The Resistance

by Matthew Cobb

  680 Over half a century later, Serreulles pointed out that there was no further consequence of the raid on the Rue de la Pompe, suggesting that none of the nine talked (Bouchinet-Serreulles, 2000, p. 336).

  681 Seaman (1997), pp. 104–8.

  682 Piketty (1998), p. 328. For Cordier’s restrained riposte to these criticisms – written after both Brossolette and Yeo-Thomas were long dead and the whole question was of purely historical interest – see Cordier (1999), pp. 513–9. On the other hand, when it comes to criticizing Brossolette’s actions, Cordier is anything but neutral (e.g. pp. 520–5).

  683 Seaman (1997), p. 110.

  684 Seaman (1997), p. 112.

  685 Cordier (1999), p. 528.

  686 In mid-1943 Francis Closon was dispatched to help set up the Comités de la Libération, embryos of the future Gaullist state. Six months later he wrote bitterly to London and Algiers, complaining that he had received not one single instruction (Closon, 1973, pp. 157–8). He later wrote of his impression that ‘At the foot of the towering peak de Gaulle, Algiers apparently lived in fog’. Closon (1973), p. 160.

  687 See Cordier (1999), pp. 528–32. Cordier points out that de Gaulle gave Passy the ‘choice’ of whether to recall Bingen or not. This was effectively a test of Passy’s loyalty – was he more devoted to his scheming with Brossolette or to de Gaulle’s leadership?

  688 One of the passengers was Émile Cossoneau, a Communist deputy. PCF leader Marty claimed from Moscow that Cossoneau had been ‘assassinated’ by the BCRA (Crémieux-Brilhac, 2001, p. 946); for details of the accident and of the burial site of the pilot, Flying Officer Bathgate, and of ‘Moreau’ (Cossoneau), see Verity (2000), pp. 144–5 and 204.

  689 Seaman (1997), p. 117. The memories of the pilot and of Yeo-Thomas with regard to this event are not identical, but both indicate that London was determined he should leave.

  690 Bouchinet-Serreulles (2000), pp. 345–6; Verity (2000), p. 205.

  691 Cordier (1999), p. 538.

  692 Cordier skips over Brossolette and Bollaert’s active attempts to free themselves, simply stating: ‘Finally, incarcerated in Rennes prison, they remained for a month and settled into the routine of prison life while, outside, their friends were busy trying to get them out.’ Cordier (1999), p. 538.

  693 During his interrogation, Bollaert was apparently told by the Nazis that an uncoded document referring to their arrest had been seized at the Spanish frontier (Piketty, 1998, p. 337). Serreulles repeatedly denied that any such document was sent by him or anyone else (Piketty, 1998, p. 337); indeed, it seems extremely unlikely that he was responsible, given that he was in London from the beginning of March (Bouchinet-Serreulles, 2000, p. 346). After the war, the story was believed by many in the Resistance, including Brossolette’s wife, who described it as ‘a stunning example of stupidity that was either murderous or unthinking, perhaps the most revolting in the whole history of the circuits’ (Brossolette, 1976, p. 248). However, Piketty (1998) carried out an extensive search for such a document and found no trace whatsoever, concluding: ‘Given our current knowledge, the identification of Paul Boutet remains inexplicable’ (Piketty, 1998, p. 338).

  694 Seaman (1997), p. 140.

  695 Seaman (1997), pp. 137–46.

  696 Seaman (1997), p. 89.

  697 Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1976), p. 447.

  698 Frenay (1976), p. 329.

  699 Cordier (1999), p. 585.

  700 This late conversion came about after a meeting between Pierre Brossolette and General Revers. Piketty (1998), pp. 319–20. This was also the swansong of the Resistance movements, as their Central Committee ceded power to COMAC, and then dissolved itself. Before the ORA was finally accepted into the Resistance, it had to prove its loyalty. As well as making a declaration in which they repudiated Vichy and promised not to be involved in politics, they also had to pool their weapons with the Resistance and promise to support the national insurrection. After a humiliating appearance before the Bureau of the CNR, ORA leader General Revers (who two years earlier had been Admiral Darland’s right-hand man) was made a non-voting member of COMAC. See de Dainville (1976).

  701 Narinksi (1996).

  702 Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), p. 946.

  703 De Gaulle, with his acute political sense, was probably well aware of this geopolitical truth (Crémieux-Brilhac, 2001, p. 1122).

