Maquis (World War II)
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The Maquis (French pronunciation: [maˈki]) 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 (STO; 'Compulsory Work Service') which provided forced labor for Germany.[1] To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.
They had an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 members in autumn of 1943 and approximately 100,000 members in June 1944.[2]
Meaning
The maquis made up one component of the mosaic of the French Resistance. The maquis refers to the organization of bands of resistance guerrillas which emerged in rural France, mainly in the south. The maqui were emergent in 1943 and were also active in 1944.[3]
Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with scrub growth called maquis (scrubland).[4]
Although strictly speaking it means 'thicket', maquis could be roughly translated as "the bush";[5] in Corsica, the saying prendre le maquis 'to go into the bush' is used to describe someone who leaves the village in order to live in the bush, either biding time to seek revenge, or while being pursued by others with an intent to arrest or kill.[citation needed] Historians have not established how this Corsican language term arrived on the mainland of France, but observe that:
the Italian-derived word "maquis" is commonly used to describe woods and scrubland on the island, and evokes an all-encompassing image of woods and mountains, whereas the more limited word "garrigue" used in the south of France indicated [...] an inhospitable terrain, and the words "bois" ('wood'), "foret" ('forest') and "montagne" ('mountain') were too bland.[6]
The term maquis signified both the group of fighters and their rural location.
The national denomination given to all Maquis forces during the war is Forces françaises de l'intérieur, known as the "FFI"; in English, the French Forces of the Interior. This large corp of about 400,000 active members (in 1944) is divided in three major sections, corresponding to three political or professional inclinations:
- The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), a para-military organism created by and for the Parti Communiste français, the French Communist Party.
- The French armyofficers.
- The Organisation de résistance de l'armée (the ORA; 'Resistance organisation of the army'), formally created in January 1943 as a more "official" and apolitical organism for the continuation of armed struggle by ex-French military personnel in the Zone libre (southern half of metropolitan France).
All three groups were deemed "terrorists" by the Vichy regime of the
Operations
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Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of
In March 1944, with the Allies gaining ascendancy, Maquis groups intensified their operations. In reaction to their weakening power, the occupiers and Vichy collaborationists began a terror campaign throughout France, enacted by German military units and the Milice.
In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136.
Politics
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Politically, the Maquis included
According to Matthew Cobb, the Communist Maquis groups adopted more active and immediate guerrilla tactics to combat the Nazis, while the groups affiliated with De Gaulle were asked to wait for a larger attack later in the war. Thus, some maquis joined Communist groups simply to be part of a more active resistance movement and not because of their politics. Georges Guingouin was one of the most active Communist Maquis leaders.[11]
The British
The Maquis had many different sub groups with their own objectives and political affiliations. In 1944, an OSS agent, Robert R. Kehoe, was embedded within a group of Maquis and described the organization as "fractured",[12] observing that "the various components were quite independent, with members loyal to their own leaders and to the political forces behind them".[12] Different ideologies within the subgroups created tensions that had to be put aside at times during the war but prosecuted those of the far right after.[13] People like Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, leaders of the French Resistance group Alliance, were both questioned about their loyalty during and after the war. This came as no surprise as both were from far-right political backgrounds, that didn’t favor the dominant Gaullist narrative. Lacau suffered the most, all the way up to his death by being put in jail several times, and accused by communist colleagues of siding with the Germans, while Fourcade was able to suffer fewer accusations by switching to Gaullism.
