French Resistance World War II Knowledge Base > History > History French Resistance World War II The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II. Studying to receive a BA in History from Columbia University. I love NY sports from Red Bulls to Yankees. Don't mind spending cold Friday nights with a movie and cup of hot chocolate. Curated Facts The role of the French Resistance in the success of Operation Overlord must never be underestimated. In existence since the early days of the German Occupation of France, originally the resistance was a movement which comprised of many separate units, each working independently, without co-ordination with one another. Bravely causing as many problems as possible to the occupying German troops. Many allied airmen owe their lives to these Frenchmen, who, through their web of contacts and safe houses, were able to help them back home to England. Article: Page Title During the late war, about 45,000 Allied aviators were shot down over occupied Europe, and their capture became a matter of immediate and furious concern for the Nazis.

At least seventy-five per cent of these airmen attempting to evade capture were given assistance by heroic Resistance people of western Europe...The French "Underground Railroad"--twentieth century version--antedated the appearance of Allied bombming missions over Europe. Hundreds of British soldiers stranded on the Continent by the fall of France in the summer of 1940 had escaped by this means. × Amazon Results The Maquis des Manises was involved in resistance activities and the hiding and repatriation of allied aircrew shot down over France. When Operation Overlord was launched on the 6 June 1944, the various resistance movements all over France were mobilized to cause maximum disruption to German communications and troop movements. Playing their part, 250 maquisards of the Maquis des Manises engaged 3000 SS and French Vichy troops in combat in the forest area. This action no doubt delayed the mobilization of these German troops to Normandy, which in turn may have facilitated the consolidation of Allied positions on the Normandy beachheads. Article: French Resistance: The M...

(ON DDAY) The German command could not determine where the Americans were concentrated (they in fact weren't) and what their objectives were to be. The French resistance had cut so many telephone lines that German HQ could not determine the full extent of the invasion. More importantly, the Germans could not determine whether or not if this airborne invasion was the real invasion or just a diversionary tactic. Article: Military History Online -... In France, toward the end of the war, the resistance movement assassinated Germans, collaborators and others they deemed unworthy of living, such as black marketers. According to rough estimates, the French Resistance killed 2500 people between the autumn of 1943 and June 6, 1945. Article: Victors against the Defea... "During the summer of 1941 the civilian population's resistance to our occupation forces intensified perceptibly in every theater of war, with sabotage incidents and attacks on Germany security troops and installations", German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel recalled the reports that came to his desk during the war.

"[A]cts of sabotage became horrifying frequent in France and even in Belgium." The counter the resistance movement, German forces employed a policy to rule by iron fist, including later retribution operations against innocent civilians. Article: World War II Database The French Resistance movement is an umbrella term which covered numerous anti-German resistance movements that were based within France. There were resistance movements that took direct orders from the Special Operations Executive, there was the communist resistance, groups loyal to de Gaulle, regional resistance movements that wanted independence etc. In the north, the target was simply the Germans while in the south, the Vichy government was a target as well as the Germans. The first resistance movements were in the north, such as the OCM (Organisation Civile et Militaire) and by the end of 1940, six underground newspapers were being regularly printed in the north. In May 1941, the first SOE agent was dropped into northern France to assist the work of the resistance.

Article: The French Resistance French Underground During World War II, Communication and Codes - Espionage Encyclopedia » Fo-Gs » French Underground During World War II, Communication and Codes French Underground during World War II, Communication and Codes █ ADRIENNE WILMOTH LERNER By 1940, Nazi Germany had invaded several Eastern European nations and turned its attention to gaining control of Western Europe. With strategic planning reminiscent of World War I, the Nazis planned to forcefully invade France, Belgium, and Holland. However, when Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain rose to power in France, he negotiated an armistice with the Germans. On June 22, France was divided into two parts: the northern three-fifths and the Atlantic coast to be directly controlled by Nazi Germany, and the remaining parts of the south to be ruled by a French puppet government. The southern region was known as Vichy. The armistice also disbanded the French army, sending many French soldiers who could escape into exile in England. The settlement angered many French citizens, many of whom wished to continue the war against Germany. As soon the occupation began, partisan groups arose to sabotage the Nazi government.

These groups called themselves by many names (maquis, partisans, resistance, and freedom fighters) and the individual groups remained separate entities until the Allied invasion of France in 1944. These underground bands of French and foreign men and women who fought against the German occupation government became known collectively as the French Resistance. The German secret police, the Gestapo, and intelligence agency, Abwehr, were powerful opponents to the resistance. In the early war period, German agents easily infiltrated resistance groups. In response, resistance groups developed codes, complex communications networks, and security structures to protect members and information. Many of the earliest resistance groups were formed by political parties that the Nazi government had earlier banned. Communists and Socialists were persecuted under the Nazi regime. Partisan groups with political ties, such as the Socialist Comité d'Action Socialiste and the Communist Front National used their extensive media and member network to produce and distribute anti-Nazi propaganda. As resistance groups began to arm themselves and carry out acts of sabotage, the papers published coded messages that communicated instructions to members. During the course of the war, underground newspapers supplied information to over a million readers. The resistance relied on coded messages to communicate with members and plan operations.

Members were called by code names, and operational units had their own cryptonym or symbols. Underground newspaper published coded articles and drawings. Poetry was even used as a means of sending coded messages or identifying oneself as a member of a resistance group to other members. The most famous, and perhaps ingenious security device of resistance groups was the use of a pyramid command structure. The pyramid structure ensured that no member of a partisan group even interacted or conducted operations with more than two other members of the organization. No records of membership were kept, and messages were sent only by word-of-mouth. Each resistance member knew one commanding member and one other partner member. Members kept strict confidentiality, and rarely met in groups larger than their operational units. This structure insured that enemy infiltrators and captured partisans could positively identify no more than two resistance operatives, leaving the rest of the organization unscathed. The strategy worked with some success, until Gestapo agents began to infiltrate the command echelons of various partisan groups. The pyramid structure also added an operational advantage as well as security. Ambushes and assassinations of German officers were carried out by a group of three men.