  704 Cordier (1999), p. 598. De Gaulle spoke as the chairman of yet another structure, the Comité d’Action en France (COMIDAC – Committee for Action in France), set up in Algiers in September 1943. COMIDAC was supposed to oversee the creation of the future Gaullist state in France, but it had done little beyond find a place on one of the many organizational diagrams (‘organigrammes’) the Free French loved so much.

  705 Cordier (1999), p. 604.

  706 Granet (1964), pp. 156–66.

  707 Cordier (1999), p. 495.

  708 Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), p. 1124.

  709 Cordier (1999), pp. 569–71.

  710 Bouchinet-Serreulles (2000), p. 356.

  711 Seaman (1997), p. 112. During his train journey back to Paris, Yeo-Thomas had one of those fortuitous encounters that would strain credulity if it appeared in the pages of a thriller. In the dining car he found himself seated next to a young German officer – Klaus Barbie of the Lyons SS. Yeo-Thomas had no idea of Barbie’s role in the murder of Jean Moulin, but he had heard enough about the Nazi to be extremely wary, and managed to keep the conversation to routine chit-chat about the scandals of the black market. Seaman (1997), p. 113. This contradicts the suggestion that Barbie was in Italy during this period (Klarsfeld, 1997a).

  712 The Resistance leader in charge of the maquis summarized the situation, underlying the lack of weapons and ammunition: ‘In those départements that are the best equipped, we can say that in the maquis barely one man in ten is armed, while in the Secret Army it is one in a hundred. The best-supplied weapons have around 10 or 20 rounds each, and the only region that has obtained some weapons (because it has received parachute drops from the British for months) has a few heavy machine guns with 300 rounds each.’ The verbatim minutes of this meeting – seventy pages long – have survived, but have still not been published or properly exploited by historians. Extracts can be found in Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1976), pp. 54–61, and are briefly discussed in Marcot (1996).

  713 Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1976), p. 60.

  714 Funk (1981), p. 30.

  715 The minutes of the War Cabinet meeting of 27 January 1944 are partially reproduced in d’Astier (1965), pp. 305–7; see also Seaman (1997), p. 126. This position was cemented on 1 February, when Yeo-Thomas was invited to meet Churchill to give his first-hand opinion on the situation of the Resistance; he spoke passionately about the need for more weapons, strengthening Churchill’s commitment.

  716 General d’Astier’s conception of the Resistance was very different from that of his brother, and he claimed to Eisenhower that it was ‘composed largely of former members of the French army, under the direction of trained officers’. Funk (1981), p. 31.

  717 Above all, Eisenhower, like Churchill, did not want anything like the ‘national insurrection’ that the Resistance had long promised would coincide with national liberation. See Funk (1981).

  718 Richard Heslop (‘Xavier’) of SOE and his BCRA colleague, Jean-Pierre Rosenthal (‘Cantinier’).

  719 Crémieux-Brilhac (1975), p. 55. For general accounts of the Glières events, see Jourdan, Helfgott & Golliet (1946); Tillon (1972), pp. 148–53; Friang (1975); Crémieux-Brilhac (1975, 1995); Kedward (1993), pp. 132–41.

  720 Paxton (2001), pp. 322–4.

  721 Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1976), p. 22. For the de Gaulle quote, see Marcot et al. (2006), entry on Pucheu, p. 845. At the same time as Schumann issued his warning, the Resistance stepped up its offensive, assassinating Lespinasse, the chief prosecutor of Toulouse, and bombing the house of Fernand de Brinon, Vichy Secretary of State.

  722 Cr�
�mieux-Brilhac (1975), p. 55.

  723 Crémieux-Brilhac (1975), p. 56. This article contains many transcripts of messages from the BBC as well as archival material from the BCRA.

  724 Tillon (1972), p. 148.

  725 Crémieux-Brilhac (1975), p. 58.

  726 Crémieux-Brilhac (1995), pp. 60–1.

  727 Crémieux-Brilhac (1975), p. 61.

  728 After one of these encounters, Tom Morel was killed by the commandant of the GMR, who had been captured by the maquis. Accounts differ as to exactly how this occurred: the Vichy man had either hidden his gun or had asked to retain it for the sake of honour, and had been given this privilege as a mark of respect for his rank.

  729 Kedward (1993), p. 139.

  730 Heslop (1970), p. 213. For a particularly critical account of the role of the BCRA in encouraging the static maquis, as a way of controlling their activity, see Rajsfus (2004), pp. 98–101.

