France is considered one of the full-fledged countries - the victors of German Nazism, along with the Soviet Union, the USA, Great Britain. But in reality, the contribution of the French to the struggle against Nazi Germany is largely overestimated.
How France fought
By the time the Second World War began, France was considered one of the strongest countries in Europe, along with Germany and Great Britain. By the time the Nazis invaded France, the French army numbered more than 2 million personnel, included 86 divisions, was armed with 3,609 tanks, 1,700 artillery pieces and had 1,400 aircraft. Germany had 89 divisions on the French border, that is, the forces of the parties were comparable.
On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded France, and on May 25, the commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, General Maxime Weygand, at a government meeting, announced that it was necessary to ask for surrender. On June 14, 1940, the Germans entered Paris, and on June 22, 1940, France officially surrendered. One of the largest European powers with dozens of colonies in Africa, Asia, America and Oceania lasted only 40 days. More than a million soldiers were taken prisoner, 84 thousand were killed.
On July 10, 1940, two months after the German attack, a pro-Hitler puppet government was formed in France, approved by the National Assembly in the city of Vichy. It was headed by the 84-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, one of the oldest French military leaders, who received the rank of Marshal in 1918. Shortly before the surrender of France, Pétain became deputy chairman of the French government. Pétain fully supported Hitler in exchange for control of southern France.
The northern part remained occupied by German troops. The Vichy government, named after the city in which it was formed, controlled the situation in most of the French colonies. So, under the control of the Vichy were the most important colonies in North Africa and Indochina - Algeria and Vietnam. The Vichy government deported at least 75,000 French Jews to death camps, and thousands of French people fought on the side of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.
Of course, not all French people were collaborators. After the surrender of France, the national committee of General Charles de Gaulle, operating from London, launched its activities. French military units obeyed him, who did not want to serve the Vichy regime. On the territory of France itself, a partisan and underground movement developed.
But it is worth noting that the contribution of the French Resistance to the war against Nazi Germany was incomparable with the contribution that the Vichy government and the part of France controlled by the Nazis made in equipping the Wehrmacht with weapons, in providing it with food, uniforms, and equipment. Almost all the industrial capacities of France until its liberation worked for the needs of Nazi Germany.
During the period from 1940 to 1944 France supplied 4,000 aircraft and 10,000 aircraft engines for the needs of the Luftwaffe. German planes with French engines bombed Soviet cities. More than 52 thousand trucks manufactured in France made up a significant part of the vehicle fleet of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops.
French military factories uninterruptedly supplied Germany with mortars, howitzers, and armored vehicles. And French workers worked at these enterprises. Millions of French men did not even think of rebelling against the Nazis. Yes, there were some strikes, but they could not be compared with the real struggle waged in the occupied territories by the inhabitants of the Soviet Union or, say, Yugoslavia.
In the Soviet Union, Donbass miners flooded mines so that the Nazi invaders could not use coal, and in France, the most they could do was to hold a strike - no, not against the supply of weapons to the front, but for an increase in wages. That is, they were, in principle, ready to work on building up the power of the German army, but for a little more money!
Fighting France is associated with us, for example, with the famous Normandie-Niemen air regiment. The pilots of the Normandy-Niemen are real heroes, fearless guys who gave their lives fighting in the skies over the Soviet Union against Hitler's aviation. But we understand that there were very few pilots of the Normandy-Niemen. But thousands of French fought as part of the volunteer formations of the Wehrmacht and the SS. As a result of the war, 23,136 French citizens who served in various units and subdivisions of the SS and the Wehrmacht were in Soviet captivity. And how many thousands of Frenchmen were not taken prisoner, how many thousands died on Soviet soil, where did they come with fire and sword in the rump of the Nazi invaders?
By the way, the French historian Jean-François Murachchol estimates the strength of the Free French Forces - the armed wing of the Free France - at 73,300 people. But the actual French among them were only 39 thousand 300 people - not much more than the number of French in Soviet captivity and clearly less than the number of French troops who fought on the side of Nazi Germany. The rest of the fighters of the Free French Forces were represented by Africans and Arabs from the French colonies (about 30 thousand people) and foreigners of various origins who served in the Foreign Legion or joined the Free French on their own initiative.
Who were the famous French partisans
Books and films are being made about the "poppies" movement. Famous French partisans … But the French were in an absolute minority among them. And would the ethnic French start creating partisan units with names like Donbass or Kotovsky? The main part of the French partisan resistance was made up of Soviet prisoners of war who escaped from prisoner of war camps in Western Europe, Spanish revolutionaries who moved to France - the remnants of revolutionary detachments defeated by Francisco Franco's troops, German anti-fascists, as well as British and American military intelligence officers thrown into the rear to the Nazis.
