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Un grand nombre d’exécutions mystérieuses

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The deaths of three members of a resistance network in July-August 1944 intrigued the police. The investigation, conducted a few months later by agents of Commissioner Clot's ”special section”, revealed the strange role played by the thugs of the ”Gestapo of Rue Lauriston” and certain agents of the ”Marco Polo” network.

Le procès de la chambre des députés : les sacrifiés

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Photographies anthropométriques de F. Zalkinow, P. Milan, A. Semahya, C. Rizo, R. Hanlet et T. Bloncourt. © Archives de la Préfecture de police

After the French Communist Party (PCF) joined the ”armed struggle”, the occupier reinforced its policy of repression. The judicial process became more radical. From summer 1941, arrested members of communist armed groups were judged by German military tribunals and sentenced, usually to death. This was the context in which the trial of the young communist irregulars of the 11th arrondissement took place.

La Marseillaise : a song of war, a song of freedom

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Bernard RICHARD - La Marseillaise, chant de guerre, chant de liberté

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Mauvaise nouvelle de France

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General Delestraint, November 1943. © SHD

The German services had been on the trail of senior Armée secrète officers since spring 1943. The investigation quickly took them to the La Muette metro station and to Caluire as they reached the top of the ”shadow army”'s leadership structure. After the arrests of General Delestraint, the head of the AS, and Joseph Gastaldo, the deputy chief of staff and head of the 2nd bureau, in Paris on 9 June 1943, the telegram from Claude Bouchinet-Serreules to London reveals the scale of the latest haul by the SIPO-SD and the Abwehr twelve days later, in Caluire.

From Klaus Barbie to Klaus Altmann

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In the national memory, Klaus Barbie has two faces. From the Occupation to the 1970s, he was the man who decapitated the French Resistance by arresting Jean Moulin on 21 June 1943. Between 1970 and 1980, he was seen more as a cog in the Final Solution in France, who had deported thousands of Jews from France, including the children of the Izieu children's home, a crime against humanity for which he was finally tried and condemned in 1987.

After the Liberation, rebuild a country in ruins ...

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... The destruction of war affected every part of the country. Assessing this destruction was entrusted to a Committee on the Cost of the Occupation, set up on 21 October, 1944 and which a year later became the Consultative Damages and Reparations Commission.

Le Gouillonneys, mine clearers on the dunes, 1946. © Ministry of equipment

Lorient. ©Private coll. - Dunkirk, 20/07/1945. - Brest, Visit of General de Gaulle, 26/07/1945. ©ECPAD

Remembrance site brochures

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La Fontenelle National Cemetery Credit: © Olivier Gilquin / ECPAD

The DPMA and the National Office for Veterans and War Victims (ONAC-VG), responsible for maintaining remembrance sites, present a full tourism offering around the remembrance sites and national military cemeteries managed by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the French State’s number-two cultural actor.

French remembrance sites attracted nearly 14 million visitors in 2018, including one third foreign tourists and over a million schoolchildren.

In the name of the German people !

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The German military tribunals constitute one of the primary instruments of repression and intimidation in the system of occupation established by the invader in France between 1940 and 1944. Long considered the poor relation in historical research due to the very patchy nature of the sources available, the history of this repression with a legal face has recently benefited from a renewed landscape of archives.

Questions to Jean Tulard: From one regime to another.

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The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David - This scene shows the moment when Napoleon takes the imperial crown from the hands of Pius VII to place it on his wife's head the Empress Josephine.
The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David - This scene shows the moment when Napoleon takes the imperial crown from the hands of Pius VII to place it on his wife's head the Empress Josephine.

The Song of the Partisans

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Manuscrit original du Chant des partisans rédigé par Maurice Druon et Joseph Kessel. Source : Musée de la Légion d’honneur.
Manuscrit original du Chant des partisans rédigé par Maurice Druon et Joseph Kessel. Source : Musée de la Légion d’honneur.

1914: a demographically weakened France

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Image published in the Hachette Almanac in 1908. Source: Author's document.
Image published in the Hachette Almanac in 1908. Source: Author's document.

What was the demographic situation of France as it entered into war on 3rd August 1914? For several centuries, right up to the 1860s, France was the most populated country in Europe, even ahead of Russia at certain times. Then, mainly due to the effect of a low birth rate at the end of the 18th century, when France entered into war it occupied fifth position in demographic terms in Europe, behind Russia, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and Great Britain, closely followed by Italy. In 1914, the population of France was still very rural, stagnant and ageing. The 1914 war struck a country which was struggling demographically. The enforced effort was huge, and the consequences after the war weighed heavy.

The liberation of Marseille

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The FFI (Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur), which played a large role in the liberation of Marseille, parade on the Quai des Belges. August 1944. Source: ECPAD
The FFI (Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur), which played a large role in the liberation of Marseille, parade on the Quai des Belges. August 1944. Source: ECPAD

French civilian victims of the Battle of Normandy

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Saint-Lô, 95% destroyed after the bombardments of 1944, called the Capital of Ruins. Source: Basse-Normandie Regional Council / National Archives USA
Saint-Lô, 95% destroyed after the bombardments of 1944, called the Capital of Ruins. Source: Basse-Normandie Regional Council / National Archives USA

World War II, unlike World War I, was very deadly for civilians. In France, nearly 400,000 civilians were killed between 1939 and 1945.

Liberation of Grenoble

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Operation “1000 Trees for Cemeteries”

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Vignemont National Cemetery (Oise department) - Source : MINDEF/SGA/DMPA-ONACVG

Chantiers de la jeunesse

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Maréchal Pétain inspecting a group of Chantiers de Jeunesse leaders. Source: Private collection.
Maréchal Pétain inspecting a group of Chantiers de Jeunesse leaders. Source: Private collection.

China in the First World War

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Near Blangy, Pas-de-Calais, arrival of Chinese workers. May 1918. Source: Photographer: Albert Moreau. ECPAD
Near Blangy, Pas-de-Calais, arrival of Chinese workers. May 1918. Source: Photographer: Albert Moreau. ECPAD

The 1st Free French Division (DFL)

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Parade of FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur) troops in liberated Dijon. From 23 September 1944, many FFI joined the 1st French Army. Source: SCA – ECPAD
Parade of FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur) troops in liberated Dijon. From 23 September 1944, many FFI joined the 1st French Army. Source: SCA – ECPAD

The 1st DFL (Free French Division) was officially created in June 1942, but some of the units making it up had already been fighting since the start of the war, and all were made up of men who fought constantly since 1939. They were motivated by the famous words of General de Gaulle's appeal of 18 June.

The French illustrated press during the First World War

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Le Pays de France, août 1914. Source : Libre de droit

Printemps 1918 : les offensives allemandes

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Brothers in arms on Mount Kemmel: a French colonel and two English colonels surrounded by officers from their regiments