One man served as a decoy, the other carried the weapon and shot the victim at close range, while the third member took the weapon after the shooting and walked away from the scene. Often the actual assailants would remain at or near the scene until authorities arrived. As they possessed no weapons, they were cleared of suspicion. Because resistance members in most urban areas did not keep their own weapons as a security measure, weapons used in attacks were returned to their stockpile via courier, often a child, who would seldom arouse the suspicion of Gestapo agents. French Resistance groups also developed an "under-ground railroad" system to smuggle downed Allied airmen back to Britain or the front lines. Using standardized coded messages, Allied servicemen were shuttled to various safe houses on route to their destination. Toward the end of the war, these same networks were used by Allied forces to send messages to various resistance groups throughout the countryside. Allied "Jedburg" teams, soldiers trained to aid the resistance, sabotage German supply lines, and unify the command of partisan groups, parachuted into France behind German lines. Individual Jedburg soldiers used the underground network to reach the towns or groups in which they were to operate.

The two-way traffic of Allied servicemen in the "underground railroad" system facilitated communication not only with diverse resistance groups, but also with Allied command. Jedburg groups also coordinated the procurement and allocation of radios to facilitate communication. While radios carried an increased risk of detection by occupation forces, they made mass communication over longer distance possible. Coded messages were transmitted nightly, both to Allied command and to various area partisans. Messages identified their recipients with a cryptonym and gave necessary instructions in coded messages. The codes were agreed upon in person, and then used in broadcasts to activate plans. When intercepted, the messages were easily identifiable as partisan transmissions, but their meanings were indecipherable. British radio, and the European underground radio, often rebroadcast Jedburg and other resistance messages. While this coding method was primitive, it required German forces to use spies instead of technology as primary means of breaking resistance group communications. Such missions were a costly drain on human intelligence resources, and carried a high level of risk. In 1944, many of the largest French underground groups united to form the Conseil National de la resistance . The organization stockpiled weapons and worked with Allied intelligence operatives to prepare for the Allied invasion of France.

During the D-Day invasion in June, 1944, the resistance cut German supply lines and aided Allied forces as they marched through France. Urban partisan members in Paris took to the streets in open warfare against the Germans, engaging forces until the liberation of Paris. With the Allied invasion, exiled members of the French Army, under the command of Charles de Gaulle, returned to France. Many resistance members then joined the army, fighting enemy forces throughout Europe. Over the course of the war, the French Resistance scored key victories against the German occupations forces. Resistance members tracked and ferreted-out French collaborators, assassinated many ranking Nazi officials, tapped the phones of the Abwehr's Paris headquarters, and destroyed trains, convoys, and ships used by the German army. The resistance provided Allied forces with invaluable human intelligence resources and aided Allied troops who fell behind enemy lines. Resistance groups shielded political dissidents, refugees, and Jews escaping the Holocaust. These numerous accomplishments carried a heavy price. German agents often infiltrated partisan groups, despite security precautions. When they captured a maquis, Gestapo agents employed torture as means of extracting the names of other resistance members. The Gestapo occasionally carried out bloody reprisals on innocent civilians after partisan sabotage operations.

As many as 25,000 French men and women, members of the resistance and those suspected of aiding their cause, were sent to German concentration camps. Another 25,000 were executed in France by Gestapo agents, including the population of an entire Northern French village. █ FURTHER READING: BOOKS: Aubrac, Lucie. Konrad Bieber and Betsy Wing (trans.). Outwitting the Gestapo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Aubrac, Raymond, and Lucie Aubrac. The French Resistance: 1940–1944. Paris: Hazan Editeur, 1997. Ottis, Sherri Greene. Silent Heroes: Downed Airmen and the French Underground. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001. Ousby, Ian. Occupation. Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press, 2000. Weitz, Margaret Collins. Sisters in the Resistance : How Women Fought to Free France, 1940–1945. New York: John Wiley & Sons., 1998.

SEE ALSO History of the French Resistance - the Alliance Reseau, Maquis, FTP and FFI The French Resistance Charles de Gaulle Le Struthof or Camp du Struthof in Alsace has a particular significance for the French because it was the main Nazi concentration camp where French resistance fighters were sent after they were captured by the Germans during World War II. The camp, also known as Natzwiller-Struthof, has become a symbol of the French resistance against the evils of Fascism during the German occupation of France. Although there were around 40,000 French citizens who were convicted of collaborating with the Nazis, there were also thousands of brave men and women who did not accept the capitulation of France and continued to fight Fascism as civilian soldiers or partisans in defiance of both the Geneva Convention of 1929 and the Armistice signed by France and Germany after France surrendered. The leader of the French resistance was Charles de Gaulle, shown in the photo above, as he broadcasts over the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). De Gaulle made his headquarters in Great Britain and the French resistance was aided and financed by the British.

