How much resistance did the French put up?

I heard that the French mostly cooperated with the Germans and the Vichy regime, and that resistance was mostly invented postwar by De Gaulle and others to lessen the humiliation the French felt. How true is this?

Other urls found in this thread:

reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24itor/exss_soldiers_in_the_french_foreign_legion/
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5utski/why_did_more_jews_in_france_survive_the_holocaust/
youtube.com/watch?v=aSRPGrvgb4w
books.google.ca/books?id=iEkEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA68&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=ZVEEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA9&dq=fall france&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=1D8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&dq=french collapse&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=9VAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&dq=french collapse&pg=PA75#v=onepage&q&f=true
articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/19/opinion/oe-stein19
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Only a small portion of the population resisted (but they were pretty effective, disrupting German occupation and helping the british to D-day), only a small portion of the population cooperated (but the Sto, the Charlemagne division... were things and kinda helped the germans). The truth is that the frogs did not care and just sit on their ass until the end of the war.

There were essentially two main sources of resistance from the French after the Nazi's rolled in. Degaulle's forces and the Communists. De Gaulle were basically just military units that refused to surrender and kept fighting. While admirable there are three main problems. The first is that they were as stated before, not a "resistance" in the sense of civilian partisans under enemy occupation but actual soldiers, the second is that they were not even in France. They fought the Axis but did so outside of occupied France. The Third is that a huge proportion of their troops were not actually French but colonial recruits who fought not for France but for the hope that their service might get their colonized home countries concessions from France after the war.
The Communists on the other hand do fit the idea of a "resistance/freedom fighter" and fought from day-one till the Nazi's were gone. The problem here is that De Gaulle (and his western allies) hated Communists and in no way wanted to give them the kind of political leverage being the actual resistance entailed.
Part of the reason for de Gaulle proclaiming the myth that every French citizen was a brave guerrilla instead of someone who meekly submitted besides saving national face, was to take the wind out from the communists.

This. Also de Gaulle certainly did nothing to invent or prop up the resistance given that a large portion of it was communist and another large portion of it was far-right (the traditional far-right, not the nazi one). De Gaulle prefered to emphasize the overseas regular French troops that were under his command.

You are wrong on pretty much everything.

This is good.

>the french

Which group do you mean?

The communists
The republicans
The anarchists
The military and affiliated political groups

What's he wrong on?

Only good resistances that actually gave the Germans a headache were in Yugoslavia, Poland and Greece.

>Yugoslavia

Tito was Quantrill-tier

2 or 3 Frenchmen resisted

The rest collaborated until the allied tanks rolled in and then they picked up rifles off dead Germans and started bullying people they didn't like and accusing them of collaboration

Hes mostly wrong on the fact that the communists were effective. The resistance cells were mostly effective on D-day when they sabotaged a shit ton of war industry to help the landings succeed, othervise they just mostly did infighting against other resistance cells.

the answer is yes OP

>The fucking French SS were some of the last line for the Fuhrerbunker
What the fuck is wrong with France?

...

algerian war was basically fought with nazi/gestapo like brutality and a lot of vichyites were involved in the army and the pied noir movement there

I also heard the Foreign Legion was loaded with escaping war crim krauts in the Indochina war, is there any truth to that?

They needed to protect fuhrer of their wife's son.

what do you know? the eternal frog also invented holocaust denial!

askhistorians reddit has a good answer for that. inb4 reddit
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24itor/exss_soldiers_in_the_french_foreign_legion/

mitterand was vichy in socialist clothes, kek?

...

...

The kikes made so much fuss about it that now we don't care and it is pretty much accepted that the holoax never happened

last pic unless people want more on the rise of le pen (the father not the daughter)

>The kikes made so much fuss about it
You seem angry. Are you upset that your little fantasy of resistance papa gaulle created for you is shattered? As it is, the Jews had every right to protest about their treatment in WWII. For a country that prides itself on being the birthplace of modern democracy, liberalism and "liberty, equality fraternity" its jarring to know that jews (among many others) were stripped of their liberties and sent to their deaths under a French government, and that the people who served in this government, and those that had a direct hand in the deportation of Jews, suffered nothing or if not that a far belated trial. I'm not really against the leniency for Vichyites directly after the war when France needed stability, but the worst offenders got off lightly, while the poorer sort, who couldn't pay for their legal defense, were executed by the Fourth Republic.
>inb4 jews aren't human XDD

> it is pretty much accepted that the holoax never happened
On /pol/. In real life, not your fantasy world, it is accepted and corroborated by evidence.

