Asses the relative role of ideology and circumstances in the emergence and development of a resistance movement in France between 1940-1944

Richard Vinen is of the opinion that de Gaulle actually fought a political war in the name of Free French vis-à-vis her British and American allies each tried to exert their political influence in Europe by ostensibly aiding de Gaulle’s military resistance to the Nazi.13 Arthur Marwick argues along the same line that France was both at war, and not at war: by having allied powers dragged along to defeat Germany where, France again suffer massive bombardment by the British and America in 1944 that was aimed at removing the occupiers.14 Military co-operation between Free French and Allied military commands took place under the representations of Remy’s Confreirie-Notre-Dame and Section F of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) where the latter funded and armed innumerable local resistance groups that included sabotage operations and provided intelligence material and escape routes for Allied airman.15 The British allegedly from ideological standpoint however, saw the resistance to the Nazi World Order from a different political spectrum; she wanted the European democracy to be reasserted against a tyrannical uni-polar hegemony.16 De Gaulle on the other hand was aware of this competition and quite often rebelled against Churchill and Roosevelt by trying to assert French rights and prestige against them by trying to act alone against the Nazi.17 This political power struggle among European powers facing Nazi World Order became more pronounced with the involvement of USSR in the World War II in 1941 that immediately made contact with the Free French and then both created a mutual co-operation to check Anglo-Saxon power in Europe.18 

It is also argued strongly that Nazi World Order was primarily driven by economic order with Germany’s interest top the hierarchy. ‘Fascist Capitalism’ best described Hitler’s economic policy. In charged of the Nazi economic policy was Hermann Göring who ‘accepted the need to exploit local resources in Western Europe in situ’.19 As war was still being fought all industrial activities under the Nazi occupation were made for war efforts; producing arms that required massive cheap labour force. The massive extermination of Russian labour force had to be replaced and historians argue that French resistance dramatically turned into a mass movement when compulsory labour service (STO) was introduced.20 H.R. Kedward Argues that STO the was main force that provoked massive resistance until the liberation of France in 1944, ‘From mid-1943, mainly because of the huge civil impact of forced labour service in Germany (STO) and developments in the war, it is possible to talk not just of movements (mouvements) which continued to spread throughout 1944’.21 Huge number of workers, peasants and students went into hiding from this labour conscription into Germany and they sought refuge with the Maquis that latter joined guerrilla warfare with them.22

Roderick Kedward however is careful of not associating what the term he uses to describe those evading the labour conscription as réractaires with the Maquis for he argues that ‘resistance movements of 1940-1942 were urban-based with urban values, and the idea of guerrilla warfare in the countryside or even a tactical retreat into the hills had hardly been discussed’23 in early French resistance literature. However, does it matter if the resistance in 1940-42 was exclusively urban in character or not? Kedward seems to ignore the fact that Nazi occupation was not centred in French cities and towns only. This controversy surrounding Maquis resistance and its members argued Kedward further due to the number of those evading the STO – only 19 per cent that was not significant to be included as part of the Maquis movement.24 The Maquis on the other hand, confirm this theory and some maquisards oral evidence as a matter of fact have dismissed the réfractaires 

as no more than an expensive irrelevance to their history, diverting food and supplies from the active combatants, whom they portray as largely made up of committed anti-fascists and foreigners on the run from the Vichy organization of Main d’Ovre Entrangere (MOE).25

Interestingly though, Kedward argues this obscurity surrounding the formation of the Maquis resistance movement was due to Vichy propaganda, ‘which also made a distinction between réfractaire and maquisard for opportunistic ends, whose importance for the continuance of Vichy’s raison d’etre’.26 Julian Jackson however has a different opinion. According to him, the réfractaires at first hid in various safe places, some in the countryside, relative homes, in deserted farm buildings and in forestry camps in the mountains and it was those hiding in the mountains that later formed the Maquis camp.27 He further argues that while some réfractaires joined the Mauquisard, others decided not to take any aggressive resistance activities and this quarter of réfractaires argued Jackson are not to be considered as resisters.28 Nicholas Atkin supported by documental evidence argues that resisters and not limiting to the réfractaires began to flock the countryside where they formed maquis bands in scrubland and STO réfractaires helped to swell the number of the Maquisards.29 Atkin also holds that there were factors that led to the formation of the Maquis bands, first it could be made possible to cite the communist resistance when they could cover themselves on the rugged hill and mountainsides and the romanticised maquis guerrilla style appealed to the French youth30 those are the factors among others that contributed to the swelling membership of the Maquisards.

