Pallud, Jean Paul German Occupation & French Resistance. Resistance in France 1940-1944

The French resistance was a refusal to accept the finality of the military defeat of 1940; a refusal to accept that Vichy was the legitimate voice of France; a refusal to accept the Vichy policy of collaboration. The "resisters" were those French men and women who decided to continue fighting against the Germans. Only a few men and women joined the Resistance in 1940, shortly after the armistice was signed, individually or in small, isolated groups, alone, without any links between them. Others joined the British SOE networks or the Free French networks. In accordance with the Soviet-German non-aggression pact of August 1939, the Communist Party initially adopted a neutral stance, although it was uncompromisingly hostile to the Vichy regime. At the end of June 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the party joined the Resistance and soon afterwards founded a secret armed force, the "Francs Tireurs et Partisans" (FTP). On 21 August, a two-man squad shot and killed Ensign Alfons Moser, an employee of the Kriegsmarine, in the Paris underground. Five days later, the Germans shot five communists in retaliation, the first hostages to be executed in France. Many more followed. Gradually, resistance movements were organised both in the occupied zone and in the free zone south of the demarcation line. In January 1942, de Gaulle sent Jean Moulin to France with the task of uniting the resistance. Jean Moulin succeeded in uniting them, and in May 1943 a National Resistance Council (CNR) was founded, made up of representatives of the resistance movements in both zones, the political parties and the trade unions. In June, the Germans struck hard and arrested Moulin on 21 June. He was tortured so severely by his SD interrogators that he died within two weeks. He betrayed nothing, and the Germans were unable to smash the CNR. At the beginning of 1944, the armed groups of the various resistance movements were brought together in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Plans were developed to create chaos behind the German lines when the Allies landed in Normandy, and the Resistance immediately went into action on D-Day. The programme to cut the tracks was extremely effective and hundreds of individual actions were carried out. As the resistance in the Alps was too strong to be dealt with by the occupying forces alone, the Germans were forced to deploy the 157th Reserve Division, which was actually a training unit, against the Glières in March and against the Vercors in July to fight guerrillas. After D-Day, resistance activities increased significantly and the German units committed numerous atrocities and war crimes against the civilian population. The worst crimes were committed by the 2nd SS Panzer Division, which hanged 99 men in Tulle on 9 June and murdered 642 civilians, including women and children, the next day in Oradour-sur-Glane. In the summer of 1944, when the German armies withdrew hastily after the general retreat order of 16 August, the resistance forces liberated most of south-west and central France. In Brittany, the FFI provided valuable assistance to the rapid advance of the American 3rd Army in August, while in the south-east they supported the advance of the 6th Army Group forces that had landed in Provence. In Paris, the Resistance started an uprising that practically liberated the city on 25 August, before the forces of the V Corps arrived. After the liberation, the Resistance fighters joined the new French army and continued the fight alongside the Allies, so that France could be associated with the victory over Germany in 1945.