FROM 1944 TO 2024, SHARING THE SPIRIT OF DEFENCE
By exploring these Resistance figures and episodes, we can better understand how these men and women sought to strengthen French national cohesion, which had been damaged by the German invasion and the collaboration of part of the country with the enemy. To do this, they contributed to the strategic thinking led by the leader of the Free French, General de Gaulle. Eight decades later, their courageous exploits are still part of the defence culture that the IHEDN is tasked with promoting.
JACQUES BINGEN, A FORGOTTEN HERO OF THE LIBERATION
Although the landings and fighting in the summer of 1944 were supported by the silent work of the "stokers of glory" (Pierre Brossolette) and the "army of shadows" (Joseph Kessel), Jacques Bingen is undoubtedly one of those for whom posterity has been the least generous. He died at the age of 34, on 12 May 1944, and did not live to see the "great, bloody and marvellous adventure" for which he had worked so hard, nor will he be able to take part in the reconstruction of the country, on which he was working so hard at the time of his death. However, among the martyrs of the Resistance, his aura is eclipsed by that of Pierre Brossolette or Jean Moulin, of whom he was a friend and one of the men they trusted during the few months they spent together.
From the arms industry to London
Jacques Bingen was born in 1908 into a Jewish family of Italian origin. A graduate of the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques and the Ecole des Mines, he turned to a career in business in the 1930s: brother-in-law of carmaker André Citroën, with whom he worked, he was also an important figure in the arms industry. He was mobilised and wounded at Saint-Valéry-en-Caux at the height of the debacle in June 1940, and made his way to Gibraltar where, with his friend Claude Bouchinet-Serreulles, the choice was obvious: London rather than New York, because "we won't sleep peacefully as long as we know our country is under the enemy's boot". There were not many administrators among the first Free French, so Bingen's contribution was invaluable. Presented to General de Gaulle on 23 July, he took charge of the Free French merchant navy in September 1940, implementing the De Gaulle/Churchill agreements in this area.
At the origins of the CNR, alongside Jean Moulin
However, from June 1942, Bingen wanted to "serve dangerously" and joined the "non-military" section of BCRA, the Gaullist intelligence service. His task was to receive and direct the mass of information coming from mainland France: it was in this context that he made contact with Jean Moulin, and began to think about a way of uniting the various components of the Resistance. From early 1943, the two men came together to devise a Resistance steering committee, which would become the Conseil national de la Résistance (CNR) on 27 May 1943. Bingen's work did not stop there: involved in drafting the CNR programme, he gave an idea of his vision of a France to be rebuilt for the post-war period, based on solidarity and led by an efficient state.
"My happy vision of this heavenly period of hell".
Parachuted into metropolitan France on 16 August 1943, after Moulin's arrest, Bingen accomplished a Herculean task: delegate for the southern zone, then general delegate for the Resistance in the early months of 1944, he managed to provide the Resistance with essential bodies (including the financial committee and the committee for immediate action, essential for coordinating the sabotage that made the landings possible) and encouraged the regrouping of the armed components into the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI) in February 1944. During these months, during which he would write that he experienced "unprecedented happiness, a feeling of fulfilment and accomplishment" despite the daily risks, he rubbed shoulders with the future leaders of the reconstruction movement, Michel Debré, Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Gaston Deferre, all of whom would testify to the painful nature of his early death, "contrary to his destiny".
Made a Companion of the Liberation on 31 March (De Gaulle insisted on "all the extensions contained in the word and the thing"), Bingen was betrayed and caught near Clermont Ferrand on 12 May. To "run no risk", he swallowed a cyanide pill. In one of his last letters, when he sensed that his end was near, he accepted this choice in advance ("No suffering can ever prevail over the joy that I have known for so long"), before paying tribute to his comrades in arms, "who have greatly contributed to my happy vision of this paradisiacal period of hell".
ÉLISABETH DE MIRIBEL, GENERAL LECLERC AND THE LIBERATION OF PARIS
Élisabeth de Miribel was one of those French women whose lives were transformed by the war. Employed in London at the embassy's economic mission at the start of the conflict, she refused to return to France when the armistice was announced on 17 June. That same day, she was contacted by a childhood friend, Geoffroy de Courcel, General de Gaulle's orderly. Joining the two men in their small flat in Saint-Stephen's House, she had the historic task of typing on her English typewriter the pages on which the appeal of 18 June was drawn up, with the "obscure premonition of taking part in an exceptional event". Élisabeth de Miribel's destiny was mapped out: she became the General's private secretary, before being sent to Quebec in 1942 to rally Canadians to the Free French cause.