Why the Communists had to be the “scapegoat” for the Maquis resistance as argued by Atkin? It cannot be argued if the Maquis had some political agenda on their minds for citing resistance to the Nazi on the Communists but a valid question can be asked is, why the Communists? Why not the army for instance? It has been mentioned earlier that the Communists were suspected from the beginning of their establishment and many historians argue that their involvement represented by the Parti Communiste Franҫais (PCF) in their resistance to the occupation remains a controversial one. The PCF on the other hand was already facing internal and external crisis ranging from the attack on workers’ right and campaign against the communist party in France as well as facing the Munich dilemma and the increasing threat of the Nazi Germany. The non-agression pact signed between the Nazi and the Soviet Union ended once and for all the French popular front.31 The full form of the Communists resistance took place after Hitler’s invasion of Soviet Union, however this is opposed by the Communists who insisted that their anti-Nazi sentiment had already existed before the invasion and distinguished themselves from that of the German Nazis.

The Communists resistance is argued to be only active in their resistance activity after 1941. Their struggles were directed at both Nazi as well as the Vichy. Aggressive policy of combating communist subversion since before the occupation by the Third Republic and after the occupation by both the Nazi and the Vichy and persecution of the PCF members said to be one of the factors that provoked the communists to embark on aggressive resistance struggles as argued by communist inclined historians. Julian Jackson however argues, that the seeds of communist resistance was made clear but merely on the surface that the Communist resistance took place only after they had received a directive from Moscow to organize ‘the resistance of the masses against the agressor’.32 This directive from Moscow instructed the French communists not to attack the British but also not to provoke the Germans.33 It can be said at this point although resistance was close but their neutrality and hesitation were still conspicuous and left us very little to wonder the general suspicion directed at the Communists for the French communist future was determined a lot by Hitler and Stalin relationship. Another document from Moscow directed by the PCF leaders in Moscow approved by the Kremlin enforced resistance and the ‘main task is not the overthrow of capitalism….but the defence of national interests…..national liberation from the yoke of the foreigner’.34 Starting from this point, the PCF patriotic orientation intensified with the call for a ‘National Front of Struggle for the Independence and Freedom of France’ and a condemnation of the ‘barbaric methods of Nazism’.35 Dissemination for the call for resistance was done through the new PCF clandestine periodical L’Universite Libre.36 The PCF was very aggressive in their rejection of both German protectorate and British dominion. However at this point it can be argued that the communist resistance cannot be called as a full-fledged resistance yet.

The PCF capitalized the distress of the people over shortages of food and low wages in the factories and tried to organize people’s committee and became the most vocal compared to other resistance movement that was daring enough to say about the Vichy ‘France hates you for its misfortune’.37 July 1941 is a turning point in the PCF resistance when under the directive of Comintern armed struggle was launched that included disrupting production as a way undermining the Nazi war effort, sabotage, assassination of a German solider and two German officers.38 The communists armed resistance until 1942 with constant directive from Moscow to intensify arm struggle.

The ordeal living under the occupation caused distress to the general French population especially in the occupied zones. As time went on, as the Vichy regime became more unpopular and the brutal racial policy of the Nazi and the condition of the people living under the Nazi occupation outside France were known to the general French people, resistance expanded and became more aggressive as they won more members including sympathizers who rendered discreet support such as providing food, information and documents to the resisters.39 Another sector of French society that contributed to the resistance movement to the Nazi was the Catholics that according to Louis Allen made up once percent of French population in France during this period.40 Allen further argues that due to German occupation, resistance for the first time, ‘it became possible for large numbers of Catholics and Communists, or adherents of the extreme left-wing, to envisage that they could act together’41and this is reflected in a poem by Louis Aragon, ‘Celui qui croyait au ciel, Celui qui n’y croyait pas’.42 The Communists who initially could not imagine a co-operation with the Catholics change their stance to face a common enemy, my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Alphonse Rozier, head of the Front National, said that he did not believe that he could be at the same time a good Catholic and a Communist but saw no conflict in being a good Catholic and a good friend.43 Initially the Catholics were supportive of the Vichy regime but decided to break away from the regime due to some disagreement mainly revolved around how French youth and their organizations were treated and problems related to the STO.44      

