Jacques Arthuys was a French industrialist, a right-wing intellectual and early leader of the French Fascist movement. He was initially a pan-European but became opposed to the Nazi movement. During World War II (1939–45) he was leader of a French Resistance organization. He was arrested, deported to a concentration camp and killed by the Germans.

The French Resistance was a collection of groups that fought the Nazi occupation of France 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.