Underground media in German-occupied France
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.
Cover of first edition of Le Silence de la Mer by Jean Bruller (1942)
General Charles de Gaulle at his desk in London during the War
Plaque in Quimper commemorating a January 1944 act of sabotage against the STO office, destroying 44,000 files.
Pierre Chaillet (1900–1972)
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.
French milice and resisters, July 1944
The cemetery and memorial in Vassieux-en-Vercors where, in July 1944, German Wehrmacht forces executed more than 200 people, in reprisal for the Maquis's armed resistance. The town was later awarded the Ordre de la Libération.
Identity document of French Resistance fighter Lucien Pélissou
The ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Limousin region of the Massif Central