External links
- Témoignage, video testimony of a Brutus member in Annecy
The Brutus Network (French : Réseau Brutus) was a French Resistance movement during World War II. It was founded in 1941 by Pierre Fourcaud, parachuted in France with instructions from Charles de Gaulle to set up an intelligence network, [1] and other socialist members of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), from the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the Southern Zone, and led by Félix Gouin. As soon as July 1941, the network almost became the armed wing of the Comité d'action socialiste (CAS - Socialist Action Committee), of which Félix Gouin had been a co-founder, along with Daniel Mayer. The CAS delegate Eugène Thomas became the leader of the Brutus Network after the arrest of Pierre Fourcaud and the departure of his brother, Jean Fourcaud, for London.
Extending itself in 1942–43, Brutus became a national Resistance network in February 1943, in particular through the impulsion of André Boyer. Boasting more than 1,000 agents, [1] its headquarters were in Lyon, with Pierre Sudreau as responsible of the Northern Zone and Jean-Maurice Hermann of the Southern Zone. André Boyer entered the directing committee of the Mouvements unis de Résistance (United Movements of Resistance) in November 1943. At the end of this year, the network was strongly affected by the arrest of Boyer, Sudreau, and Hermann. Gaston Defferre, later mayor of Marseilles for years, succeeded to André Boyer (he was previously his deputy) as national chief.
Pierre Brossolette was a French journalist, left-wing politician and major hero of the French Resistance in World War II. He ran an intelligence hub of Parisian resistance at the Rue de la Pompe, before serving as a liaison officer in London, where he also was a radio anchor for the BBC. Arrested in Brittany as he was trying to reach the UK on a mission back from France alongside Émile Bollaert, Brossolette was taken into custody by the Sicherheitsdienst. He tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window at their headquarters on 84 Avenue Foch in Paris as he feared he would reveal the lengths of French Resistance networks under torture. He died of his wounds at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital later that day. In 2015, his ashes were transferred to the Panthéon with national honours at the request of President François Hollande, alongside politician Jean Zay and fellow Resistance members Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz.
Georges-Augustin Bidault was a French politician. During World War II, he was active in the French Resistance. After the war, he served as foreign minister and prime minister on several occasions. He joined the Organisation armée secrète; however he always denied his involvement.
Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France, known as PMF, was a French politician who served as President of the Council of Ministers for eight months from 1954 to 1955. He represented the Radical Party, and his government had the support of the Communist Party. His main priority was ending the war in Indochina, which had already cost 92,000 dead, 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured on the French side. Public opinion polls showed that, in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the Geneva Conference of 1954 he negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. The United States then provided large-scale financial, military and economic support to South Vietnam.
René Pleven was a notable French politician of the Fourth Republic. A member of the Free French, he helped found the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR), a political party that was meant to be a successor to the wartime Resistance movement. He served as prime minister twice in the early 1950s, where his most notable contribution was the introduction of the Pleven Plan, which called for a European Defence Community between France, Italy, West Germany, and the Benelux countries.
Henri Queuille was a French Radical politician prominent in the Third and Fourth Republics. After World War II, he served three times as Prime Minister.
Paul Ramadier was a politician and a French statesman.
Félix Gouin was a French Socialist politician who was a member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).
Combat was a large movement in the French Resistance created in the non-occupied zone of France during the Second World War (1939–1945).
Gaston Defferre was a French Socialist politician. He served as mayor of Marseille for 33 years until his death in 1986. He was minister for overseas territories in Guy Mollet’s socialist government in 1956–1957. His main achievement was to establish the framework used to grant independence to France’s African territories. As the Socialist candidate for president in 1969, he received only 5 percent of the vote. He was much more successful in promoting François Mitterrand as leader of the Parti Socialiste in 1971. He held a series of ministerial portfolios after the Socialist victory in 1981, especially as minister of state for the interior and decentralization.
Libération-sud was a resistance group active between 1940-1944 and created in the Free Zone of France during the Second World War in order to fight against the Nazi occupation through coordinated sabotage and propaganda operations.
Ceux de la Libération was a French resistance movement during the German occupation of France in World War II.
Events from the year 1884 in France.
The Groupe du musée de l'Homme was a movement in the French resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War.
The Organisation civile et militaire was one of the great movements of the French Resistance in the zone occupée, the German-occupied region of northern France, during the Second World War.
The French Section of the Workers' International was a political party in France that was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the modern-day Socialist Party. The SFIO was founded during the 1905 Globe Congress in Paris as a merger between the French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France in order to create the French section of the Second International, designated as the party of the workers' movement.
Eugène Thomas was a French socialist teacher, trade unionist and politician. He was a member of the French Resistance during World War II (1939–45). He was Minister or Secretary of State for PTT four times in the post-war period..
Following the creation of SOE's F Section in the summer of 1940, it became eventually apparent that French anti-German sentiment was not as simple as once thought and effectively fell into two camps - those who supported de Gaulle and those who did not. To keep these camps apart, RF Section (pro-Gaullists) was mooted in late 1940 and came into being in early 1941. By May 1941 it was established at 1, Dorset Square and initially headed by Capt Eric Piquet-Wicks. The complexities of the interplay between F and RF Sections and between RF and BCRA is covered in MRD Foot's book "The SOE in France". The operations listed below are effectively, jointly mounted by SOE-RF and BCRA with the former supplying, or access to, the materiél with the BCRA supplying personnel. The men and women who made their ways to London to join BCRA came from a wide background both in terms of profession and location. To assume they were French and lately of the remnants of the French military is an over-simplification - civilians as well as foreign-born pro-French sympathisers make up a notable proportion of the agents prepared to fight for France.