In 2005, a new museum at the Natzweiler Memorial Site was dedicated to the heroes of the French resistance whose efforts to defeat the Nazis and liberate Europe were significant. By the time that the Allies were ready to invade Europe in June 1944, there were as many as 9 major resistance networks which were fighting as guerrillas against the German occupation of France. There were an estimated 56,000 French resistance fighters who were captured and sent to concentration camps; half of them never returned. The French resistance fighters blew up bridges, derailed trains, directed the British in the bombing of German troop trains, kidnapped and killed German army officers, and ambushed German troops. They took no prisoners, but rather killed any German soldiers who surrendered to them, sometimes mutilating their bodies for good measure. The Nazis referred to them as "terrorists." The photo below shows a Nazi poster which depicts the heroes of the French resistance as members of an Army of Crime. World War II had started when France and Great Britain both declared war on Germany after Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Poland was conquered by September 28, 1939 with the help of the Soviet Union which invaded Poland from the other side on September 17, 1939. France and Great Britain had made a pact with Poland that they would provide support in case of an attack, but only if the attack was made by the Germany Army; they were under no obligation to declare war on the Soviet Union. The British also made a pact with France that neither country would sign a separate peace with the Germans. After the conquest of Poland, there was a period called the "phony war," or the "Sitzkrieg" when there were no further attacks by the Germans. Months later, when the war started up again, Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940, going around the Maginot Line, which the French had thought would protect them from Nazi aggression. On June 17, 1940, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, the new prime minister of France, asked the Germans for surrender terms and an Armistice was signed on June 22, 1940.

The French agreed to an immediate "cessation of fighting." According to the terms of the Armistice, the French were allowed to set up a puppet government at Vichy in the southern part of the country which the Germans did not occupy. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Germans, even agreeing to cooperate in the sending of French Jews to Nazi concentration camps. There were no German soldiers stationed in Vichy France, and many refugees, including some Jews, flocked there. In occupied France, the German soldiers were ordered by Hitler to behave like gentlemen. They were not to rape and plunder. They were to take only photographs. Hitler himself visited Paris and had his photo taken in front of the Eiffel Tower, as shown below. On Hitler's orders, the German conquerors went out of their way to be friendly. They set up food depots and soup kitchens to feed the French people until the economy could be brought back to normal. The French soon decided that collaboration with the Germans was to their advantage. The French people had been stunned by the collapse of the French Army in only a few weeks. To many, this meant the end of France as a world power.

The collaborationists felt that the German war machine was invincible and the only sensible thing to do was to become allies with the Nazis who would soon unite Europe under their domination. But for some, centuries of hatred of the Germans prevented them from accepting their defeat. Charles de Gaulle, a tank corps officer in the French Army, refused to take part in the surrender; he fled to England where, on the eve of the French capitulation, he broadcast a message to the French people over the BBC on June 18, 1940. This historic speech rallied the French people and helped to start the resistance movement. Part of his speech is quoted below: Is the last word said? Has all hope gone? Is the defeat definitive? No. Believe me, I tell you that nothing is lost for France. This war is not limited to the unfortunate territory of our country. This war is a world war. I invite all French officers and soldiers who are in Britain or who may find themselves there, with their arms or without, to get in touch with me. Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not die and will not die.

Although Charles de Gaulle was not well known in France, and few people had heard his broadcast, this was the beginning of the French resistance which slowly gained momentum. At the time of the French surrender, America was not yet involved in World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had no choice but to recognize Vichy France as the legitimate government. Winston Churchill refused to acknowledge Pétain's government and recognized de Gaulle as the leader of the "Free French." On July 4, 1940, a court-martial in Toulouse sentenced de Gaulle in absentia to four years in prison. On August 2, 1940, a second court-martial sentenced him to death. Aided by the British, de Gaulle set up the Free French movement, based in London. It was particularly galling to the French that Germany had annexed the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the Greater German Reich after the Armistice. The Cross of Lorraine was later adopted by Charles de Gaulle as the symbol of his Free French movement.

The French resistance was in direct violation of the Armistice signed by the French, which stipulated the following: The French Government will forbid French citizens to fight against Germany in the service of States with which the German Reich is still at war. French citizens who violate this provision are to be treated by German troops as insurgents. Since Great Britain was the only country still at war with the German Reich, the collaboration of the French resistance with the British was a violation of the Armistice, as was the later collaboration of the partisans with American troops after the Normandy invasion. According to the Geneva Convention of 1929, the French resistance fighters were non-combatants who did not have the rights of Prisoners of War if they were captured. In the summer of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill established an intelligence organization called the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Its purpose was to wage secret war on the continent, but with the defeat of France this intelligence network was all but destroyed. The SOE was revived and by November 1940, it was giving aid to the French resistance. At least one American participated in the French Resistance: Lt.

Rene Guiraud was a spy in the American Military Intelligence organization, called the OSS. After being given intensive specialized training, Lt. Guiraud was parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, along with a radio operator. His mission was to collect intelligence, harass German military units and occupation forces, sabotage critical war material facilities, and carry on other resistance activities. Lt. Guiraud organized 1500 guerrilla fighters and developed intelligence networks. During all this, Guiraud posed as a French citizen, wearing civilian clothing. He was captured and interrogated for two months by the German Gestapo, but revealed nothing about his mission. He was then sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he participated in the camp resistance movement along with several captured British SOE spies. Because he was an illegal combatant, wearing civilian clothing, Lt. Guiraud did not have the rights of a POW under the Geneva Convention. At first, the French resistance was not organized; it consisted of individual acts of sabotage. Ordinary French citizens cut telephone lines so that communications were interrupted, resulting in German soldiers being killed because they had not received warning of bombing raids by the British Royal Air Force.