>For a country that prides itself on being the birthplace of modern democracy, liberalism and "liberty, equality fraternity" its jarring to know that jews (among many others) were stripped of their liberties
Can't have been too shocking in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair

btw this is the start of the excerpt that i forgot to post. offers a bit more context

France had by far the lowest Jewish death rate of any occupied country except Denmark.

You don't know what you're talking about.

again

despite your edgy statement, thinking over the matter again in light of the beginning excerpt I posted above, leads me to agree with rousso. I'm not saying that the jews were the sole victims of Vichy and the Nazis, and that many other groups suffered under them. However, I mean that the jews, just as much as any of these other groups, had the right to ask for justice. It so happens that the jewish community is well organized to press its case (even though I'm sure other jews that these spokesmen claimed to represent might well have been indifferent or against opening a can of worms) and others are not. Unfortunately, this had led to media to latch onto this particular narrative (I highly doubt that jews are as represented in French media as america) at the expense of others.

>I highly doubt that jews are as represented in French media as america

Yes France is clearly the most antisemitic Jew-murdering country in the world, that's why there have so few of them.

I'm not disagreeing that France had the lowest death rate of jews. but on the other hand the deportations were horrific no matter whether its statistically smaller relative to other countries, and it's no surprise that the French have trouble reconciling vichy officials and an apathetic, or even supportive, population deporting jews and others and their claims that they were all french were resisters, that vichy was an illegitimate (despite very little attempt to overthrow it) blip in history which was doomed never to work as the french people would always fight for a republic which, in fact, didn't pan out in reality.
true but that was several generations removed already and WWI I assume probably overshadowed memories of the Affair. Dreyfus affair was also within the framework of the third republic over the life of a single person and it was settled within this same system, though by dubious means (presidential pardon). It did reveal an underlying antisemitism in french society, which might have shocked some, but it didn't shake the foundations of society and the values people invested in it. It was also in the context of the final stage of the cultural wars between the French state and the Catholic Church which the former effectively won.

Considering the Dreyfus Affair was only resolved in 1910 I'd imagine the Jews weren't exactly ecstatic about any French government

Everything you claim about France applies ten times more to every single country other than France, making your post completely irrelevant.

you're gonna have to provide proof. I don't doubt that as my excerpts say, that the french jewish community became assertive, probably offensively assertive to many who didn't want to bring out the skelies in the closet and who thought that the attention came to focus on them too much, but this doesn't presuppose a presence in the media.
i never said that france is more anti-semitic than others. can you read?

France was one of the rare countries where Jews had full equal rights as French citizens, where half the country took the defence of some random incompetent Jewish captain, and where even the reactionary semi-fascist Vichy government protected the French Jews from deportation and from the Holocaust.

Name one fucking country where the Jews would have less reason to complain.

Literally switch on French TV and over 50% of the people you see will be Jewish, holy fuck.

Have you ever heard of "whataboutism"? Cause that's what you're doing. We're not talking about other countries: we're talking about France in a thread dedicated to discussing the post-war legacy of Vichy. You have disproven nothing in my post and so you also don't have the authority to say that my post is "irrelevant"

Your claims about France are like claiming that Australia is a Northern country. Pointing out that just about every other country in the world is farther North than Australia isn't "whataboutism", it disproves your stupid claim.

that's anecdotal evidence. give me some data please

>the reactionary semi-fascist Vichy government protected the French Jews from deportation and from the Holocaust.
not true whatsoever

you're doing it again, but this time with a sloppy analogy. the fact is that france had a troubled legacy from world war 2, just like all those other countries did. But were focusing on FRANCE, not those countries.

I think this will help you
>Tu quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwiː/;[1] Latin for, "you also") or the appeal to hypocrisy is an informal logical fallacy that intends to discredit the validity of the opponent's logical argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).

>that's anecdotal evidence. give me some data please
The French government doesn't keep a database of Jews in the media you /pol/tard.

>not true whatsoever
Almost no French Jews whatsoever were deported in France. Vichy assisted the deportation of immigrant Jews in exchange for protection for French Jews.

No other government did this. This is why in all other occupied countries the Jewish death rate is between 60% and 95% rather than France's 26%. And it's why all those French Jews are still around today.

>the fact is that france had a troubled legacy from world war 2, just like all those other countries did. But were focusing on FRANCE, not those countries.
The fact that France was by far the best occupied country to be a Jew in invalidates all your whining, as well as the tireless propaganda aimed at passing off France as the main culprit for the Holocaust.

