The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class, men who had escaped into the mountains and woods to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire to provide forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.
The French Resistance was a collection of organisations who fought the Nazi occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The Resistance's men and women came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, liberals, anarchists and communists.
The National Front was a World War II French Resistance movement created to unite all of the Resistance Organizations together to fight the Nazi occupation forces and Vichy France under Marshall Pétain. Founded in 1941 in Paris by Jacques Duclos, André Pican and Pierre Villon, along with their wives all members of the French Communist Party (PCF) they felt that to be a vital force against the Nazis, the collaborationists and the informers that all of the Resistance movements, no matter their party or religion had to band together. Its name was inspired by the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition which governed France from 1936 to 1938. This helped them coordinate attacks all across France, to move weapons, food, false identity papers, information and food, protect and move people who were to be arrested or executed and supply multiple safe houses for the Resistance and for Jews. They also formed fighting units in early 1942 to assassinate German leaders and soldiers among the occupation forces, perform acts of sabotage on railroads and other forms of distribution of people and goods being taken from France to Germany and to help organize sabotage in factories forced to produce armaments and goods for the German military.
The Francs-tireurs et partisans français (FTPF), or commonly the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP), was an armed resistance organization created by leaders of the French Communist Party during World War II (1939–45). The communist party was neutral at first, following the Soviet Union's official view that the war was a struggle between imperialists, but changed to a policy of armed resistance against the German occupation of France after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Three groups were formed, consisting of party members, young communists and foreign workers. Early in 1942 they were merged to form the FTP, which undertook sabotage and assassinations of the occupation. The FTP became the best organized and most effective of the French Resistance groups. In March 1944, before the Allied forces returned to Normandy, the FTP was theoretically merged with the other Resistance groups. In practice, it retained its independence until the end of the war.
The Affiche Rouge is a notorious propaganda poster, distributed by Vichy France and German authorities in the spring of 1944 in occupied Paris, to discredit 23 immigrant French Resistance fighters, members of the Manouchian Group. The term Affiche Rouge also refers more broadly to the circumstances surrounding the poster's creation and distribution, the capture, trial and execution of these members of the Manouchian Group.
The Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI) were a sub-group of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) organization, a component of the French Resistance. A wing composed mostly of foreigners, the MOI maintained an armed force to oppose the German occupation of France during World War II. The Main-d'œuvre immigrée was the "Immigrant Movement" of the FTP.
Combat was a large movement in the French Resistance created in the non-occupied zone of France during the Second World War (1939–1945).
The National Council of the Resistance (also, National Resistance Council; in French: Conseil National de la Résistance, was the body that directed and coordinated the different movements of the French Resistance: the press, trade unions and members of political parties hostile to the Vichy regime, starting from mid-1943.
The Brutus Network 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, 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, 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.
Paul Chenailler, better known under the pseudonym Colonel Morice, was in charge of the French resistance in the Morbihan region Brittany during World War II.
The Maquis du Limousin was one of the largest Maquis groups of French resistance fighters fighting for the liberation of France.
The armée secrète was a French military organization active during World War II. The collective grouped the paramilitary formations of the three most important Gaullist resistance movements in the southern zone.
Mouvements unis de la Résistance was a French Resistance organisation, resulting from the consolidation of three major Resistance movements in January 1943 and also the merger of the military arms of these movements within the Armée secrète. Its committee was headed by Jean Moulin. These three then merged with five other major movements to form the Conseil National de la Résistance.
Thomas Elek, also known as Tamás Elek and KERPAL was one of 22 members of the French resistance convicted and executed at the fort of Mont Valérien as one of the Manouchian Group, part of the French liberation army FTP-MOI. After the executions, the Vichy government sought to discredit the resistance members, and widely distributed and posted thousands of copies of the Affiche Rouge. Named for its red background, the poster featured ten of the Manouchian group, including Elek. It identified him as "Elek Juif Hongrois 8 déraillements".
Réseau Morhange was a French resistance group created in 1943 by Marcel Taillandier in Toulouse. The group organised direct action and counterintelligence against the German occupiers and collaborators of Vichy France.
The Maquis des Vosges were groups of French resistance fighters in the Department of the Vosges during the Second World War. They were associated through an amalgamation of different resistance groups roughly when the Conseil national de la Résistance was created on 27 May 1943. Maquis shrubland is a Mediterranean biome of dense scrub, which provided the guerrillas with cover.
The Organisation de résistance de l'armée, O.R.A. was a French paramilitary resistance organisation during the Second World War. It was created on 31 January 1943, following the November 1942 German invasion of the zone libre as a self-styled apolitical organisation bringing together former French military personnel in pursuit of active resistance against the German occupiers, but rejecting Charles de Gaulle.
Noyautage des administrations publiques, also known by the abbreviation NAP, was an arm of the French Resistance, started by André Plaisantin of the Combat movement, with the aim of infiltrating the Vichy Government. It was started in 1942 on a suggestion from Claude Bourdet to Jean Moulin.
The Volontaires de la Liberté was a French resistance group founded in May 1941. Consisting of school boys and led by Jacques Lusseyran, the group's activities consisted initially of propaganda; it published a bulletin that agitated against the Nazi occupation and the regime of Vichy France. After the Service du travail obligatoire, the Compulsory Work Service, was installed by the Nazis in February 1943 the group's size increased and it dispersed, in part due to ideological differences, many members joining the larger, militant Défense de la France to engage in armed combat. Others continued under the Volontaires name and aided other resistance organizations by sheltering downed Allied pilots.
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.