The Germans fought back by announcing that hostages would be shot if more acts of resistance were carried out. Slowly, resistance organizations began to form. Telephone workers united in a secret organization to sabotage telephone lines and intercept military messages which they would give to British spies operating in France. Postal workers organized in order to intercept important military communications. The French railroad workers formed a resistance group called the Fer Réseau or Iron Network. They diverted freight shipments to the wrong location; they caused derailments by not operating the switches properly; they destroyed stretches of railroad tracks and blew up railroad bridges. Women also participated as lone fighters in the resistance, as for example, Madame Lauro who poured hydrochloric acid and nitric acid on German food supplies in freight cars on the French railroads. Hundreds of the railroad workers were shot after they were caught, but Madame Lauro continued her acts of sabotage, working alone and at night; she was never captured. Another French woman, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, became the head of the most famous resistance network of all, the Alliance Réseau; its headquarters was at Vichy, the capital of unoccupied France. This espionage network was one of the first to be organized with the help of the British.

They began by supplying the Alliance Network with short wave radios, dropped by parachute into Vichy France. Millions of francs to support the Alliance Network were dropped from the air by the British or sent by couriers. The British SOE and the French resistance worked together throughout the remainder of the war to obtain vital information about the German military and their plans. The SOE would send questions for the French resistance network to find the answers to and report back the information. The Alliance Network was originally started by Georges Loustanau-Laucau and a group of his friends. The nickname of the Alliance was Noah's Ark because Madame Fourcade gave the members of her underground network the names of animals as their code names. She took the name Hedgehog as her own code name. Madame Fourcade was eventually captured, but she escaped by squeezing through the bars on the window of her prison cell. She then joined the Maquis and worked with the British SOE spy organization in the last days before France was liberated. Sir Claude Dansey, the head of the S.I.S, requested the Alliance Réseau to go to Alsace to give General George Patton information about the German Order of Battle in that region.

The Alliance was able to help Patton with some very valuable intelligence that had been obtained by the British. Madame Fourcade survived the war, but members of her Alliance Network were captured in Alsace and executed at Natzweiler-Struthof . As the war progressed, anti-Fascists and Communists from other countries joined the British SOE as secret agents. One of the most famous was Albert Guérisse, who headed the PAT line which helped downed British and American flyers to escape from France, going through Spain and then back to England. Guérisse was captured in 1943 and subsequently sent to Natzweiler-Struthof. Another escape line, called Comet, was also infiltrated by German agents in 1943 and Dédée de Jongh was arrested by the Gestapo. She was sent to the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück where she survived. Guérisse was taken to Dachau when the Natzweiler camp was evacuated and he also survived. After the arrests of Guérisse and de Jongh, the escape lines were rebuilt and they became more effective than ever in saving British and American downed fliers.

Eight women SOE agents were executed, four at Dachau and four at Natzweiler, for their part in the French resistance. Three other women SOE agents were shot at Ravensbrück. But for some strange reason, Guérisse and de Jongh were not executed, despite the important part they had played in rescuing fliers so that they could live to bomb German cities again in what the Nazis called "terror bombing." Nor was Madame Fourcade, a very high-ranking resistance fighter, executed by the Gestapo. Instead, they tried to convince her to become a double agent, but she refused. Don Lawson, the author of a book entitled "The French Resistance," wrote the following with regard to the downed fliers who were saved by the resistance fighters: How many Allied military escapees and evaders were actually smuggled out of France and into Spain will never really be known. Records during the war were poorly kept and reconstruction of them has been unsatisfactory. Combined official American and British sources indicate there were roughly 3,000 evading American fliers and several hundred escaping POWs who were processed through Spain.

These same sources indicate there were roughly 2,500 evading British fliers and about 1,000 escaping POWs. (American and British escapees and evaders in all of the theaters of war totaled some 35,000, which amounts to several military divisions.) Operating these escape and evasion lines was not, of course, without cost in human lives. Here, too, records are incomplete and unsatisfactory, since many of the resistants simply disappeared without a trace. Estimates of losses vary from the official five hundred to as many as several thousand. Historians Foot and Langley estimate that for every escapee who was safely returned to England a line operator lost his or her life. According to the terms of the Armistice signed on June 22, 1940, the 1.5 million captured French soldiers, who were prisoners of war, were to held in captivity until the end of the war. The French agreed to this because they thought that the British would surrender in a few weeks; instead, the British rejected all peace offers by the Germans and the French POWs remained in prison for five long years.

Many of them escaped and joined the Maquis, one of the most notorious resistance groups, which distinguished itself by committing atrocities against German soldiers. In 1943, the Germans started conscripting Frenchmen as workers in German factories. Many refused to go and escaped into the forests where they joined the Maquis. In the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which were annexed into the Greater German Reich, former French citizens were conscripted into the German Army. Many Alsatians went into hiding and escaped into Vichy France where they too became part of the French resistance, fighting with the Maquis. The Maquis was independent from the other resistance groups; they operated as guerrilla fighters in rural areas and especially in mountainous regions. The name Maquis comes from a word that means bushes that grow along country roads. The Maquis literally hid in the bushes, darting out to kidnap German Army officers and execute them in a barbarous fashion. One of the most well-known victims of the Maquis was Major Helmut Kämpfe , the commander of Der Führer Battalion 3, who was kidnapped on 9 June 1944 and killed the next day.

The Maquisards, as the fighters in the Maquis were called, were politically diverse. Some of them, like the "Red Spaniards" who were former soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, were Communists, but in general, the Communists had their own resistance organizations, such as the FTP. This was a resistance group, formed by the Communist party, called the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. The Communist party also formed the Front National which fought in the resistance. After the Allied invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Maquis became particularly active. In preparation for the invasion, the British had dropped a large number of weapons and millions of francs by parachute into rural areas. The weapons were stored in farm houses and villages, ready for the resistance fighters who would play an important part in the liberation of Europe. As a result, the Maquis was very effective in preventing German troops from reaching the Normandy area to fight the invaders. The reprisals against the Maquis by German troops became more and more vicious.

