by Matthew Cobb
104 Schoenbrun (1981), p. 92.
105 Bood (1974), p. 45.
106 Schoenbrun (1981), p. 94.
107 A Parisian square and a Métro station now bear his name.
108 Bood (1974), p. 46.
109 See, for example, Kersaudy (1981), p. 81. Despite this whiff of messianism (which Churchill could also share), de Gaulle was lucid about his initial resources – ‘At my side, not the shadow of a force, or of an organization. In France, no resonance and no fame. Abroad, neither credit nor justification’ he later wrote in his memoirs (de Gaulle, 1962a, p. 82). Churchill was equally lucid and equally bold. On 27 June he met de Gaulle in Downing Street and said: ‘You are alone – well! I shall recognize you alone.’ Kersaudy (1981), p. 83.
110 Rémy (1948), p. 24.
111 Passy (1947a), p. 33.
112 Weil-Curiel published three volumes of memoirs relating to this period. However, they are generally taken to be of uncertain accuracy. Later, when in Gestapo custody, Weil-Curiel unwisely accepted a proposal to write anodyne reports on Vichy France for them. Although he did not betray anybody, his account reveals a systematic and strong streak of self-justification. Weil-Curiel (1945, 1946, 1947). See note 61 below.
113 Weil-Curiel (1946), p. 197.
114 Aveline (1962), p. 160.
115 Blanc (2004), p. 23.
116 Diary entry for 6 August 1940. Humbert (2008), p. 11.
117 There is only one published account of this period of the Resistance in any language (Blumenson, 1978). However, this work has no references, and although the author was able to interview many of the survivors in the 1970s, the wealth of verbatim detail ultimately undermines the book’s credibility. As a reviewer put it: ‘The effect of such passages, and there are many of them, is to detract from the verisimilitude of Blumenson’s account, not add to it.’ Silvestri (1978). French academic Julien Blanc has recently turned his attention to this period and has completed a PhD thesis on the subject.
118 Wood (2003). Hauet was supported by a group based in Versailles which included another retired colonel – Maurice Dutheil de la Rochère, a veterinary surgeon and a forty-eight-year-old Dominican monk. The veterinary surgeon was Julien Lafaye, who died at Sonnenbourg prison camp on 15 May 1944. The monk was Father Joseph Guihaire, who was beheaded in Brandenbourg camp on 5 December 1942. La Rochère was a reactionary and proud of it. He was a Catholic monarchist who had an office in an Education Ministry building, from where he could safely coordinate the activity of a wide range of individuals – firemen, a local bookseller, a cobbler, provincial shopkeepers and civil servants. From September 1940 this group produced a small journal entitled La Vérité française (‘The French Truth’), the first regular Resistance periodical – thirty-two issues were produced before the Nazis smashed the organization in November 1941.
119 Ghrenassia (1987).
120 Humbert (2008) p. 18.
121 Martin-Chauffier (1976), p. 104.
122 Humbert (2008), p. 18. The Toulouse philosopher Georges Friedmann concurred, praising Vildé as ‘the very image of the young communists I knew in the USSR’. Humbert (2008), p. 31.
123 Résistance 1, December 1940. Facsimile and transcription at http://www.vilde.fr/pages-f/resistance-f/resistance-1.htm (accessed 25 March 2008). See also Barbara Mellor’s translation of the whole article in Humbert (2008), pp. 309–10.
124 Humbert (2008), p. 24. The fire was alight in case the police or the Gestapo should arrive – the idea was that the articles could be thrown into the flames. As additional cover, there was also a portrait of Pétain on the mantelpiece. After the editorial meeting was over, the Martin-Chauffier family would huddle around the dying embers. The family’s Siamese cat purred. ‘It was our weekly celebration of comfort and spirit,’ wrote Simone Martin-Chauffier, in her diary (Martin-Chauffier, 1976, p. 80).
125 Humbert (2008), p. 29.
126 Blanc (2000).
127 Martin-Chauffier (1976), p. 78.
128 Humbert (2008), p. 20.
129 Tillion (2000).
130 La Rochère, Tillion and Hauet were all in contact with Captain d’Autrevaux, who was the main Paris agent of Vichy Intelligence (Blanc, 2000). Sections of the Vichy military apparatus were keeping their options open in case the military tide began to turn against the Germans, and they passed information on to their colleagues in both US and UK Intelligence. Furthermore, Vildé himself had two possible connections with MI6, one direct, the other indirect. Georges Ithier may have been an MI6 agent, while two women from the US embassy, Penelope Royall and Josie Meyer, made regular visits and apparently acted as liaison with US Intelligence agents at the embassy. These suggestions are made by Blumenson (1978) and Blanc (2000), and may well be true, but there is no evidence.
