Patriotic Militia Milices Patriotiques (MP-PM) | |
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Ideology | Communist |
Part of | ![]() |
Allies | Partisans Armés (PA) |
Opponents | ![]() |
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]
22,006 people are recognized to have been part of the Milices during the war. [3]
The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French 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 avert capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.
The French Resistance was the collection of French movements that fought against the Nazi German 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 men and women of the Resistance came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, aristocrats, conservative Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, liberals, anarchists and communists.
Paul 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.
The Milice française, generally called la Milice, was a political paramilitary organization created on 30 January 1943 by the Vichy regime to help fight against the French Resistance during World War II. The Milice's formal head was Prime Minister Pierre Laval, although its Chief of operations and de facto leader was Secretary General Joseph Darnand. It participated in summary executions and assassinations, helping to round up Jews and résistants in France for deportation. It was the successor to Joseph Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) militia. The Milice was the Vichy regime's most extreme manifestation of fascism. Ultimately, Darnand envisaged the Milice as a fascist single party political movement for the French state.
La Cagoule, officially called Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire, was a French fascist-leaning and anti-communist terrorist group that used violence to promote its activities from 1935 to 1941 French Third Republic.
The Lebanese Communist Party – LCP or Parti communiste libanais (PCL) in French, is a communist party in Lebanon. It was founded in 1924 by the Lebanese intellectual, writer and reporter Youssef Ibrahim Yazbek and Fou'ad al-Shmeli, a tobacco worker from Bikfaya.
The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War (1939–1945). The Allies promoted the alliance as a means to control German, Japanese and Italian aggression.
Hubert Marie Eugène Pierlot was a Belgian politician and 32nd Prime Minister of Belgium, serving between 1939 and 1945. Pierlot, a lawyer and jurist, served in World War I before entering politics in the 1920s. A member of the Catholic Party, Pierlot became Prime Minister in 1939, shortly before Belgium entered World War II. In this capacity, he headed the Belgian government in exile, first from France and later Britain, while Belgium was under German occupation. During the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, a violent disagreement broke out between Pierlot and King Leopold III over whether the King should follow the orders of his ministers and go into exile or surrender to the German Army. Pierlot considered Leopold's subsequent surrender a breach of the Constitution and encouraged the parliament to declare Leopold unfit to reign. The confrontation provoked a lasting animosity between Pierlot and other conservatives, who supported the King's position and considered the government's exile to be cowardly.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
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.
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 Marteux 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 pro-government Secret Army.
The Belgian government in London, also known as the Pierlot IV Government, was the government in exile of Belgium between October 1940 and September 1944 during World War II. The government was tripartite, involving ministers from the Catholic, Liberal and Labour Parties. After the invasion of Belgium by Nazi Germany in May 1940, the Belgian government, under Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot, fled first to Bordeaux in France and then to London, where it established itself as the only legitimate representation of Belgium to the Allies.
The Popular Guard – PG or Popular Guards, Garde Populaire (GP) in French was the military wing of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP), which fought in the 1975-77 phase of the Lebanese Civil War and subsequent conflicts. The LCP and its militia were members of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) and its successor, the Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF).
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-east 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.
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.
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 75,000 Jews in the country in 1940, around 24,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.
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.
All Alone (NURP.39.SDS.39) was a war pigeon who was decorated for bravery in service during the Second World War for delivering an important secret message in one day over a distance of 400 miles (640 km), while serving with the National Pigeon Service in August, 1943.
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.