Resistance Groups - How Effective?

timshatz · Mar 12, 2009

Yozimbo said:
Following the discovery of his remains the I. Battalion, 4th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment under the command of Major Adolf Diekmann (a personal friend to Kaempfe) retaliated on OsG.
QUOTE]

May've confused my Nazis. I was thinking of the Capt. who was last seen with his driver that the Resistance captured. He was never seen again (although it doesn't take much to figure out what happened to him).

davebender · Mar 13, 2009

How do you define "collaboration"?

After WWII the people of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romainia and Ukraine were occupied by the Soviet Union for a period of about 45 years. There was no immediate hope of liberation from enemy occupation. A few tough cases chose to die fighting rather then submit to Stalin's rule. Most of the population just went on living and waited for times to get better. It was the same in France during 1940 to 1944. Only they didn't have to wait so long for their freedom from enemy occupation.

Negative Creep · Mar 13, 2009

Agreed with you, collaboration is just as hard to define as resistance. Looking back with hindsight is very easy, but if I was a Frenchman in late 1940 I wouldn't hold out much hope of ever being liberated. As the war progressed more and more people joined, some out of hope, some realising which way the wind was blowing. I'm sure that right after the war the numbers of people who had been in the resistance increased significantly!

timshatz · Mar 13, 2009

Negative Creep said:
Agreed with you, collaboration is just as hard to define as resistance. Looking back with hindsight is very easy, but if I was a Frenchman in late 1940 I wouldn't hold out much hope of ever being liberated. As the war progressed more and more people joined, some out of hope, some realising which way the wind was blowing. I'm sure that right after the war the numbers of people who had been in the resistance increased significantly!

Probably nailed it on the head. Most people stay out of the way until the occupiers look like they're losing. Then, they probably give passive assistance to the cause. The guys that actually went out and did something were a small minority. Single digit percentage, that is just my guess.

On a related note, I was in Paris back in 1994 just before the 50th Anniversary of the Liberation of Paris. Saw an exhibit of pictures showing the liberation. There were about 100 to 120 shots. All of the shots, showed French Resistance types in Paris. There were two shots of Americans (no Brits, Canadians, Poles,ect) and those shots were two from Cappa on Omaha.

But the shots of the French Resistance in Paris were actually pretty funny. I wasn't going to laugh out loud (bad form in a foriegn country) but it showed a bunch of guys who looked like they'd come out of a poetry reading. None of them had the same weapons (design, caliber or useage) as another. One has a rifle from the Franco Prussian war, another with a British Webley Revolver, last might have a German Mauser. It was all over the place. And, true to form, there were pictures of them "manning the barricades" (to answer your question, there were no pics of German Armor or Artillery).

If you took the exhibition as a whole, you got the impression that the Poets, Communist, Anarchist and just about every socialist nutjob from the Left Bank rose up and overthrew their Nazi oppressors. Which is close to how it happened....

...when you add in the 2nd French Armored Division, US 4th ID and other assorted units. But, given the stuff I saw, the regular army forces just showed up for the parade.

Negative Creep · Mar 13, 2009

timshatz said:
(to answer your question, there were no pics of German Armor or Artillery).

Actually scrap my previous statement, I've now read in three different sources the Germans did have tanks

timshatz · Mar 13, 2009

I've read there were some SPs in Paris, but not many. There is a story of a gunner in a French Sherman knocking out an SP under the Arc de Triumph (sp?) with a single shot when he remembered his grade school geography and dialed in the distance at one click. Sounds a little far fetched but still, that was the story.

Also have heard that captured French tanks of 1940 vintage were out an about, used by the Germans.

From what I've read of the Liberation of Paris ("Is Paris Burning" by Larry Collins is one of the books on the subject), the Germans had no combat troops to speak of in the city. Further, the demolitions that were ordered by Hitler were ignored by the commander. He pretty much didn't do anyting. The troops he did have were paper pushers and the odd unit caught in the city when the FFI went active. It wasn't much of a fight, no Stalingrad. Isolated pockets of resistance at best.

Negative Creep · Mar 13, 2009

Wiki actually has a picture

"German tank (Hotchkiss H35) moving in downtown Paris on August 19 1944 during the battle for Paris. Screenshot from La Liberation de Paris, September 1st, 1944."

timshatz · Mar 13, 2009

Don't imagine they gave the French 2nd much trouble when they showed up with M4s. If they engaged at all.

Have seen pictures of M4 Shermans and M10 TDs in the fighting. Also some Greyhounds and Halftracks. But the only tank on tank stuff I read about was that action at the Arch de Triump. I don't believe an M4, with a short barreled 75, could get a round through the front armor of a Stug at 1,000 yards (assuming it was an M4 vs Stug shoot out). Somebody else on the board with a better knowledge of that combo would know.