Only American intelligence officers were thrown into France 375 people, another 393 people were agents of Great Britain. The deployment of agents took on such proportions that in 1943 the United States and Great Britain developed the entire reserve of intelligence officers who spoke French. After that, groups of 1 Englishman, 1 American and 1 Frenchman who spoke English and acted as a translator began to be thrown.
Former Soviet prisoners of war, who formed the basis of numerous partisan detachments named after the heroes of the Civil War and Soviet cities, fought most fiercely. Thus, the "Stalingrad" detachment was commanded by Lieutenant Georgy Ponomarev. France still remembers the names of Georgy Kitaev and Fyodor Kozhemyakin, Nadezhda Lisovets and other heroic Soviet soldiers.
Among the participants in the Resistance were representatives of the Russian emigration, for example - the legendary Vicki, Vera Obolenskaya - the wife of Prince Nikolai Obolensky. In the underground, Vicki was involved in organizing the escape of British prisoners of war, was responsible for communication between underground groups. Her life ended tragically - she was arrested by the Gestapo and executed on August 4, 1944 in Berlin. The song of the Partisans became the anthem of the Resistance, and was written by Anna Yurievna Smirnova-Marly (née Betulinskaya), also an emigrant from Russia.
A huge contribution to the organization of the partisan struggle against the Nazi invaders was made by Jews - French and immigrants from other countries, who created a number of their own underground groups in France, as well as were present in most international partisan formations. An underground network "Strong Hand" was created, on the basis of which the whole "Jewish Army" was formed. In Lyon, Toulouse, Paris, Nice and other cities of France, underground Jewish groups operated, engaged in sabotage in warehouses, the destruction of Hitler's secret services' sexotes, theft and destruction of lists of Jews.
A large number of people of Armenian origin lived on the territory of France, so it is not surprising that groups of partisans and underground fighters - ethnic Armenians - also appeared.
The name of Misak Manushyan, an Armenian anti-fascist who managed to escape from the Nazi concentration camp and create his own underground group, is inscribed in gold letters in the history of France. Unfortunately, Misak was also captured by the Gestapo and executed on February 21, 1944. Misak Manushyan's group included 2 Armenians, 11 Jews (7 Polish, 3 Hungarian Jews and 1 Bessarabian Jewess), 5 Italians, 1 Spaniard and only 3 French.
In the Nazi camp, the writer Luiza Srapionovna Aslanyan (Grigoryan), who took an active part in the Resistance Movement along with her husband Arpiar Levonovich Aslanyan, was killed (he also died under strange circumstances in a Nazi concentration camp - either he was killed or died from torture).
On August 22, 1944, near the city of La Madeleine, a detachment of French partisans "Poppies" attacked a German column retreating from Marseilles. The column consisted of 1,300 soldiers and officers, 6 tanks, 2 self-propelled artillery pieces, 60 trucks. The partisans managed to blow up the bridge and the road. Then they began shelling the convoy with machine guns. For a whole day, the Germans, who had an absolute superiority in numbers, fought with a small partisan detachment. As a result, 110 German soldiers and only 3 partisans were killed. Are the heroes of the French partisans? Indisputably. Yes, only the French in the detachment were only 4 people, and the remaining 32 fearless anti-fascists were Spanish by nationality.
The total number of French partisans was about 20-25 thousand people. And this is in a country with over 40 million people! And this is if we take into account that 3 thousand partisans were citizens of the Soviet Union, and many thousands more were ethnic Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, who, by the will of fate, ended up in France and often gave their lives for its liberation from the Nazi invaders.
Isn't the laurels of the victorious country heavy for France?
As for the French themselves, an absolute minority of the country's inhabitants joined the partisan movement. Millions of French citizens continued to work regularly, to carry out their official duties, as if nothing had happened. Thousands of Frenchmen went to fight on the Eastern Front, served in the colonial troops, obeying the collaborationist Vichy regime, and did not think about resisting the invaders.
This suggests the conclusion that, on the whole, the French population was not so burdened by life under the rule of Nazi Germany. But is it possible then, in this case, to consider France among one of the countries - the victors of fascism? After all, the same Serbs or Greeks made a much more significant contribution to the victory over the Nazi invaders. In small New Zealand, 10% of the country's male population died on the fronts of World War II, fighting against Japanese and German troops, although no one occupied New Zealand.
Therefore, even if the German field marshal Wilhelm Keitel did not say the words that are attributed to him - "And what, we also lost to the French?", Then they clearly should have been said. As such, France's contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany was simply not there, since the Vichy regime supported the Nazis. If we are talking about individual Frenchmen who fought in the ranks of the Resistance, then there were many real heroes - anti-fascists of German or Spanish nationality, but no one is talking about Spain's contribution to the fight against Nazism or Germany's participation in the victory over itself.
