Did the "French Resistance" in WWII make a real difference?

Factual Questions
1

Taking off from another recent SD thread on French History I’m curious if Dopers have the SD on the “French Resistance”. Until the last few years I’ll admit I had the “Hogan’s Heroes” / Hollywood reinforced view that the French Resistance was an effective and massive undertaking on the part of the French that really had some impact in fighting the Axis.

Over the last decade or so there have been a few reviews of books and articles I have read essentially saying the “French Resistance” as such never really existed as popularly conceived and was largely a face saving device for the French employed by de Gaulle and others in the aftermath of the war and that France for better or worse spent the bulk of Nazi occupation period with it’s belly turned up and paws in the air. These sources claim(ed) that the “French Resistance” to the extent it existed was miniscule, un-organized and largely ineffective at doing anything to impede the Nazis.
Is this revisionist view more accurate of unfair? Interested in SD’ers opinions re these differing points of view.

2

Unquestionably there was a huge rush to be in the Resistance towards the end of the German occupation, or at least to claim you were.

But there was no one unified group called the Resistance. French politics and history being what it is, there were left-wing and right-wing groups,even some based on religious lines. To imply that all of these groups were highly organized, or even armed, is false. Some were extremely structured (generally those with ex-servicemen, or the Communist-led groups), others were unfocused. Many pursued their own political agendas. To rise in the French government after DeGaulle came to power, you had to have been in the “right” maquis group during the war.

The British formed Special Operations Executive, or SOE, shortly after the fall of France in June 1940. Their job was to organize, train, and supply groups in France (and the other occupied countries of Europe) in order to cause trouble for the Germans. Because of their small numbers, this generally meant sabotage by night, intelligence-gathering, and only in the very last days of occupation, overt armed uprising. (This latter was dangerous if your timing was wrong, or the regular Allied forces were delayed.)

Trained agents (saboteurs, radio operators, etc.), both male and female, some French, some English, even some French-Canadians were parachuted into France, or were landed in fields by small single engined aircraft (Lysander), flown by a special squadron of the RAF. Many tons of supplies were dropped; arms, ammunition, propaganda leaflets, food, money, etc. Many of these agents were captured, tortured, and sent to concentration camps, where very few survived the war. Many ordinary French people not actually in the Resistance helped them, or hid an escaped POW, even though they would face execution if caught. Sadly, there were those who betrayed agents and resistants for personal gain, or sometimes through coercion.

One of the great success stories of the Resistance is that of the “escape lines” run to recover downed Allied pilots, hide them from the Germans (and the Vichy Militia), and get them out of France (usually through the mountains to Spain), in order to fly again. Something like 30,000 Allied sevicemen evaded the Germans in Europe (although this number includes those who crossed over the front lines after D-day).

Certainly the Resistance caused the Germans trouble out of all proportion to the actual number of resistants; many troops were tied up in guarding installations, combing woods and countryside for lairs or arms caches, providing security checkpoints in cities, towns and villages, etc. Also, the psychological effect on the Germans was one of always having to watch your back, never being fully at ease.

I’ll post more tomorrow, when I have more access to research material, but the short answer to your question is yes, the bulk of the French population (like the bulk of the population in all the occupied countries) did not actively resist. However, the many groups that made up the amorphous entity called “The Resistance” varied from disciplined, trained, heavily armed professionals to those who were little better than brigands. That they tied up a great deal of German manpower and time is undeniable; that they undertook (particularly just before D-Day) specific sabotage of targets that were difficult or impossible to destroy by aerial bombing is also true. But there was a wide spectrum of motivations, politics, and effectiveness.

3

Absolutely.
Just about every source I have read or seen on “D-Day” mentions that la resistance provided invaluable info on German troop and defensive positions. That is only one example.

4

Even if they did not make a huge MILITARY differance, the value for moral was tremendous.

Rodd: good post, dude! :cool:

5

Rodd Hill has got the right of it…While the Resistance was not the large organized force that is portrayed by film and romantics, it did exist in several, mostly loosly organized groups.

I would point out that any 5th column threat is certain to cause damage; tie down garrison troops that could be used else where at the worst.

6

[hijack]

I’m currently reading a very good book called “Dishonoured Society” by John Follain, which in part explains the role of the Cosa Nostra in assisting the Allied invasion of Siciliy. It seems that all kinds of deals were struck (usually based around US authorities turning a blind eye to mafia activities in America, or promising positions of authority in any Allied military government in Sicily) so that the Sicilian families would not hinder Allied progress.

