自由区
Beginning in 1942, the "Service du Travail Obligatoire" (STO) (Compulsory Work Service) resulted in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of young French men to Nazi Germany to work as forced labour for the German war effort. To avoid the STO, tens of thousands of men fled into the mountains and forests of France and joined the maquis, the rural resistance fighters against the German occupation. In 1943, three men, mountaineer , soldier , and writer developed a plan to use the Vercors as a redoubt and a staging area for resistance to the German occupation. Following the German invasion of the "Free Zone" ("Zone libre") and the disbandment of the Vichy Armistice Army, about fifty soldiers of the 11th Cuirassier Regiment arrived in the Vercors, but kept themselves distinct from the maquis, whom they regarded as amateurs.