For more than a century, army photographers and cameramen (and operators) have produced a record—employing the technical equipment available to them and toeing the ministerial line—of the conflicts that affected their contemporaries at the time and continue to affect society today. Their news images broadcast through every media channel, from the written press to the Internet, have depicted the course of our modern history and kept the memory of our dedicated troops alive. While the French military authorities knew the benefits of photography since the technology first appeared in the 1830s, they did not immediately jump on it as a means of representing the strategy and supporting the instruction of troops. In 1895, the Lumière brothers patented the Cinématographe, a combination film camera and projector.

In 1915, the French army engaged in the First World War established, as did the German army, two units dedicated to taking still and moving images of its operations: the army photography unit and the army cinematographic unit. From that point on, the military authorities profited from these technological innovations to take and produce, in times of war as well as of peace, photographs and films that helped relay their message and document their history.

Banned image: German prisoner amongst the infantrymen, at "La Fauvette", Talou region in Meuse, 20 August 1917.
© Albert Samama-Chikli / ECPAD / Défense

ON THE FRONT OF THE GREAT WAR

In May 1915, four French ministries—the War, Foreign Affairs, National Education and Fine Arts ministries—joined forces to create the Army Photography Unit or Section photographique des armées (SPA) following the enemy’s example. The photographers were a mix of conscripted civilians who worked for photography companies affiliated with the national photography trade association and servicemen. The Army Cinematography Unit or Section cinématographique des armées (SCA), established at the same time, was run by four major French production companies involved in producing newsreels: Gaumont, Pathé, Éclair and Éclipse.

In 1917, the French War Ministry turned producer and sole distributor after both units were merged into one and named the Army Photography and Cinematography Unit (SPCA). Its mission was threefold: to produce images for the purpose of propaganda, primarily through newsreels; build up the historical archives, and create content for the military archives. At the front, photographers and cameramen worked in concert. Their actions were under rigorous supervision. They were only permitted to travel by order of the War Ministry or the French army general headquarters and were always chaperoned by a staff officer. It would be the operator’s responsibility to transport with him the photographic or film camera, tripod, and cellulose nitrate reels or glass plates. The filming conditions and strict supervision somewhat encumbered by heavy equipment meant that the unit primarily ‘shot’ the battle adjacent: the ferrying of the troops or artillery, the wounded, the prisoners and the camps. Images of the front and the injured were not shown until after the French victory.

Germaine Kanova, SCA photographer, carrying a Rolleiflex, Bade-Würtemberg, 11 April 1945
© ECPAD/Défense

At the start of the war, the equipment was supplied by civilian production companies and later the cameras were hired. Each operator would send his negatives to the production company he worked for, which would then develop and print the films. The prints would be mounted and annotated on boards and the photographs captioned before being presented to the military censorship commission. Any photos or footage of the dead or wounded, frequently taken by camera operators such as Pierre Machard and Albert Samama-Chikli, were prohibited by the censorship commission lest they weaken national morale. Photographers and cameramen in the SPCA were interested in every aspect of the Great War. However, the distribution of their images was strictly regulated. While not every image was destined for public distribution, all photography and footage had to be archived. Censorship was exercised at the point of distribution.

During the interwar period, and at the time of the Spanish Civil War in particular, the war reporter, such as Robert Capa or Gerda Taro, became a familiar figure in civilian life. At a time when the illustrated press was growing in popularity, the political impact of published photos became sensitive to public opinion. Conscious of this shift and helped by the technical development of cameras, which became lighter and more easily transportable, photojournalists sought to get as close to the action as they could. However, exposure to risk was just as prevalent, especially owing to their restricted field of view when looking through the lens. Nevertheless, risking their life to capture images was an occupational hazard they willingly accepted. In 1937, Gerda Taro was crushed to death by a tank.

“UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH TROOPS”

Conscious of the stakes at play in managing photographs and film footage, the warring parties engaged in the Second World War employed both media as an implacable psychological weapon serving a cleverly orchestrated propaganda campaign in support of the war effort. On the French side, the co-existence of two governments each claiming legitimacy was reflected in the management of images. Official teams of photographers and cameramen were active in Vichy (attached to the General Commission for Information) as well as in London and Algiers (with the Office of Information through Cinema). From 1944, in mainland France, other operators accompanied the liberating forces and witnessed first hand the horrors of war. Indeed, Germaine Kanova took photographs endowed with realism and a profound humanism, emphasising the dignity of men scarred by an environment devastated by years of war. Jacques Belin, meanwhile, observed attacks by the troops, and captured the energy of battle and immortalised the soldiers.

When the Second World War broke out, army reporters wanted to be as close to the troops as possible. In the post-war period, in mainland France, the photography and cinematography units had a hand in building the identity of the country’s national defence. At the same time, reporters were sent to Indochina to garner public support for a far-flung conflict. Their main mission was to show the face of the enemy. Yet these directives put reporters in tough circumstances. For instance, Paul Corcuff who after enlisting in June 1944 was sent to Indochina in 1949 to observe the military operations at close range, accompanying the withdrawals, and experiencing the living conditions and general feelings of exhaustion. From the inside, he witnessed the daily reality of the fighting forces but was appointed by the Press Information Service (SPI), a unit attached to the army’s department of propaganda. Army photographer Pierre Ferrari also wanted to be as close as possible to his subject. In the heat of action his images neither elude war nor death.

Soldiers of the 1st RBFM (Armoured Marine Regiment) and 2nd DB (Armoured Division) aboard a jeep during the liberation of Strasbourg near the Montafgne Verte rail bridge, November 1944.
© Jacques Belin/Roland Lennad/ECPAD/Défense

However, neither photographer had any power over the future of their images, which were subject to the obligatory information controls before they were published in the international press. This way of working—which would become the accepted standard of many photographers including Henri Huet during the Vietnam War—was exacerbated by the necessity to employ equipment (such as the Rolleiflex 6x6) that was cumbersome and poorly suited to the subjects in hand. The Arriflex used by Pierre Schoendoerffer and already the motion picture camera of choice of cameramen during the Second World War had only three minutes of battery life and took very short reels. The camera operator was obliged to carry around equipment including chargers, films and spare batteries, weighing in at over 20 kilos. Transporting such a heavy load, operators were unable to film at will, instead forced to capture short albeit well planned shots that today are some of the most iconic images of the conflict (parachutists, Diên Biên Phu and so forth).

The photographs taken by army reporters depicted the reality of the battlefield. But the editorial choice had to dovetail with a communications strategy that extended outside the French borders. The images of military operations in Indochina had to specifically meet the communications objectives defined by the French government within a tense international context. While civilian reporters were less beholden to the imperatives of political communications, military reporters, some of whom were veterans, could more easily integrate into the forces.

After Indochina, the French army was deployed to Algeria. During this conflict, the French Ministry of Defence deliberately avoided sharing any images of large-scale military action. In the field, the General Government of Algeria set about developing its local action, such as distributing tracts and installing loud speakers (under the orders of the 5th Bureau of Psychological Warfare). The SCA unit stationed in Algiers was organised and scaled up to meet the growing demand for news images. The unit enjoyed an almost exclusive monopoly in terms of producing “operational” images to be sent out to press organisations and the military. These images were chiefly images of captured prisoners or psychological warfare operations led by the 5th Bureau against the civilian population. At this time, one photographer who adopted an alternative approach emerged: Marc Flament, a photographer appointed by Lieutenant Colonel Bigeard. He took part in all the operations conducted by the men of the 3rd Colonial Parachutists Regiment (RPC) and immortalised the parachutists and commandos in aestheticised shots that showed the soldiers as heroes. His images, which were shot outside the regulatory confines of the 5th Bureau and the filter of institutional censorship, reflected the harsh realities of war.