Negative Creep · Mar 13, 2009

I'm not sure how the event is viewed in France, but it certainly wasn't a massive uprising and dramatic battle against battle against battle hardened troops a la Warsaw. That being said, we shouldn't take away from those who did fight as a lot of them lost their lives in the process

timshatz · Mar 13, 2009

Very true. In Paris, the Germans were on their way out. In Warsaw, the Germans stayed and fought it out, destroying the city after they were done. Two totally different fights.

Which brings up an interesting point about the Polish Resistance and their battle against the Germans. It would seem the Resistance in the East was on an altogether greater scale than that in the West. Same could be said of the Balkans. Three seperate theatres of resistance.

Yozimbo · Mar 14, 2009

Also regarding the Polish case, there is another major factor that must be taken into account...
The Polish needed to liberate their capital and by extension their country in order to have a legitimate case of independence post-war, as the red army was literally at the gates and it's political leadership had not shown the best of intentions in the past.
It is now widely accepted now that they were actually played by them (red army). Believing that the red army was actually going to enter Warsaw any minute now (thus driving off the Germans) they hasted into an all out uprising to beat them to the liberation of the city (as well as putting into effect Operation Tempest -Akcja Burza- that had the end of achieving political control of Poland before the Soviets arived).
However as we all know the red army (who was informed at the last minute by Polands PM Stanisław Mikołajczyk) stopped dead on its tracks right of the Vistula, providing thus a dubious form of ceasefire to the Germans and allowing them to take out the uprising with no other pressure from them (in the all times classic axiom - the enemy of my enemy is my friend...).

The French resistance in Paris now on the other hand, did not had these kind of troubles to worry about, so they had a rather different approach in terms of fighting and urgency of matters. To be honest from what I've read so far in most cases the majority of fighters that were photographed at the time of liberation with guns blazing only picked them up when the German army was already miles away...and they exhausted their fighting skills and prowess in hunting down civilians accused of collaboration with a vengeance...

Arsenal VG-33 · Mar 15, 2009

Well, where do I begin with this? I've pulled however many books from my own library to peruse over the questions/statments made here and I'll answer a few here:

davebender said:
The French resistance was pretty small prior to 1944. In fact most of them joined after the Normandy invasion. I guess joining the resistance a few days prior to liberation was a way to insure the "Free French" did not accuse you of collaboration with the enemy.

The French Resistance, while mainly localized and individualistic at first, really came of age in late 1942 early 1943, when the forced labor draft was implemented (STO, Service Travail Obligatoire), so in reality it grew exponentially during that period.

davebender said:
In France it was largely the job of national police forces that reported to the French government.

By 1943, there were actually few Milice left, most having jioned the LVF to fight on the Russian front. After that point, it was mostly Polizei, or small Wermacht/SS detachments that were used to root out Resistance bands. A few Milice units may have left around, mostly wash-outs of the LVF, but by 1944, most of them realized which way the war was going and went into hiding themselves. It's interesting to know that most of these Miliciens were actually common criminals and convicts who were quickly hunted down and rid of during the Epuration immediately following the liberation of the region.

Of the Oradour-sur-Glane Massacre, I too have Max Hasting's work on this subject. He makes it quite clear that while the Alsatians of the Das Reich unti that was there and commited the atrocities, perhaps 2 or 3 actually participated in the murders, the remainder having been positioned on the outskirts of the town to guard roadd entries, where they even prevented outsiders from entering town and becoming potential victims themselves. The reason is that many of the Alsatians, having been formerly citizens of France, then having been made citizens of the Reich via annexation, protested the orders they were given, to the point that at least one of their NCOs was threatened with execution by his superiors. Hastings give clear evidence that this is in fact the closest thing to mutiny ever seen in the Das Reich Division during the whole course of the war.

timshatz said:
But the shots of the French Resistance in Paris were actually pretty funny. I wasn't going to laugh out loud (bad form in a foriegn country) but it showed a bunch of guys who looked like they'd come out of a poetry reading.

What were they supposed to look like...army soldiers? After over 4 years of wearing the same clothes with few means to replace them, they're obviously going to look like a band of troubadours.

timshatz said:
But the shots of the French Resistance in Paris were actually pretty funny. I wasn't going to laugh out loud (bad form in a foriegn country) but it showed a bunch of guys who looked like they'd come out of a poetry reading. None of them had the same weapons (design, caliber or useage) as another. One has a rifle from the Franco Prussian war, another with a British Webley Revolver, last might have a German Mauser. It was all over the place. And, true to form, there were pictures of them "manning the barricades" (to answer your question, there were no pics of German Armor or Artillery).

