The French Resistance.

A very interesting take below as this fellow tries to separate the post-war mythology of the resistance, from the actual reality. We tend to forget that the various groups hated each other almost as much as they hated the Germans. There were communists of various competing stripes, DeGaullists and various other nationalist and socialist groups. The British had to deal with these various political entities separately and hide activities from faction to faction as well as hide it from DeGaulle and company.

An interesting video.

 

Near the end the narrator says that 30,000 Frenchmen were executed by the Resistance in the vacuum after the allied forces had passed, and before regular government could be established. The Germans had executed 30,000 Frenchmen during the entire occupation. No doubt most of those executed were actual collaborators and needed killin' but since there were no trials or justification offered or demanded, nobody will ever know those stories in any detail.

.

 

On the other side the French communists were amazed after the Ribbentrop deal 1939 that Stalin orders them not to make propaganda against the Germans. Ouch! Kph

 

Resistance groups hated each other, just as many Allied generals and other military men hated each other.

The restistants would have killed 30000 French just after the passage of the allies, just as the Allied bombings killed thousands of innocent French. In wars there is inevitable collateral damage.
It is reported that many resistance fighters have not joined England to organize and coordinate. Not everyone could afford it. That's why they organized themselves in France, in different Maquis. It was war, so difficult to coordinate between groups and yet that's what happened ... They were informed of what other groups were doing. It was London that coordinated the French Resistance.

What is undeniable is that without the help of all the Resistance groups, certainly helped by the British and Americans before the landing thanks to logistical support (parachuting, etc.), the Allies would not have managed to deliver France and Europe in the same way.
These groups greatly facilitated the advance of the Allied troops.

Regardless of their political orientation, ALL resistance groups had one and the same purpose, to get rid of Nazism, and they did a lot of work in that direction.

I do not appreciate the opinion of this man in this report (but it is my personal opinion )

 

He is not denying the courageous work of the resistance, just clarifying what a Frenchman would know and British and Americans would not. We here tend to think of the Resistance as a somewhat unified national front (likely due to Hollywood). His description clarifies the individual groups as more like the "cells" used by later radicals and terrorist groups that could not (and can not today) be easily infiltrated and destroyed by governments. I'm sure that separation of the groups kept them secure against German infiltration and worked to make them far more effective than would otherwise be the case.

.

 

After hearing the Allied would be using the 'Allied invasion money' in France de Gaulle threatenened to take out of D-day operations all the French guides and resistance people who could help the Allied units find their targets that night/day...

 

From what I've read, the Germans had some real successes in penetrating certain groups, especially in northern France.

 

Some success is an understatement. By early 1944, virtually all of the SOE run groups in France and the Low Countries had either been compromised or destroyed. Only some of the SOE/OSS Jedburgh teams parachuted in just before D-Day survived long enough to make contact with Allied ground forces after the invasion.

 

November 11 1943 is, I understand, a well-remembered day for historians of the Resistance in Nazi-Occupied France.

It was on that day that the Maquis paraded through the town of Oyonnax in an event designed as a show of strength, a morale boost for the local population. The town was chosen because there was no German garrison nearby.

More than 200 Maquisards took part. They marched, sang the Marseillaise, and then disappeared back into the mountains. The event is described in Matthew Cobb's excellent book The Resistance.

Sometime ago I came into possession of this small medallion. It features the date ‘XI Novembre, 1943’.

One side is the Cross of Lorraine smashing a Swastika.



On the other side is an Astrix-like warrior.


I would love to know the story behind it. I assume it relates to Oyonnax, but does it?

When was it created? How many issued?



Thanks.

 

.....I don't know...it was like or worse than the Kansas/Missouri border '''problems'' before, during, and after the Civil War....murder, revenge murder, robbery, innocents killed--hanged/etc .....good guys were the bad guys--bad guys were the good guys .....just like in the Balkans and Italy [ and today in many parts of the world ] the ''good'' guys say they are killing the '''bad'' guys....but the reality is, who really knows?

 

I think "The French Resistance" would be a cool band name.

 

Not being a wise-ass, just a guitar player.

 

I read that after D-day every French belonged to the resistance......?"