THE ERA OF OVERSEAS OPERATIONS

Deployed principally to produce instructional and informational films from a more institutional angle, military reporters followed armies in peace time but also during periods of international conflict. Indeed, during the 1970s and 1980s, the teams of reporters employed by the Army Photography and Cinematography Establishment (ECPA) took part in overseas operations in Kolwezi, Lebanon and Chad. The French army was then a participant in international operations and it was not long before its deployments would be exclusively under the mandate of the UN or NATO.

Photographer Marc Flament, Algeria.
​​​​​​​© Arthur Smet/ECPAD Collection Smet

Photographic and audiovisual equipment was improving all the time. This meant reporters could work more autonomously and move around more easily. Reporters worked with several cameras, which might be colour or black and white. From the 1980s, army reporters enjoyed a certain amount of freedom, such as François-Xavier Roch who immortalised far more than just the action of the French army in Lebanon and started a career as a photojournalist. However, as soldiers first and foremost, army reporters undoubtedly tended towards self-censorship, which was likely guided by a sense of propriety among brothers in arms. Pierre Schoendoerffer, for example, always refused to film a soldier in agony. Similarly, during the attack on the Drakkar barracks in Beirut on 23 October 1983, killing 58 French parachutists, Joël Brun, the ECPA photographer stationed there, refused to film the first hours of the dramatic scenes but waited until the next day to photograph the searches and act on behalf of the forensic identification team, documenting the identity of the victims and the collection of the ID tags. Consequently, he did not capture the initial explosion or the terror on the servicepeople’s faces.

During the 1970s and 1980s, photographers and cinematographers had to send their reels and films to the head quarters based at the Fort d’Ivry to be developed. This somewhat delay their publication. In the 1990s, the use of satellites to transmit analogue video images via Inmarsat revolutionised practices. During the Gulf War, camera operators sent their footage of warfare and the Allied breakthroughs in Saudi Arabia and Iraq directly. This development allowed for rapid broadcasting on TV following authorisation by the military command. In subsequent years, this system of transmission remained expensive and heavy (around 10 kilos) but did allow operators in the French army to document, almost instantly, the action of the French armed forced in combats or in contact with civilian populations in Rwanda, former Yugoslavia and Kosovo, through news items covered to rally French support. Until the 2000s, operators would even entrust their films to those able to transport them back to France, such as pilots.

From the start of the new millennium, digital technology began to replace analogue technology. ECPAD, the French delegation for defence information and communication (DICoD), and the Army Information and Public Relations Services (SIRPA) deployed to the field photographers, camera operators and sound recorders as well as journalists (civilian and military) who had the capability to publish their work almost instantly, after authorisation by the army military command, and to produce written press reports for army publications or for external use (TV media, for example).

In the field, however, technology was not the only constraint. Photographers and camera operators might have orders to follow and objectives given by the military communications advisor in the field. The photos or footage they produced was then contingent on the decisions of the communications officers. In Côte d’Ivoire between 2003 and 2005, they produced less archive images than evidentiary images and news images.

Paul Corcuff, photographer for the SPI, with his Rolleiflex hanging from his neck, during Operation Mouette in Indochina, 23 October 1953.
© ECPAD/Défense

Framing a precise and restricted subject gives the impression there is no reverse angle for the troops, but also makes it possible to produce images endowed with certain characteristics: the camera is closer to the troops, in particular at moments which are rarely captured on film by civilian journalists. The images thus become weapons in the hands of both parties, especially in the case of asymmetrical warfare. Operators in this situation form a Combat Camera Team.

“COMBATANTS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT”

The 2000s also beckoned in a change in how subjects were treated. In Afghanistan, for example, photographers and videographers recorded the main missions to which the French army was deployed. However, the prisoners and dead of the enemy were never photographed to ensure the material was never used for the purpose of propaganda. The French army took with them journalists from outside the institution who were required to abide by the rules issued by the communications officer. Photographic and film coverage of contemporary events related to the fight against terrorism necessitates a different approach. As evidenced in the Sahel where France has stationed troops since 2013. At the start of intervention, only official photographers were authorised to observe operations, as much to abate the military command’s fears of seeing journalists being taken hostage as to manage communications surrounding military operations. In fact, when hostilities broke out, the only images available were those of preparations and logistics, which immediately told the journalism world that Operation Serval in Mali was going to be a war without images. The photos produced by the ECPAD, shot in close proximity to the troops, were only published after the first operations, while the possibilities of observing these same operations were more restricted for journalists. In the battle against terrorism, controlling the image, from when it is taken to where it is distributed, constitutes an alternative war zone, above all in the realm of new media.

In Afghanistan or in Mali, photographers and videographers found themselves once more in the position of directly witnessing skirmishes targeting French troops. This explains why, for several years now, army officers have been equipped with individual firearms in addition to their photographic or film equipment. They might, in fact, be called on to exchange fire to defend their brothers in arms. They are combatants in their own right, exposed to the same risks, as we are reminded by the death of Sergeant Sébastien Vermeille, photographer for the SIRPA Terre (SIRPA’s land army unit based in Lyon) on 13 July 2011 in Afghanistan. In October 2013, the DICoD attached to the French Army Ministry founded the Prix Sergeant Vermeille to honour the fallen officer. It was set up to promote the work of professional civilian and military photographers who accompany, in the field, men and women deployed by the army ministry in France in domestic or overseas operations.

Troops looking for survivors in the ruins of the Drakkar building in Beirut following the attack on 23 October 1983.
© Joël Brun/ECPAD/Défense
 

For a hundred years, the images produced by army war reporters, archived since the earliest days of the very first units established, have provided a record, evidence and information to support defence communications. Not to mention that they also help the policy of remembrance pursued by the Army Ministry for educational, cultural and scientific purposes. The exhibitions, audiovisual productions and publications made from these images are windows into the history of contemporary conflicts, and pay homage to both their victors and victims. The image collections are an essential medium for educational actions that call on academics to study an archive document and examine the question of engagement, in particular from a modern perspective. As such, the work carried out by war reporters for over a hundred years is an importance feature of remembrance for French citizens, our younger citizens especially.

The period of demobilisation that came in the wake of the First World War was exceptional not only because it was on a scale never seen before but also owing to the diverse backgrounds of those affected, a mixture of those born and bred in mainland France, others from overseas France, i.e. the former colonies, but also men and women recruited to work for the war effort.

From the moment the armistice was declared, four million mobilised troops in the French army (including around 300,000 soldiers from the former colonies) were given the prospect of returning home, an unquestionable source of joy for soldiers and their families alike. The government was well aware of their hopes. Yet it also had a duty to maintain a strong army until the signing of the final peace treaty imposed on a defeated Germany, an act that did not happen until 28 June 1919 in the form of the Treaty of Versailles. Caution was also paramount due to other international concerns going on at that time (in central and eastern Europe, Russia and the Levant).

A demobilised soldier trying on the national suit, nicknamed the "Abrami", Paris, École militaire, 13 February 1919.