131 See Dorrian (2006). Plans of the Saint-Nazaire pens were also obtained by the French ALLIANCE intelligence circuit, which worked for MI6 (Fourcade, 1973, p. 71).
132 Gernoux (n.d. 1946?), p. 15.
133 Humbert (2008), p. 28.
134 Humbert (2008), p. 28.
135 Weil-Curiel was unable to leave France and was eventually persuaded by Gaveau to return to Paris. He was arrested on the way. See note 38 above.
136 The group had no name at the time. ‘Musée de l’Homme’ was the title given to the group after the war by Germaine Tillion, when she was filling out an official form that would entitle the members and their descendants to various pension rights. As the official ‘liquidateur’ of the group, she had to come up with a name in a matter of minutes (Tillion, 2000).
137 When Germaine Tillion learned that Gaveau was the traitor, she hatched a plot, in conjunction with MI6, to kidnap him. This came to nothing. Wood (2003), p. 98 n. 113.
138 Tillion (2000), p. 121.
139 Humbert (2008), p. 93.
140 Sénéchal was found guilty of espionage but was acquitted of a charge of intelligence with the enemy. The reason for this apparent discrepancy was that the sole evidence of contact with the enemy was a letter he was carrying, which he had written, and which was addressed to de Gaulle. This letter was dictated to him by Gaveau. Roskothen considered it would have been immoral to condemn Sénéchal for something that a Gestapo agent had set him up to do. He was still executed. Wood (2003), p. 97.
141 Wood (2003), p. 101.
142 Vildé (1997), pp. 87–9.
143 Aveline (1962), pp. 161–3.
CHAPTER 3
144 Douzou (1995), pp. 36–7.
145 A copy of Frenay’s manifesto has been found in a Toulouse archive. Cuvelliez (1995). For a slightly different version, see Cordier (1989a), pp. 25–8. In his memoirs, Frenay described the content of his manifesto quite honestly (Frenay, 1976, p. 14).
146 This number is still growing, as archives reveal hitherto unknown publications. This figure is taken from Aglan (2006). For an early survey of the underground press in France, see Bellanger (1961).
147 Frenay (1976), p. 20.
148 The title was a reference to the claim that there had been a Nazi ‘fifth column’ inside France prior to June 1940, conspiring for the defeat of France.
149 Schoenbrun (1981), p. 152.
150 Aglan (2006), p. 123.
151 Named after a decisive 1792 battle in which the forces of Revolutionary France defeated the Prussian army.
152 Simon (1942), p. 54. For an English-language account, see La Lettre de la France Libre 15 February 1942, pp. 18–19. A PDF of this publication is available: http://www.perfumefromprovence.com/associationsocfull.pdf (accessed August 2008).
153 See photo in Simon (1942), opposite p. 64.
154 Aglan (2006), p. 89.
155 Quoted in Langer (1947), p. 141. These illusions provoked a stinging criticism from General Spears, who wrote a memorandum in his usual sharp terms: ‘Our painstaking attempts to propitiate the Vichy government might, conceivably, make a dispassionate observer conjure up the picture of a well-meaning person bent on feeding a lettuce to a rabbit while it is being chased
around its cage by a stoat. A waste of lettuce, at best, since, if the rabbit were grateful, which would be unlikely, it will remain at the mercy of the stoat, bent on its ultimate destruction. Vichy is completely at the mercy of the Germans. Who can doubt it? Our pandering can no more alter the fact than can its own efforts at conciliation.’ Kersaudy (1981), p. 127.
156 See Groussard (1964). He was eventually released, and in 1942 made his way to Switzerland, where he worked for MI6.
157 Vinen (2006), p. 135.
158 See Kitson (2008). There is a self-serving account of this period by the creator of the TR, Colonel Pierre Paillole (Paillole, 2003).
159 Aglan (2006), p. 90.
160 Bellanger (1961), pp. 32–7. Pantagruel was probably the first underground newspaper, appearing in October 1940 in Paris. It was produced and entirely written by Raymond Deiss, a music publisher. The odd title came from the name of a giant in Rabelais’ eponymous poem ‘Pantagruel’. Deiss produced sixteen issues before he was arrested in October 1941. He was beheaded by the Nazis in Cologne on 24 August 1943.
