What can you tell me on the characteristics of the French Maquis and Resistance operations during World War 2?

Question

I would mainly like to know what kink of operations they carried out, how large the resistance was, and what the effects were.

Answer 1

French resistance to Nazi occupation in WW2 grew gradually from very small beginnings, until by late 1944 (when the Germans were in full retreat) hundreds of thousands of French people were involved (or at least claimed to be involved) in the resistance movement.

The earliest members of the resistance were often soldiers from the French army that had been defeated in 1940, but who sought to hide from the German occupiers, so as to evade capture and being shipped as POW's to forced labor in Germany. In those early days, the resistance was non-political and completely uncoordinated: just isolated little groups of a few dozen people trying to avoid being taken prisoner. The movement was always strongest in the areas of France that had not been (until 1943) occupied by the Germans, but left to the Vichy regime. In the early years, therefore, most actual fighting by resistance groups was not against Germans, but against Vichy forces (particularly the Milice).

From late 1940 onwards, the British and the de Gaulle's governement in exile began to make contact with some of these groups, supplying them with radios, arms, explosives and liaison agents, to begin building networks that could actually achieve something in terms of harrassing the occupation forces.

The first big boost to numbers involved in the resistance came in mid-1941 when Hitler invaded Russia. Up until then, the large French Communist party had (under orders from Moscow) cooperated with the Germans. Overnight that changed: now Moscow wanted Communists everywhere to make life as difficult as possible for the Germans, and numerous Communist resistance cells were established. Although this boosted the size of the resistance, it also split the movement: many Communist cells were less interested in fighting Germans than in undermining right-wing resistance groups with an eye to turning France into a Communist country in the post-war world.

The resistance received an even bigger boost in 1943, when the Germans began to draft young French civilians into forced labor in German factories. Many thousands of young men fled into the hills to hide from the draft, and gravitated into already existing bands of Maquis. This was when the resistance really became a mass movement, and when supplies of arms and explosives from Britain began to arrive via parachute drops in significant volumes.

Nevertheless, until the Normandy landings in June 1944, British and Free French policy had been for the resistance movement to keep a low profile, to build strength for a serious struggle against the occupiers. This was done in order to limit German reprisals for resistance acts, in which hostages were executed in large numbers in response to any murders of German soldiers.

Timed to coincide with the Normandy landings, resistance groups began to emerge from hiding in June 1944 to disrupt German troop and supply movements by blowing up rail lines, bridges, etc. One German response was the infamous massacre of the entire population of the village of Oradour.

There were few full-pitched battles between the resistance and the Germans. The most famous was the battle on the Vercors Plateau in southeastern France in 1944. Another was in Paris itself, when the police (until then no friend to the resistance) combined with FFI fighters to attack the German garrison as the Americans and Free French were racing to reach the city. Following the liberation of Paris, de Gaulle called upon the resistance to disband: he too, had an eye on France's political future, and wanted no armed alternative government to survive from the movement.

Answer 2

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