50 - édition française (E-RE(A)D t. 1) (French Edition)

The division played a critical role in Operation Cobra , the Allies' "breakout" 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 mauled several other German units as well. During the battle for Normandy this German division lost killed, wounded and 85 missing. 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 Resistance 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 vehicles, Dietrich von Choltitz , the military governor of Paris, surrendered the city in a ceremony at the Hotel Meurice. Jubilant crowds greeted the French forces, and de Gaulle led a renowned 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 de Gaulle, but for the French population de Gaulle was almost universally recognised as the true leader in their victory.

These events forced Roosevelt to recognise, finally and fully, the provisional government installed in France by de Gaulle. The military strength of the communists was still relatively feeble at the end of , 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.

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

The publication opposed both fascism and western imperialism, and 12 issues were distributed from July through July 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. A number of them formed the Union of Russian Patriots , which adopted pro-Soviet positions and collaborated closely with the French Communist Party.

The same thing was created by Jean-Baptiste Lebas in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais administratively joined with Belgium in January , along the lines of a prior network created in September In Algeria , left-wing networks of resistance were already formed. As the Riom trial began in , the fervour and the number of socialists in the Resistance grew. Despite some differences in their positions on certain issues, these organizations were united in their opposition to parliamentarism , [] a stance that had led them to participate in demonstrations, most notably the "political disturbance" riots of 6 February These efforts continued until La Cagoule could be infiltrated and dismantled in But the powerful appeal of French nationalism drove others to engage in resistance against occupying German forces.

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Sometimes contact with others in the Resistance led some operatives to adopt new political philosophies. In contrast, many extreme right-wing members of the Resistance, such as Gabriel Jeantet and Jacques Le Roy Ladurie , never renounced their tolerant attitudes towards Vichy. The Affiche Rouge red placard was a famous propaganda poster distributed by the Vichy French and German authorities in the spring of in occupied Paris. It was intended to discredit a group of 23 Franc-Tireurs known as the " Manouchian group ".

The poster emphasised the composition of the group's membership, many of whom were Jews and communists, to discredit the Resistance as not "French" enough in its fundamental allegiance and motivations. The Statute on Jews , which legally redefined French Jews as a non-French lower class , deprived them of citizenship. That legislation was spontaneous and autonomous. They distributed millions of dollars from the American Joint Distribution Committee to relief organisations and fighting units within France. The Armenian community of France played an active role in the Resistance.

Armenian-French writer Louise Aslanian — , another French Resistance activist, was arrested among with her husband Arpiar Aslanian on July 24, , taken to the Nazi concentration camps [] by Nazis and killed in Many of Louise's manuscripts and diaries were confiscated and destroyed by Nazis. Georgians living in France and the French colonies and people of Georgian ethnicity played an active and symbolic role in the French resistance. Col was one of the 66 French recipients of the Norwegian War Cross and was also posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour. He led his troops by example and died in combat during the Second Battle of El Alamein in October Upon return to his homeland, he was imprisoned by Soviet authorities on charges of high treason but two commanders of the French Resistance testified for his commitment in the fight against Nazi Germany.

Although inequalities persisted under the Third Republic , the cultural changes that followed the First World War allowed differences in the treatment of men and women in France to narrow gradually, [] with some women assuming political responsibilities as early as the s. 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 [our youth] the inclination for work, the sense of discipline, the modesty, the respect, that give men character and make nations strong. Suzanne Hiltermann-Souloumiac played an important role in the Dutch-Paris movement, specialised in rescuing Allied pilots. Marie-Madeleine Fourcade , the only major female leader in the Resistance, headed the Alliance network.

In this context, it is customary to distinguish the various organisations of the French Resistance as movements or networks. A Resistance network was an organisation created for a specific military purpose, usually intelligence-gathering, sabotage or aiding Allied air crews who had been shot down behind enemy lines. In July , after the defeat of the French armies and the consequent armistice with Germany , 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 Sea Lion , the expected cross- channel invasion of Britain.

Its principal goal was to inform London of German military operations on the Atlantic coast and in the English Channel. He was betrayed, arrested in May , and shot on 29 August Both networks proved vital later in the war. Another BCRA appendage was called Gallia , a fact-gathering network specialising in military intelligence and police activities. Its importance increased throughout the second half of and into the spring of It eventually became the largest BCRA network in the Vichy zone, employing about 2, sources, contacts, couriers and analysts.

Gallia's work did not stop after the landings in Normandy and Provence; it provided information to the Allies that allowed for the bombing of the retreating German armies' military targets. Dutch-Paris built an important network in France to help resistants, Jews and allied pilots to cross the Pyrenees and flee to Britain. Near the end of the war, because of a denunciation, nearly all members of the network were caught and deported to concentration camps, where many died.

