Resistance leaders never overcame their reservations about the Socialists—Mayer failed to get the Socialists a separate seat on the CNR Bureau—but their hostility softened as they became more apprehensive of the Communists. The Resistance was torn between contempt for the Socialists and awe of the Communists. Even Frenay, who despised politicians, wanted the Socialists to be given a place on the CNR Bureau: his main concern was now to weaken the Communists who were planning, in his view, to turn de Gaulle into a French Kerensky.107 As for the Socialists, they remained wary of the Resistance. They were attracted to the MLN as a weapon against the Communists, but suspicious of it as a weapon against the parties—an entirely logical response since the MLN had been conceived to fulfil both objectives. Following the Socialist lead, Libération-Nord refused to join the MLN.108 The Socialists blew hot and cold, and were still deliberating whether to join the MLN at the Liberation. In the end, then, the MLN was never more than the MUR plus some Northern movements.
Communist Infiltration?
Those resisters who wanted the MLN as a barrier against the Communists soon started to fear that the MLN itself had fallen under Communist influence. This was the latest version of a persistent rumour that Communist moles were playing on the naivety of non-Communist resisters and colonizing the Resistance.109 There was the example of Marcel Degliame, a Communist tradeunion activist, who had joined Combat after escaping from a prisoner of war camp, and ended up running its Workers’ Action division (AO). Degliame was unusual since most of the alleged moles were in Libération not Combat. Libération acquired the reputation of being the Trojan horse through which the Communists hoped to dominate the MLN. Suspicion centred on several possible culprits: Lucie and Raymond Aubrac, founding members of Libération, who had been student Communist activists before the war; Pierre Hervé, another former Communist student activist, who joined in July 1942; Maurice Kriegel, a Communist trade unionist, who joined in the summer of 1942 and became Aubrac’s deputy as commander of the movement’s paramilitary forces; and Alfred Malleret, another trade unionist, who joined in the autumn of 1942 and headed the Lyons region until 1944.
One problem with viewing the presence of these Communists as an entryist conspiracy is that some of them were only in Libération in the first place because they had lost contact with their Party in 1940–1. But did the Party subsequently use them as moles once it had reorganized in the South? Certainly they kept their Communist affiliations secret: as late as May 1944, Morandat scoffed at allegations that Degliame, Kriegel, and Hervé were Communists.110 Hervé later denied suggestions that the Communists in Libération had secretly formed themselves into a separate section,111 but his own reports to the Party certainly showed that they saw themselves as working in Communist interests. On 9 May, he wrote: ‘now that we have two heads of region and one deputy head who are Communists—and if you provide us with the men we will have one or two others—we can influence the political line taken by the Resistance’.112 But one must not exaggerate the effectiveness of the Party’s control. Degliame complained in January 1944 at ‘having to act without Party advice since we cannot wait when there are decisions to take’.113 In April, Kriegel wrote to the Party, on behalf of Degliame, Hervé, Malleret, and himself, to say that if their relations with the Party had been more ‘normal’ it might have been able to avoid ‘hesitations’ on their part. This presumably meant that they had awaited instructions, but that the mechanisms of communication did not work well.114
Another alleged Communist tactic was the manipulation of sympathizers who were not full members. It was claimed after the war that this had enabled the Communists to control the Bureau of the CNR. But of the five members of the Bureau, only Pierre Villon was a Communist. Blocq-Mascart was anti-Communist. Of the other three, Bidault, although in the FN and for this reason seen by some as a tool of the Communists, also had other affiliations, and was considered an ally by the Delegation. So too was Saillant, a non-Communist trade unionist of whom the Communists were at this time suspicious (although after the war he did join the Party).115 Finally, there was Copeau whom many saw as a fellow-traveller. Although this may have been true after the war, Copeau’s position at this time was more complex. In December 1943, he even complained to d’Astier that Bidault was too subservient to the FN. Copeau’s ambition for the MLN, as he expressed it in February 1944, was ‘to counteract the policy of the Communist party and Front National… by proving… that we are as capable as them at meeting events and acting’.116 These are hardly the words of a complaisant fellow-traveller. By promoting the MLN, Copeau was certainly not doing what the Communists wanted.
Only if Copeau and Bidault are both put in the Communist camp, which would be wrong, did the Communists enjoy a majority on the CNR Bureau. If the Communists frequently got their way in the Bureau, it was partly because Villon was an exceptionally effective political operator, and Blocq-Mascart an inept one. It was also because the themes of their propaganda were attractive to many people who were neither Communist nor even fellow-travellers. Copeau was far from alone in becoming increasingly fascinated by the Communists in this period: they were admired for the heroic role of the Red Army, for their FTP martyrs, for their uncompromising language of action. The Communists’ increasing influence within the Resistance in 1943 is therefore explained less by their infiltration of the leadership of the Resistance than their ability to voice the aspirations of many ordinary resisters. To understand the Communists’ success, it is necessary to leave the leaders and return to the base.