In the 30-40, french were in the same political position of pre-nazi germany, near civil war state, if hitler wasn't an autist and put some propaganda and good diplomatie, he could have a facist france within the axis.

nice deflection, /pol/ack. You're the one insisting that jews control french media

>Almost no French Jews whatsoever were deported in France. Vichy assisted the deportation of immigrant Jews in exchange for protection for French Jews.
Did you even read the excerpts above? Historians have shown that this is absolutely false. Vichy didn't care about Jews, but it had no problem seizing properties of jews in tunisia and other north african possessions among other things. And it neither shielded nor distinguished between french and foreign jews. If anybody it was Italian officials who were the heroes here.

> all your whining,
or, as regular people call it, debating a point with facts. the use of this tells me that you have nothing left but to resort to adhominems because you have nothing more to argue.
> tireless propaganda aimed at passing off France as the main culprit for the Holocaust.
lmao /pol/. I never said that, at all. You're deliberately twisting my words and exaggerating them because you know you're wrong. all you have left is trying to elicit crocodile tears for the lurkers reading this argument.
Wanting to keep the discussion on france is not the same thing as claiming that france was the "main culprit of the holocaust"

you may want to check this thread to see vichy france's attitude toward the jews and why so many survived. hint: it wasn't because of vichy
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5utski/why_did_more_jews_in_france_survive_the_holocaust/

>You're the one insisting that jews control french media
hurrrrrrr

>And it neither shielded nor distinguished between french and foreign jews.
But it did you shithead. French Jews were spared, you just can't seem to tell the difference between French citizens and immigrants.

>I never said that, at all.
You're singling out France as being somehow especially evil while it's a indisputable historical fact that it was the best place to be a Jew in occupied Europe. This is the same attitude that has become dogma in America, France, and elsewhere since the 1970s, which consists in blaming the Holocaust almost solely on France.

>But it did you shithead. French Jews were spared, you just can't seem to tell the difference between French citizens and immigrants.
equal amounts of immigrants and french jews were deported retard

>You're the one insisting that jews control french media
no proof, no argument

>You're singling out France as being somehow especially evil while it's a indisputable historical fact
This thread is about France and the legacy of Vichy, which is why we are talking about the Holocaust in France. To mention other nations is irrelevant at the moment, but if you were to make another thread on that I'd happily join it. drop the persecution complex.

> it's a indisputable historical fact that it was the best place to be a Jew in occupied Europe
correlation does not mean causation. in other words, just because it was the safest place in europe does not mean this was a consequence of Vichy, which passed anti-semitic policies and used its own state apparatus to track and deport jews. it just so happens that the Italians owned parts of franc after the French defeat and many jews fled here. When this collapsed in 1943 with the fascist regime jews started hiding in southern france, whose rugged terrain makes it easy to hide in. If there had not been Vichy, another puppet state would have taken its place in history: The Nazis allowed Vichy to happen because they didnt want to expend manpower holding the interior of france and because the vichy regime complied with german industrial demands.

Petain did nothing wrong!

youtube.com/watch?v=aSRPGrvgb4w

>equal amounts of immigrants and french jews were deported retard
But that's wrong you cockgobbling faggot.

>>You're the one insisting that jews control french media
You're the one insisting that Jews control American media.

>To mention other nations is irrelevant
France doesn't exist in a vacuum dipshit. If you're going to cowardly judge people from the past you have to at least compare them to what other people did in similar situations, otherwise your snide contempt is utterly meaningless.

>but if you were to make another thread on that I'd happily join it
And yet there are NEVER threads about any country's collaboration or participation in the Holocaust, except for ONE, which gets shat on for it pretty much non-stop.

>Vichy, which passed anti-semitic policies and used its own state apparatus to track and deport jews.
Foreign Jews, and again, this was a trade-off for the protection of French Jews.

Treason is a quick road to execution, so they had nothing to lose

They were volunteers, and they kept fighting after all other units had surrendered.

