French Resistance
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The French Resistance is the name used for resistance movements during World War II which fought the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy regime, and was a vital and some say decisive factor in the defeat of Hitler and the Nazi revolution. Resistance groups included small groups of armed men and women (referred to as the maquis, if they were based at the countryside), publishers of underground newspapers, and escape networks that helped allied soldiers.
In recent years some have stated that the French Resistance has not been afforded due recognition for their part in halting Hitler's march through France. However, in 1946 the Allied Forces gratefully acknowledged France's 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 crucial contribution by the 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 composed from all layers and groups of French society, from conservative Roman Catholics (including priests), to liberals, anarchists, and communists.
[edit] Origins
In June 1940, Charles de Gaulle addressed the people of France from London. He called on the French people to continue the fight against the Germans, saying “Quoi qu’il arrive, la flamme de la résistance française ne doit pas s’éteindre et ne s’éteindra pas” (“Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished”). (See Appeal of June 18.) This message hit hard in occupied France but initially it was less well received in Vichy France. Regardless of what many thought of the Vichy government, the area they controlled was run by French people. However, when the Vichy government began to openly collaborate with the Germans, attitudes hardened
The French Resistance movement is an umbrella term which covers numerous anti-German resistance movements that were based within France. There were resistance movements that took direct orders from the Special Operations Executive, the communist resistance, groups loyal to de Gaulle, regional resistance movements that wanted independence, etc. In the north, the target was simply the Germans while in the south, the Vichy government was a target as well as the Germans. The first resistance movements were in the north, such as the OCM (Organisation Civile et Militaire) and by the end of 1940, six underground newspapers were being regularly printed in the north. In May 1941, the first SOE agent was dropped into northern France to assist the work of the resistance.
In addition, there were Belgian, Polish and Dutch resistance networks who cooperated to defeat the Germans. Various groups organized in both occupied France and unoccupied Vichy France. Many of them were former soldiers who had escaped from the Germans or joined the resistance when they were released from prison camps. They hid weapons in preparation to fight again.
Others were former socialists and communists who had fled the Gestapo. Many of them hid in the forested regions, especially in the unoccupied zone. They joined together to form maquis bands and began to plan attacks against the occupation forces. Some groups also had Spanish members who had fought on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Even some 1000 Germans, who had to leave Germany because they were communists, Jews or political opponents, fought for the resistance.
Because of the political complexities of France, the resistance movement got off to a difficult start. However, by June 1941, the resistance movement had become more organized and its work against the Germans increased accordingly. Two dates are important in explaining the work of the resistance movement in France.
On June 22 1941, all the communist groups within France joined forces to create one group. This simple act greatly increased its potency. On November 11 1942, German forces occupied the whole of France. This meant that the whole country was occupied and the attitude of the north quickly transferred itself to the south.
The German attack on Russia - Operation Barbarossa - led to many French communists joining the resistance movement. Politics took a back seat and the French communists gained a reputation for being aggressive and successful resistance fighters. Many French people joined as the support for the Vichy régime quickly waned. Many in the south were angered by the compulsory labor service that had been brought in. But the treatment of the Jews was a major cause of resentment towards the Vichy government and many joined the resistance as a means of fighting against a policy that the vast majority found abhorrent.[citation needed]
[edit] Risks involved
The German occupation authorities did not hesitate to employ brutal means in order to subdue the French population. 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 guerrrillas; 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.
In addition, the Vichy Regime had established paramilitary groups (presumably considered part of the Vichy security forces), such as the Milice, in order to fight the Resistance. These groups, collaborating closely with the Nazis, were very brutal and did not hesitate to use methods such as torture.
[edit] The Networks of the BCRA
The BCRA (Le Bureau central de renseignements et d'action), was a French resistance agency created in 1940.
In July 1940, after the defeat of the French Armies, the Germans controlled the French coast from Spain to Belgium. With the threat of a possible cross-channel invasion of Britain, Churchill asked the Intelligence Service to set up with General de Gaulle an information network made up of the Free French Forces. Colonel Passy, of the second office, took the responsibility of creating such a network, with the main goal of informing London of German military operations across the Atlantic coast and the English Channel.
By the end of the war there were nearly 2000 volunteers. Among them, Gilbert Renault, known mainly under the pseudonym of Colonel Rémy, returned to occupied France in August 1940. He went on to create one of the most active and important resistant networks of the BRCA: the Notre-Dame Brotherhood. From 1941 on, supported by multiple networks, the BCRA was able to send material and armed parachutists 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.
[edit] The role of the French Resistance in the Liberation
A main point of the two forms of resistance, external and internal, was that the French were present with the Allies at the time of liberation. The question which stems from that is: What was the role of the resistance in the liberation? It is difficult to give an answer to this question but there are some brief replies: In September 1943, the Corsican resistance started a movement which liberated the island with the assistance of commandos from North Africa. Starting from the D-Day Landings in June 1944, the FFI and FTP, theoretically unified under the commandment of General Kœnig, fought to liberate other French provinces.
