page_title: French Resistance
section_title: BCRA networks
hierarchical_section_title: French Resistance / Networks and movements / BCRA networks
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Scherl: Der rote Marquis in Frankreich Manche der Terroristen versuchen, beim Nahen der deutschen Streifen die Flucht zu ergreifen. Sie werden gefangen genommen, gefesselt und warten nun, isoliert an einer Hauswand stehend, auf ihre Abführung. Oft findet man unter ihnen durch kommunistische Hetzpropaganda verführte Jugendliche. PK Koll Information added by Wikimedia users. Français&#160;: Le maquis rouge en France A l'approche des troupes allemandes, certains terroristes essaient de s'enfuir. Ils sont capturés, ligotés, et mis à part debout devant un mur, attendent leur transfert. On trouve souvent parmi eux des adolescents qui ont été séduits par la propagande communiste de lutte. PK Koll
context_page_description: The French Resistance was the collection of French movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women, who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The men and women of the Resistance came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics, Jews, liberals, anarchists and communists.
  The French Resistance played a significant role in facilitating the Allies' rapid advance through France following the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, and the lesser-known invasion of Provence on 15 August, by providing military intelligence on the German defences known as the Atlantic Wall and on Wehrmacht deployments and orders of battle.
context_section_description: In July 1940, after the defeat of the French armies and the consequent armistice with Germany, British prime minister Winston Churchill asked the Free French government-in-exile (headed by General Charles de Gaulle) to set up a secret service agency in occupied France to counter the threat of a German operation code-named Operation Sea Lion, the expected cross-channel invasion of Britain. Colonel André Dewavrin (also known as Colonel Passy), who had previously worked for France's military intelligence service, the Deuxième Bureau, took on the responsibility for creating such a network. Its principal goal was to inform London of German military operations on the Atlantic coast and in the English Channel. The spy network was called the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA), and its actions were carried out by volunteers who were parachuted into France to create and nourish local Resistance cells.
  Of the nearly 2,000 volunteers who were active by the end of the war, one of the most effective and well-known was the agent Gilbert Renault, who was awarded the Ordre de la Libération and later the Legion of Honour for his deeds. Known mainly by the pseudonym Colonel Rémy, he returned to France in August 1940 not long after the surrender of France, where the following November he organised one of the most active and important Resistance networks of the BCRA, the Confrérie de Notre Dame (Brotherhood of Our Lady), which provided the Allies with photographs, maps and important information on German defences in general and the Atlantic Wall in particular. From 1941 on, networks such as these allowed the BCRA to send armed paratroopers, weapons and radio equipment into France to carry out missions.
  Another important BCRA operative, Henri Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves, a naval officer, developed a 26-person network in France. He was betrayed, arrested in May 1941, and shot on 29 August 1941.
  Christian Pineau, one of the founders of the Libération Nord movement, also had BCRA roots. During his trip to London in April 1942, the BCRA entrusted him with the creation of two new intelligence systems, Phalanx and Cohors-Asturies. Both networks proved vital later in the war.
  Mouvements Unis de la Résistance (Unified Movements of the Resistance, MUR) was a French Resistance organisation resulting from the regrouping of three major Resistance movements ("Combat", "Franc-Tireur" and "Libération-Sud") in January 1943. Later that year, the BCRA and the United Movements of Resistance merged their intelligence networks.
  Another BCRA appendage was called Gallia, a fact-gathering network specialising in military intelligence and police activities. Its importance increased throughout the second half of 1943 and into the spring of 1944. It eventually became the largest BCRA network in the Vichy zone, employing about 2,500 sources, contacts, couriers and analysts. Gallia's work did not stop after the 1944 landings in Normandy and Provence; it provided information to the Allies that allowed for the bombing of the retreating German armies' military targets.
caption: German military and résistants, July, 1944
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