The French Resistance is the collective name used for the French resistance movements which fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy Regime during World War II. Resistance groups comprised small groups of armed men and women (referred to as the maquis when based in rural areas), publishers of underground newspapers, and escape networks that helped Allied soldiers. The Resistance came from all layers and groups of French society, from conservative Roman Catholics (including priests), Jews, to liberals, anarchists and communists.
The French Resistance played a valuable role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, and Provence on August 15, by providing military intelligence on the Atlantic Wall and Wehrmacht deployments and coordinating acts of sabotage on power, transport and telecommunications networks. It was also politically and morally important for France both during the occupation and for decades after as it provided the country with an inspiring example that stood in marked contrast to the collaboration of the Vichy Regime.
After the landings in Normandy and Provence, resistance combatants were organized more formally into units known 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 400,000 in October of that year. Although the amalgamation of the FFI was in some cases fraught with political difficulty, it was ultimately successful and allowed France to re-establish a reasonably large army of 1.2 million men by VE Day in May 1945.
Motivations
The cemetery and memorial in Vassieux-en-Vercors, where in July 1944 German forces executed over 200 inhabitants in reprisal for the maquis' armed resistance. The town was later awarded the Ordre de la Libération.
Following the Second Armistice at Compiègne, life continued normally for many in France. However, the German occupation authorities and the collaborationist Vichy Regime soon began employing increasingly brutal means in order to subdue the French population, and although the majority of people neither collaborated nor resisted the occupation, the authorities' unpopular acts provoked movements of active and passive resistance among a discontent minority.
One of the conditions of the Armistice was to pay the costs of the three-hundred-thousand strong German occupational army, which amounted to twenty million Reichsmarks per day. The artificial exchange rate of the German Reichsmark currency against the French franc was consequently established as one mark to twenty francs. This allowed German requisitions and purchases to be made into a form of organised plunder and resulted in soaring inflation, endemic food shortages and malnutrition, particularly amongst children, the elderly, and the more vulnerable sections of French society such as the working urban class of the cities. Labour shortages occurred due to hundreds of thousands of French workers being requisitioned and transferred to Germany for Compulsory Labour Service (Service du Travail Obligatoire or STO) and the large number of French prisoners of war being held in Germany. The occupation became increasingly unbearable with numerous regulations, censorship and propaganda in place during the day, and curfews at night. The sight of French women consorting with German soldiers also angered many Frenchmen.
In reprisal for resistance activity, the authorities established harsh methods of collective punishment. The increased militancy of communist resistance in August 1941 led to thousands of hostages being taken from among the general population, of whom "at each further incident a number reflecting the seriousness of the crime shall be shot." Over the course of the occupation, 30,000 French civilians were shot as hostages for acts of resistance. 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 early 1943, the Vichy authorities established a paramilitary group, the Milice, to combat the resistance alongside the German forces that were stationed in all of France by the end of 1942. The group collaborated closely with the Nazis and was the Vichy equivalent to the Gestapo security forces in Germany. Their actions were often very brutal and included the torture and executions of suspected resistance members. After the liberation of France, many of the estimated 25,000 to 35,000 miliciens were themselves executed for collaboration. Many of those who escaped arrest fled into Germany, where they were incorporated into the Charlemagne Division of the Waffen SS. |
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