161 Pineau (1960), p. 95.
162 Pineau (1960), p. 99.
163 Pineau (1960), p. 93.
164 Pineau (1960), p. 100.
165 From the earliest days, ordinary people had expressed their opposition to the Occupation in an unorganized and often incoherent way. Those with a more political outlook tended to act in a typically political fashion, although not necessarily particularly effectively. So, for example, on 17 June 1940 – even before de Gaulle had made his famous broadcast from London – Edmond Michelet, a Christian-Democrat in Brive, south of Limoges, handed out a leaflet consisting merely of six quotations from the French writer and philosopher Charles Péguy, who was killed at the beginning of the First World War, and which simply called for the fighting to continue. For discussions of women’s involvement in all kinds of Resistance, see Weitz (1995); for the particular experience of the wives of POWs, see Fishman (1992).
166 Bood (1974), pp. 92–3.
167 Anonymous (1959), p. 88.
168 In Bordeaux, for example. See Terrisse (1993), p. 176.
169 Simon (1942), p. 58.
170 In the US science-fiction TV series V (1985), in which humans fight against an alien occupation in an unsubtle parallel with the Nazi Occupation, Resistance fighters scrawled V everywhere. When the programme was broadcast, the UK was in the midst of the year-long Great Miners’ Strike. The miners, seeing a further parallel in the occupation of their pit villages by the police, in turn sprayed V on the sides of pit buildings.
171 As early as June 1940 the Nazis had a giant V on a flag in Paris, apparently to celebrate their victory over France, even though the German word for ‘victory’ is ‘Seig’. Ousby (1997), p. 221.
172 Guéhenno (2002), p. 177. Simon (1942), p. 80, suggests that the Nazis introduced a weekly travel card in the Métro in order to prevent tickets being used by the Resistance. What later became known as the ‘Carte Orange’ continued to function in Paris until recently, when it was replaced by electronic passes.
173 Over 200,000 jobs were lost in the aviation industry after June 1940; the Renault car factories sacked a third of their workforce. In the key industrial area around Lille and Calais – the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, which was annexed by the Nazis and put under control of their Brussels HQ – unemployment soared from 18,000 in April 1940 to 248,000 by August. Details from Courtois (1980) and from Fridenson & Robert (1992).
174 This section is based on Anonymous (n.d.), Lecoeur (1971), Courtois (1980), Dejonghe (1987), Dejonghe & Le Maner (2000), Taylor (2000) and Lefebvre (2001).
175 Ever since the Nazis increased the working week by thirty minutes on 1 January 1941, the coalfield had seen a series of isolated protests over working time, lack of food or against victimization, involving strikes and sit-down protests at the bottom of the pit. Each time, a mixture of minor concessions and coercion – including arrests, deportation and occupation of the pitheads by German troops – put an end to the movements.
176 Taylor (2000), p. 75.
177 Dejonghe (1987), pp. 335–6. A group of Polish miners living in the region explained the situation in a leaflet: ‘The appalling conditions imposed on the miners and their families have led to the magnificent movement. Some thought that the miners would behave like slaves, that they would bow their heads without saying a word. They were very much mistaken. It could not be otherwise – the slave regime imposed on the miners, together with terribly reduced rations, has been made worse by the fact that pay has fallen far behind the cost of living . . . that’s why all workers support this strike.’ Ghesquier-Krajewski & Ghesquier-Krajewski (2002), p. 8 n. 39.
178 Ouzoulias (1975), pp. 87–9.
179 Security staff working for the Lens Mining Company spied on a typical women’s demonstration on 3 June: ‘Around fifty women with a hundred children marched from the Rue Saint-Pierre and the Avenue de la Fosse to a meeting at the pit, stopping at the pit gates; Paroy, a young lad aged around ten years old, marched with his mother, carrying a placard which we could not read. The movement was mainly led by the wives of the workers who live at 64 Rue de Flandre and 6 Rue de Picardie. Also involved were Simone Vasseur, an accountant at pit 12, Madames Coutiez, Ohermant, Abas, Scubic, Davalt and the daughters of Paul Adolphe. The demonstration began at 12h50, the Germans arrived and dispersed the protesters.’ Lecoeur (1971), pp. 81–2.
180 Dejonghe (1987), p. 334.
181 Some families are still hurting, nearly seventy years later. In January 2005 the son of one of the deported miners, Gaston Damette, put an appeal on the Internet asking for anyone who had information about the end of his father’s life. Damette senior died in Dachau on 21 June 1944.
