The nature, extent and significance of resistance in Occupied France are other issues that continue to interest, some might say preoccupy, historians and politicians in postwar France. How many French men and women were engaged in resistance? what did this engagement consist of? and how effective was it in the struggle against the Nazis? These are just some of the questions that have been asked in the postwar years.
We will return to them again in the next session and for this week's class, consider the main features of resistance in France between 1940 and 1944.
Between June 1940 and the spring of 1942, opposition to the German army of occupation and to the Vichy government was limited. Jean-François Muracciole reminds us that:
En juin 1940, au moment de la débâcle, le choix ne se pose pas encore entre résistance et collaboration, mais entre capitulation et armistice. (Muracciole: 1996 p.5)A number of reasons for this relative lack of active resistance have been put forward:
This said however, from the summer of 1940 onwards, one witnesses the emergence of small, spontaneous and individual acts of resistance. Turning one's back on a German victory parade or giving incorrect directions were minor but significant acts of resistance to the occupying power. As early as June 1940, Jean Texier produced a clandestine tract called Conseils à l'occupé (`advice to the occupied') which included 33 ways ways of expressing personal resistance. The case of Étienne Achavanne, who sabotaged telephone lines in Le Havre and was executed for it in July 1940 is typical of the more daring acts of resistance (Durand: 1989 pp.102-5). Not all sections of the army accepted the armistice and the Senegalese troops of the 1st colonial regiment carried on the combat with German troops near Lyon. Their determination to resist led to the entire regiment being brutally massacred. Small, individual acts of resistance gradually became larger, more organized and more militarily significant as the war dragged on. More importantly, hitherto separate resistance groups began to learn of one another's existence and began to link up.- a feeling of resignation after the defeat of June - H.R. Kedward claims that `the arguments of common sense and practicality ... buttressed inaction. Few people saw any way in which the French could continue a war which had been so comprehensively lost' (Kedward: 1985 p.47);
- the division of France into six separate zones, and the difficulty of moving and communicating between them;
- the massive Germany military presence in the North and, in the Unoccupied zone, the presence of a legitimate government;
- the belief, held by many, that Pétain was playing un double jeu, stringing the Nazis along whilst secretly planning his revenge.
It is estimated that in December 1940, there were only a few thousand
active in some form of resistance with many more tacit supporters.
Organized resistance took place in both the North, which was occupied and
had a large German military presence and the South which was, until
November 1942, unoccupied. The types of activities these early organized
resistance movements were engaged in fell into three categories:
Like the Musée de l'Homme network, other groups emerged around
prominent individuals: military figures like General Cochet or Captain
Frenay, academics and intellectuals like Jean Cassou in Paris or
Pierre-Henri Teitgen in Montpellier, active Communist party members like
Charles Tillon in Bordeaux and priests like Father Fessard or Father
Chaillet in Lyon (Kedward: 1985 p.48).
Although the image of resistance is of an essentially clandestine activity
taking place in occupied territory, London was a major city of French
resistance. A number of French military men and politicians had based
themselves in London with the express purpose of continuing the fight
against Nazi Germany alongside Great Britain. One of the first major
symbolic gestures of this London-based resistance was de Gaulle's famous
radio
speech to the French broadcast from London on the 18th June 1940.
De Gaulle was 50 when he made this now landmark speech. Although a
relatively young general with less experience than many of the men who
formed the French government, his speech expressed a better understanding
of the nature of the war and its dynamics - `cette guerre est une guerre
mondiale' (this war is a world war) - than the French government that had
agreed the armistice. De Gaulle argued that France could continue the war
from its colonies and draw on the huge industrial potential of the United
States.
One of the challenges de Gaulle and the other Français de Londres
faced was how to assert their legitimacy over the nascent and growing
resistance movements in France and how to unify them behind a shared
purpose led, of course, by de Gaulle. This was a difficult task given the
fragmented nature of the resistance movements in France and the suspicion,
particularly strong amongst movements dominated by Communists, Socialists
and Left-leaning Republicans, of de Gaulle's political intentions. His
military background, his aristocratic particule (`de' in France
tends to designate aristocratic descent) and publications like Vers une
armée de métier were seen as deeply suspicious.
Resistance in the Occupied zone developed early due to a relatively high
degree of resentment towards German military occupation. Although
movements in the North were generally smaller than those in the southern
zone due to the difficulties of communication in a heavily policed zone,
they were nonetheless significant in bringing together French people of
different political persuasions (e.g. Socialists, Catholics etc.). What
linked them was their common hostility to Nazi occupation. Although these
movements were spread out across the Occupied zone, their main centre was,
of course, Paris. Some of the major groups were:
Many of these groups were working directly for either the Free French (la
France libre) based in London or for the SOE and were therefore part
of a much larger struggle to wage war against the Nazi domination of
Europe.