© © Joly/ECPAD/Défense

ORGANISATION OF THE DEMOBILISATION

The act of sending the soldiers back to civilian life was carried out in stages with priority afforded to the most senior. From late November, the oldest men (between 49 and 51) were permitted to go home. This was followed by the return of men aged 32 to 48 between December and April. Circumstances changed when the Allied leaders became alarmed at Germany’s reticence to accept the terms of the armistice, which it deemed too harsh, and started to consider military intervention with the explicit intention of forcing the defeated nation into submission.

The demobilisation process was therefore put on hold. The classes comprising the active reserve forces, i.e. soldiers under 32, were kept in service until July 1919. While more than a million soldiers were demobilised by this time, the French army still had a further 2.5 million men in its troops compared to just over four million on 11 November 1918.  Demobilisation was then resumed and carried out in four stages through to September. It wasn’t until 14 October 1919 that the general decree of demobilisation was signed, cancelling out the sadly famous mobilisation decree of 1 August 1914. The return of those originating from the colonies was carried out along the same lines. However, for many of them who enlisted for the duration of the war, their contracts stipulated that demobilisation was not an option until six months from the end of hostilities, which meant the month of May 1919 at the earliest, taking the armistice as the base date. In September 1919, about 15,000 indigenous troops remained in France including 13,000 Indochinese soldiers, above all Vietnamese, nurses and drivers for the most part. They returned to their native countries between September and November.

A demobilised soldier is given a medical inspection, Paris, École militaire, 13 February, 1919

© © Joly/ECPAD/Défense

The staggered return was rarely appreciated by those affected, even if it did give some of them the chance to attend the parade on 14 July 1919 through the Arc de Triomphe. It brought disarray to the formation of the units which had to be reorganised to factor in the demobilised troops. Furthermore, there was a lapse in discipline with soldiers and citizens feeling that the end of the German threat no longer justified the application of rules and regulations to which the large majority were subjected in silent revolt and which they strongly resented.  For the demobilised, quitting the army brought its own set of problems. The procedure itself was simple: having a medical inspection, updating one’s military papers, then being sent to the demobilisation centre which was the holding place for the regiment to which each demobilised soldier belonged. But there was frequent chaos, especially as concerned the trains: the soldiers, to protest against the slow convoys and the uncomfortable carriages, frequently smashed windows and doors.  Demonstrations were held by the Senegalese riflemen from the Saint-Raphaël Camp who, during a review, jostled a general and noisily demanded their return. When you factor in the lack of marine transportation, the repatriation of overseas soldiers was even further problematic.

QUITTING THE ARMY, RETURNING HOME

For the first to leave, returning home meant facing disappointment.  The demobilised men were treated quite indifferently by the authorities and there was no ceremony of any sort welcoming them back. To replace the clothes left behind in the barracks, abandoned or unwearable, they received nothing but an ill fitted suit (called an Abrami after the Under-Secretary of State for War Léon Abrami) or, if they refused it, the paltry sum of 52 francs, equivalent to about 50 euros in today’s money.  They were even summoned by the tax office to pay their back taxes, since the moratorium was lifted at the end of the hostilities. It was only in March 1919 that more comprehensive measures were introduced to compensate for the earlier gaffes: the tax moratorium was reinstated; a demobilisation bonus was paid, calculated on a fairer basis (250 francs plus 20 francs for each month stationed on the front), and a law on pensions paid to war invalids or families of men killed in action was passed. The welcome home was also changed.

From the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the regiments who returned to their home town were now celebrated: festivities commenced with a parade of the troops, cheered on by crowds of compatriots, in streets bedecked in decorations and foliage. The celebrations were especially emotional for many of them in the procession who, despite mixing with other regiments during the course of the conflict, were still sons of the soil. The parade was sometimes, though not always, followed by various other festivities, including concerts, balls, fireworks or torch-lit processions. Even when the festivities took place, nothing could hide the obvious grief that would ensue for years to come for the walking wounded and the widows and families whose black mourning wear was a constant reminder of all those who would never return home.

Spahis in parade at the victory celebration in Paris, 14 July 1919

© © Albert Harlingue/Roger-Viollet

The demobilised troops also had to make huge efforts to readapt. They had lived, for several years, five in some cases, amongst their fellow troops, far away from home, and cut off from civilian life with the exception of rare periods of leave. They first had to find a job, which was not always easy. Despite the passing of a law in 1918 obliging business owners to rehire their former workers or employees, not all of these owners were still in business or in a position to take on staff. They were also forced to carry out a series of formalities, which were time-consuming and often humiliating, to obtain the benefits to which they were, by rights, entitled. But finding work was not their only problem. The liberated man, whose daily routine up until that point had been governed by the army, had forgotten how to live an ordinary life, meet their individual needs and know how to feed and dress themselves. More especially, family life had to be reorganised, with wives who, whether they liked it or not, had taken on the responsibilities in their capacity as the new head of the household and children who had lost many years with their father, if they had ever known him at all. Couples separated and divorces were more common than before the war.

The demobilised also felt that they had nobody with whom to share their personal experiences since the people they’d left behind could not even begin to imagine the suffering, fears and solidarity they had shared with their brothers in arms. A portion of the six and a half million veterans (about one adult male in two) did find an association in which they could express their sense solidarity and grievances in French society. Their main state of mind was a feeling of pride of surviving such an ordeal and clinging to their positions, as they did in Verdun, to stop masses of German troops spilling across the country. They felt infinitely more a sense of satisfaction from fulfilling their duty than the exhilaration of the daring exploit of war, even if not everyone was entirely indifferent to it. The further the war receded into the past, the stronger the sense of peaceful, and even pacifist, patriotism grew in the majority of the troops, marked above all by a condemnation of the war and a rejection of anything that might facilitate it, most notably militarism, the excitement of daring heroism and even, in some extreme cases, the honour of choosing death over servitude.

WHAT FUTURE FOR THE OTHERS “MOBILISED” FOR WAR?

Other categories of soldier were also affected by the end of the war. French prisoners, whose number is estimated in the region of 500,000, were able to leave their camp as soon as the armistice was signed. Many took the initiative to return home by their own means, not without difficulty. The French authorities took responsibility for the repatriation of all others. It took two months, from mid-November 1918 to mid-January 1919, to complete the majority of returns. Those that did return had to deal with the indifferent attitude of the authorities and public opinion, as if these veterans were somehow tainted with dishonour when most of them had no reason to shoulder any blame, The law also assimilated them with the other veterans for the compensation owed to them.

Just as discreet, perhaps understandably so, was the demobilisation of men from Alsace and Lorraine from the territories annexed to the Reich since 1871, who had served in the imperial army (250,000 of them during the war). In an attempt to counter the lack of understanding and the injustices born of their situation as Frenchmen having served in an enemy army, a first association was set up in 1920 under the patronage of the great patriotic writer Maurice Barrès, and explicitly named ‘malgré-nous’ (against our will), which was once again used following the even more tragic circumstances that unfolded during the Second World War.

Further neglected still was the demobilisation of a small number of women, conscripted into the war to carry out work until then largely attributed to men in industry and services. They were forced to quit their jobs and return to being housewives or domestic workers under pressure from the authorities (the minister of armaments Louis Loucheur issued a circular to this effect on 13 November 1918). The transfer of these women was done with little noise and left few traces behind.

French prisoners repatriated from Germany, November 1918

© © Maurice-Louis Branger/Roger-Viollet

TO CHALLENGE OR MAINTAIN THE COLONIAL ORDER?