20
Resistance in Society
Chapter 19 described the history of the Resistance in 1943 in terms of power struggles: between London and France, BCRA and the Interior Commissariat, Communists and non-Communists, North and South, politicians and resisters, first- and second-generation resisters. These conflicts were, however, accompanied by a parallel process of consolidation. Through the creation of such organizations as the AS, the CNR, the MUR, and the MLN, the Resistance was moving towards greater integration and unification: controlling this process was what lay behind the power struggles. Consolidation was accompanied by centralization. From the spring of 1943, even the main resistance organizations in the South—the BIP, the CGE, and the MUR—moved their headquarters to Paris. Lyons had become too dangerous and too small. The former ‘capital of the Resistance’ was now also the regional capital of the Gestapo. Serreulles reported in August that resistance leaders had been forced increasingly to ‘confine themselves to the outskirts of Lyons in premises which were each day harder to find, and which they could not leave once they had taken refuge in them’.1 Paris offered greater anonymity. The move to Paris also signalled that the Resistance was looking to the day when it would be called upon to govern.
Diversification and Radicalization
Consolidation and centralization did not mean uniformity. The Resistance was not just a series of acronyms. Centralization at the summit was accompanied by diversification at the base. This diversification was partly a result of size. Resistance never became a mass movement, but 1943 was the year of fastest expansion. Défense de la France never had more than about 2,500 members, but three-quarters of them joined between February and December 1943; just over half Libération-Nord’s members joined in 1943. Of the 3,658 members of resistance organizations in the Alpes-Maritimes, 52 per cent joined in 1943 (19 percent in 1944).2 Estimates of the size of the AS fluctuated enormously. Libération-Nord claimed to have 4,900 men available to it in April 1943, and 31,000 in September. BCRA estimated in March that the AS could count on 126,000 men (51,000 in the North and 75,000 in the South); two months later, it put the figure at 208,000. In October, another report suggested 128,250 in the North alone.3 Even if such figures are correct, only a tiny proportion of these potential forces were armed—10,000 at the most—and even fewer knew how to use the arms they possessed.
The increasing professionalization and militarization of the Resistance, symbolized by the growing importance of
the AS, might have militated against a rapid increase in numbers. In 1942, Pineau distinguished two kinds of Resistance: ‘military Resistance can only be performed by a real Secret Army… composed of men ready, outside their daily tasks, to undertake a specific mission… Political Resistance, on the other hand, is performed by each Frenchman in the framework of his normal activities.’ The former required ‘a hierarchy, a discipline, a discretion incompatible with the idea of a mass movement’; the latter ‘leaves a lot to individual initiative’.4 In fact, both these kinds of resistance developed in 1943: the Resistance started to undertake an increasing variety of operations which created opportunities for more and more people. This allowed it to tap the anti-Vichy mood which had existed for at least a year. The population’s amorphous resentment was channelled into action. In 1940–1, a few resisters had struggled to create a ‘Resistance’; in 1943, the Resistance began to create ‘resisters’: it offered tasks to people who wanted to act.5
Many of these people had already carried out individual acts of protest like tearing down posters or scrawling graffiti: they had already been, as it were, in a state of latent resistance. A quarter of those who eventually joined Défense de la France had performed some resistance activities before January 1943, but at this stage only 12 per cent of them were already members of the movement. In only 55 per cent of cases did the decision to join the movement represent their ‘entry into resistance’.6 This phrase should, however, be used cautiously. There were certainly people whose participation in the Resistance was a sudden moment of rupture. One resister remembered his engagement in the following way:
After the debacle I knew a period of apathy. Then on one spring day, having thought for a long time about it, hesitated for several weeks, it seemed to me absolutely clear and ineluctable. It was destiny. There was no longer any hesitation …It was from that moment that I started looking for a group and it was not very easy to find one.7
In this case, the decision was sudden, although there was a delay before it could be acted upon. But for many people, ‘joining’ the Resistance was a chain of small actions cumulatively acquiring the form of an engagement: the quantitative became qualitative.8
After the war, official recognition of participation in the Resistance was conferred through the possession of a card attesting that its recipient had been a Voluntary Resistance Fighter (CVR). By 1994, 260,919 of these cards had been issued. They provide much information on the social background of the ‘foot soldiers’ of the Resistance, but this information must be treated critically. The rules governing the attribution of CVR cards were quite restrictive. The cards reveal more about the associations of former resisters after the war than about the Resistance itself.9 Many people did not bother to acquire a card; others with incontrovertible Resistance credentials were refused one for technical reasons. In the two Normandy départements of Calvados and Manche, 1,336 cards were distributed, but subsequent research suggests that at least another 1,350 people could have been included.10
Attempting to quantify the Resistance fails to grasp its true character in 1943. As more people came into the orbit of the Resistance, it lost the quality of a Freemasonry to which one belonged, permeating society in ever more complex ways. Ripples of complicity extended into communities previously untouched. Even people who only played an intermittent role could make a significant contribution. Take the example of an FTP fighter wounded by gendarmes in the village of Barjols in the Var, and given refuge by a peasant also working for the FTP. After his wounded finger went gangrenous, this resister was looked after by two doctors, both of whom kept silent. The whole operation was organized by the wife of a local agent of the Azur-F2 network. In total, ten people participated in saving this one resister.11 Without such help, invisible except under the microscope of local histories, the activities of the more visible Resistance leaders would have been impossible.
