The French Resistance

[BarKokhba]

What was the effectiveness, and overall effect of the French Resistance prior to D-Day? Which organizations made up the Resistance? Prior to D-Day, did various groups coordinate any mass attacks on German troops or installations greater than hit-and-run attacks? Any info or photos greatly appreciated.

[Carl Schwamberger]

The only twobooks on my shelf I can recommend are 'The Dark Years; by Jackson & 'Vichy France' by Paxton. those are both histories of occupied France from 1940-1945. They have some useful context for Resistance operations. Hopefully some other people can recommend something more specific.

[BarKokhba]

Thanks Carl, I'll try to find them. My impression is that to this day, the legacy of the Resistance is still hotly debated in France.

[Chambellan]

The "French Resistance" as a single cohesive forces is something of a myth. The first resistors came from the French military. Vichy was allowed to keep a token force, but a large number of French officers were forced back into civilian life, and some of them commandeered military materiel and began organizing in the earliest days. Later, the German’s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union forced France’s kaleidoscope of Communist parties out of their neutrality and into the role of resistors. As the war in Europe progressed, Vichy’s enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazis began to poison their initial widespread perception of legitimacy, and a series of laws that would come to be collectively known as the Service du travail obligatoire sent thousands of young men fleeing into the wilds of France in order to avoid deportation and forced labor in Nazi Germany. By the middle of 1943, the British Special Operations Executive and the American Office of Strategic Services recognized this opportunity to arm, train, and organize these (mostly) men into something useful, and these widely disparate groups were eventually brought, with reasonable success, under the banner of the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur.

The effectiveness of these different groups as a military forces was highly variable. Many of the Maquis (usually groups of tens of men living in a forest somewhere) were concerned with little more than feeding themselves, while others were potent guerrilla forces. The Maquis du Vercors were an early and constant thorn in the German's side, and even declared a free state in July 1944.

As for further reading, William Casey's (OSS member, later head of the CIA) The Secret War Against Hitler gives an interesting view of this period.

Edit: If you really want to dive deep, the French National Archives has a huge amount of primary source material available online. The map linked below is one my favorite. It shows the approximate drop zones for Jedburgh teams (mixed British, American, and French Commando units) from June-September 1944, and each worked hand-in-glove with Resistance forces on the ground. https://www.siv.archives-nationales.cul ... medium.jpg

[BarKokhba]

Thank you Chambellan. Excellent summation of a topic I'm just beginning to delve into.

[Empiricist]

The map linked below is one my favorite. It shows the approximate drop zones for Jedburgh teams (mixed British, American, and French Commando units)...

120 Polish paras were also Jedburghers prepared for operations in France.
http://www.polandinexile.com/exile5.htm