The return of demobilised troops from the colonies was often marked by some form of ceremonious wecome. In a speech delivered in Algiers, General Nivelle, who had come to welcome the riflemen and Zouaves returning to their garrisons, praised "their heroism, their spirit of sacrifice and their unconquerable faith, in Marne, Ypres, on the Somme, in Aisnes, in Verdun, and in Château-Thierry, in Champagne". He reminded them that he had always stationed them at posts of honour. This greeting was addressed above all, admittedly, to only the first repatriated contingents while those that followed were welcomed with far greater indifference. In certain cases, the authorities seemed to take an interest in planning the readaptation of troops. One brochure handed out to demobilised troops from Indochina explained the formal procedures to follow to ensure they received the benefits to which they were entitled. They were given a medical inspection and any injured or sick were treated in medical facilities.

This outpouring of solicitude did not mean a total disregard of surveillance. In Indochina, one regiment of repatriates, established in September 1917, was instructed to centralise information on the indigenous troops in mainland France, so as to report any potential problems, but also any sign of divergences in individual behaviour, which was then passed on to the local security services. In some regions, incidents occurred in response to returning troops. In Djibouti, in the spring of 1919, demobilised troops, some of whom earned a name for themselves in battle (in particular during the liberation of Douaumont in October 1916) mutinied. Some who returned to their camps set about looting the place. Incidents broke out in town. Other similar disturbances happened in French West Africa (AOF), especially in Senegal and Guinea. None of these incidents deteriorated into serious trouble. Workers recruited in the colonies to support the war effort (whose number is estimated at 200,000) also returned to their home country in their masses. The authorities had no desire to keep them in France. They feared these workers had been corrupted by revolutionary ideas which seemed to be gaining ground amongst the French proletariat. They felt that sending them back was an opportunity to give popularity-seeking satisfaction to popular discontent, at a time when troops returning from the front were still seeking employment. Managers in the colonies wanted to reinstate all of the “indigenous” manpower, vital for ensuring the economic recovery in overseas France while receiving wages pushed down to the lowest level by pressure from the returnees. To meet the needs for rebuilding France, there was a general preference for calling on people originating from Europe, deemed more efficient and more accepting by the trade unions owing to their working class tradition. A small number of colonial and Chinese workers were employed to work on the first sites established to clear rubble from the front, in conditions that were often punishing and dangerous. The return journey of demobilised troops was in principle paid by the state, but the administration was in no rush to honour its obligations. The last Vietnamese returnees did not make it home until July 1920.

As their comrades in mainland France, veterans, be they European or indigenous, expressed little the realities of war. Some tended to attribute the attitude of these troops to a “fatalism” that rendered them indifferent to the most momentous events and not to the need to forget that was very common amongst veterans. Back home, these same indigenous citizens were just as ready to challenge the pre-war order and the order imposed by the colonial authorities not to mention the order of traditional societies. They were not prepared to submit to their civic leaders or their elders.

Chinese workers in a munitions factory, Lyon region, September 1916.

© © Piston/Excelsior-L’Équipe/Roger-Viollet

They relied on their status as veterans in the French army to try to avoid the orders imposed by the administration. In AOF, business owners criticised the arrogant attitude of demobilised troops and accused them of picking up lazy habits while in service that was driving them to delinquency. However, many were enjoying, amidst the general population, the consideration shown to them owing to their apparent command of “white manners”: they smoked tobacco, knew a smattering of French and could show official “papers”. Their military actions were admired in a society in which the combatant was held in high esteem. Their demobilisation bonus, paid in one go and often spent on gifts, also gave them, at least in the beginning, a certain prestige in parts of the country forced into a frugal existence.

Furthermore, some repatriates acquired from their time in Europe a new political conscience and new ideas for action. One former soldier, Dorothée Lima, founded in 1920 the first newspaper in Dahomey, La Voix du Dahomey. One returnee worker from France, Tôn Duc Thang, who may have participated in the Black Sea mutinies, created the first trade union in Saigon. For others, a spell in the army confirmed a political vocation, such as Jean Ralaimongo, a teacher who was voluntarily conscripted at the age of 32 and went on to become one of the first leaders of the Madagascan emancipation movement, or accountant Galandou Diouf who soon became the rival of Senegalese political leader Blaise Diagne.  We might wonder if this type of behaviour was frequent amongst the former combatants. In fact, most of them returned home with a desire to enjoy a peaceful life and the benefits extended to them by the government and the respect of their loved ones.

Veterans and former soldiers of European origin, especially the French in Algeria, had a different attitude. While their mentality might seem not so dissimilar to their compatriots in mainland France, the colonial context brought a slight nuance to their patriotism. Their war experience, the brotherhood of arms that forged links between many of them and indigenous soldiers, the countless examples of heroism and devotion shown by these troops, seemed to plead in favour of maintaining a colonial order that produced impeccable conduct. Their very positive opinion on their former comrades in battle took scant consideration of the often tough living conditions the latter would return to in civilian life or their aspirations to escape the condition of “subjects”. While feeling more affection and respect towards the indigenous troops than in the past, those who were yet to be known as the “Pieds noirs” were scarcely more prepared to listen to the demands of their representatives. These exaggeratedly optimistic sentiments were further reinforced by the exemplary participation of the soldiers from the colonies during the Second World War.

Overall, demobilisation might appear to have been successful: the soldiers made a seamless integration into civilian life. Veterans in mainland France continued to express their loyalty to the Republic, which seemed to have come out of the war stronger. But their expectations were commensurate with the sacrifices they had made: a happier life, a more attentive government. As for the men enlisted from the colonies, the pride of having been good soldiers nurtured a claim for dignity that would fuel aspirations of independence.

French troops occupying Germany’s chemical warfare centre: outposts at the exit from the bridge outside Mannheim, March 1919. Photograph published in the Excelsior daily magazine on Sunday 5 March 1919.

© © Excelsior-L’Équipe/Roger-Viollet

Originally centred around the “citizenship pathway” (census registration at the age of 16, defence education at middle school and high school, defence and citizenship day), that task now extends throughout the school career and on to university.

Teaching about defence and national security means focusing on three aspects. First, historical perspective, to resituate defence issues within a broader timeframe: from the threat to borders to the threat without borders, and hence from the defence of borders to defence without borders, from national independence to strategic autonomy, from national defence (the white paper of 1972 on national defence) to defence (the white paper of 1994) to defence and national security (the white papers of 2008 and 2013); second, France “among the peoples of the world”, in the context of internal and external threats, its alliances and commitments, the military actions and operations conducted by its armed forces, and a continuum of internal and external security, on which the fight against terrorism is a major marker; and third, defence as public policy, i.e. a political authority which decides it, operators who implement it and the resources that are assigned to it by the nation, based on an analysis of the land, air, maritime, interministerial and inter-Allied aspects of defence.

The central issue is clearly the participation of students - future citizens - in the defence and national security of their country. Defence interrogates citizenship first, not the other way round. The end of conscription has meant a new relationship between citizens, defence and national security; a new civic contract between France and its armed forces.

Final year primary school students at École Paul Bert
© Laurent Villeret / Picturetank / Ministère de l’Éducation nationale

At the same time, the organisation of defence is no longer restricted to the national setting alone: under multilateral, in particular European, treaties and agreements, France participates in multiple overseas international security operations, in the name of the values it champions and the law it promotes, in the community of nations. The middle-school and high-school history and geography syllabuses fit into this context. In the face of threats that cross borders, the traditional distinction between external defence and internal security becomes blurred, and resistance and resilience must draw on the whole of the national community.