A woman on a mission, from Canada to Algiers
Élisabeth de Miribel maintained a direct and personal relationship with the General, who told her how much he appreciated her "noble and useful efforts" at a time when you had to "carry the mountain on your back". Eager "to get closer to the action", as "the dawn began to whiten over France", she went to Algiers in September 1943, then to the Italian front where, as a war correspondent, she covered the terrible fighting at Monte Cassino.
General Leclerc's challenge
When she came across General Leclerc, she asked him to follow her division, the 2nd armoured division. "I don't want to be bothered with journalists, let alone women", he replied, "but we'll make a bet: if you manage to join me in France, I'll keep you". To keep her bet, Élisabeth de Miribel pulled out all the stops and asked General de Gaulle to intervene. Her audacity paid off: on 30 July, she flew to London, then to France with Maurice Schuman. In this "rediscovered" country, where downed aircraft and shell craters rubbed shoulders with farmers returning from harvest, she met up with Leclerc in the gardens of the Alençon prefecture. "It was a gamble," the general conceded. As Élisabeth de Miribel's writings did not have American approval for publication, they did not enjoy the same worldwide circulation as those of her colleagues. However, no other press correspondent followed the Liberation of Paris so closely.
A look at the Liberation of Paris
From 16 to 25 August, Élisabeth de Miribel followed the 2nd armoured division "relentlessly" on its way to Paris, "a mixture of war and 14 July". Joy and tragedy mingled: as they entered Antony, a young girl recognised her brother standing on a tank. She rushes to embrace him, but a German shot from a window kills her. Two young soldiers were shot dead by ambushers a hundred metres from the place where the crowd had carried them in triumph a few minutes earlier. It was not until two days later that Élisabeth de Miribel reported on the "tears rolling down the cheeks of the old warriors from Chad and the feverish people who had waited so long for them". "It was the unforgettable encounter between France and its soldiers", she concluded, "the dark complexion of the soldiers contrasted with the emaciated faces of the resistance fighters, but the same fire animated their gazes". However, nothing is over yet: many of the soldiers who experienced these moments in history would lose their lives a few days or weeks later, during the fighting in Eastern France.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE VERCORS MAQUIS
Behind the term "maquis", several realities of civil and military resistance succeeded one another throughout the war. In 1940, the less easily accessible areas of France (mountainous, rural) were used as places of retreat, particularly for persecuted minorities, but the introduction of the STO (Obligatory Labour Service) changed all that. As historian Fabrice Grenard points out, the influx of draft dodgers from the spring of 1943 led Resistance leaders to consider the possibility of turning them into armed combatants. After complex debates, it was in the summer of 1943 that a structure was put in place and resources and weapons began to flow into the maquis.
The Vercors, a French fortress
Undoubtedly one of the most impenetrable areas of mainland France, the Vercors served as a place of retreat from the summer of 1940, mainly for Jewish populations fleeing Paris and schools that took over the tourist infrastructure. A military organisation began to take shape in the spring of 1942, based around "francs-tireurs" groups and political circles close to the underground SFIO. The reception structure was therefore already in place when many young people who had refused to leave for Germany as part of the STO. From early 1943, the establishment of scattered camps and the "Montagnards" project to militarise the plateau, in particular with airstrips, made the Vercors a structured area, breaking with the more flexible and reticular tactics of other maquis.
The role of the maquis in the landings
With the link established with London, as part of the Secret Army, the maquis embodied a local political legitimacy that was an alternative to that of the Vichy regime. Clashes with German troops and, above all, the Milice began in January 1944. But there was also the question of their military role in the landings: the aim was to increase the number of places of uprising, to distract the German forces and prevent them from concentrating in Normandy. At the same time, this role gave Free France military, and therefore political, clout with the Allies. On 5 June, Radio Londres broadcast the message: "The Chamois of the Alps is on the move". The maquisards, joined by a large number of volunteers, took over the plateau and liberated it, setting up an administration in the "Provisional Republic of the Vercors", which enjoyed widespread support from the local population.
A tragic outcome, but one that will help ensure ultimate success
However, arms were in short supply and Allied parachute drops were insufficient, just as preparations were underway for the Provence landings. The German offensive, the most massive ever launched against the Resistance, began in mid-July: bombing raids, parachute and Alpine fighter offensives, two days of fighting marked by atrocities affecting civilians in particular, and the maquis was forced to disperse. The fighting claimed the lives of almost 1,000 Maquis and civilians alike. Although the strategy of an early "anchor point" was debated, as the Free French had no air resources of their own to support the Vercors, General de Gaulle made the commune at the heart of the maquis, Vassieux-en-Vercors, a Companion of the Liberation on 4 August 1945, in recognition of the price of its sacrifice and the part played by French combatants in the liberation of the region.
