Fighters in The Shadows
Robert GideaReviewed by Roger Stanton With access to previously unseen French archive materiel, ‘Fighters in the Shadows’ attempts to expose some of the myths surrounding much of the French Resistance and the boasts of G
- Author
- Robert Gildea
- Reviewed by
- Roger Stanton
- Publisher
- Faber & Faber
- Price
- £30
- Published
- 2015
Fighters in The Shadows by Robert Gildea (Reviewed by Roger Stanton)
With access to previously unseen French archive material, Fighters in the Shadows exposes the myths that surround much of the French Resistance and the boasts of General de Gaulle.
The first French soldier into Paris in 1944 was a member of the La Nueve Regiment, which consisted mainly of Spanish Republicans, and many French citizens adopted a “wait and see” attitude to liberation, following the lead of the Vichy government. In 1971 the film Le Chagrin et la Pitié suggested that the French people had been supine, cowardly, and given to collaboration; it was banned from public display for twelve years.
Only after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the introduction of the Service du Travail Obligatoire did more than 40,000 Frenchmen decide to join the Maquis rather than be deported to Germany. Nearly all were under 30 years of age. Gildea argues that we should speak of “Resistance in France” rather than “the French Resistance”.
The book highlights organisations and individuals omitted from Gaullist rhetoric, not least the part played by the other Allies. Gildea celebrates foreign fighters whose contributions have been ignored, including Spanish Republicans and anti-fascists serving in large Resistance groups in southern France. Nancy Wake, for example, led a Maquis group of more than 7,000 members, many of them Spaniards who formed her personal bodyguard.
The “official history” also overlooks Eastern Europeans, particularly Poles who created their own intelligence networks, escape lines and resistance groups. It is little known that, after the liberation of Paris in 1944, British and Jewish members of SOE were given 24 hours to leave France, and scant credit is given to the French colonial forces or the escape lines.
De Gaulle also understated the contribution of women. The war put many women in the firing line, especially those who worked for escape lines and in SOE and intelligence-gathering roles. When de Gaulle assumed control they were largely ignored, removed from Resistance posts and rarely given recognition. Yet women had been at the heart of the Resistance as nurses, couriers, safe-house keepers, intelligence gatherers and even armed fighters. When Marguerite Gonnet was arrested by the Gestapo in Lyons in May 1942 she was asked why she had taken up arms against the Germans. “Quite simple, Colonel,” she replied. “Because the men had dropped them.”
Gildea also explores the infighting between key figures such as Jean Moulin and Henri Frenay, and between communist Maquis groups and the anti-communists at de Gaulle’s London headquarters. A May 1943 meeting in Saint-Sulpice, chaired by Moulin and attended by all major Resistance leaders, tried to resolve these tensions; a month later Moulin was betrayed to the Gestapo and died under torture.
This is a serious, compelling study that restores the bravery of ordinary French citizens and groups airbrushed from official history, and credits those who fought and died for freedom regardless of their political objectives.
ISBN 978-0571280346. Faber & Faber. £30