There is a good explanation for this: Gen. de Gaulle explicitly asked that weapons drops did not occur over large metropolitan areas as these were the areas that were predominately controlled by Communist factions of the Resistance. A post-Liberation Communist government in France would have spelled disaster for the Allies in regards to clearing France of the Germans, as they were more liable to take orders from Moscow than the western Allies. The fact that most of the Paris Resistance were armed with the odd assortment of weapons is no surprise when this fact is taken into account.

timshatz said:
If you took the exhibition as a whole, you got the impression that the Poets, Communist, Anarchist and just about every socialist nutjob from the Left Bank rose up and overthrew their Nazi oppressors. Which is close to how it happened....

Most of the intelligencia/anarchist/"peots" had already been deported to the death camps, executed, or were in hiding by mid 1944, writing underground leaflets. The Paris insurectionists were more or less evenly split between Communists and Gaullist factions by August 1944, with a slightly larger majority going to the Gaullist (FFI) forces.

As for the French DB, they lost approx. 45-55 killed when entering Paris, with almost twice that many wounded and many vehicles destroyed, so it wasn't all "parade" for them. As for German artillery, I belive you're correct on this, there appears to have been none in the near viscinity, though immediately after the lberation of Paris there was a Luftwaffe raid which killed about 250 people, wounded a further 1,000, and destroyed several blocks of the city. Additionally ( and unknown to most, V-2 rockets did strike Paris as well).

timshatz said:
I've read there were some SPs in Paris, but not many. There is a story of a gunner in a French Sherman knocking out an SP under the Arc de Triumph (sp?) with a single shot when he remembered his grade school geography and dialed in the distance at one click. Sounds a little far fetched but still, that was the story.

Nothing far-fetched at all, it was witnessed by many people. A slight correction however, the French tank gunner (a tank destroyer) did not knock out the Panther, but he disabled it by hitting one of it's tracks. The Panther's gun was then blocked by a lamp post. A second French tank (a Sherman) then appeared on the Place de la Concorde and rammed the Panther, setting it ablaze but not before it's crew escaped.

timshatz said:
Also have heard that captured French tanks of 1940 vintage were out an about, used by the Germans.

True. How many exactly I'm not sure, but I think they were mostly the M-35 Hotchkiss types, though there was a Char-B in their possesion which was later recaptured by the FFI and parked at the southern end of the Grosskommandanture (Hotel Crillon) and used as a stationary gun, shooting at whatever German transport came through the wide intersection.

By the way, the lat time I went to Paris, I inspected closely the area where the Panther was first disabled and then rammed. The curb side where the Panther was pushed onto is still caved in a bit.

timshatz said:
From what I've read of the Liberation of Paris ("Is Paris Burning" by Larry Collins is one of the books on the subject), the Germans had no combat troops to speak of in the city. Further, the demolitions that were ordered by Hitler were ignored by the commander. He pretty much didn't do anyting. The troops he did have were paper pushers and the odd unit caught in the city when the FFI went active. It wasn't much of a fight, no Stalingrad. Isolated pockets of resistance at best.

Since this book was written, it's been since proven that Cholitz had every intention of destroying as much of Paris as possible. The only reason he didn't is because he lacked the means to do it. He actually had far less expolive charges than he was led to believe. I disagree with you on the level of fighting: While most sections of the city saw "sporadic" fighting, there were some areas which saw pitched battles, included Place de l'Etoile, Jardin de Luxembourg, and Place Saint Michel. The Senate building in the Luxembourg gardens actually had an SS detachment, and there was quite a bit of blood letting there.

timshatz said:
Don't imagine they gave the French 2nd much trouble when they showed up with M4s. If they engaged at all.

Gen. Leclerc's 2e DB lost most of their vehichles in the suburbs of Paris prior to entering Paris via Porte d'Orleans. A well placed German 88 gun ensured this.

Negative Creep said:
I'm not sure how the event is viewed in France, but it certainly wasn't a massive uprising and dramatic battle against battle against battle hardened troops a la Warsaw. That being said, we shouldn't take away from those who did fight as a lot of them lost their lives in the process

I think it's a mistake to make this comparison for one very important fact: The Paris Uprising was no less dramatic or popular as that of Warsaw's. The difference here lies in the fact that at Warsaw, the Red Army sat on the other side to allow the Nazis to get rid of the resistance there. The Western Allies were thankfully, much more humanitarian and understanding than the Russians and rushed to the aid of the Parisians. The Nazis destroyed Warsaw because the Red Army allowed them to do it, which in turn meant less political resistance to Stalin. The two uprisings were thus not determined from within, but their destinies were determined from outsides influences.