Innocent French civilians suffered, as for example in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane which was destroyed by Waffen-SS soldiers on June 10, 1944. Henri Rosencher was a Jewish medical student and a Communist member of the Maquis. He survived the war and wrote a book entitled Le Sel, la cendre, la flamme (Salt, Ash, Fire) in which he described his work as an explosives expert with the French resistance. He was captured and sent to Natzweiler-Struthof, then later to Dachau where he was liberated by American troops on April 29, 1945. The following is a quote from Rosencher's book, which describes a typical Maquis resistance action which resulted in the death by suffocation of 500 German Wehrmacht soldiers (feldgraus): On the morning of the 17th of June, I arrived in the area of Lus-la-Croix-Haute, the "maquis" [zone of resistance] under the command of Commander Terrasson. They were waiting for me and took me off by car.

The job at hand was mining a tunnel through which the Germans were expected to pass by train. The Rail resistance network had provided all the details. My only role was as advisor on explosives. TNT (Trinitrotoluene - a very powerful explosive) and plastic charges were going to collapse the mountain, sealing off the tunnel at both ends and its air shaft. When I got there, all the ground work was done. I only had to specify how much of the explosive was necessary, and where to put it. I checked the bickfords, primers, detonators, and crayons de mise à feu. We stationed our three teams and made sure that they could communicate with each other. I settled into the bushes with the team for the tunnel's entrance. And we waited. Toward three p.m., we could hear the train coming. At the front came a platform car, with nothing on it, to be sacrificed to any mines that might be on the tracks, then a car with tools for repairs, and then an armored fortress car. Then came the cars over-stuffed with men in verdi-gris uniforms, and another armored car.

The train entered the tunnel and after it had fully disappeared into it, we waited another minute before setting off the charge. Boulders collapsed and cascaded in a thunderous burst; a huge mass completely covered the entrance. Right after that, we heard one, then two huge explosions. The train has been taken prisoner. The 500 "feldgraus" inside weren't about to leave, and the railway was blocked for a long, long time. Another Jewish hero of the French resistance is Andre Scheinmann, who emigrated to the United States in 1953. Together with Diana Mara Henry, he has written a book entitled "I Am Andre: World War II Memoirs of a Spy in France." Andre is a German Jew whose family escaped to France in 1938 after the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht. His parents were murdered at Auschwitz during the German occupation of France. Andre had been a soldier in the French Army and was a Prisoner of War when France surrendered, but he escaped and joined the French underground resistance movement. Pretending to be a collaborator, he became an interpreter for the Germans for the French national railroad.

The Nazis never suspected that he was Jewish; he was given the job of overseeing the rail system in the Brittany region of France. As a member of the French underground, second in command of a network of 300 spies, Scheinmann's job was intelligence, but he also engaged in sabotage. His resistance network gathered information on German troop movements and reported weekly to the British. The information that they supplied was invaluable to the British Air Force in bombing German troop trains. Scheinmann and his compatriots also blew up trains, killing contingents of German soldiers. Scheinmann was eventually arrested by the German Gestapo; he endured 11 months in a Paris prison until he was sent in July 1943 to Natzweiler-Struthof as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner. He disappeared into the Night and Fog of the Nazi concentration camp system, where he was not allowed to communicate with anyone on the outside. At Natzweiler, he was given a cushy job working in the weaving workshop, and because of his ability to speak German, he was made a Kapo with the authority to supervise other prisoners.

Along with many other well-known French resistance fighters, he was evacuated from Natzweiler to Dachau and released by the American liberators. He joined the FFI and remained a soldier in the French military even after the war ended. As a hero of the resistance, he was awarded the Legion of Honor, the Medal of Resistance and the Medal of the Camps by the French government. The FFI, or the Force Française d'Interior, also known as the "Fee Fee," was also very active after the invasion at Normandy. The British increased their arms drops after the invasion and a vast arsenal of weapons was stored on farms and in villages, ready to be handed out to the resistance fighters. Before Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, signed in August 1939, the Communists in France had refused to join the resistance movement. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the French Communists then began to organize. The Communist resistance fighters were not loyal to de Gaulle or to France; their loyalty was to international Communism and the Soviet Union, which was fighting on the side of the Allies, against Fascism.

The objective of the Communist guerrilla fighters was the defeat of Fascism and the establishment of a Communist government in France, which would have direct allegiance to the Soviet Union. Because of this, they preferred to fight independently of the other resistance groups. Their specialty was capturing German army officers and executing them, which brought swift reprisals from the Germans. In October 1941, the Germans shot 50 hostages in reprisal for the assassination of a German field commander at Nantes. This did not stop the assassinations; in 1943, the Communists claimed that they were killing 500 to 600 German soldiers per month. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, a right-wing collaborationist military group, called the Service d'Ordre Legionnaire, was organized by Joseph Darnand in July 1941 in support of Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain and his Vichy government. Darmand volunteered to help the Germans and the Vichy officials in rounding up the Jews in France and in fighting against the French resistance.

In January 1943, the Service d'Ordre Legionnaire was reorganized into the Milice Française, which became the secret police of the Vichy government, working in close association with the German Gestapo in France. Darmand was accepted into the Waffen-SS army and given the rank of Sturmbannführer. Like all members of the SS, Darmand took an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Another famous Milice leader was Paul Touvier. By 1944, the Milice had expanded, from an initial 5,000 members, to a special police force of 35,000, which greatly assisted the Gestapo in fighting against the resistance. Without the help of the French collaborationists, the job of the Gestapo would have been much more difficult.

