It is customary to distinguish the various organisations of the French Resistance between movements and networks. A resistance group or network was an organization created for a specific military purpose (intelligence, sabotage, helping prisoners of war escape and preventing shot-down pilots from falling into the hands of the Germans). In contrast, the main goal of a resistance movement was to educate and organize the population.

The majority of resistance movements in France were unified after Jean Moulin's formation of the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) in May 1943. CNR was coordinated with the French Forces of the Interior under the authority of the Free French Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle and their body, the Comité Français de Libération Nationale (CFLN).

Major Resistance movements

Unifications of major movements

Ultimately, unification took place from late 1943 to early 1944 when the Armée Secrète, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans and other organisations gave birth to the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).

Other movements

  • The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British military organisation that directed from London. It parachuted more than four hundred agents into Occupied France to establish escape routes, co-ordinate acts of sabotage, set up radio communications and supply materials and armaments for French groups.
  • The American OSS and the SOE contributed Jedburgh teams in 1944 to aid the resistance and arrange air supply of equipment.
  • Défense de la France was a resistance group in the Northern zone that was centred on the distribution of a clandestine newspaper, whose circulation had reached 450,000 by January 1944.
  • The Groupe du musée de l'Homme was formed by Parisian academics and intellectuals in 1940 after General Charles de Gaulle's Appeal of 18 June. It distributed clandestine newspapers but with a more patriotic and conservative position than others. It also transmitted political and military information to Britain and helped to hide escaped Allied prisoners-of-war. Vichy agents eventually infiltrated the group, and many members were arrested and later executed.
  • The Noyautage des administrations publiques (NAP) was a resistance organisation launched in 1942 with the mission of infiltrating the administration of the Vichy regime. The main intelligence missions that it carried out on behalf of the Free French provided false papers and prepared for the seizure of power after the liberation of France.
  • Mouvement National des Prisonniers de Guerre et Déportés (MNPGD)
  • Volontaires de la Liberté, a group composed of school boys (from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Lycée Henri-IV) and university students. Formed in Paris in 1941, most of its members joined the Défense de la France after February 1943 to engage in armed combat.[1]

Networks

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Volontaires de la LibertéHistoire mondiale du XXème siècle". Histoire mondiale du XXème siècle (in French). France Télévisions. 2014. Archived from the original on 10 March 2014. Retrieved 10 March 2014.
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