The core role of the national education service, in this context, is to teach all students the essential skills and knowledge that comprise these subjects, to consolidate them as part of a coherent progression, and to test them, with the aim of building a shared defence culture. An official curriculum and teacher training are necessary conditions for this to take place.

DEFENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY AT THE HEART OF MAKING STUDENTS INTO CITIZENS

The primary school curriculum devotes considerable space to “moral and civic education” (éducation morale et civique, or EMC). The points of reference that enable pupils, according to their age, to better situate themselves in time and space place them, ipso facto, in the context of our period and country. At middle school (collège), where basic skills and knowledge are consolidated, students learn to recognise and respect the symbols and emblems of the French Republic and the characteristics of the French Nation, and to situate France within the European Union, the French within the European context and France in the world.

Primary school class
© Phovoir

In 3ème (age 14-15) and Première (16-17), two “defence” modules were clearly identified in the 2010-2012 curriculum. The former “civic education” course in 3ème devoted 20% of class time to the theme of “defence and peace”. With the new EMC syllabus, the situation has changed significantly. Not only is it not articulated with the history and geography syllabuses, it is not immediately clear where the elements that teach about defence and national security are to be found in the texts. The absence of references to a level of education also poses a problem. The need for articulation with the history and geography syllabuses led to the recommendation that the three aspects mentioned above should be taught to students of 3ème, i.e. at age 14-15.

In the section on “Engagement”, the title refers to “Learning the governing principles of national defence”. In the face of threats that cross borders (other than tensions linked to migration, which reinforce them or lead certain states to invent new ones), the distinction between internal and external security has become blurred. France's overseas military operations are presented in this context. Under the heading “Explain the link between commitment and

responsibility”, an entry entitled “The security of people and property: organisations and issues” makes the link between defence and national security.

In the section on “Judgment”, under the heading “Understanding how the French Republic's two values of liberty and equality can come into conflict” is the title “Problems of peace and war in the world and causes of conflicts”. It is up to us to give coherence to these sparse elements, by closely articulating them with the history and geography syllabuses in 3ème.

At the lycée (high school), part of the EMC syllabus in Première (age 16-17) is devoted to defence. It is theme 4: “The structure and challenges of national defence”. Since the late 1980s, “national defence” has seen in-depth changes and reforms, in response to changes in the world affecting the conditions for both peace and war; the organisation of defence is no longer limited to the national setting alone; under alliances and agreements, in particular at European level, France participates in multiple overseas international security operations; the end of conscription, the professionalisation of the armed forces and the sophistication and growing costs of equipment have meant a new relationship between citizens, defence and national security.

By researching and analysing two themes chosen from a list, students are encouraged to think about these questions: the roles of defence and national security (new forms of insecurity such as terrorism, piracy and the proliferation of weapons and means of destruction, global defence, France between peace and war, protection of national territory and foreign operations, the justification for international missions of the armed forces); means of defence (French forces, international defence alliances and commitments, bilateral agreements); defence actors (institutions, citizens, information, defence careers, the military reserve, the feminisation of the armed forces, current debates such as the concept of military ethics, respect for the rule of law).

NEW CONCEPTS IN THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY CURRICULUM

At collège, the history syllabus in 4ème (age 13-14) looks at “the Revolution, the Empire and war”. It also discusses the spread of nationalist feeling across Europe, thus enabling students to understand the revival of such feeling today. The geography syllabus, devoted to globalisation, takes as its felicitous starting point the theme “Seas and oceans: a maritime world”, to look at ports, coastlines, maritime trade and the strategic role of straits, opening up a broad discussion of maritime geostrategy.

Collège Jean-Philippe Rameau, Champagneau- Mont-d’Or
© Philippe Devernay / Ministère de l'Éducation nationale

In 3ème (age 14-15), the history syllabus begins with the First World War and culminates with present-day conflicts, taking in the two World Wars, totalitarian regimes and including map-based work on operations like Stalingrad and the Pacific War. It goes on to look at the Cold War and the main emphases of global geopolitics since the early 1990s, thus building a picture of the context of France's power and defence interests. Still in 3ème, the geography syllabus addresses “France in today's world”. It situates metropolitan France and the French overseas territories in the world, and introduces the concept of “power”, which can be usefully explained and expanded upon, both for France and for Europe. It presents the European Union as a major economic cluster “founded on the financial power of the euro, but whose diplomatic and military role remains limited”.

In this way, it lays the foundations for historical, geopolitical and strategic reasoning, while also considering the political, material and moral challenges facing defence. More generally, the history and geography syllabuses encompass the recent past, giving students the keys to understanding current conflicts and the challenges inherent to the difficult, incomplete process of building peace in the world. At collège, it is on the basis of these disciplines alone (history, geography, and moral and civic education), in combination with our programmes, that “practical interdisciplinary education” (EPI) can be developed: in it, defence and national security, in all its aspects, will have the place teachers choose to give it.

The curricula of the different types of lycée (general, technical and vocational) show a clearer presence of defence and national security issues, and a more extensive articulation with the history and geography syllabuses (2010-2012 syllabuses, revised in 2013).

In Première (age 16-17) at the general lycée, Theme 2 of the combined history-geography syllabus is “War in the 20th century”, which looks at the two World Wars, the Cold War and the new forms of conflict since 1990 (an armed conflict: the Gulf War; a place: Sarajevo; a terrorist act: 11 September 2001). The history syllabuses focus on the recent past, reinforcing students' understanding of current conflicts.

The history syllabus in Terminale (final year, age 17-18), for students of the S (sciences), ES (economic and social studies) and L (literary studies) series, is on the theme of “Historical perspectives on today's world”. For Theme 1, students choose between “The historian and memories of the Second World War” and “The historian and memories of the Algerian War”. By studying the history of the Resistance (in Première) and memories of the Resistance (in Terminale), for instance, students learn, on the one hand, to distinguish history as an activity from memory as a subject of history and, on the other, to analyse the history of the Resistance since 1945 and that of the interlocking and competing memories which appear today.

Theme 2 in S series (Theme 3 in ES and L series) looks at “Major powers and conflicts in the world since 1945”, “The paths of power” (the USA and the world since 1918/1945, China and the world since 1919/1945) and “A hotbed of conflict” (the Near and Middle East, a hotbed of conflict since the end of the Ottoman Empire/Second World War).

The challenges of defence and security are approached in relation to the topicality of these issues. The geography syllabus in Terminale at the general lycée - on the theme of “A geostrategic approach to the seas and oceans” - similarly fits into this approach.

Collège Michelet, Vanves
© Xavier Schwebel / Picture Tank / Ministère de l'Éducation nationale

Students at technical lycées can choose, depending on their course, from a range of themes including “Living and dying in wartime”. Meanwhile, “Europe, a region marked by two World Wars” is a compulsory subject for Première students of the “management science and technology” and “health and social science and technology” courses.

At the vocational lycée, the civic education syllabus in Première “particularly stresses the duty of defence”. In Terminale, the chapter of history on “The world since the watershed of the 1990s” looks at the collapse of the Soviet model and emphasises the “crises which marked the start of this new period”: genocides in Africa and Europe, terrorism, the war on terror, France's international responsibility, and citizens' awareness. For the Certificat d'aptitude professionnelle (CAP), Theme 4 of the history syllabus (“Wars and conflicts in 20th-century Europe”) presents the challenges to defence and national security.