  731 Crémieux-Brilhac (1995), p. 66.

  732 For a collection of such documents, see Michel & Mirkine-Guetzévitch (1954). For a political analysis, see Michel (1962).

  733 For a discussion of the Action Programme, focusing on why the CNR was the only Resistance organization in Europe to produce such a document, see Andrieu (2006).

  734 The Action Programme of the CNR has been widely and repeatedly reproduced over the last sixty-five years. See, for example, Marcot et al. (2006), pp. 1063–6.

  735 At the Tehran conference, Roosevelt suggested to Churchill and Stalin that no one over the age of forty should be allowed to participate in a future French government, as all those above that age were fatally tainted with collaboration. Kersaudy (2004), p. 352.

  736 Kersaudy (2004), pp. 352–3.

  737 The declaration of independence had the mischievous encouragement of British Major-General Spears (Egremont, 1997, pp. 250–60; Zamir, 2005). De Gaulle’s man in Beirut, Helleu, responded to the declaration by arresting the President, the Prime Minister and key ministers of the newly elected government, dissolving parliament and suspending the constitution. He then used violence to suppress the inevitable protests. The Free French claimed (apparently with some justification) that Helleu ‘stops being lucid at some times of the day’. For the Lebanese affair, see Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), pp. 983–92; Kersaudy (2004), pp. 346–53; and Zamir (2007). Extracts from the minutes of the Tehran meeting are given in Kersaudy (2004), pp. 352–3. Macmillan (1984), pp. 290–301 gives his uncomplimentary contemporary views about the role of Spears, who, he felt, was ‘out for trouble and personal glory’ (p. 295).

  CHAPTER 10

  738 Fourcade (1973), pp. 308–9.

  739 Pierquin (1983), p. 125.

  740 Pierquin (1983), p. 125. For a brilliant portrayal of the Resistance on the railways, see René Clément’s film La Bataille du rail (1946) which won the Palme d’Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.

  741 The classic account of this period is George Millar’s memoir, Maquis, first published in 1945 (Millar, 2003).

  742 There are many books on the Allied campaign, which is not the focus of this chapter. For the background material on military matters, I have relied on Keegan (1982), Funk (1992) and Wieviorka (2007).

  743 Vergnon (2002), p. 86. There are other examples of virtually identical formulations – Vergnon (2002), p. 113, n. 19.

  744 Koestler (1968), p. 276.

  745 For detailed accounts of the arguments, see Kersaudy (1981), pp. 337–54 and Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), pp. 1220–31.

  746 All examples in this paragraph taken from Kedward (1993), pp. 199 and 186. More detail on the Fontjun maquis (without sources) can be found at: http://cessenon.centerblog.net/471936-L-affaire-de-Fontjun (accessed August 2008).

  747 Guingouin (1974) reproduces the FTP order on pp. 178–9.

  748 Guingouin (1974), p. 175; Taubmann (2004), p. 97; Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), pp. 40–1. Hastings (1983), p. 128, reproduces a claim from a Communist Party publication according to which, on the evening of 7 April, the Tulle FTP appealed to Guingouin for help but were turned down flat. There is no mention of this alleged appeal in Fouché & Beaubatie (2008) and it does not appear in the edition I have consulted (150 combattants et témoins, 1975), even though this is the edition cited by Hastings (1983). Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), pp. 235–43, examine the changes between the five editions of this work (Maquis de Corrèze) and raise doubts about its usefulness as an historical account. It should be remembered that from this time right up to his death, the PCF leadership was extremely hostile to Guingouin (see Chapter 7).

  749 Kedward (1993), p. 172. Hastings (1983) gives the figure of 139 German dead (p. 139). Figures for the number of German prisoners taken, and the reason for their execution, vary. For a detailed examination of the various versions, see Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), p. 96.

  750 Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), pp. 112–8.

  751 Guingouin (1974), p. 181.

  752 Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), p. 112–3.

  753 Elie Dupuy, in command of an FTP batallion, later recalled: ‘At around 9 p.m., Jean Baldous, on sentry duty at the town hall, heard a low and powerful noise coming from the town . . . Together with a few men, he went on a scouting expedition. After a few minutes they encountered the German tanks, which immediately opened fire with their machine guns: our men leaped into nearby gardens and hid themselves from both sight and the firing line of the armoured vehicles. Miraculously, no one was hurt.’ 150 combattants et témoins (1975), p. 378.

