 | |
| Categories | National Press |
|---|---|
| Frequency | daily |
| Year founded | December 1941 |
| First issue | December 1941 |
| Final issue | August 1974 |
| Country |  France |
| Based in | Paris |
| Language | French |
Combat was a French newspaper created during the Second World War. It was founded in 1941 as a clandestine newspaper of the French Resistance.
In August 1944, Combat took over the headquarters of L'Intransigeant in Paris, and Albert Camus became its editor in chief. The newspaper's production run decreased from 185,000 copies in January 1945 to 150,000 in August of the same year:[ clarification needed ] it did not attain the circulation of other established newspapers (the Communist daily L'Humanité was publishing at the time 500,000 copies).
Following the liberation, the main participants in the publication included Albert Ollivier, Jean-Paul de Dadelsen, Jean Bloch-Michel (1912–1987), and Georges Altschuler (fr). Among leading contributors were Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Emmanuel Mounier, Raymond Aron and Pierre Herbart. [1] From 1943 to 1947, its editor-in-chief was Albert Camus. [2] Its production was directed by André Bollier until Milice repression led to his death.
During 1946, Combat was opposed to the "game of the parties" claiming to rebuild France, and thus became closer to Charles de Gaulle without, however, becoming the official voice of his movement.
Loyal to its origins, Combat tried to become the place of expression for those who believed in creating a popular non-Communist Left movement in France. In July 1948 (more than a year after the May 1947 crisis and the expulsion of the Communist Party (ministers) from the government), Victor Fay (de), a Marxist activist, took over Combat's direction, but he failed to stop the newspaper's evolution towards more popular subjects and less political information.
In 1950, it hosted a debate about the Notre-Dame Affair stimulated by a vehement letter by André Breton in response to the editor Louis Pauwels. [3] [4]
Philippe Tesson (fr) became editor in chief from 1960 to 1974. Henri Smadja (fr) had thought Tesson could be a perfect puppet-editor but Smadja's situation, in part because of the Tunisian regime, got worse. In March 1974, Philippe Tesson created Le Quotidien de Paris (1974–1996), which he had conceived as the successor of Combat.
During the May 1968 crisis, Combat supported the student movement although from a Stalinist point of view, through the signatures of the likes of Jacques-Arnaud Penent (fr). On 3 June, it published a falsified version of the Address to All Workers by the Council for Maintaining the Occupations, removing the references to the Situationist International and the attacks against the Stalinists. [5] [6]
Henri Smadja died by suicide on 14 July 1974, and Combat definitively ceased to be published the following month.
Albert Camus was an Algerian-born French philosopher, author, dramatist and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.
André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972. The intellectual foundations of the Situationist International were derived primarily from libertarian Marxism and the avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century, particularly Dada and Surrealism. Overall, situationist theory represented an attempt to synthesize this diverse field of theoretical disciplines into a modern and comprehensive critique of mid-20th century advanced capitalism.
Louis Aragon was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review Littérature. He was also a novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt. After 1959, he was a frequent nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Comte de Lautréamont was the nom de plume of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies, had a major influence on modern arts and literature, particularly on the Surrealists and the Situationists. Ducasse died at the age of 24.
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts. For more on this, see French art of the 20th century.
Les Temps Modernes is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.
Gilles Dauvé is a French political theorist, school teacher, and translator associated with left communism and the contemporary tendency of communization.
Louis Pauwels was a French journalist and writer.
Anarchism in France can trace its roots to thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration and was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. According to journalist Brian Doherty, "The number of people who subscribed to the anarchist movement's many publications was in the tens of thousands in France alone."
Pascal Pia, born Pierre Durand, was a French writer, journalist, illustrator and scholar. He also used the pseudonyms Pascal Rose, Pascal Fely and others.
The Notre-Dame Affair was an action performed by Michel Mourre, Serge Berna, Ghislain Desnoyers de Marbaix, and Jean Rullier, members of the radical wing of the Lettrist movement, on Easter Sunday, 9 April 1950, at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, while the mass was aired live on national TV. Mourre, dressed in the habit of a Dominican friar and backed by his co-conspirators, chose a quiet moment in the Easter High Mass to climb to the rostrum and declaim before the whole congregation a blasphemous anti-sermon on the death of God, penned by Berna.
Maurice Nadeau was a French teacher, writer, literary critic, and editor. He was born in Paris.
Morvan Lebesque, was the Breton language name of Maurice Lebesque, a Breton nationalist activist and French journalist.
The Groupe du musée de l'Homme was a movement in the French resistance to the German occupation during the Second World War.
Le Quotidien de Paris was a French newspaper founded in 1974 by Philippe Tesson. Along with Le Quotidien du médecin and Le Quotidien du Pharmacien, Le Quotidien de Paris made up the Groupe Quotidien which employed over 550 individuals, with nearly all press organs now defunct. Philippe Tesson intended for it to be the successor to the daily newspaper Combat, of which he had been the editor-in-chief between 1960 and 1964. Combat included articles and editorials from a variety of opinions, as well as an in-depth coverage of cultural events in Paris. The survival of Le Quotidien de Paris during the 1980s and '90s was largely due to the success of another paper from the same publishing group, Le Quotidien du Médecin, which was run by Tesson's wife, Marie-Claude Tesson-Millet. In 1991 it distributed 35,000 newspapers across France. Its last issue appeared in 1996.
The Council for Maintaining the Occupations, or CMDO, was a revolutionary committee formed during the May 1968 events in France originating in the Sorbonne. The council favored the continuation of wildcat general strikes and factory occupations across France, maintaining them through directly democratic workers' councils. Within the revolutionary movement, it opposed the influence of major trade unions and the French Communist Party who intended to contain the revolt and compromise with General Charles de Gaulle.
Edmond Charlot (1915-2004) was a French-Algerian publisher and editor. He is best known for his friendship with Albert Camus and for being his first editor.
Alter Ollivier (1915-1964) was a French historian, author, journalist, politician and member of the French resistance. He was born on 1 March 1915 in Paris and died there on 18 July 1964.
The clandestine press of the French Resistance was collectively responsible for printing flyers, broadsheets, newspapers, and even books in secret in France during the German occupation of France in the Second World War. The secret press was used to disseminate the ideas of the French Resistance in cooperation with the Free French, and played an important role in the liberation of France and in the history of French journalism, particularly during the 1944 Freedom of the Press Ordinances.