[/hijack]

7

Resistance movements in occupied Europe probably had the biggest direct military impact on the war due to their intelligence role. Dangerous, boring & unglamorous work.

However, one shouldn’t overlook the moral influence an active resistance has on the population at large - the resistance fighters serve as an example to convince people that “all is not lost” and points out that the occupying troops are enemies, no matter what the propaganda says. In a situation where it must be extremely tempting to give up, accept what looks inevitable and make the best of a bad situation, the resistance fighters demonstrated that there was a more moral alternative. After all, if th

As for “large and organized” - well, if a resistance movement is large, it’s more likely to be discovered -and if it’s too organized, it’s probably easier to unravel, once discovered. These organizations had to be small and extremely low-profile in order to work. How would you even know who to take orders from ? It’s a wonder it got organized at all.

8

Try to find “The White Rabbit” by Bruce Marshall as told by F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas, G.C., M.C.

It’s the true story of Cmdr Yeo-Thomas, who was one of the primary British spies involved in organizing and arming the various resistance movements in France. He was captured and tortured by the Gestapo and eventually escaped from a concentration camp.

It’s a fascinating book that details the various resistance movements and their motivations at the time, as well as the amazing story of Yeo-Thomas.

9

Thanks for the kind words; I’ve been interested in European resistance movements since I was a kid. One of our family’s closest friends was a wonderful Danish lady, whose husband had been in the Danish Police (who, as a group, resisted both passively and actively, to the point where the Germans arrested the entire force).

I did some more research this morning, and found harder figures for the number of Allied servicemen who were helped by the Resistance.

M.R.D. Foot, a British Army officer who was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his work with the Resistance in Brittany, and also worked with SOE in Britain, wrote one of the definitive books on the subject, “Resistance.” He estimates the total number of Allied evaders as 30,000, but this number includes 10,000 who were (temporarily) at large when Italy dropped out of the war. The Germans scooped up about 8,500 of these and transported them to POW camps in Germany and Poland.

Foot, who worked closely with some of the escape lines in France and Belgium, estimates that over 4,000 Allied aircrew were smuggled out of occupied Europe. That is enough to fully man about 20 British bomber squadrons. In addition, he states that it cost about 20,000 pounds to train a fighter pilot; a trained, experienced man was a valuable asset to recover, not to mention the beneficial effect on Air Force morale of having “missing” comrades return unscathed.

Foot breaks Resistance down into three main categories:

  1. Intelligence
  2. Escape/evasion
  3. Subversion, which he further divides into:
    a) sabotage
    b) attacks on troops and individuals
    c) politics
    d) insurrection

It is important to remember that not all resistants were part of a group; the child chalking a “V” on the pavement (or more daringly on a German vehicle) was as much part of the movement as the railway clerk switching labels on boxcars, and thus sending winter clothing to Greece and sun-helmets to the Russian front.

A knowledgable saboteur could accomplish with 6 ounces of plastic explosive that which tons of bombs dropped by British and American bombers could not; in fact the best sabotage was done by someone who worked in the factory or railyard–they knew which small component to destroy in order to bring everything to a screeching halt.

The dull monotony of intelligence-gathering was vital to the Allies; some children memorized the colour-code on the shoulder straps of German troops, in order to identify what units were moving where, or counted tanks and guns being transported by rail, and in what direction they were going.

The military intelligence sent to the Allies from inside Europe included photographs of a crashed V-1 (Denmark); information on V-1 launching sites (France); information on German “heavy water” production (Norway); there were even reports on the holocaust sent to London in 1943 (Poland).

The Danish resistance could claim some tremendous successes, including spiriting the physicist Niels Bohr out of the country, eventually to the USA, where he was an important part of the Manhattan Project. But perhaps the Danes’ greatest achievement was to save Denmark’s Jews from the Nazis. There were some 8,000 Jews in Denmark, and 7,200 were smuggled out of the country to Sweden by the resistance. The Germans only arrested 800, of whom 50 were to die in concentration camps.

The risks run by all resistants and agents were heavy: the Germans were ruthless, taking hostages from the general population, and executing 5 or 10 for every German killed by partisans, or destroying entire villages (Lidice was only one of several Czech villages razed). Gestapo torture methods included repeatedly drowning and reviving victims; electric shocks, pulling teeth, toe- and fingernails. It was an operational maxim in SOE to assume that any agent would break within 48 hours of arrest by the Gestapo. Not all broke, which took superhuman strength of spirit. The British agent Yeo-Thomas (known as the “White Rabbit”) not only survived repeated Gestapo torture at the notorious Fresnes prison, but when sent by the Germans to Buchenwald concentration camp, actually escaped, and survived the war.