Examples of the independence of separate Maquis groups can be found all throughout France during the Second World War. For example, Maquis groups in Brittany often did not speak French and were focused on the expulsion of German forces from their region and not from France as a whole.[12] As they did not operate like a normal resistance organization due to their lack of centralization, the Maquis would not be able to accomplish as much as the Allied nations had hoped.[citation needed]
History
Prior to the inception of the Maquis, small resistance groups were created in the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. In northern and western France, movements like
Resistance groups in the occupied zone eventually became linked to the Free French in London or the Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Britain to undermine Nazi-occupied Europe with specially trained agents.[14] By May 1941, the northern movements, who specialized in sabotage and espionage and the southern movements, who focused on planning escape routes, developed the only major movement common to both, the Front National.[14] Resistance became closely linked with the effects of the occupation and Vichy legislation and as the working class became alienated "resisters and people on the run could be harboured with a degree of safety"[15] in the rural areas of France, resistance had a role and justification in the lives of many people "who had no ambition to hold a gun, or memorize a coded message, though as the occupation grew in its violence the pressure on the French people to defend themselves by force intensified, and the military nature of resistance came to predominate".[16]The connection between the Vichy government and armed resistance paved the way for the eventual formation of the Maquis.[citation needed]
The Service du travail obligatoire (STO; compulsory labor service) was enacted on 16 February 1943 but underwent various refinements and classifications.[17] It required young men born between 1920 and 1922 to register at their mairies (town halls), whereupon the authorities "listed several categories of workers, divided them into those who were exempt, those who would be liable for compulsory service in Germany, and those who would have to work for German industries in France".[17] In the first few months, reports suggest that there were many who refused STO and went into hiding, mostly in areas where people hid Jews and resisters.[18] These first few months of refusal of STO, and the "embryonic camps and groupings that resulted" contributed to the eventual emergence of the mystique and discourse of le maquis.[19]
Politically motivated anti-fascists, immigrant workers on the run, the réfractaires and Spanish Civil War veterans, along with the leniency of the Vichy administration's pursuit of réfractaires, contributed to the emergence of an aggressive movement, with a combative discourse and a romantic mystique of rural revolt.[6] The speed with which the term maquis spread was astonishing, since the concept did not exist in January 1943. By June, talk of the maquis made its way from south-eastern France to the plains of northern France.[7] The Maquis eventually became the national service, due to the large influx of young people in revolt against the STO.[20] This unification was due, in part, to Michel Brault, a Parisian lawyer, who headed the organization of the resisters in April 1943, and to the drafted circulars establishing the Maquis's charter. Within one month, 20,000 copies of the text — which did not exceed the size of a playing card — were distributed throughout the southern zone".[20] Brault, in a report sent to London on 14 February 1944, listed the various elements available for action to the Allies and described the Maquis as "youths who have rebelled against the STO as well as men of all ages who have given up trying to live a normal life [...]. They totalled about 48,000."[21]
Role
The Maquis de l'Ain, captained by Henri Petit (alias Romans), organized a network of camps in the dense forests in the mountainous regions of the Bugey and the lower regions of La Bresse, without creating a fixed camp. This gave
... primacy to isolation from all habitation, but also to sites which permitted hasty retreats.[22]
The enemy would not be able to surprise the Maquis because the views from the mountains were extensive, but some enjoyed this advantage and stayed in the same sites for months, defying their own rules of mobility. Guerrilla warfare practised by the Maquis "created a psychosis of fear within the enemy [...], giving an impression of numbers and strength which was more illusory than real".[22] The Maquis de l'Ain's effectiveness was honed at the training school they opened at Gorges above Mongriffon in June 1943. Captain Romans described the situation:[23]
The watchwords were explicit: no large concentrations of men. No pitched battles. Guerrilla warfare only! We had a few revolvers and some hunting rifles and were reduced to making sketches in order to teach the use of modern weapons. Early in July we received our first Sten machine gun. We kept taking it apart and putting it together until we could do it in record time, Then the gun was passed from one camp to another.
In the control for rural areas, the maquisards, in their role as the hunted, "gradually made the terrain of the hunt unpredictable for the hunters",[22] and eventually dangerous. The Maquis's goal was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the 'hunters' and the 'hunted'.[24]
During the Allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, the Maquis and other groups played some role in delaying the German mobilization. The French Resistance (FFI for Forces Françaises de l'Interieur, 'French Forces of the Interior') blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the Atlantic coast. Coded messages transmitted over Radio Londres, broadcast from the BBC, alerted the Maquis of the impending D-Day with seemingly meaningless messages such as "the crow will sing three times in the morning" read in a continuous flow over the British airwaves. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. For example, Nancy Wake's group of 7,000 maquisards was involved in a pitched battle with 22,000 Germans on 20 June 1944. Some Maquis groups took no prisoners so some German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers rather than maquisards.[citation needed]
The Allied offensive was slowed and the Germans were able to counterattack in southeast France. On the
When
Equipment
Although the Maquis used whatever arms they could get, the groups affiliated with the
The Maquis also used German weapons captured throughout the occupation; the
Customs
The Maquis were clandestine groups which did not wear uniforms, so as to blend in the population. However, over time many started wearing the Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion, but distinctive enough to be effective.