The expansion of the Resistance occurred at a time when it seemed increasingly likely Germany would lose the war. This does not mean that these comparatively late arrivals should be written off as opportunists. As the Germans became weaker, they became more dangerous: the growth of resistance was a function of opportunities more than opportunism. Although many resisters themselves believed the contrary, there was no hierarchy of virtue attaching to the moment of entry into Resistance. The strata of resistance generations reveal not different levels of courage or patriotism, rather, they reflect how the combination of background, conviction, and experience caused people to respond in different ways, and at different times. Every group had its own moment of truth. Even the Jews only gradually became aware of the threat facing them. The Jewish resistance fighters of the MOI have been tellingly described as the ‘generation of the Vel d’Hiver round-up’.
The expansion in the size of the Resistance also widened its sociological and geographical base: it spread from towns to countryside, from plains to mountains. It embraced workers and peasants, Catholics and Protestants, men and women, French and foreigners. The social composition of the Resistance changed as new tasks presented themselves. Or, as one historian puts it, the ‘sociology of the Resistance was first of all a reflection of the sociology of the needs of resistance’.12 In 1941–2 it required people to write for newspapers and produce them; it needed people whose jobs allowed them to move around. Within the working class, there were early opportunities for rail and postal workers to disrupt communications and transport. For the peasantry, opportunities only presented themselves in 1943.
As people discovered in the Resistance an outlet for their desire to act, they also offered it new forms of action: the needs of the Resistance also developed in relation to the sociology of the Resistance. Resistance was a constant process of self-creation. Sabotage and terror attacks on Germans and collaborators became increasingly common. Abetz counted 3,800 sabotage operations between January and September 1943.13 In Marseilles, there were four ‘terrorist’ actions in January 1943, eight in February, twenty-one in April, nineteen in November. These included several assassinations: of a police commissioner on 22 March 1943; a German soldier on 29 March; the head of the Milice of the département on 24 April; two miliciens on 29 May. In Britanny, sabotage and terror attacks increased sixfold between July and December. In the Haute-Saône, there were ten such actions in August 1943, twenty-two in September, sixty-four in October (including five assassinations); seventy-four in November (four assassinations).14 Such actions were no longer carried out only by the Communist FTP, but also by the corps francs of the non-Communist movements which had moved beyond publicity stunts.
This radicalization of Resistance affected even a movement like Défense de la France which had originally privileged the idea of spiritual resistance. The Catholic convictions of its leaders made them suspicious of violence. But in November 1942 the movement’s newspaper declared that everyone’s duty was to bear arms; a year later, it approved FTP assassinations of individuals; and in March 1944, Viannay wrote an article entitled ‘The Duty to Kill’ (which did cause some dissent within the movement):
Kill the German to purify our territory, kill him because he kills our people… Kill those who denounce, those who have aided the enemy… Kill the policeman who has in any way contributed to the arrest of patriots… Kill the miliciens, exterminate them… strike them down like mad dogs…destroy them as you would vermin.15
As violent action became more important in the Resistance, words became less so. People no longer needed to be persuaded. In the Var, propaganda took up three-quarters of resistance activity before November 1942, and 38 per cent after it.16 From the middle of 1943, Libération-Nord, whose newspaper had appeared regularly since December 1940, put more and more emphasis on military action. The newspaper, which had helped recruit members in 1941–2, now became more of an information sheet for people who were already members.17 The circulation of Défense de la France continued to expand, but there was a change in the relationship between the newspaper and its readers. In 1941–2, the prod
uction of the newspaper had involved finding people to distribute it; in 1943, the production of the newspaper was unable to keep up with the demand from people eager to distribute it.18
The relative importance of propaganda may have diminished, but in absolute terms the clandestine press continued to expand. It acquired a real presence in French society. The diary of Henri Drouot, which barely registered the existence of the resistance press in 1942, is full of references to it in 1943. In August he noted that resistance newspapers circulated easily and in large numbers. He mentions seven titles by name.19 The Bibliothèque nationale catalogue of resistance publications, which is not exhaustive, lists 1,015 titles for the Occupation as a whole (not all existing at one time). The publication figures of some papers became enormous:
Libération-Sud
December 1942–July 1943: 60,000–100,000
July 1943–March 1944: 120,000–150,000
March 1943–August 1944: 120,000–200,000
Franc-Tireur
January 1943: 50,000
September 1943: 100,000
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