W. D. Halls, is of the opinion on what triggered the Catholics disassociated themselves from the Vichy regime was due to the treatment of the Jews under the Nazi Germany is mainly a significant factor that changed the attitude of the Catholics towards the regime under the Nazi’s control.45 The Catholics and Protestants constitute France Christian denominational feature. Of these two main Christian denominations, the Protestant is argued to be more collaborative of the Vichy regime and were more favoured by Petain due to him being a Protestant himself. Why the Catholics were more pronounced in their disassociation with the regime and later join the resistance movement? Robert Zeretsky argues that ‘Vichy versus Resistance battle lines were often drawn along the lines of traditional religious conflict’46 and he maintains further that ‘contrasting predispositions, mentalities, and views of Vichy can be situated in a geographical and cultural context of historic Catholic-Protestant rival and conflict.47  It cannot be said for certain if the marginalization of Catholicism by the Nazi in Germany had directly triggered the Catholic to resist the Nazi. However the long history of Catholic and Protestant enmity is not ignored by Zeretsky. Remember the well known Thirty Year’s War fought between the Catholics and the Protestants?

The spread of resistance ideas and struggle was important in drawing members and supporters. Newspapers, magazines, posters and books for examples are effective tools for the dissemination of resistance movement’s message to the French people. It was so important that the prohibition of the publication of the PCF’s daily newspaper L’Humanité the communists’ mouthpiece for example had caused distress to them and what is more important is the people behind the publications of daily newspapers, magazines, books and pamphlets among others is what James D. Wilkinson calls as “Intellectual Resistance”. This scenario was not unique to France but in Europe in general, Wilkinson observes, ‘for Europe’s intellectuals, in particular, the Resistance experience gave to politics a moral dimension that led to many to sacrifice their own safety and self-interest in an unequal combat’.48 Thus it can be argued that the intellectual resistance is equally as important as physical resistance of the other resistance movement and can be said the backbone for the spread of resistance movement and source of motivation and strength.

In France, intellectual resistance was mostly carried out in secret or as underground movement and in Paris groups of Parisian writers joined the ranks of intellectual resistance who continued their writings in form of venting their anti-war sentiments even before 1939 and the occupation had led to full commitment to their intellectual resistance.49 Jean Paul Sartre became prominent French intellectual whose writings became influential in intellectual resistance. Sartre in most of his writings draws some guidelines on what attitude should French people adopted towards the Germans during the occupation; Vercors Jean Bruller, in his Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) argues that Petain’s handshake with Hitler at Montoire was nothing but a sign of disaster.50 Threats of execution as a reprisal for anti-Nazi acts only intensified anti occupier sentiment and led to more active intellectual resistance albeit underground and it is argued that ‘the intellectuals were among the first active résistants during the early months of indecision and inertia, when the French Communist party was still paralyzed by the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the mass of French citizens refused to commit themselves’.51 Poem of Paul Eluard “Courage” depicted the ordeal and hunger suffered by the French under the Nazi who exploited in a brutal way France physical and human resources influenced thousands of French youth evaded the STO and joined the Maquis resistance.52 Other clandestine publication such as Les Lettres Franҫaises became catalyst for more active level of resistance among the intellectuals and drew more participation among the French people to join resistance movement. Earlier historian on French Intellectual resistance such as Gordon Wright depicts the French elites and social rebels posed an aggressive resistance to the occupation in the German occupied – north.53 Wright further argues it is the heroic character of the French bourgeois resistance that was ‘the earliest and most reliable underground agents, according to one prominent ex-resister, were the intellectuals, men who fully grasped the issues involved; men who, when captured, usually stood up under torture even better than the simpler and apparently tougher working class militants’.54