Thus the school curriculum offers rich and varied subject matter, structured in a progressive way so as to equip students with the skills and knowledge of defence and national security which they need to fulfil their duties as citizens and economic, social, cultural and environmental actors, founded on the French Republican values promised by the schools system. Students are taught a critical perspective, distance from events, and their responsibility as future citizens. By thinking about, grasping and accepting complexity - the basic tenets of learning about defence and national security - students are able to progress in their education as young citizens: accept nothing without first discussing, challenging and understanding it.

Teachers of history, geography and civic education, as well as those of other disciplines, need to be prepared to teach these concepts, which also need to be clearly identified. This requirement is all the more crucial since the Instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres (IUFMs) were replaced by the Écoles supérieures du professorat et de l'éducation (ESPEs), enabling the previous approach to the subject to be called into question.

DEFENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING

High school (lycée) class
© Sophie Brandstrom / Ministère de l'Éducation nationale

In 2012, at the request of the director-general for schools, the French education inspectorate drew up a system of reference to serve as a benchmark for the new ESPEs. The document was circulated to them, and began being used by some in autumn 2013. It is intended to support those teaching staff involved in broad-based teaching about military, defence and national security issues. It comprises four modules, each lasting two hours, plus one revision module with case studies.

The material begins by looking at “The importance of military events in national history”, through France's involvement in conflicts, the part played by the French

navy in France's global influence, and the role of the armed forces in defence and national security. This means approaching defence as public policy, in a historical perspective, over the long-term duration of an organisation and institution, with elements of comparison in time and space and references to the army, air force, navy and Gendarmerie Nationale. It then goes on to analyse the contemporary bases of defence and national security.

“From the link between the nation and its armed forces to the relationship between defence and society” focuses on defence in its political, social and cultural setting (roles, history, military traditions). A central place is given to the issue of the French people's participation in defence and the participation of the armed forces in the emergence of citizenship. The relationship between schools and the armed forces is looked at. Useful parallels are drawn concerning the influences between military events and literature, philosophy, the arts and the sciences.

“New settings, new references: France's defence and national security environment (from the 1970s to the present)” considers the changing risks and structure of international life, and analyses the contemporary bases of France's defence policy, in the spirit of the key changes seen in the successive white papers. The issues of defence and national security are looked at through the prism of major threats, weapons of mass destruction and national resilience.

The final part addresses the most recent challenges to French defence and national security. “Governing in stormy weather: how to organise the security of the nation?” looks at the setting, context and actors that make up France's defence and security architecture, and the emergence of a new government defence and security culture which has the continuity of national life as its objective, foreign operations as an extension, and deterrence as the ultimate insurance.

Teacher training at an École supérieure du professorat et de l’éducation (ESPE)
© Xavier Schwebel / Ministère de l'Éducation nationale

Published in December 2013 in the form of a DVD and booklet, Enseigner la défense (Teaching about defence) reinforces teaching through an academic approach and suggested activities. A national web portal, under the aegis of the inspectorate-general, also provides up-to-date references on the issues of defence and national security. Continuing professional development - crucial for all teachers - must be based on training, for which the prime responsibility, within the regional education authorities, lies with the regional inspectorates, in particular as part of the trinômes académiques, or 'academic triads'. That training must be both joined up and consistent at national level, and it is the inspectorate-general's job to ensure that it is.

Composed on the night of 25 to 26 April 1792, with the title Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin (Battle song for the Army of the Rhine), La Marseillaise was sung for the first time by its composer, Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an officer in the engineers popular among his fellows for his guitar playing and singing. Versions differ as to the circumstances of that first rendition: whether it took place that same evening at a dinner at the home of Dietrich, mayor of Strasbourg, the next morning after a night's composition, or at an officers' dinner. History has preserved the account immortalised by Lamartine in his Histoire des Girondins and Isidore Pils's painting, made in 1849, amid the euphoria of the proclamation of the Second Republic. The first edition of the score was printed without the composer's name, in Strasbourg, by Dannbach. It was dedicated to Marshal Luckner, making it possible to date it no later than May 1792, when Luckner was appointed commander of the Army of the North, before dying on the scaffold in January 1794. Dietrich would meet the same fate, being guillotined in 1793. Opposed like the others to the deposition of the king, Rouget would escape the death sentence, although he would be imprisoned from August 1793 to July 1794.

To begin with, the song was circulated around France by clubs and newspapers. It was introduced in Montpellier by future general François Mireur. It was then adopted by the battalion of Marseille volunteers, called upon by the Theodorian Convention to participate in the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy, on 10 August 1792, which saw the Revolution descend into terror. The song then became a rip-roaring success. The circumstances of its arrival in Paris and its adoption by the inhabitants of the capital caused it to be named La Marseillaise.

Gossec ironed out a few weaknesses in Rouget's score and wrote its first arrangement for orchestra, with the title L'Offrande à la Liberté (The Offering to Liberty). That version opened all concerts and performances. Chosen by the Thermidorian Convention as the official anthem in 1793, it was declared the “national song” by the Convention on 14 July 1795 (26 Messidor Year III, in the Republican Calendar). La Marseillaise quickly became known throughout Europe. It was translated into English and German as early as 1792, reached Sweden by 1793, and was introduced to the United States in 1795.

Associated with the excesses of the Revolution, La Marseillaise was banned under the Empire in favour of Chant du départ and Veillons au salut de l'Empire. It reappeared during the Hundred Days, but was banned once again under the Restoration. It was sung during the July Revolution, in 1830, and Berlioz made a masterful arrangement of it for orchestra and choir, which he dedicated to Rouget de Lisle. Even so, La Marseillaise did not regain its national anthem status either under the Second Republic or the Second Empire. Its resurgence during the popular risings that brought down the regimes of the 19th century confirms how deeply embedded it was in the French psyche, from years of performance combined with the thrilling memory of the Revolution. La Marseillaise remained a subversive song, restricted to the poor neighbourhoods of big cities.

A CONTESTED PATERNITY

Bonaparte commissioned Rouget de Lisle to write a new anthem, but his Chant des combats, performed at the Opéra Comique on 3 January 1800, was a flop, as was Vive le roi, composed for the return of the Bourbons in 1815. With only a single masterpiece to his name, Rouget de Lisle's authorship of the melody of La Marseillaise was contested, especially since the first editions did not bear his name. Some saw in it the work of Pleyel, Holtzmann, or even Mozart. In 1863, the musicologist Fétis was summoned to court for having attributed the composition to Navoigille, but he withdrew. In 1886, French historian Arthur Loth found the theme of the piece in Les Stances de la calomnie, taken from the oratorio Esther, a score predating the Revolution, written by Jean-Baptiste-Lucien Grisons, choirmaster at the chapel of Saint-Omer from 1775 to 1787. The case caused a furore, and led Constant Pierre to publish his research on the musical repertoire of the Revolution, and Julien Tiersot his history of the anthem, both of which defended Rouget. More recently, a score by virtuoso Italian violinist

Giovanni Battista Viotti, Tema e variazioni in Do maggiore, thought to date from 1781, has been found to contain the theme of La Marseillaise. There was no such thing as copyright at that time, and borrowings were frequent, so the debate is far from over.