In leadership and the more technical aspects of leading a resistance group women were often more involved in the Maquis than men, helping the front line fighters. It was very common for young educated women to be used as couriers from one Maquis group to another. Young women were chosen because they were more inconspicuous than men and could often pass through German checkpoints without being stopped or questioned.[12] Allied operatives working with the Maquis described the women of the Maquis helping of the fighters as "the lifeblood of the resistance, furnishing information, passing instructions, and arranging for food and supplies."[12]
Controversy
This section relies largely or entirely upon a single source.(January 2024) ) |
Many individuals claimed membership in the Maquis to escape being labeled
Notable maquis
- Maquis de l'Ain et du Haut-Jura
- Maquis de Corrèze
- Maquis de Fontjun in the Hérault
- Georges Guingouin, Maquis du Limousin
- Maquis des Glières in the French Alps
- Maquis de l'Oisans in the French Alps
- Maquis du Grésivaudan in the French Alps
- Maquis du Vercors in the French Alps
- Maquis du Limousin in the Massif Central
- Maquis de Lozère directed by the German antifascist Otto Kühne
- Auvergne
- Maquis de Picaussel in the Aude
- Loire Atlantique
- Maquis de Saint-Marcel in Brittany
- Corps Franc du Sidobre (Tarn)
- Maquis La Tourette in the Hérault created by Jean Bène
- Maquis de Vabre (Tarn)
- Maquis Vallier (Var)
- Maquis des Vosges
- Maquis de Rieumes in the Haute-Garonne
- Corps Franc de la Montagne Noire in the Montagne Noire (Aude, Tarn, Haute-Garonne)
- member operating in Laos. (The Hmong were formerly known by the exonym Meo)
See also
- Chant des Partisans
- Francs-tireurs
- Free France
- Maquis (Star Trek): a group of colonists in the Star Trek franchise that named themselves after the World War II fighters.
- Military history of France during World War II
- Organisation de résistance de l'armée
- Resistance during World War II
- Spanish Maquis
- Thiaroye massacre
- Zone libre
- Grenoble's Saint-Bartholomew
References
Sources
- Chambard, Claude (1976). "The Making of an Army". In Elaine P. Halperin (ed.). The Maquis: A History of the French Resistance Movement. New York: Bobbs Merrill Company, Inc.
- Cobb, Matthew (2009). The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis. London: Simon and Schuster UK.
- Davies, Peter (2001). France and the Second World War: Occupation, Collaboration and Resistance. Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415238960. Archivedfrom the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
- Grenard, Fabrice (2019). Les maquisards: Combattre dans la France occupée (in French). Paris: Vendémiaire. ISBN 978-2-36358-332-1.
- Jackson, Julian (2003). France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199254576.
- Kedward, H. R. (1985). "Resistance". Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance 1940–1944. New York: Basil Blackwell Ltd. pp. 46–60. ISBN 978-0-631-13927-0.
- Ousby, Ian (1999). Occupation: The ordeal of France 1940–1944. London: Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6513-1.
Citations
- ^ Cobb 2009, p. 161.
- ^ Grenard 2019, p. 182.
- ^ Kedward (1993), p. vii.
- ^ "maquis". Online Dictionary.com. Random House. Archived from the original on 15 March 2008.
- ^
- "maquis, n.". Collins English Dictionary (12th ed.). HarperCollins. 2014 – via Freedictionary.
- "References in classic literature – maquis". The Free Dictionary. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
- Which cites a quotation from: Conrad, Joseph (1906). The Mirror of the Sea. London: J. M. Dent. Chapter XLIII.
- ^ a b Kedward 1993, p. 29.
- ^ a b c Kedward 1993, p. 30.
- ^ Davies 2001, p. 8.
- ^ a b Jackson 2003, p. 577.
- ^ a b Ousby 1999, p. 275.
- ^ Cobb 2009, p. 164.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Kehoe, Robert R. (1944). "Jed Team Frederick: An Allied Team with the French Resistance". Studies in Intelligence. 42 (5). Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on 23 April 2019. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
- S2CID 145710614.
- ^ a b c d Kedward 1985, p. 49.
- ^ Kedward 1985, p. 50.
- ^ Kedward 1985, p. 51.
- ^ a b Kedward 1993, p. 19.
- ^ Kedward 1993, p. 20.
- ^ Kedward 1993, p. 28.
- ^ a b Chambard 1976, p. 89.
- ^ Chambard 1976, p. 92.
- ^ a b c Kedward 1993, p. 50.
- ^ Chambard 1976, p. 99.
- ^ Kedward 1993, p. 60.
- ^ The weapons of the Maquis Musée André Voulgre Archived January 1, 2024, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Supplying the Resistance: OSS Logistics Support to Special Operations in Europe Archived December 7, 2023, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The Guns Of The French Resistance American Rifleman. December 17, 2022. Tom Laemlein. Archived December 17, 2022, at the Wayback Machine