Following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War in early , about half a million Spanish Republicans fled to France to escape imprisonment or execution. Many Spanish escapees joined French Resistance groups; others formed their own autonomous groups which became known as the Spanish maquis. In April , Spanish communists formed an organisation called the XIV Corps, an armed guerrilla movement of about 3, combatants by June Spanish soldiers ultimately advocating the fall of General Francisco Franco.

Others, like Antoine Diederich , rose to high rank in the Resistance. Diederich, known only as "Capitaine Baptiste", had 77 maquis soldiers under his command and is best known for attacking Riom prison, where he and his fighters freed every one of inmates who had been sentenced to death. They had gone to Paris in the s and s to escape repression in their homeland.

Many joined the Resistance, where they were particularly active in the regions of Lyon , Grenoble , Marseille and Toulouse. The Germans executed nearly 1, Jewish resisters of different nationalities during the occupation, while others were killed in action. On 3 March , representatives of the Italian Communist Party and Italian Socialist Party who had taken refuge in France, signed the "Pact of Lyon" which marked the beginning of their participation in the Resistance.

While not part of the French Resistance, French-speaking Cajun soldiers in the United States military posed as local civilians in France to channel American assistance to the Resistance. From to , the first years of the German occupation of France, there was no systematically organised Resistance capable of coordinated fighting throughout France. Active opposition to the German and Vichy authorities was sporadic, and carried out only by a tiny and fragmented set of operatives.

The earliest Resistance organisations 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. Even after they became more intensively activist, propaganda and the cultivation of positive morale remained, until the very end of the war, their most important concerns. Early acts of violent resistance were often motivated more by instinct and fighting spirit than by any formal ideology, [] but later several distinct political alignments and visions of post-liberation France developed among the Resistance organisations.

These differences sometimes resulted in conflicts, but the differences among Resistance factions were usually papered over by their shared opposition to Vichy and the Germans; [] and over time, the various elements of the Resistance began to unite. Many of the networks recruited and controlled by the British and Americans were not perceived by the French as particularly interested in establishing a united or integrated Resistance operation, and the guerrilla groups controlled by the communists were only slightly more attracted by the idea of joining of a Resistance "umbrella" organisation.

Nonetheless, a contact between de Gaulle's envoys and the communists was established at the end of The liberation of Corsica in September , a clear demonstration of the strength of 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 Resistance. The French Resistance began to unify in Formal consolidation was accomplished through the intervention of Jean Moulin.

In this context, he had forged a strong network of relationships in anti-fascist circles. Some time after November , the idea of teaming up with his former colleague, Gaston Cusin , to identify and contact a number of potential Resistance "centres of influence" occurred to him; but only during the summer of was he able to make the most critical contacts, including contact with Henri Frenay, leader of the movement not yet called Combat but still known as 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 entertained the possibility of bringing them together under the acronym "LLL". The Maquis French pronunciation: Initially, they were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France 's Service du travail obligatoire STO to provide forced labor for Nazi Germany. To avert capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into non-active resistance groups.

The first action of many Resistance movements was the publication and distribution of clandestine press material. Most clandestine newspapers were not consistent in their editorial stance and often consisted of only a single sheet, because the sale of all raw materials —- paper, ink, stencils —- was prohibited. By , however, about , copies of underground publications reached around two million readers. Resistance workers used friendly print-shop facilities at night. Staff risked the Germans noticing that a resistance newspaper used the same type face as officially sanctioned documents.

Profession-specific newspapers also existed. La Terre advised farmers on how to send food to resistance members. Bulletin des Chemins de Fer encouraged railroad workers to sabotage German transportation. Unter Uns "Among Us" , published in German for the occupiers, printed stories of German defeats on the eastern front. This was followed by their first tract, Vichy fait la guerre 'Vichy wages war' , written by Cassou.

The novel Le Silence de la Mer "The Silence of the Sea" , by Jean Bruller , quickly became a symbol of mental resistance through its story of how an old man and his niece refused to speak to the German officer occupying their house. The intelligence networks were by far the most numerous and substantial of Resistance activities. They collected information of military value, such as coastal fortifications of the Atlantic Wall or Wehrmacht deployments.

French Resistance

The BCRA and the different British intelligence services often competed with one another to gather the most valuable information from their Resistance networks in France. The first agents of the Free French to arrive from Britain landed on the coast of Brittany as early as July The various Resistance movements in France had to understand the value of intelligence networks in order to be recognized or receive subsidies from the BCRA or the British. Information from such services 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 , the BCRA was receiving 1, telegrams by radio every day and 2, plans every week. Their dangerous work gave them an average life expectancy of around six months. Not only were the operators few and inept, but their information was dangerous. Sabotage was a form of resistance adopted by groups who wanted to go beyond just distributing clandestine press publications. Many laboratories were set up to manufacture explosives. In the southern occupation zone, Jacques Renouvin engaged in the same activities on behalf of groups of francs-tireurs.