First score of La Marseillaise by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, 1792. BnF
© Roger-Viollet

AN ANTHEM SEEN AS SUBVERSIVE

The Second Empire was keen to forget La Marseillaise, and permission to perform it on stage was systematically denied, except at the declaration of war in July 1870. This song of insurrection was resumed under the Commune. It was sung on 8 September 1877, at the funeral of Adolphe Thiers. The same year, following a performance of the song at a theatre in Nantes, republican deputies tried to have it reinstated as the national anthem. On 30 June 1878, the musical director of the Republican Guard, Adolphe Sellenick, was reprimanded by the commander of the Guard. This unprecedented treatment of the musical director of the army's - and the regime's - most prestigious orchestra was intended by war minister General Borel to be exemplary. The grounds he gave for banning the song drew on the argument invoked since the Restoration: “Quite apart from any political significance one might wish to ascribe to it, which it is important to avoid in all matters affecting the army, La Marseillaise was written for wartime and is therefore not appropriate to the army today, since we are, and wish to remain, at peace with the entire world.” This case occurred towards the end of the crisis of 16 May 1877, which toppled the regime, with institutions awaiting the restoration of the monarchy being replaced by a radical republic that would make repeated symbolic gestures asserting its revolutionary past. Almost certainly in concert with the Parisian authorities, who were inaugurating a monument to the Republic, Sellenick's performance heralded a return to favour for the revolutionary song. The affair did not affect his career, for he went on to be made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and the Minister for War commissioned a military march from him for the Bastille Day celebrations of 14 July 1880. He also remained in his post until the age limit, in 1884.

A NATIONAL ANTHEM IS ADOPTED

On 14 February 1879, a bill was presented by Gambetta, then withdrawn. Six days later, at the proposal of General Gresley, Minister for War, Parliament declared La Marseillaise the official national anthem by confirming the decree of 14 July 1795 (26 Messidor Year III, in the Republican Calendar). A letter from the war minister of 24 February 1879 states that “the anthem entitled Hymne des Marseillais shall be performed in all circumstances where military bands are called upon to play an official tune”. The letter would have one believe that the piece had never ceased to be the official anthem, as if the other regimes had been nothing but historical parentheses: “A decree-law dated 26 Messidor Year III (14 July 1795), published in the Bulletin of Laws and which has never been revoked, provides that the piece of music entitled Hymne des Marseillais shall be performed by military bands.” 1879 was too soon, for the republicans had yet to decide upon a date for France's national day. The first Fête Nationale, or Bastille Day, was therefore on 14 July 1880, with the handing over of military flags at Longchamp racecourse, parades, gun salutes and public dances. Since that date, La Marseillaise has been performed at all official ceremonies.

AN OFFICIAL SCORE

When an official anthem is adopted, there needs to be a reference score, to avoid differences of execution when more than one band perform together. In 1845, the adoption of the instruments of Adolphe Sax had resolved the issue of instrumentation and organisation. All that remained was to agree on the score. Gossec's arrangement was not suitable and that of Berlioz was really intended to accompany a choir, not to be played by itself. In 1886, General Boulanger, then Minister for War, launched a competition among musical directors and formed a jury of the leading musicians of the time. The official version for orchestra was adopted on 20 May 1887. A new score was adopted in 1912 to be performed with choirs. It was adapted by Pierre Dupont, whose version became the official one in 1938, and remains so to this day, the only exception being the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing, who asked for it to be played more slowly.

NATIONAL ANTHEMS ACROSS EUROPE

From 1792 onwards, the revolutionary ideas disseminated by the French armies had unsettled the peoples of Europe. Between 1809 and 1813, students and soldiers of the German Freikorps turned to the writings of their poets (Arndt, Weber, Uhland, etc.). Schiller's Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) was set to music by Beethoven. This musical theme, the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, would become the European anthem in 1986. In Poland, Sienkiewicz and Kurpinsky wrote La Varsovienne (The Song of Warsaw) in 1831. In Belgium, the revolt of 1830 which led to independence was triggered at the opera by the words of Auber's La Muette de Portici. In Italy, it was Verdi, whose very name symbolised unity: in the mouths of the partisans of unification, “Viva VERDI” meant Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re d'Italia (Long live Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy). Written in 1840 and set to music in 1854, Die Wacht am Rhein (The Watch on the Rhine), served as the official national anthem of the German people during the Franco-Prussian War. The question of nationhood also inspired the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben. In 1841, he wrote Das Lied der Deutschen or Deutschlandlied, which he set to music by Haydn, the third couplet of which is the present-day German national anthem. The model came from the British, who were the first to compose patriotic anthems. As early as the mid-18th century, they adopted Rule Britannia (1740), God Save the King (1745; the melody is borrowed from a composition by Lully, which is still contested by the British) and Heart of Oak (1759), the anthem of the Royal Navy.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN PEOPLES

Besides expressing collective identity through singing, national anthems are also a means of addressing other nations. In this sense, they established a kind of dialogue between peoples, a concert of nations. Music and song act on the long-term memories of people. Songs we learn as children, or hear as teenagers, are remembered for the rest of our lives. Thus, they leave indelible marks on successive generations. These pieces of music permeate the collective memory, influencing its evolution, which is necessarily slow in this context. Europe sang in one voice up until Luther. Not popular songs, but the sacred repertoire. Without necessarily speaking Latin, the people sang it and understood what it meant. By making German a liturgical language, Luther broke the unity of Latin. National anthems can therefore be interpreted as an attempt to establish a dialogue between peoples, between nations, for want of refinding that lost unity. In the days when recording and modern broadcasting techniques like radio, film and television were as yet unknown, song was a essential medium.

A COLLECTIVE BOND IN CONSTANT DEBATE

A national anthem is viewed in the country that has adopted it as a tool of cohesion, of collective identity. Beyond its words, melody and history, the composition takes on its own significance, enabling all to recognise themselves in it. When a song is raised to the status of national anthem, any subversive significance is toned down. La Marseillaise had been used since the French Revolution as a political song, but now workers preferred L'Internationale, for which the music was composed in 1888. This change was also seen overseas. From February to November 1917, La Marseillaise served as the official anthem for Russia's provisional government, until the Bolsheviks replaced it with the Internationale. In France, Jean Renoir's 1938 film La Marseillaise contributed to reconciling the song with the popular masses, even though questions continued to be raised about its institutionalisation. Today, only the first and sixth couplet and the chorus by Rouget de Lisle are sung, together with the seventh couplet (known as the “children's couplet”), which is ascribed to Abbé Pessonneaux. The other verses are almost never performed.

Questions, criticisms and challenges, however legitimate they might sometimes be, also call into question the validity of its role and therefore of the collective bonds uniting the individual members of a nation. Despite its complex history, for more than two centuries La Marseillaise has moved to the rhythm of the history of France. While it may not be above controversy, and may at times have been snubbed, the anthem continues to be viewed as a symbol of union and remains irrevocably associated with the Republic. It rings out at all its celebrations: commemorations, official ceremonies, memorial celebrations and international sporting events. La Marseillaise has been protected against the offence of desecration since 2003, and has been required to be taught in schools since 2005.

Transfer of Rouget de Lisle’s ashes to Les Invalides: the procession, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 14 July 1915.
© Wackernie / Excelsior - L'Équipe / Roger-Viollet

WITH THE FRENCH IN THEIR HARDSHIPS

The institutionalisation of the anthem has involved its being taught to the younger generations. In 1911, in the face of increasing tensions across Europe, French education minister Maurice-Louis Faure made it compulsory for La Marseillaise to be taught in schools.