182 For example, the Société des Mines de Lens received 428,287.50 francs in compensation for the 57,101 tons of coal it lost during the strike. Lecoeur (1971), p. 99.
183 Dejonghe (1987), p. 341.
184 Dejonghe (1987), p. 341.
185 In contrast, the number of tanks used in the attack was only slightly more than that employed to crush the French army, while fewer aircraft were involved compared with 1940.
186 Bood (1974), p. 108.
187 On 22 June seventeen-year-old Maroussia Naïtchenko and her comrades from the Jeunesses Communistes (Communist Youth) in the eleventh arrondissement of Paris were on a camping weekend on the banks of the Seine, in the countryside near Paris. One of the campers heard about the invasion on a cats’ whisker radio, and the news flashed around the camp in an instant. Maroussia recalled: ‘Some comrades went into the town to buy a newspaper. They brought it back and read it on the riverbank. I took a photo of them. Maurice Fiferman (whom we called Fifi), Maurice Feld and myself decided to swim across the Seine, while Titi got hold of a rowing boat to accompany us . . . We returned, accompanied by Smulz [‘Titi’] Tizselman. I took a photo of him, in his borrowed rowing boat. There he is, so young, his hair tightly curled . . .’ (Naitchenko, 2003, p. 217). The photo of Titi – slightly blurred – shows a thin, pale young man of seventeen, wearing large black bathing trunks and pulling hard on an oar as he struggles against the current. He is looking down and behind slightly, as though trying to see what is coming. Photo in Berlière & Liaigre (2004).
188 Naïtchenko (2003), pp. 168 and 180.
189 Had she and her comrades known of the anti-Semitic and equivocal terms that were used in the secret negotiations with the Occupiers (these have recently come to light – Besse & Pennetier, 2006) they would have been even more appalled. The negotiators reminded the Nazis that the Communist Party had supported the Stalin–Hitler pact and had not been beaten by what they called the ‘Jewish dictatorship’ of Interior Minister Mandel – indeed, they argued that the Communist Party’s intransigence had hastened the Nazi victory. Finally, the Party leaders promised the Nazis to do nothing for them, but nothing against them. Despite the Nazi refusal to play ball and legalize the paper, the Communist Party leadership more or less kept to th
is promise until June 1941 (Besse & Pennetier, 2006, pp. 10–13).
190 Courtois (1980), p. 152. For analyses of the PCF’s early attitude to the Occupation, see Gallissot (1971), Avakoumitch (1980), Courtois (1980) and Beaubatie (1992).
191 Courtois (1980), p. 189.
192 Instead, the PCF claimed, ‘the National Independence Front, in order to fulfil its mission of liberation, must have as its fundamental force the working class of France with the Communist Party at its head’. In 1941 the Party was still determined to go it alone. Courtois (1980), p. 191.
193 Courtois (1980), p. 220.
194 Lévy-Osbert (1992), p. 37.
195 Lévy-Osbert (1992), p. 39.
196 Lévy-Osbert (1992), p. 46.
197 In the end, there were demonstrations at both places. See Guéhenno (2002), p. 177.
198 Lévy-Osbert (1992), p. 48.
199 This underlines the fact that the Nazis’ savage reprisal policy was instituted before the wave of attempted sabotage and assassinations. Neumaier (2006).
200 Berlière & Liaigre (2004), p. 106.
201 Berlière & Liaigre (2004), p. 107.
202 For an excellent account of the Bataillons, the reasons why some historians doubted the existence of a group by that name, and details of how their history was subsequently distorted by the Communist Party, see Berlière & Liaigre (2004). This section owes much to their detailed archival study and compassionate analysis.
203 Moser’s fine uniform may have led Fabien to believe he was shooting a highranking officer. In fact Moser was merely in charge of the navy’s clothing depot at Montrouge. Berlière & Liaigre (2004), p. 324, n. 397.
204 The pistol had belonged to the Marquise d’Andurain, the mother of a Jeunesse Communiste member. An incredibly wealthy aristocrat, she was a cocaine addict who dealt opium from her smart Longchamp mansion, was allegedly involved in British, German and French spy networks, told her son she had killed three people, and ended her life in the Bay of Tangiers, murdered. Berlière & Liaigre (2004), pp. 98 and 325, n. 405, n. 406 and n. 415–18. For more information see her son’s website http://dandurain.org (accessed January 2009).
