Milices Patriotiques

Last updated

Patriotic Militia
Milices Patriotiques (MP-PM)
Ideology Communist
Size22,006 members (total)
Part of Red flag.svg Belgian Communist Party
Allies Partisans Armés (PA)
Opponents Flag of Germany (1935-1945).svg German Occupying Forces

The Patriotic Militia (French : Milices patriotiques, Dutch : Patriotische Militie) was a communist group in the Belgian resistance during the Second World War, affiliated to the Communist Party of Belgium. [1] The Milices were intended to be a mass movement, working alongside the much smaller Partisans Armés (PA) group. [2]

History

22,006 people are recognized to have been part of the Milices during the war. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maquis (World War II)</span> French resistance groups

The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the 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 which provided forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Resistance</span> French rebel groups that fought the Nazis in World War II

The French Resistance was a collection of groups that fought the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during the Second World War. Resistance cells were small groups of armed men and women who conducted guerrilla warfare and published underground newspapers. They also provided first-hand intelligence information, and escape networks that helped Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind Axis lines. The Resistance's men and women came from many parts of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, liberals, anarchists, communists, and some fascists. The proportion of French people who participated in organized resistance has been estimated at from one to three percent of the total population.

Paul Claude Marie Touvier was a French Nazi collaborator during World War II in Occupied France. In 1994, he became the first Frenchman ever convicted of crimes against humanity, for his participation in the Holocaust under Vichy France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milice</span> Paramilitary force in Vichy France

The Milice française, generally called la Milice, was a political paramilitary organization created on 30 January 1943 by the Vichy régime to help fight against the French Resistance during World War II. The Milice's formal head was Vichy France's Prime Minister Pierre Laval, although its chief of operations and de facto leader was Secretary General Joseph Darnand. The Milice participated in summary executions and assassinations, helping to round up Jews and résistants in France for deportation. It was the successor to Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) militia. The Milice was the Vichy régime's most extreme manifestation of fascism. Ultimately, Darnand envisaged the Milice as a fascist single-party political movement for the French State.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Darnand</span> French SS officer

Joseph Darnand was a French collaborator with Nazi Germany during World War II. A decorated soldier in the French Army of World War I and early World War II, he went on to become the organizer and de facto leader of the Milice française, or French Militia, the collaborationist Vichy government's paramilitary police force. Darnand also served as an officer in the Waffen-SS. He was tried and executed after the war for treason.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Doriot</span> French journalist, communist, fascist politician

Jacques Doriot was a French politician, initially communist, later fascist, before and during World War II.

La Cagoule was a French fascist-leaning and anti-communist militant group. It opposed the left-wing Popular Front and used violence to promote its activities in the final years of the Third Republic and into the Vichy Regime. La Cagoule was founded by Eugène Deloncle and bankrolled, among others, by Eugène Schueller, the founder of L'Oréal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lebanese Communist Party</span> Political party in Lebanon

The Lebanese Communist Party is a communist party in Lebanon. It was founded in 1943 as a division of the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party into the Syrian Communist Party and the Lebanese Communist Party; but the division was only implemented in 1964.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belgian Resistance</span> Resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II

The Belgian Resistance collectively refers to the resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Within Belgium, resistance was fragmented between many separate organizations, divided by region and political stances. The resistance included both men and women from both Walloon and Flemish parts of the country. Aside from sabotage of military infrastructure in the country and assassinations of collaborators, these groups also published large numbers of underground newspapers, gathered intelligence and maintained various escape networks that helped Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines escape from German-occupied Europe.

People's Militias, also called The Armed Fist of the Working Class was a militia organisation of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arab Democratic Party (Lebanon)</span> Lebanese political party

The Arab Democratic Party (ADP) is a Lebanese political party, based in Tripoli, in the North Lebanon Governorate. Its current leader is Rifaat Eid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toilers League</span> Political party in Lebanon

The Toilers League, also designated the Workers League is a Lebanese left-wing political party founded in Lebanon at the late 1960s and currently led by former Chouf MP Zaher el-Khatib.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia</span> Military unit

The Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia were paramilitary auxiliary formations of the Royal Italian Army composed of Yugoslav anti-Partisan groups in the Italian-annexed and occupied portions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the Second World War.

<i>Front de lIndépendance</i> Belgian resistance organisation during World War II

The Independent Front was a left-wing faction of the Belgian Resistance in German-occupied Belgium in World War II. It was founded in March 1941 by Dr Albert Marteaux of the Communist Party of Belgium, Father André Roland, and Fernand Demany, another communist. The aim of the organisation was to unite Belgian resistance groups of all opinions and political leanings; nonetheless the only political party that was affiliated as such was the Communist Party. The FI operated a significant propaganda, social and paramilitary organization, in addition to its military and sabotage functions and operated in competition with the larger far-right Secret Army.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belgium in World War II</span>

Despite being neutral at the start of World War II, Belgium and its colonial possessions found themselves at war after the country was invaded by German forces on 10 May 1940. After 18 days of fighting in which Belgian forces were pushed back into a small pocket in the north-west of the country, the Belgian military surrendered to the Germans, beginning an occupation that would endure until 1944. The surrender of 28 May was ordered by King Leopold III without the consultation of his government and sparked a political crisis after the war. Despite the capitulation, many Belgians managed to escape to the United Kingdom where they formed a government and army-in-exile on the Allied side.

<i>Partisans Armés</i> Belgian resistance movement during WW2

The Armed Partisans was a faction of the resistance in German-occupied Belgium in World War II. The group was affiliated to the Belgian Communist Party. In 1941, many of its members left to join the Front de l'Independance while the rest of the group was undermined in 1943 when almost all the leadership of the group and the Communist Party were arrested by German forces. It was renamed the Belgian Army of Partisans' after the Liberation of Belgium in September 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Holocaust in Belgium</span>

The Holocaust in Belgium was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Out of about 66,000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French National-Collectivist Party</span> French far-right party, 1934 to 1944

The French National-Collectivist Party, originally known as the French National Communist Party, was a minor political group active in the French Third Republic and reestablished in occupied France. Its leader in both incarnations was the sports journalist Pierre Clémenti. It espoused a "national communist" platform noted for its similarities with fascism, and popularized racial antisemitism. The group was also noted for its agitation in support of pan-European nationalism and rattachism, maintaining contacts in both Nazi Germany and Wallonia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German occupation of Belgium during World War II</span> Occupation of Belgium during World War II

The German occupation of Belgium during World War II began on 28 May 1940, when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces, and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945. It was the second time in less than thirty years that Germany had occupied Belgium.

France was one of the largest military powers to come under occupation as part of the Western Front in World War II. The Western Front was a military theatre of World War II encompassing Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. The Western Front was marked by two phases of large-scale combat operations.

References

  1. Vaute, Paul (1 September 2004). "L'euphorie avant l'épreuve". La Libre Belgique. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  2. Conway, Martin (12 January 2012). The sorrows of Belgium : liberation and political reconstruction, 1944-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN   978-0199694341.
  3. "Souvenir et Memoire" (PDF). www.bel-memorial.org. p. 2. Retrieved 13 February 2013.