Sometimes, the Milice made mistakes, giving misleading information, as when two Milice policemen told the Germans that a Germany army officer, who had been kidnapped by the Maquis, was being held in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane and was going to be ceremoniously burned alive; this wrong information led to the destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane and the murder of 642 innocent people, one of the worst atrocities committed by the Waffen-SS in World War II. Jean Moulin The greatest hero of the French Resistance was a man named Jean Moulin, shown in the photo above. His great contribution was in convincing Charles de Gaulle that all the independent resistance groups and the Secret Army should be united into one central organization. De Gaulle had not planned to use the French resistance to liberate France, but Moulin advised him that the Allies would have a much better chance of defeating the Germans with the help of a united resistance movement. Moulin was authorized by de Gaulle to establish the National Resistance Council (CNR). He contacted the leaders of the various resistance networks and got them to agree with his plan by promising them money and supplies from the British.

Then he suggested that the resistance should form a military organization that would fight the Germans in open combat. He was preparing for the day when the Allies would invade Europe and a French Army would be ready to join them. De Gaulle hoped to use this army to take control of France and become its President after the country was liberated. Most of the resistance networks were against this idea because they had been successfully operating as guerrilla fighters and did not want to become part of an Army. The Communists liked the idea of a resistance Army but they would not swear loyalty to de Gaulle, since they had their own plans to set up a Communist government in France. In the Spring of 1943, the first meeting of the National Resistance Council took place in Paris, attended by the leaders of 16 different resistance organizations. The meeting lasted for several days, during which time Moulin was finally able to persuade the rival factions to unite and to swear an oath of loyalty to Charles de Gaulle as their leader. Several weeks later, on June 21, 1943, Moulin was arrested by the German Gestapo.

According to Don Lawson, author of a book called "The French Resistance," Moulin had been betrayed by Jean Moulton, an agent with "Combat," one of the oldest of the resistance groups. Moulton had been captured by the Gestapo and to avoid being shot or tortured, he agreed to give names and locations of resistance members. Hundreds of the resistance fighters were then arrested by the infamous Gestapo Chief, Klaus Barbie. Many of them wound up at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp. Two of the biggest problems for the resistance fighters were transportation and food, which was also was a problem for the French people in general. Food was rationed and the Germans had confiscated most of the cars. The British supplied weapons and money, but there were no food drops into France. The places where food was available, mainly in rural areas, became thriving black market centers. The Maquis traveled mostly by bicycle, although some had managed to hide a few old cars. Gasoline was not available for most French civilians; only doctors and others who needed to use a car were allowed gasoline.

When the Allied invasion came, the resistance fighters were cautioned to wear armbands with the Cross of Lorraine, so that they could be easily identified by the Allied soldiers. French women who were not part of the resistance were asked to volunteer to help sew the armbands. After the successful Normandy invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower made the decision not to take Paris immediately. De Gaulle knew that Paris was a Communist stronghold and he knew that if Paris were liberated from within by the Communists, they would probably take control of the French government. To prevent the Communists from taking control of the capital city of Paris, De Gaulle decided that Paris must be liberated by the Allies. According to Don Lawson in his book "The French Resistance," de Gaulle had taken steps, before the Normandy invasion, to strengthen his plan to become the new President of France after the liberation. He insisted that the SOE increase its weapons drops, but stipulated that these weapons should be mainly parachuted to the Maquis in the outlying areas, with only a few going to the 25,000 Communist resistance fighters holed up in Paris.

Don Lawson wrote the following, regarding the decision to drop weapons to outlying areas: That this procedure was justified by motivations other than de Gaulle's personal ones was clearly indicated by the fact that in the peninsula of Brittany alone fewer than 100,000 FFI kept several German divisions pinned down during the Normandy campaign. In the whole of France, it was estimated by General Eisenhower, the FFI's efforts in preventing German troops from attacking the Allied invasion forces were the equivalent of some fifteen Allied divisions. As always, these resistance efforts were not without cost. The Germans were now desperate, and their reprisals were even more savage than before. In March of 1944 an entire Maquis band numbering more than a thousand resistants were wiped out in the Haute Savoie region. In July 1944 another Maquis force of similar size was destroyed at Vercors. In the days immediately following the Normandy invasion, the FFI, or the French Forces of the Interior, became a French Army under the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) commanded by General Eisenhower, who unilaterally informed the Germans that the French resistance fighters were to be regarded as legal combatants.

Eisenhower authorized a French combat division to be commanded by General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc. This division was called the 2nd Armored Division, but it was more commonly known as Division Leclerc. De Gaulle contacted the Communist resistance in Paris and unilaterally informed them that Division Leclerc would be the liberators of Paris. Meanwhile, Hitler was holed up in his Berlin bunker and he had seemingly gone mad; he ordered the destruction of Paris rather than surrender it to the Allies. His generals ignored this order and Paris was saved. Eisenhower had finally agreed that the 2nd Armored Division should lead the liberation of Paris with the US Fourth Infantry Division providing backup. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944; Charles de Gaulle rode into Paris in triumph, holding up his arms, spread wide in a V for victory sign. The French Resistance | World War II Database World War II Database Contributor: C. Peter Chen ww2dbaseWhen France surrendered to Germany on 22 Jun 1940, those who resented Germany occupation and the Vichy government formed cells that collectively were named the French Resistance.