Stealing dynamite from the Germans eventually took preference over handcrafting explosives. The British Special Operations Executive also parachuted tons of explosives to its agents in France for essential sabotage missions. Train-derailment strategies varied considerably in their effectiveness. Among the SNCF employees who joined the resistance, a subset were in Resistance-Fer which focused on reporting the movement of German troops to the Allied forces and sabotaging the railways' rolling stock as well as their infrastructure.

Following the invasions of Normandy and Provence in , the sabotage of rail transport became much more frequent and effectively prevented some German troop deployments to the front and hindered the subsequent retreat of German occupying forces. 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 bombing. Sabotage by resistants freed up vulnerable and expensive aircraft for other uses rather than risk heavy losses by attacking heavily defended targets.

It was also preferred since it caused less collateral damage and fewer civilian casualties than Allied bombing. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June , communists engaged in guerrilla warfare , attacking German forces in French cities. In July , the Allies' failure to open a second front resulted in a wave of communist guerrilla attacks aimed at maximizing the number of Germans deployed in the West to give the USSR military relief.

As a result, the clandestine press was very discreet about the events and the communists soon decided to discontinue the assassinations. From July to October , groups in Paris engaging in attacks against occupying soldiers were better organized. Joseph Epstein was assigned responsibility for training Resistance fighters across the city, and his new commandos of fifteen men perpetrated a number of attacks that could not have been carried out before. The commandos were drawn from the foreign branch of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans , and the most famous of them was the Manouchian Group.

Defining the precise role of the French Resistance during the German occupation , or assessing its military importance alongside the Allied Forces during the liberation of France, is difficult. The two forms of resistance, active and passive, [] and the north-south occupational divide, [] allow for many different interpretations, but what can broadly be agreed on is a synopsis of the events which took place. Following the surrender of Fascist Italy in September , a significant example of Resistance strength was displayed when the Corsican Resistance joined forces with the Free French to liberate the island from General Albert Kesselring 's remaining German forces.

Several color-coded plans were co-ordinated for sabotage, most importantly Plan Vert Green for railways, Plan Bleu Blue for power installations and Plan Violet Purple for telecommunications. The Liberation of Paris on August 25, , with the support of Leclerc 's French 2nd Armored Division , was one of the most famous and glorious moments of the French Resistance.

The liberation of most of southwestern, central and southeastern France was finally fulfilled with the arrival of the 1st French Army of General de Lattre de Tassigny , which landed in Provence in August and was backed by over 25, maquis. 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. General Eisenhower also estimated the value of the Resistance to have been equal to ten to fifteen divisions at the time of the landings.

One infantry division comprised about ten thousand soldiers. Historians still debate how effective the French Resistance was militarily, [] but the neutralization of the Maquis du Vercors alone involved the commitment of over 10, German troops within the theater, with several more thousands held in reserve, as the Allied invasion was advancing from Normandy and French Operation Jedburgh commandos were being dropped nearby to the south to prepare for the Allied landing in Provence.

And it made the most cynical sit up and take notice when we learned from German field officers that the Germans in central France were truly terrified, had to live under arms, could not move freely, had lost all control in sizable sectors even before we came It was a military fact that the French were worth at least a score of divisions to us, maybe more". It is estimated that FFI killed some 2, Germans, a low estimate based on the figures from June only.

In one case, as many as 77 milices members were summarily executed at once. A second inquest in separated out 8, executions of suspected collaborators and 1, summary executions for which the motive of killing was not known, giving a total of 10, executions. Head-shaving as a form of humiliation and shaming was a common feature of the purges, [] and between 10, and 30, women accused of having collaborated with the Germans or having had relationships with German soldiers or officers were subjected to the practice, [] becoming known as les tondues the shorn.

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". It is now estimated that close to 30, Frenchmen of all political movements combined were shot, [] [] [] of whom only a few thousand were communists. The French Resistance has had a great influence on literature, particularly in France. A famous example is the poem "Strophes pour se souvenir" , which was written by the communist academic Louis Aragon in to commemorate the heroism of the Manouchian Group , whose 23 members were shot by the Nazis.

In the immediate postwar years, French cinema produced a number of films that portrayed a France broadly present in the Resistance. In the s, a less heroic interpretation of the Resistance to the occupation gradually began to emerge. In this manner, in Is Paris Burning? The candid approach of the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shone a spotlight on antisemitism in France and disputed the official Resistance ideals.

In , Louis Malle 's Lacombe, Lucien caused scandal and polemic for his lack of moral judgment regarding the behavior of a collaborator. The Story of a French Spy. Training to become an opera singer, Suzanne was traveling for rehearsals, costume fittings, and lessons when she was recruited by an organizer of the French Resistance and became a secret courier. 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. Among prominent foreign figures who participated in the French Resistance was the political scientist and later Iranian Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. After serving as the prime minister and strong man of the authoritarian Shah regime in Iran, he was forced back into Paris in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution.

He was assassinated on order of the Iranian Islamic Republic in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Free France and Gaullism. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. January Learn how and when to remove this template message. Women in the French Resistance.

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French Resistance - Wikipedia

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