Although the Southern zone was not occupied until November 1942, it
nonetheless provided the base for some of the most significant resistance
movements with Lyon becoming the de facto spiritual home of the
resistance in the Unoccupied zone.
Some of the main movements in the south were:
As you can see from the number of different movements in operation
throughout France, the resistance was far from unified. This was
recognised by de Gaulle who sought to unify the diverse movements by
ensuring their adherence to his own France Libre movement. In
January 1942 Jean Moulin was parachuted into France with the mission of
unifying France's resistance movements.
For a succinct overview of attempts to unify the diverse resistance
movements, you should read Muracciole (1996 pp.48-60).
The reasons for resistance are numerous and complex. The motivations are
not reducible to personal bravery alone - although this undoubtedly played
a part, but involve issues of class and class politics, religion,
ethnicity and so on. Here are just some of the main motives:
The sociological characteristics of resisters varied enormously according
to the nature of the resistance movement or network to which they
belonged, and, of course, depended on the type of activity (i.e. civil or
military) they were engaged in. Although the overall numbers of the French
engaged in active resistance were
However a number of main features are noticible:
As I mentionned above, France's diverse immigrant community made a
massive, and frequently forgotten contribution to the resistance movement
and to the liberation of France. In 1939 it is estimated that there were
around 2.5 million foreigners in France, or 6% of a total population of 41
million. Italian (around 800,000), Polish (around 500,000) and Spanish
migrants (around 250,000 in 1936) were the largest groups. Immigration
from other Central and Eastern European countries was also significant and
amongst their number were around 120,000 Jews. Most of these migrants
arrived after World War I to help resolve the labour shortage and were
therefore what we might call economic migrants. However, many arrived in
the 1930s in response to events in Europe: Italian anti-fascists, Spanish
Republicans and assorted members of the International Brigade, German
anti-Nazis, and, of course, Jews fleeing the violent anti-semitism of
Central, Eastern and, increasingly, Western Europe. There was a
particularly dramatic wave of Catalan migrants (around 500,000) in January
1939 after the fall of Barcelona.
Many of these migrants - economic, political or racial - were active in
resistance movements in both the North and the South early in the war.
Sometimes, immigrants formed their own autonomous resistance groups with
their own political - i.e. anti-fascist - agenda. Spanish and Polish
migrants were particularly active and well-organized in these sorts of
groups. One Polish group, POWN, had close links with Poles based in London
and many Spanish and Catalan migrants had recent combat experience from
their struggle against Franco.
There was one organization that grouped migrants of different
nationalities into a single movement. Franc- tireurs et partisans de la
main d'oeuvre immigrée (FTP- MOI). MOI was initially set up by the
French Communist Party (PCF) in the 1920s to organize immigrant workers
and played a key role in helping to set up the International Brigade that
fought against Franco in Spain. A well-organized political structure
therefore, already existed prior to the war and its integration into a
resistance movement in mid- 1941 was relatively easy. By the summer of
FTP-MOI had spread from its initial base in Paris and had groups in
Southern cities like Lyon, Toulouse, Grenoble, Marseille and Nice.
The activities FTP-MOI engaged in were typical of many armed resistance
movements: they assassinated German military personnel and collaborators,
sabotaged factories working for the Germans, derailed freight trains,
destroyed electricity cables and so on. Spaniards were particularly
influential in the South-West and many towns and cities there were
liberated by Spaniards alone. Many joined the maquis and were
active in the main action in Vercors, the plateau des Glières and other
areas of intense fighting.
For a general overview of the resistance in France you could click on La
Résistance et l'honneur de la France (in French). It's produced by the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is somewhat lacking in detail and
objectivity.
There is a good page of text and colour photographs on the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
(in English) by Dr Keith Comass.
An example of an early form of organized resistance was the so-called
Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) network which was formed in
Paris in August 1940 by a group of academics that included Boris Vildé,
Anatole Lewitsky, Pierre Walter and Yvonne Oddon. They wrote resistance
tracts and magazines (e.g. Résistance) and set up links with the
British. The publications were important in developing the network and
disseminating information to other networks and to more and more French
people. The arrest and deaths of key members of the group in March and
April 1941 led to its demise but not before they had passed on to the
British information that was to prove useful in their attack on the German
naval base in Saint Nazaire in March 1942.
La France Libre: Resistance from Abroad
Resistance in Northern France
Resistance in Southern France
A Unified Resistance?
Reasons for resistance
As we have discussed in earlier lectures (Vichy
1940-42 and Vichy
1942-44), as Hitler embarked upon a `total war', repression increased
and living standards dropped, thus spurring many hitherto indifferent
French men and women into action.
The French Resistance?
Useful Web Sites
Further Reading