In September 1944, with the continuation of unloading armies and supplies at Normandy, the Maquis and other sabotage groups intervened, either by starting battles to fix German forces in one area, or by disorganizing railway communication networks used by the Germans: the green plan for railways, the purple plan for telephone lines and the blue plan for electric installations. The Paul plan aimed to destroy German deposits of ammunition and fuel, to badger German reinforcements, and to prepare for the arrival of Allied troops.
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. However, it is very difficult to understand the effectiveness of the popular demonstration, with the psychological operation on the one hand, and the military on the other. Less debatable is the liberation of most of the southwest and central France, and the southeast was finally liberated with the progression of the 1st French Army of the General of Lattre de Tassigny, unloaded in Provence in August 1944.
One often refers to 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: How can information provided to the Allies be converted? And intoxication of the Germans whom the Intelligence Service did try by handling the Prosper network of the SOE? One will never have an answer to the question: "was the contribution of the resistance so decisive that the head of the invasion of Normandy was not rejected back into the sea?
[edit] List of groups
Groups include:
- Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR - Clandestine central underground committee, organised by Jean Moulin, to coordinate every inland resistance group, with patriotic political parties, and syndicates). CNR supported de Gaulle against Giraud for the unification of the French Empire forces, under the authority of Comité français de la Libération nationale (CFLN), in Algiers
- Agir
- Armée Secrète (AS or Secret Army) - Gaullist resistance group of Charles Delestraint.
- Bureau d'Opérations Aériennes (BOA) - Service for arranging clandestine air operations in northern France.
- Carte. A putative organisation conceived by André Girard.
- Ceux de la Resistance
- Ceux de la Libération
- Combat - Formed 1942 by Henri Frenay. This group was moderate left-wing and concentrated on sabotage and counterpropaganda. It published an underground newspaper Combat that was printed in Lyon and distributed in Paris. Albert Camus was active in the editing of the book alongside Georges Bidault. Along with Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre was a famous member, and their membership served to make the group famous after the war. The paper Combat was privatized in 1949 and became a usual commercial newspaper.
- Combat Zone Nord
- Comité d'Action Socialiste (CAS) - Founded in January 1941 by Daniel Mayer, member of the French Socialist Party.
- Comité Départemental de Libération (CDL or Departmental Liberation Committee)
- Comité de libération du cinéma français (Liberation Committee of the French Cinema)
- Confrèrie Notre-Dame - Catholic resistance group
- Défense de la France - A group of students of Sorbonne University that began to produce an underground newspaper of the same name. The first printing in August 1941 was 15,000. The paper survived through the occupation. The group also had espionage and escape networks and produced false ID papers for resistance members. In the end it had close contacts with the maquis.
- Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (Français) (FTP or FTPF) - It was formed by the French Communist Party and ended up as the military wing of the Front National (see below).
- Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main d'Oeuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI) - It was originally communist, and mostly composed of foreigners. In contrast with maquis this group was doing urban guerrilla fighting. See Manouchian, Affiche Rouge
- Francs-Tireur This was a Left-wing group formed by Jean-Pierre Lévy in Lyon in 1941. In December 1941 they began to publish Le Franc-Tireur underground newspaper. There were also members in the Mediterranean area.
- Front National (FN or National Front, now also known as the Front National de la Resistance) - This group was founded by members of the French Communist Party in May 1942. Its leader was Pierre Villon (It should not be confused with the current far-right wing party Front National).
- Interallié - Intelligence organization of Roman Sziarnowski and Mathilde Carre. It was crushed in 1942.
- Liberation-Nord Organized by Henri Ribière; Paul Rassinier joined it.
- Liberation-sud One of the first groups founded by Emmanuel d'Astier, Lucie Aubrac and Raymond Aubrac. It published an underground paper Libération with the support of remnants of the socialist party.
- Musée de L'Homme Another Parisian clandestine newspaper group, of a more conservative patriotic tendency. It also transmitted political and military information to Britain and helped to hide escaped Allied Prisoners of Wars (POWs). Vichy agents however infiltrated the group and most members were arrested and many executed.
- Organisation Civile et Militaire (OCM or Civil and Military Organization). Founded by Colonel Alfred Touny in April 1942. He was killed with 12 others in Arras two years later.
- Organisation de la Résistance de l'Armée (ORA or Organization of Armed Resistance) - Giraudist, i.e., composed of supporters of French General Henri Giraud. François Mitterrand joined it in 1943.
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.
[edit] Activities
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 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 after the slayer of Caesar in Shakespeare).
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. 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 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.
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.