Arsenal VG-33 · Mar 15, 2009

Yozimbo said:
The French resistance in Paris now on the other hand, did not had these kind of troubles to worry about, so they had a rather different approach in terms of fighting and urgency of matters. To be honest from what I've read so far in most cases the majority of fighters that were photographed at the time of liberation with guns blazing only picked them up when the German army was already miles away...and they exhausted their fighting skills and prowess in hunting down civilians accused of collaboration with a vengeance...

If this were true, then over 1,500 FFI and civilians and over 2,500 Germans should not have been killed. Your statement is a slap in the face of their memories.

Yozimbo · Mar 15, 2009

Unfortunately there are a lot of slaps in the face for France regarding a lot of aspects that they prefer to forget about during the second world war and this is one of them...

I am not arguing that there were people that fought and died against the Germans and I meant no disrespect to their sacrifice. My argument is that the sacrifice of those brave people has been appropriated on a national level for political reasons and as a consequence until recently everyone in France was in the Maquis... It is understandable from a national pride point of view. After all France had lost a war in a shockingly quick way, one of it's foremost great war heroes collaborated with the enemy, half of it's territory was given a mock independence, and state collaboration achieved record levels in various aspects... So in post war France something was needed urgently to restore a sense of national pride...and everybody participating in the Maquis was a good start...
I do apologize if my thesis may be offensive to some but I am a firm believer that things should be presented as they were (according to historical documents often declassified only recently) and not as we would like them to be...

Arsenal VG-33 · Mar 15, 2009

Yozimbo said:
Unfortunately there are a lot of slaps in the face for France regarding a lot of aspects that they prefer to forget about during the second world war and this is one of them...

Of all the countries occupied by the Nazis, the French have done the most to examine and atone for their past over the last 25-30 years. There are few who are "preferring" to forget this past. You certainly don't see this kind of self-examination by other countries. It's only outsiders who are learning about these things for the first time who make such silly assesments. Again, I ask you, if the Paris underground only waited until all the Germans had left as you say they did , why all the casualties? Maybe you'd prefer to think they jumped from windows? Have you read Collin's and Lapierre's book?

v2 · Mar 15, 2009

Polish Home Army...
Polish Home Army underground

Yozimbo · Mar 15, 2009

Arsenal VG-33 said:
Of all the countries occupied by the Nazis, the French have done the most to examine and atone for their past over the last 25-30 years. There are few who are "preferring" to forget this past. You certainly don't see this kind of self-examination by other countries. It's only outsiders who are learning about these things for the first time who make such silly assesments. Again, I ask you, if the Paris underground only waited until all the Germans had left as you say they did , why all the casualties? Maybe you'd prefer to think they jumped from windows? Have you read Collin's and Lapierre's book?

From a historian point of view it was again small politics...
De Gaule needed urgently to legitimize his provisional government. In order to do that he HAD to "liberate" Paris. And to achieve that he had to literally blackmail the Allied High Command to help him out. Because Eisenhower wanted to bypass Paris and get inside German land asap knowing that this was what the Allies needed to do in order to maintain momentum.
If that happened Paris would sooner than later be evacuated by the Germans.
In the aftermath Paris was liberated by the FFL and the US 4th Infantry Division.

I do apologize for my ignorance, as I am learning about those things for the first time, after all i am nothing but a humble post-doc history researcher passing my days digging into the National Archives at Kew....

pbfoot · Mar 15, 2009

Arsenal VG-33 said:
Of all the countries occupied by the Nazis, the French have done the most to examine and atone for their past over the last 25-30 years. ?

maybe they are the only ones that bent and followed the germans to such a degree

parsifal · Mar 15, 2009

The casualty list forthe liberation was unquestionably much smaller than the actions in Warsaw. The Home army, from memory lost about a third of its strength, which I believe was about 60000 combatants, plus there were about another 200-300000 civilan casualties. I believe german casualties came to about 37000. When you look at the two actions in terms of the casulaty lists, there is no comparison between the two.

However, I think it unfair to try and belittle the importance of the liberation of Paris on the basis of the relatively small butchers bill. The liberation was a politically significant milestone in the downfall of the Nazis.

Also, you dont see the same criticisms being levelled at the Allied armies in general. During the war, 80% of German military casulaties occurred on the Eastern Front. Even the whole of the Normandy camapaign , and the subsequent advance across western Europe was small change compared to what was happening on the Eastern Front. In that same time period, Axis casualties on the western front were running at about 240000 give or take. On the eastern front they had lost over a million, including dead, wounded, mia and prisoners.

None of us are prepared to acknowledge the true workhorses of wwii, and the debt we still owe them.....the russians

Watanbe · Mar 17, 2009

I think most of us on the forums are prepared to acknowledge that the Eastern Front was what really wrecked the Germans! I also believe that we discuss and argue more about the Western Theatre because it applies more to us and we find it more interesting. It doesn't necessarily mean we are ignorant!

Resistance Groups - How Effective?

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