To return to M.R.D. Foot’s book, he closes it by saying, “…resistance’s real strength in battlefield terms, in an age of armour and air warfare, was puny. But it had titanic, as it turned out invincible, strength in moral terms. It gave back to people in the occupied countries the self-respect that they had lost in the moment of occupation. People who had been in it, or near it, or simply with it in spirit, were able to face themselves calmly in a looking-glass, and to know that in the end they had not been cowards; they had belonged to a band of radical companions, mostly unknown to each other, who had put their utmost into fighting evil…There is a Dutch saying worth recall: only dead fish float down the stream, live ones swim against it.”
Some links to Resistance and SOE subjects:

Resistance:
http://home.att.net/~governmentdrone/wwii-resistance.html
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/t022/t02291.html
http://www.denmark.org.uk/news/news1097/page01.htm
SOE agents and operations:
http://www.btinternet.com/~stephen.stratford/agentgcs.htm
http://www.freeyellow.com/members6/soe/
http://www.boulder.demon.co.uk/
Canadian secret agents: http://198.103.134.2/general/sub.cfm?source=history/secondwar/courage

10

What a good post, Rodd! You’re an excellent writer. Who says you can’t find content on the 'net? I’ve learned a lot from SDMB posters. Did you ever see the movie “Counterfeit Traitor” with William Holden? Based on a true story about a Swedish businessman who reluctantly became an agent for England during WWII. Part of it takes place in Amsterdam, and I was reminded of the movie when I read your post. Great film!

11

Just to play a bit of devil’s advocate here, John Keegan’s The Second World War looks at three examples of resistance in 1944-45, all of which took place with Allied troops on the way and in the immediate vicinity, and concludes “If the three uprising typify in their outcome the unintended effect of the programme of subversion, sabotage, and resistance which Churchill [proclaiming “now set Europe ablaze” in 1940], later abetted by Roosevelt, and the European governments in exile so ardently supported after June 1940, the programme must be adjudged a costly and misguided failure. All failed at the price of very grave suffering to the brave patriots involved but at trifling cost to the German forces that put them down . . .” (484)

He does allow that the psychological impact of resistance was useful to occupied populations, but that German rule was never shaken by resistance. He suggests that the Germans had no more than 6500 security police in France at any time during the war. Hitler faced substantial and effective guerrilla forces in only two places: Yugoslavia and the USSR.

Lastly, intelligence is all well and good, but the human intelligence provided by resistance groups is far inferior in accuracy, scale, and timeliness than signals intelligence provided by things like the Allied breaking of the Enigma code.

Resistance is romantic, and those who participated were certainly brave, but its objective impact shouldn’t be overestimated.

12

DRS makes a good point that “German rule was never shaken by resistance.” This is certainly true, but only the most cockeyed optimist would claim that a resistance movement alone could defeat (or offer a serious military challenge to) the occupying German forces. That was never the intent of supporting European resistance movements.

And it should be remembered that Keegan’s figure of 6500 security police refers to Gestapo, SD (Security Service of the SS), and the like. Regular sweeps of the countryside, ambushes for resistance “reception parties” for supply drops, and the cordon and search of towns, villages and city sections relied on massive support from regular German army troops and resources.

As to the three uprisings Keegan mentions: IIRC, one that he refers to is the Plateau des Glieres massif, site of a large Resistance stronghold, and object of a large German military operation in March, 1944. A disaster insofar as virtually all resistants (and Allied agents) were killed or captured, along with supplies and weapons, absolutely. But this was unarguably a misuse of the Resistance–too much too soon; to hold a large area like the plateau gave no real strategic advantage to the Resistance; rather it just narrowed down the areas that the Germans had to search! Having said that, many Germans were killed and wounded, it took a great deal of time and manpower, and although tragic, it did give morale and propaganda value.

I think Keegan (and there are few writers of military history whom I hold in higher regard) undervalues the morale factor of resistance, even unsuccessful resistance: the Catholic Church and Communism have done very well out of martyrs for the cause when it comes to inspiring the wavering faithful. Keegan’s focus is on the bottom line in strict regular military terms; and overlooks the importance of resistance for Allied propaganda in the US and UK, in keeping up the morale in the occupied countries, and eventually in propaganda (white and black) directed at German home front and military morale.