[edit] Notable Persons
Other people involved with French Resistance include:
- Abbé Pierre (Catholic priest, Maquis, transition of Jews to Switzerland and safe Spain)
- José Aboulker
- Gilbert Renault, (1904-1984)
- Berty Albrecht, (1893-1943)
- Dimitri Amilakhvari, (1906-1942)
- Louis Aragon, (1897-1982)
- Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, (1900-1969)
- Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie, Roman Catholic conservative politician
- Serge Asher-Ravanel
- Lucie Aubrac
- Jacqueline Auriol, (1917-2000)
- Josephine Baker
- Raoul Batany, (1926-1944)
- Samuel Beckett
- Robert Benoist
- Georges Bidault, (1899-1983)
- Denise Bloch
- Marc Bloch, (Historian, 1886-1944)
- Tony Bloncourt
- Marc Boegner, (1881-1970)
- Raoul Boulanger
- Claude Bourdet, (1909-1996)
- Pierre Brossolette
- Jean Cavailles
- Albert Camus (writer)
- Roger Carcassonne
- Donald Caskie, (1902-1983)
- Rene Char
- Peter Churchill, SOE
- Charlotte Delbo, (1913-1985)
- Martha Desrumeaux
- Jacques Duclos
- Marguerite Duras (writer)
- Paul Eluard (poet, communist resistance)
- Honoré D'Estienne d'Orves, Catholic, sympathizer of the Action Française, naval officer (1901-1941)
- Joseph Epstein
- Marie-Madeleine Fourcade
- Henri Frager
- Henri Frenay (Founder of Combat, government minister)
- Varian Fry
- Cristino Garcia, (1914-1946)
- Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz, (niece of General de Gaulle)
- Albert Guérisse
- Georges Guingouin, communist resistance
- Michel Hollard,
- Arthur Honegger, (1892-1955)
- Max Hymans
- René Iché, (artist, sculptor, 1897-1954)
- Éliane Jeannin-Garreau
- Germain Jousse
- Bernard Karsenty
- Marcel Langer
- Jacques Lusseyran
- André Malraux ("Colonel Berger")
- Missak Manouchian
- Robert Marjolin
- Julien Meline
- Jean-Pierre Melville (Filmaker)
- Pierre Mendès-France
- Edmond Michelet (government minister)
- Jean Moulin (head of the CNR)
- Jean Pierre-Bloch (1905-1999)
- Christian Pineau
- Eliane Plewman, SOE
- Paul Rassinier, Libération Nord resistance group
- Odette Sansom
- Raymond Sommer
- Suzanne Spaak
- Evelyne Sullerot (historian and sociologist)
- Violette Szabo
- Dorothy Tartiere
- Germaine Tillion (anthropologist)
- Charles Tillon, communist resistance
- Berthe Vicogne-Fraser
- Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier
- Jean-Pierre Vernant, philologist and anthropologist
- Pierre Villon, communist resistance
- Pierre de Vomécourt
- Philippe de Vomécourt
- Nancy Wake
- Gabrielle Weidner (1914-1945)
- Johan Hendrik Weidner (1912-1994)
- William Grover-Williams
- Jean-Pierre Wimille
- Chuck Yeager
- Tristan Tzara
- Gheorghe Gaston Grossmann (changed his name from Grossman to Marin after he returned to Romania after WW2)
- Vladimir Jankélévitch, (1903-1985)
- Ostap Kuzma, member of FFI based in Troyes
- Dimitri Shterban
- Darius Campbell
After the war, many Frenchmen falsely claimed to have had connections to resistance. Some—like Maurice Papon—even manufactured a false resistance past for themselves. Estimates range from 5% of the French population to about 200,000 active armed members and possibly ten times that of supporters.
[edit] The Memory of the Resistance - The Legendary Myth
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.

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".
The fact of 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 very influential PCF was the "party of the 75 000 shot" while it had less shot than all who were not communist. The PCF recovered with its single idea of the events such as the shooting of communists at Châteaubriand.
[edit] The Resistance in Cinema
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 Jericho (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 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. 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.
[edit] French Resistance in Popular Culture
In the British sitcom Allo Allo, René Artois is a French café owner who also helps out the French Resistance, which, in the area of Nouvion where the programme takes place, is led by a woman called Michelle, who often thinks up very far-fetched plots. For much of the programme, the Resistance are primarily concerned with helping two British airmen get home to Britain. In the latter part of the programme, they are concerned with spreading propaganda messages to the local French people.
Nouvion also boasts a chapter of the all-female communist Resistance, who are much more ruthless than the De Gaulle Resistance. They have been known to kidnap German officers and demand ransom, and at one point, they capture Colonel Von Strohm and Lieutenant Gruber, who are disguised as Adolf Hitler and Herman Göring, and attempt to force "Hitler" to broadcast the surrender of Germany.
[edit] See also
- Chant des Partisans
- Free France
- Les Éditions de Minuit French publishing house set up during the Resistance by Jean Bruller (Vercors) and Pierre de Lescure
- Timeline of women's participation in warfare
- French Forces of the Interior
[edit] External links
- Chronology 1940-1945
- Exiled Spanish anarchists in the French Resistance - account of Spanish refugees from the Spanish Civil War from 1939-1945
- L'histoire de la Résistance française
- Women in the French Resistance
- French Secret Agents - Roll of honour, awards and images.
[edit] Further reading
- 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 Illinios University Press, 1976.
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