Zone libre
The poem was published on 3 April 1942, without apparent censorship, in the clandestine book of poetry "Poésie et vérité 1942" (Poetry and truth 1942). According to Max Pol Fouchet, he convinced Éluard to reprint the poem in June 1942 in the magazine "Fontaine", titled "Une seule pensée", to reach the southern Zone libre. The same year, it was printed in London in the official Gaullist magazine "La France libre" and thousands of copies were dropped by parachute by British aircraft of the Royal Air Force above occupied France maquis. In 1945, the poem was published by Éditions de Minuit in Eluard's poetry book "Au rendez-vous allemand." The complex history of Éluard's collections is detailed by the editors of his complete works, Lucien Scheler and Marcelle Dumas, particularly in Vol. 1 of Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1975, p. 1606–1607.