plan Noir (Black) for German
fuel depots and Plan Tortue (Tortoise) for road traffic.[145] The paralysing of German
infrastructure is widely thought to have been very effective.[146] British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill later wrote in his memoirs of the role the Résistance played in the
liberation of Brittany, "The French Resistance Movement, which here numbered 30,000
men, played a notable part, and the peninsula was quickly overrun."[147]

Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division parading after the Battle for Paris, August 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
Résistance. 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 landed in Provence in August 1944 and was assisted by over 25,000 maquis.[148]

One source often referred to is General Dwight D. Eisenhower's comment in his military
memoir, Crusade in Europe:

Throughout France, the Free French had been of inestimable value in the
campaign. They were particularly active in Brittany, but on every portion
of the front we secured help from them in a multitude of ways. Without
their great assistance the liberation of France and the defeat of the enemy
in Western Europe would have consumed a much longer time and meant
greater losses to ourselves.

—[149]

General Eisenhower also estimated the value of the Résistance to have been equal to ten
to fifteen divisions at the time of the landings. (One infantry division represented about
ten thousand soldiers.)[150][151] Historians and military experts however note that such an
estimate was rather exaggerated; and the overall military effectivness of the French
Résistance was more limited.[152] It is estimated that FFI killed some 2,000 Germans,
while suffering the losses of about 4,000 or 5,000; further, the French losses included
about 10,000 civilians killed in German reprisals and about 6,000 collaborators, victims
of the French civil war.[152]

Tribute to SNCF personnel killed during the Second World War

In coming to terms with the events of the occupation, several different attitudes have
emerged in France, in an evolution the historian Henry Rousso has called the "Vichy
Syndrome".[153]

Immediately following the liberation, France was swept by a wave of executions, public
humiliations, assaults and detentions of suspected collaborators, known as the épuration
sauvage (wild purge).[154] This period succeeded the German occupational administration
but preceded the authority of the French Provisional Government, and therefore lacked a
form of institutional justice.[154] Approximately 9,000 were executed, mostly without trial.
[154]
Head shaving was a common feature of the purges,[155] and between 10,000 and
30,000 women accused of having collaborated with the Germans were subjected to the
practice,[156] becoming known as les tondues (the shorn).[157]

The official épuration légale began following a June 1944 decree that established a three-
tier system of judicial courts;[158] a High Court of Justice, which dealt with Vichy
ministers and officials; Courts of Justice for other serious cases of collaboration; and
regular Civic Courts for lesser cases of collaboration.[154][159] The phase of the purge trials
ended with a series of amnesty laws passed between 1951 and 1953[160] which reduced the
number of imprisoned collaborators from 40,000 to 62,[161] and was ensued by a period of
official "repression" that lasted between 1954 and 1971.[160] During this period, and
particularly after de Gaulle's return to power in 1958,[162] the collective memory of
"résistancialisme" tended to propose a very much resistant France opposed to the
collaboration of the Vichy Regime.[163] This period ended when the aftermath of the
events of May 1968, which had divided France between the conservative war generation
and the younger, more liberal students and workers,[164] led many to question the
Résistance ideals of the official history.[165]

The questioning of France's past had become a national obsession by the 1980s,[166]
fuelled by the highly-publicised trials of war criminals such as Klaus Barbie and Maurice
Papon.[167] Although the occupation often remains a sensitive subject in the twenty-first
century,[168] contrary to some interpretations the French as a whole have acknowledged
their past and no longer deny their conduct during the war.[169]

Because so many resistance members were shot at Fort Mont-Valérien, in Suresnes, the
memorial of the France Combattante was installed there.
After the war, the influential French Communist Party (PCF) projected itself as "Le Parti
des Fusillés" (The Party of those shot), in recognition of the thousands of Communists
executed for their Résistance activities.[170][171][172] The number of communists killed was
in reality considerably less than the Party's figure of 75,000, and it is now estimated that
nearer to 30,000 Frenchmen of all political movements combined were shot,[131][173] of
whom only a few thousand were communists.[131]

The Vichy Regime's prejudicial policies had discredited traditional conservatism in

France by the end of the war,[174] but following the liberation many former Pétainistes
became critical of the official résistancialisme, using expressions such as "la mythe de la
Résistance" (the myth of the Résistance),[175] with one concluding, "The 'Gaullist' régime
is therefore built on a fundamental lie."[176]

The French Résistance 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.