I love petain

Yes that's the point, had they been conscripted they would be PoWs, but as volunteers, they would be quickly executed for treason

i don't care desu

To be more clear i don't care how many kikes died, you can try to "white guilt" me but it will not work, achmed

Read all these articles if you want accounts of the Fall of France written at the time it happened:

books.google.ca/books?id=iEkEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA68&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=ZVEEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA9&dq=fall france&pg=PA9#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=1D8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&dq=french collapse&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q&f=true
books.google.ca/books?id=9VAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&dq=french collapse&pg=PA75#v=onepage&q&f=true

>But that's wrong you cockgobbling faggot.
ok reading up it looks like 1/3 who died were french jews

> If you're going to cowardly judge people from the past you have to at least compare them to what other people did in similar situations
Yes I believe comparison is helpful, but to point to other worse examples to avoid talking about the french context is disingenuous to me

>You're the one insisting that Jews control American media.
I said they had a presence in media. I never said that they controlled it, which is why the holocaust gets more attention here in the States. i'm not saying its good or evil its just the state of things here.

>And yet there are NEVER threads about any country's collaboration or participation in the Holocaust, except for ONE, which gets shat on for it pretty much non-stop.
well I'm sorry that france always happens to be the target, i never make threads about france desu

it has nothing to do with jews as a category or "white guilt." it has to do with the fact that a group of individuals was rounded up not on legal grounds or in harmony with the universalist principles of the french revolution, but on the grounds that their heritage and physical features determined whether they be treated as citizens or not. This is what we call "arbitrary rule" and the undermining the rule of law in one arena, in this case against the jews, was a symptom of the tightening of everyone's civil liberties, as was quite clear in Nazi germany in the 1930s for example. And I never said you had to feel guilty. All I said was that the Jews are allowed to air their grievances, whether it falls on open ears or not. Other groups besides the Jews had just as much right to have justice, too. But since you have a /ppol/ack mind you see everything in black and white.

>but it will not work, achmed
ironic, considering that the jewish and muslim communities in france are at each other's throats.

>Foreign Jews, and again, this was a trade-off for the protection of French Jews.
I find it hard to believe that a regime that identified the jew as an alien body, no matter where his or her origin, reconciled that with a humanitarian sentiment to protect the nation's jews. It's possible that individual officials worked according to the things you state. Looking at the literature it looks like the verdict is still out whether vichy surpassed the minimum required by the nazis. at best, though, the regime was benign to the jews and I suspect that the government only protected jews insofar as they had the legal status of french citizens, making the handing over of jews an issue of sovereignty, not a matter of whether the deporting the jews themselves was wrong.

this pic is also illuminating. what is the difference between a jewish exile from central europe and a jewish exile who became naturalized in the 1930s, as half of "french jews" had done?

hmm read it wrong. only a fifth of naturalized jews were from central europe

>ok reading up it looks like 1/3 who died were french jews
More bullshit.

>but to point to other worse examples to avoid talking about the french context is disingenuous to me
lmao and talking about how horrible France was while neglecting to mention that it was the least bad of all by a huge margin isn't?

>I said they had a presence in media.
And they don't in French media? This is retarded beyond words.

Naturalised means acquiring citizenship...

this. No frenchman really resisted the germans. This is all made up because de Gaulle was assblasted by the frenchmen's incompetence and cowardice

>More bullshit.
look at the picture in that post. you have not once provided any evidence for your statements.

>talking about how horrible France was while neglecting...
i'll keep repeating it. if this thread were about another country's experience in wwii i'd be posting here. but this thread is about vichy france so we're talking about france. you're getting butthurt, however, that anything bad is said about france for whatever reason.

>And they don't in French media? This is retarded beyond words.
You're going in circles. I already said if you can provide me proof of that, then I'd believe you. But you made up a lame excuse so I assume your making your judgement based on anecdotal evidence and your base emotions.

I know that. I'm saying that a fifth of "French" jews were in fact indistinguishable from the refugees that that user is insisting were deported to protect the French jews from the same fate. But if these citizens are of basically the same extraction, why couldn't the Vichy government grant these immigrants asylum status or temporary citizenship?

posting there*

>look at the picture in that post.
There was no picture in that post.

>I already said if you can provide me proof of that
How about you provide proof that Jews have a presence in American media.

> But if these citizens are of basically the same extraction, why couldn't the Vichy government grant these immigrants asylum status or temporary citizenship?*
Because this isn't a fucking racial issue but one of citizenship. What the fuck does "extraction" have to do with anything?

>There was no picture in that post.
the picture about the death tolls of jews in the post you were replying to

>How about you provide proof that Jews have a presence in American media.
from a simple google search
articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/19/opinion/oe-stein19
not everything holds today though i bet

I didn't say that they were effective, only that they were there.

why is this post still here 12 hours later?

Fuck yeah, if you have it.