  754 Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), p. 97.

  755 ‘Rapport du lieutenant Kléber (J.-J. Chapou), 8 juin 1944’ reproduced in Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), p. 100.

  756 150 combattants et témoins (1975), p. 379.

  757 There were claims that some of the Nazi dead showed signs of torture and mutilation, but there is no direct evidence of this. Hastings (1983), pp. 138–9. The way in which this story appeared and was then propagated by the Nazis and by their apologists after the war is described in Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), pp. 143–8.

  758 Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), p. 174, examines all the possible reasons – time, miscounting by officers, unrest among rank-and-file German soldiers. Hastings (1983), p. 145, considers that rope was the reason. There are a number of alleged images of the hangings, either photos or a drawing, supposedly by German officers, none of which can be authenticated; for a detailed account of the problems associated with the provenance of these images, see Fouché & Beaubatie (2008), pp. 243–8.

  759 Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1981), pp. 124–5.

  760 Schoenbrun (1981), p. 378.

  761 For a sober account of the events, with many references to contemporary German documents, see Meyer (2002), pp. 185–212. After the war, the main perpetrators were put on trial: it turned out that many of the rank-and-file soldiers involved were French men, conscripts from Alsace, which had been annexed by the Nazis in 1940. This caused huge tensions in the country, and in 1953, shortly after the sentences were announced, the French parliament amnestied the French citizens involved. Noguères & Degliame-Fouché (1981), p. 134. There was another victim of the Das Reich that day. About fifty kilometres south-east of Oradour, near Salon-la-Tour, a German patrol stumbled on a black Citroën car, which stopped suddenly as a man and a young woman leaped out, carrying machine guns. In the firefight that followed, the woman was captured. She was twenty-three-year-old SOE agent Violette Szabo, who only four days earlier had parachuted into the Limousin on her second mission to France. She was deported to Ravensbrück and was executed in January 1945. Minney (2006) (originally published in 1956) describes her life; see also the feature film of the same name, Carve Her Name with Pride (1958).

  762 Crémieux-Brilhac (2001), p. 1255.

  763 For a more detailed account, see Kedward (1993), pp. 166–9.

  764 There are many accounts of the events that followed. I have used Dreyfus (1971), Rude (1974), La-Picirella (1986), Vergnon (2002) and Veyret (2003). Pearson (1978) sadly has no detailed references to back up
an otherwise excellent English account.

  765 Although most of these new recruits were untrained and inexperienced, there was a small group of around fifty troops from Senegal, who had been freed from a Lyons barracks by a Resistance raid, and two sets of gendarmes, from the towns of Nyons and Saint-Marcellin, who came over to the maquis lock, stock and barrel.

  766 As an official declaration plastered on the walls of the towns and villages of the plateau put it: ‘On 3 July 1944 the French Republic was officially restored in the Vercors . . . Our region is in a state of siege. The National Committee of Liberation requests that the population do the impossible, as it will itself do, and put all available means at the disposal of the military commanders, who have the weighty task of protecting us from an increasingly barbarous enemy. Inhabitants of the Vercors, the great Republic has been reborn in your land. You should be proud. We are sure that you will know how to defend it. We hope that for the Vercors, the 14 July will be yet another occasion to show your republican convictions and your attachment to the great fatherland. Long live the French Republic. Long live France. Long live General de Gaulle.’ Vergnon (2002), p. 96.

  767 Vergnon (2002), p. 103.

  768 Vergnon (2002), p. 97.

  769 Foot (2004), p. 345.

  770 Details from Veyret (2003), p. 39.

  771 Vergnon (2002), p. 109.

  772 Foot (2004), p. 346.

  773 When news of the catastrophe eventually reached Algiers, there was a major governmental crisis, as one of the Communist Party’s ministers, Fernand Grenier, released Chavant’s message and then accused the Free French of betraying the Vercors fighters and of ‘political opportunism’ in not sending Free French planes. Furious, de Gaulle gave Grenier a choice – resign or withdraw his comments. Grenier ate his words. For a summary of the dispute, see Rajsfus (2004), pp. 103–6. Grenier’s own account can be found in Grenier (1959), pp. 200–11. Amazingly, in 1947, Rémy, by now a leading figure in de Gaulle’s political party, the Rassemblement pour la France, accused Grenier of being responsible for the lack of air support for the Vercors. See Grenier (1959), pp. 212–4.