Churchill and FDR also had to think of the future: one day the war would be over. How would people in Europe react to having been completely abandoned during the occupation time? A great deal of goodwill was built up by the western Allies’ support of resistance (most of the goodwill was squandered, but that is another story).

Intelligence is made up of thousands of scraps of information, pieced together to form some coherent whole; sigint like Ultra, while vital for troop and ship movements, and tactical information, could not have supplied detailed technical information on German heavy water research; it took humint for that. Likewise, the discovery of the German V-weapons program relied on Polish and Danish eyewitnesses (and French to decipher the meaning of the launch sites). British Military Intelligence so valued the eyewitness reports of RAF aircrew who had been smuggled out of Europe that each was exausively debriefed for anywhere from a four days to three weeks. Sigint is only a part of the overall picture (and no single intelligence source alone can supply the whole picture).

13

The resistance did provide priceless information to the allies, and were extremely sucessful saboteaurs (such as the syphoning, with only a straw and power of mouth, of a whole set of railroad engines, which caused a battalion of tigers to be 3 weeks late in Normandy.)
However, their actual military contributions were not so succesful. In (I think) April of 1944 a resistance group in southern France seized an plateau and from there created an armed camp and started various light assault and harassment missions. They became confident, and then a company of SS troops came. They crushed the French with minimal losses.

Minor nit picking: The SD is not the Security Service of the SS. They were the brown coat militia that supported Hitlers politics and from which the SS was formed. Sorry to such a nitpicker, but I couldn’t resist.

14

Ermmm, I think, Argeable, that you mean the “SA”, Sturm Abteilung, who were the “brownshirts.” The
Sicherheitsdienst, or “SD” were the security service branch of the SS, led by Heydrich until his assassination, then by Kaltenbrunner.

15

One should also note that the first enigme machine to be recovered was taken by the Polish resistance and spirited away to England.

The rest of the Enigma story is about retrieving the daily set-up codes but without that first machine things could have been, at the very least, more protracted.

16

one example of the Resistance having a military impact was the Paris rising in the spring of 1944. The Allies originally intended to by-pass Paris, and press onwards, leaving the German troops there to wither on the vine, so to speak.

The Resistance in Paris started an insurrection, and the political implications of letting them be defeated by the Germans helped to force the Allies to occupy Paris. (There were other factors, such as De Gaulle’s order to Le Clerc to march on Paris with his Free French unit; the Allies had to keep up.)

17

In the flag of France, the Tricolor, the white should be replaced with yellow. France hasn’t had a backbone since Napoleon. They have lost nearly every war since Napoleon.
The ones they didn’t lose the British or the Americans had to bail them out.

18

Thanks to all for the information and esp. Rodd Hill for clueing me in re the French (and other) resistance movements. For all the purported evils of the net the access to this quality level of information makes it all worthwhile.

BTW Rodd if you aren’t already you really should be writing books on this stuff. Your posts were models of depth, clairity and conciseness.

19

Astro, I’m blushing deeply. Glad you found it interesting. Maybe I would write a book if I wasn’t so damned lazy!

20

The French leadership made some major blunders in both World Wars, but I don’t think the courage of the average French soldier was any less than that of her allies. The Free French weren’t bad soldiers - and as has been covered in this thread, French resistance fighters showed a lot of valour, although some of it, tragically, was wasted.

Perhaps the French had more “backbone” under Napoleon. IMHO, history has been very much kinder to him than he deserves, seeing as he managed to get most of Europe involved in what was ultimately fruitless wars. I, for one, see no reason to applaud Napoleon - he was a skilled tactician and leader, but his goals were not exactly what you’d call moral. And he failed, ultimately.

And on the topic of “bailing out” France (and the rest of us Europeans), please keep in mind that it’s somewhat easier to defend against an aggressor across a channel or - in the case of USA - an ocean. They make such nice anti-tank ditches, right ? My deepest respect and gratitude to the American and British heroes who eventually made the difference, but don’t put down those who tried in vain.

I have no intentions of defending incompetent French Generals, who could (and should) have managed their battles better, but the average French fighting man tried when he had the chance. And in fairness to the French leaders, I don’t remember reading about anyone on the Allied side taking blitzkrieg seriously before seeing it demonstrated.

Oh, and Rodd: Interesting posts - being Danish, I of course found them especially interesting. The rescue of the Jews was one of Denmarks finer hours (not many of them in WWII), although it should probably in all fairness be said that having neutral Sweden a short boat trip away made it somewhat easier to get them to safety.