Some groups were violent in nature, aiming to hurt or kill the German occupiers; these were called maquis. Other groups used non-violent means, publishing underground newspapers and broadcasted anti-German and anti-Vichy radio programs. Many of these groups were born after the 18 Jun 1940 address by Charles de Gaulle who encouraged the French people to continue the fight against the German forces even if the nation surrendered. To take advantage of these groups, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) began infiltrating into France beginning in May 1941 to aid the resistance groups. Because de Gaulle often disagreed with his British allies, he formed his own agency to independently aid French resistance efforts without coordinating with British efforts. In the beginning, the resistance groups were scattered and lacked cooperation. On 22 Jun 1941, all communist groups in France merged into a larger group, showing the rest of the resistance groups the effectiveness of more coordinated resistance actions. On 11 Nov 1942, German forces marched to Vichy-held southern France, and the resistance sentiment spread into that region as well, especially after the Vichy government adopted some German-influenced anti-Semitic policies.

ww2dbaseThe initial German response was that of annoyance, and it soon turned into great frustration. "During the summer of 1941 the civilian population's resistance to our occupation forces intensified perceptibly in every theater of war, with sabotage incidents and attacks on Germany security troops and installations", German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel recalled the reports that came to his desk during the war. "[A]cts of sabotage became horrifying frequent in France and even in Belgium." The counter the resistance movement, German forces employed a policy to rule by iron fist, including later retribution operations against innocent civilians. The SS also tortured many suspected resistance group members, with them ending up either dead or in a concentration camp. Rarely, entire villages would be razed as deterrence to future acts of sabotage; such was the fate of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Adolf Hitler insisted that such draconian measures were necessary to deter the would-be "terrorists", otherwise the situation in France would become out of control. Despite the risks, many fighters continued to wield British-supplied weapons to fight.

ww2dbaseIn 1943, when the prospect of a cross-Channel invasion on France became closer to reality, the United States also began aiding the French Resistance. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) began sending its own agents into France in cooperation with the SOE to rally French support against German occupation. ww2dbaseOn 27 May 1943, after months of work, Jean Moulin persuaded several resistance groups to merge into the Conseil National de la Resistance (CNR), with Moulin becoming the first chairman of the alliance. On 21 Jun, however, Moulin was captured by the German Gestapo and was tortured to death. Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle became joint presidents of the CNR after the death of Moulin, but by Oct that year, the politically-minded de Gaulle maneuvered Giraud out of the position of power and became the sole leader of CNR. Although de Gaulle was difficult to work with for the Allied commanders, with him in London, it was possible for the Allied command to pass orders for the resistance fighters to attack key communications and transportation targets to aid the planned Operation Overlord.

93 small teams of three agents (one American, one British, and one French) were then sent into France to closely coordinate actions immediately before the invasion. The resistance fighters continued to aid Allied invasion efforts after the forces had made footing on continental Europe, in northern France aiding the troops marching toward Paris, and in southern France during Operation Dragoon. Groups in Paris, supported by the Paris policemen, began their fiercest resistance on 19 Aug 1944, attacking German forces with rifles and grenades while rounding up collaborators for execution. The fighting climaxed on 22 Aug. 1,500 resistance fighters and civilians lost their lives before Paris was liberated on 25 Aug. Three days later, de Gaulle called for the disbanding of all resistance groups and encouraged them to join the new French Army under his direct control. ww2dbaseSources: In the Service of the Reich, Wikipedia. The French Resistance Interactive Map The French Resistance Timeline 1. Paulette says: 19 Mar 2010 10:28:15 AM My sister was in the resistance in Marseilles . I do not know how to get any information about her , or who she was working with.

Is there anyway to find any more information? 2. Anonymous says: 19 Apr 2010 12:40:52 PM contact the french authorities as there is still an assosciation of veterans that fought in the resistance by region.hope this helps. Steve. 3. Bob the builder says: 27 Oct 2010 05:57:30 PM good info 9 Nov 2010 09:11:15 AM hello this doesnt really help at all 5. Anonymous says: 31 Jan 2011 06:42:30 AM this is some rubbish info. 6. Anonymous says: 24 Feb 2011 09:18:00 AM i thought this was helpful 7. Eternal says: 22 Mar 2011 09:24:10 AM I just need to do it for history class 8. sam-i-am says: 24 May 2011 10:46:23 AM This is Helpful!!!

4 Sep 2011 05:46:19 AM Any information is help full. Thank you. 10. Anonymous says: 8 Jul 2012 02:03:16 PM the "maquis" weren't called this way because they were violent but because of the place resistants hid to escape nazis : 11. Anonymous says: 6 Nov 2012 11:41:49 AM thx for the info 16 Nov 2012 10:18:03 AM good 6 Feb 2013 01:58:15 PM Can you help? Can anyone advise on some official prices of foodstuffs during the German occupation. For some research I am doing I need to know the cost of a small loaf of bread. [not that there was any large loaves] I know there were three price levels, but only one was official. I would appreciate any help as people who were in the know are becoming fewer each year. 14.

Paris says: 22 Apr 2013 05:27:18 PM The timeline was very helpful! Thank you!!! :) 15. Anonymous says: 8 Jul 2013 12:24:49 PM Question, about escape lines. Due to the need of raw scrap metal, in the occupied Zone, Did allied invaders get transported from disused mine workers, with consignments of scrap mine salvage. As a means to cross check points, as a third man in the lorry, would be easy to bluff the guards. 3 go out, 3 come back. Regular as clockwork. If theres a metal shortage for the russian front by 1943. Disused mine workings also have many labourers who come and go, so hard to keep security tabs on allied invaders posing as casual workers. 16.

lorraine says: 26 Nov 2013 04:32:31 AM HI I AM WRITING AS I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MY NAN SHE WAS FRENCH AND IN THE RESISTANCE WW2 THERE IS A PLAQUE DEDICATED TO THE RESISTANCE SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE BY THE SEA THAT IS ALL I KNOW I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHERE IT IS PLEASE. 17. Wally says: 22 Apr 2014 01:34:45 PM I would like to get information on my uncle, Laurent Giaume who was nicknamed "Nano." He was a leader of the Maquis in Nice, France and there is a street named for him and his heroism. He passed away last year. 18. Dr Fred Fisher says: 26 Jun 2014 06:37:31 AM My gardener Donald Cadge was shot down and hidden by the maquis for 5 months in 1944----in the forest at LYONS.

