The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the German military administration in occupied France during 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.
The French Resistance was a collection of groups that fought the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist Vichy régime 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-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.
The Appeal of 18 June was the first speech made by Charles de Gaulle after his arrival in London in 1940 following the Battle of France. Broadcast to France by the radio services of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), it is often considered to have marked the beginning of the French Resistance in World War II. It is regarded as one of the most important speeches in French history. In spite of its significance in French collective memory, historians have shown that the appeal was heard only by a minority of French people. De Gaulle's 22 June 1940 speech was more widely heard. The historic importance of these radio broadcasts and de Gaulle's future status as the emblem of the French resistance gave de Gaulle the nickname L'Homme du 18 juin.
Georges Pierre André Bégué, code named Bombproof, was a French engineer and agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE in France, occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England.
La Voix du Nord is a regional daily newspaper from the north of France. Its headquarters are in Lille.
Events from the year 1944 in France.
Gilbert Renault, known by the nom de guerre Colonel Rémy, was a notable French secret agent active during the Second World War and was known under various pseudonyms such as Raymond, Jean-Luc, Morin, Watteau, Roulier, Beauce and Rémy.
Jean Lescure was a French poet.
Jean-Pierre Azéma is a French historian.
"Chanson d'automne" is a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), one of the best known in the French language. It is included in Verlaine's first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866. The poem forms part of the "Paysages tristes" section of the collection.
Maurice Diamant-Berger, known as André Gillois, was a French writer, radio pioneer and - during the Second World War - general Charles de Gaulle's spokesman in London.
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.
Radio Belgique (French) and Radio België (Dutch) were radio broadcasts transmitted to German-occupied Belgium from London during World War II. It was produced with the support of the Belgian government in exile and formed part of the BBC's European Service.
The Sigmaringen enclave was the exiled remnant of France's Nazi-sympathizing Vichy government which fled to Germany during the Liberation of France near the end of World War II in order to avoid capture by the advancing Allied forces. Installed in the requisitioned Sigmaringen Castle as seat of the government-in-exile, Vichy French leader Philippe Pétain and a number of other collaborators awaited the end of the war.
The Verlaine Message Museum or Museum of 5 June 1944 is a historical museum founded in 1991 in Tourcoing, France, near Lille. It is named after the message sent by the BBC's Radio Londres at 9:15 pm on June 5, 1944 announcing the imminent invasion of Normandy. The museum is housed in the concrete bunker where the German Wehrmacht intercepted the message.
Various kinds of clandestine media emerged under German occupation during World War II. By 1942, Nazi Germany occupied much of continental Europe. The widespread German occupation saw the fall of public media systems in France, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Northern Greece, and the Netherlands. All press systems were put under the ultimate control of Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda.
Les Français parlent aux Français was a daily radio broadcast in French transmitted on the BBC. It was broadcast from the 14 July 1940: under the title Ici la France then, from 6 September 1940 to 31 August 1944, under its better known name.
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.
This is a list of events from British radio in 1944.