The Résistance is also portrayed in Jean Renoir's wartime This Land is Mine (1943),
which was produced in the USA.

In the immediate post-war years, French cinema produced a number of films that
portrayed a France broadly present in the Résistance.[177][178] The 1946 La Bataille du rail
depicted the courageous efforts of French railway workers to sabotage German
reinforcement trains,[179] and in the same year Le Père tranquille told the story of a quiet
insurance agent secretly involved in the bombing of a factory.[179] Collaborators were
hatefully presented as a rare minority, as played by Pierre Brewer in Jéricho (1946) or
Serge Reggiani in Les Portes de la nuit (1946), and movements such as the Milice were
rarely evoked.

In the 1950s, a less heroic interpretation of the Résistance to the occupation gradually
began to emerge.[179] In Claude Autant-Lara's La Traversée de Paris (1956), the portrayal
of the city's black market and general mediocrity revealed the reality of war-profiteering
during the occupation.[180] In the same year, Robert Bresson presented A Man Escaped, in
which an imprisoned Résistance activist works with a reformed collaborator inmate to
escape.[181] A cautious reappearance of the image of Vichy emerged in Le Passage du
Rhin (1960), in which a crowd successively acclaim both Pétain and de Gaulle.[182]

After General de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, the portrayal of the Résistance
returned to its earlier résistancialisme. In this manner, in Is Paris Burning? (1966), "the
role of the resistant was revalued according to [de Gaulle's] political trajectory".[183] The
comic form of films such as La Grande Vadrouille (1966) widened the image of
Résistance heroes to average Frenchmen.[184] The most famous and critically acclaimed of
all the résistancialisme movies is Army of Shadows (L'Armee des ombres), which was
made by the French film-maker Jean-Pierre Melville in 1969. The film was inspired by
Joseph Kessel's 1943 book, as well as Melville's own experiences, as he had fought in the
Résistance and participated in Operation Dragoon. A 1995 television screening of
L'Armee des ombres described it as "the best film made about the fighters of the shadows,
those anti-heroes."[185]

The shattering of France's résistancialisme following the events of May 1968 emerged
particularly clearly in French cinema. The candid approach of the 1971 documentary The
Sorrow and the Pity pointed the finger on anti-Semitism in France and disputed the
official Résistance ideals.[186][187] Time magazine's positive review of the film wrote 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."[188]

Franck Cassenti, with L'Affiche Rouge (1976); Gilson, with La Brigade (1975); and
Mosco with the documentary Des terroristes à la retraite addressed foreign resisters of
the EGO, who were then relatively unknown. In 1974, Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien
caused scandal and polemic because of his absence of moral judgment with regard to the
behavior of a collaborator.[189] Malle later portrayed the resistance of Catholic priests who
protected Jewish children in his 1987 film Au revoir, les enfants. François Truffaut's 1980
film Le Dernier Métro was set during the German occupation of Paris and won ten
Césars for its story of a theatre production taking place while its Jewish director is
concealed by his wife in the theatre's basement.[190] The 1980s began to portray the
resistance of working women, as in Blanche et Marie (1984).[191] Later, Jacques Audiard's
Un héros très discret (1996) told the story of a young man's traveling to Paris and
manufacturing a Résistance past for himself, suggesting that many heroes of the
Résistance were imposters.[192][193] In 1997, Claude Berri produced the biopic Lucie
Aubrac based on the life of the Résistance heroine of the same name, which was
criticized for its Gaullist portrayal of the Résistance and over-emphasis on the
relationship between Aubrac and her husband.[194]

[edit] Cultural personalities

Main article: List of people involved with the French Resistance

The well-known personalities of France —— intellectuals, artists, and entertainers ——

faced a serious dilemma in choosing to emigrate or to remain in France during the
country's occupation. They understood that their post-war reputations would depend, in
large part, on their conduct during the war years.[195] Indeed, many were later ostracised
by the French following accusations that they had collaborated.

After the war, many Frenchmen falsely claimed to have been involved in the Rêsistance.
Some, such as Maurice Papon, created false Résistance pasts[196]

Among prominent foreign figures who participated in the French Résistance was the later
Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. His antitotalitarian efforts took him to Paris in
1980 as head of Iranian opposition groups against the then-established Islamic
government. He was assassinated in 1991.[197]