Another important sector of French resistance that was motivated by general suffering under the occupation was that of what Margaret Collins Weitz calls “Sisters Resistance”. As mentioned earlier, French women resistance was motivated by the ordeal and fate of their loved ones and friends killed or faced deportation. Women protesting and resisting in France has its own history and tradition where it can be traced back as early as in 1789 and history in general shows that shortage of foods is the biggest factor that provoked women to protest fitting their maternal role nourishing the family and Weitz describes French women resistance to the occupation as a “family affair”.55 The participation of women in different movements and networks according to Julian Jackson are varied and there were women who became ‘among the founding members of Franc-Tireur, the Musee de l’homme group (Germaine Tillion), Defense de la France (Helene Viannay, Liberation Sud (Lucie Aubrac), and Combat (Bertie Albrecht)’.56 

Women participation however had to overcome the stereotype that resistance was only a male thing and some women break this stereotype by transforming themselves into manly character and bravery.57 France is known to have her famous heroin character, Joan of Arc anyway and could have inspired the heroic character of the women resistance and their role and activities in the resistance are no less important and dangerous than that of their male counterparts.

Jewish resistance in France were ultimately affected by the persecution suffered by their fellow Jews in Germany and the development of Jewish resistance movement in France to the occupation was largely influenced by it. According to Renee Poznanski, the evolution of Jewish resistance in form of ‘organizations dedicated to rescue, as well as ideological movements or military groups’ from Paris to cities in the southern, Vichy Zone, and to the countryside.58 The occupation changed the urban character of the Jewish community dramatically when they fled the cities and towns in drove to countryside and this made the Jewish resistance after 1940 ‘in all it forms, grew out of pre-existing institutions that shifted their orientation or served as the nuclei of new movements’.59 Impoverished Jewish community flocked their synagogues as new social venues providing assistance to those in need, marginalized and desperate to flee the Nazi persecution, while those remained in the cities and towns were mainly Jewish communists who continued their struggle expressed in clandestine propaganda and education and gradually transformed into armed resistance.60

Conclusion

The Nazi World Order had not only dragged France in her resistance to the Nazi occupation but also other European nations as a continuation and part of the battle fought in the World War II. Thus, it can be said from military point of view, French resistance to the Nazi occupation was also the Allied powers resistance. This concerted military resistance was primarily provoked by the ideological agenda of Hitler’s Nazi World Order to subjugate Europe under her hegemony. France and the Allied powers’ resistance to the Nazi occupation can be said at this point was an effort to maintain balance of power in Europe. Subjugating Europe means subjugating its economies and Hitler saw only through military expansion could economic domination be achieved.

Nazi’s brutal economic policy under which forced labour conscription was imposed on the occupied France provoked greater resistance among the French people. This was demonstrated by the swelling number of the Maquisards when those evading the STO joined their resistance movement. The evasion of the STO by the French people was not only caused by the strong anti-Nazi sentiments and deportation to Germany but also due to the brutal treatment of the Nazi towards their forced labours and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. The Jews in France were ultimately affected by the fate of their brethrens under the Nazi in Germany, thus, led them to resist the occupation and their resistance dramatically changed the urban character of the Jews in France. Other resistance movement emerged as a result of the Nazi’s brutal treatment of the Jews and the daily ordeal living under the Nazi occupation was the Catholic resistance and historians argue that the Catholic resistance was also motivated by the long history of enmity between Catholicism and Protestantism. Germany’s track record of her Catholic-Protestant history herself can hardly be regarded as excellent. In this sense the Catholic resistance was also directed at the Protestant Vichy government. Shortage of food and other basic needs are part of the ordeal endured by the French people under the Nazi, and this greatly challenged the French women’s maternal roles, hence, provoked them to resist the occupation. The women resistance to the occupation and the danger they faced were not any less important than that of their male counterparts.

Intellectual resistance can be deemed as the backbone of the French resistance movement to the occupation. Through their intellectual works the spread of resistance ideas and message reached the people resulting in the growing number of members of the resistance and motivation in the resistance activities. French intellectuals through their works provide sense of direction and purpose for the resistance movement. Problem such as division and distrust as in the case of the Communist resistance vis-à-vis the general French people and other resistance movement however served as obstacles toward a more united and fruitful efforts in the resistance struggles, hence, hampered the speedy liberation of France.

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