A young man in the maquis --Robert Bolle--arranged for a dinner at his fathers house, His father owned a comb factory in the city. He would like very much to contact any descendents to thank them. 19. Samuel says: 1 Nov 2014 02:39:55 PM Who knows the answer to this question? Phillips 66 made a sabotage oil that was air dropped behind enemy lines by the allies. The French Resistance would pour this oil into the motor, NOT the gas tank, and 30 minutes later the motor would quick working. What did the French Resistance call this "sabotage oil"? 20. Anonymous says: 16 Nov 2014 04:13:50 PM My grandfather worked on the railroad and was in the underground French Resistance and was executed during WW2..I have some pictures of showing them having meetings underground. I would like to know who do I contact to get more info 21.

Anonymous says: 16 Nov 2014 06:27:08 PM Lorraine their is a plaque of 17 people that were with the French Resistance in the Orleans train station my mom told me cause my grandfather is also listed on that plaque.. 22. Swiper The Fox says: 8 Dec 2014 10:31:48 AM This Was Very Help Full Thanks :]!!!! 23. Dave W says: 31 Dec 2014 10:23:33 AM Lorraine, At Barfleur on the tip of the Cherbourg **** ular at the end of the quay there is a plaque to the 'Resistant', I don't have a photo of it but I'm sure plenty of people will have. 24. Anonymous says: 12 Jan 2015 09:38:38 AM some one make me a thesis statement for a 8 page essay for the french resistance 25. Anonymous says: 15 Jan 2015 08:53:26 AM This sucks 26.

Anonymous says: 8 Feb 2015 03:11:15 PM Would like to find out about the massacre of french resistance fighters in the forests of Fontainebleau. My grandfather saw the trucks driving through the forest with the resistance fighters that had been taken out of the city jail to be shot. 27. Anonymous says: 9 Apr 2015 11:05:11 AM i dont get any of this but it was helpful 28. Matt M says: 20 Apr 2015 02:04:41 AM I've done some archival research on the military effectiveness of the French Resistance. If anyone is interested in digging deeper, there are some good sources listed in the end matter of this paper: 29.

Anonymous says: 29 Apr 2015 09:16:59 AM My mother told often me that my German dad was in the French resistance during the war , he married my mum in 1943 and ended the war in the pioneer corp in the British army and died in 1947 at the age of 27 he has a military stone at his grave, can anybody help me to find any information about him as the m o d can not give me any info until 70 years after his death in 3 years 30. My name says: 3 May 2015 08:02:21 AM i need some better pics, im doing a project 31. Anonymous says: 3 Jul 2015 12:50:24 PM Interesting how it misses out all the innocents they murdered without trial after the war, history really is written by the victors. 32.

Victor says: 3 Jul 2015 01:58:33 PM Totally agreed, to quote Napoleon "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." 33. Anonymous says: 1 Sep 2015 03:14:54 PM Is there more info on another website about this? My grandpa was in the French resistance 34. PCol says: 11 Dec 2015 08:17:26 AM Any serious questions could be answered by France Libre, they coordinated and verified lists of resistance groups after ww2, may be able to answer questions, WWW francelibre.... 35. Anonymous says: 17 Dec 2015 05:08:24 PM Any chance of finding a date when this article was published? 36. pczach says: 2 Feb 2016 11:47:25 AM I have a small 22 cal covert gun, identified as "stinger". It appears to be of US manufacture and WW II vintage. It's an aluminum cylinder you can hide in the palm of your hand.

The gun, six rounds, an extra barrel, and English/French instructions were hidden in a tube of grease. If anyone can provide some info or history on this weapon, I'd appreciate it. 37. Stupidness500 says: 7 Feb 2016 04:43:54 AM This really helped, dudes! 19 Feb 2016 07:19:08 AM the frenhc resestanse killed thousands without rtial 39. Eric Lautzenhiser says: 27 Feb 2016 03:01:25 PM My grandparents were both active in the French Resistance. How much info is available on members that survived (both survived) and were later hailed as heroes? 40. Anonymous says: 13 Mar 2016 04:08:49 AM Paulette are you looking for Jeanine? 41. Anonymous says: 28 Mar 2016 05:02:39 AM thnks soooooooooo much 42.

Michael Cotting says: 9 May 2016 03:18:10 PM My father is now deceased, but was in the Resistance. I have many pictures, dairy, certificates, etc. and wish there was somewhere would they could be appreciated. His name was Noel Cotting. I am Michael Cotting. mcotting@comcast.net 43. Anonymous says: 5 Jun 2016 01:06:11 PM I LOVE WWII 44. karen says: 2 Jul 2016 10:49:03 AM My uncle was saved by the Resistance in February of 1944 when his bomber was shot down. I'm trying to gather as much info as possible and publish a book about his experience. Is there any way I would be able to find out who might have helped him? 45. James Pope says: 16 Oct 2016 09:36:02 AM My father-in-law (whom passed away Oct 13 2016) join the French Resistance to escape forced work for the Germans either in ammunitions plants or building the Atlantic wall.

Most of his classmates were then tortured and killed by the Gestapo or disappeared in the concentration camps. He was proud of his service. 46. Anonymous says: 14 Dec 2016 09:05:05 AM this was very helpful All visitor submitted comments are opinions of those making the submissions and do not reflect views of WW2DB. Posting Your Comments on this Topic Your Name

Question: What is the name of the French underground resistance who fought against Germany in WWII?
Answer: MAQUIS