With the outbreak of the First World War, it became the song of the “sacred union”, the pledge of political unity on the home front as the last bastion against German aggression. It was sung and played both at the front and in the civilian zone, on café terraces and at the theatre as well as at official ceremonies. A symbol of this fervour, on 14 July 1915 the ashes of Rouget de Lisle were exhumed from the cemetery of Choisy-le-Roi and interred under the Dôme des Invalides, in Paris, following a formal ceremony.

La Marseillaise remained the national anthem under the Vichy government, and was not really challenged by Maréchal nous voilà, which never became an official anthem. It was sung by French soldiers in England, by prisoners in the Stalags and by members of the Resistance movement. The constitution of 1946, then that of 1958, both make express reference to La Marseillaise as the national anthem. In 1962, it was sung both by the partisans of French Algeria and the supporters of General de Gaulle, who would break into it in his speeches before those present were able join in. On 30 May 1968, it was sung by supporters of de Gaulle on the Champs-Élysees.

Some renditions of La Marseillaise have been highly acclaimed, such as those by Jessye Norman in the Place de la Concorde at the bicentenary of the Revolution, on 14 July 1989, and Mireille Mathieu; others, like Serge Gainsbourg's 1979 reggae version, have gone down less well, and its use at football matches is often controversial. More recently, at the National Assembly's tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks of 7 January 2015, deputies sang it in unison to symbolise national unity in the face of the terrorist threat. This symbolic act was repeated when Parliament met at Versailles following the terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015.

Gustave Doré (1832-1883), La Marseillaise, allegorical engraving, 1870. BnF
© Albert Harlingue / Roger-Viollet

A SANCTIICATION OF THE COLLECTIVE BOND

An expression of the bonds uniting a people, national anthems have a sacred dimension too. Performers and listeners are expected to adopt a respectful posture, which means standing with the head uncovered. It is not the song itself which is sacred, so much as what it represents to society. La Marseillaise has been on official record since the early days of the Revolution, when it replaced the traditional Te Deum: “Upon receipt of the news, the Convention decreed the celebration of a civic festival, at which, on war minister Servan's proposal, it was decided that, instead of the Te Deum, the Hymne des Marseillais would be sung. This session of the National Assembly at which Rouget de Lisle's composition was acknowledged by name (28 September 1792) was the first at which mention was made of the future national anthem, and the performance which followed was the first official rendition of it.”

In the Roman liturgy, the Te Deum is sung at formal thanksgiving services (victories, national days, royal births, disease remission, the benediction, processions, etc.) and in all circumstances where thanks are offered to God. By replacing this hymn with La Marseillaise to celebrate a victory, its sacred function is transferred. It is no longer God who is celebrated by the people; instead, the people celebrate their own victory, as masters of their own destiny.

IN WHAT CONDITIONS DID THE BATTLE START?

Antoine Prost: At the end of 1915, the war seemed to be stuck in a rut. The Allies had failed to break through and their failures at Artois and Champagne persuaded Falkenhayn, the German commander in Chief, that a breakthrough was impossible. But he wanted to get back to a war of movement. He held the British army in great esteem but believed the French army was exhausted. How could these people who do not have children continue the war? Hence the idea of inflicting a major defeat on them in an area where the British could not help them. He believed this would lead them to seek a separate peace. A political miscalculation due to his underestimating his opponents. But why attack Verdun?

The President of the Council Georges Clemenceau at Mort-Homme during a visit to the battlefield, September 1917.

© ECPAD 1917 / Albert Samama- Chikli

Once the battle had gotten bogged down, Falkenhayn claimed he wanted to bleed the French white because the symbolic importance of this site would force them to defend it no matter what. And this was what happened. But in the German headquarters, no one spoke of a blood-letting prior to the battle. Moreover, Verdun was much less important than Reims for the French. In September 1914, the order had even been given to evacuate it. In fact, Falkenhayn's reasons were military. The fortified region of Verdun was a dangerous salient threat along his lines. On the other hand, it was difficult to defend. Firstly, it had very fragile links to the interior: the railroad to Nancy was cut off at Mihiel by the Germans and that of Sainte-Menehould came under their artillery fire. There remained a slow narrow-gauge train and a rocky road that was enlarged in 1915 and which no one could have imagined how intensely it was to have been used by the French. As well as that, the French would have great difficulty fighting on the right bank because the Meuse was a major cut-off point on which there were less than a dozen bridges. So Falkenhayn initially decided to only attack on the right bank and not on both banks as requested by the Chief of Staff of the attacking army.

This choice was also a tactic intended to save his troops. He was counting on his heavy artillery which was much more powerful than that of the French, to crush French positions to such an extent that they would no longer be able to defend them. In fact, the German attack was not a headlong rush forward, the infantry were confident; if they met resistance, the order was to wait for another bombing. This tactic focused all fire on a relatively narrow but deep zone to get the most intense shelling and prevent the arrival of reinforcements.

The offensive was decided on in December and quickly put together: it was ready on 12 February but bad weather put it back to the 21st. Joffre, who believed the major battles would take place on a broad front could not imagine that the Germans would engage massively into this deep ravine terrain and only realised the danger at a very late stage. He was not aware of how dramatically unprepared the Verdun front was and his artillery was quantitatively and qualitatively greatly inferior to that of Falkenhayn. He took the necessary precautions at the last minute. We cannot say that the French were surprised, but they were not prepared. The first week of the battle almost ended in disaster.

Ceremony at the Douaumont ossuary under construction, 1927.

© Suddeutsche Zeitung / Rue des Archives

WHY DID THE BATTLE OF VERDUN BECOME A SYMBOL OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR?

Antoine Prost: Verdun is not a symbol of the First World War everywhere. For the English, the Somme or Passchendaele matter much more. But for the French, yes, it summarises and symbolises the entire war. The fighters were saying it already in 1916: "If you weren't at Verdun you weren't in the war." In fact Verdun and the Armenian genocide is all that lower secondary school pupils are taught about the war.

For the soldiers, this battle was the peak of violence: they had never seen such hell. It was worse than that of previous battles. But then they were not in a position to compare Verdun to the battles that followed such as the Somme or Le Chemin des Dames. Yet these were probably worse, because the technological war continued to escalate with more massive bombings and ever more machine guns. Witnesses everywhere tell of the same horrors: the thirst, mud, the stench, exhaustion, the distress of shells falling all round, the cries of the wounded, the dislocated corpses, death present everywhere. There are no scales to measure the horror of battle and this one resulted in 143,000 German deaths and 163,000 French deaths but the monthly toll in the Somme was higher than that of Verdun.

Other reasons have been put forward to explain the exceptional status of Verdun: the fact that this was the only battle in the war in which the Allies did not play a direct role, or the "noria" that moved 73 of the 100 divisions in the French army to Verdun, with the result being that, of all the battles in the war, it was the one in which the largest number of French soldiers took part. Yet these explanations are secondary.

In fact, at the time, Verdun was experienced as an exceptional battle, "The" battle that we could not lose. Since 1914, the Allies had had the upper hand. And here now were the Germans attacking. And what an attack! Within days, they had advanced 6 to 8 kilometres, the front was at breaking point, defeat loomed. The French feared losing the war and they knew what that meant: they had lost the previous one and it had cost them Alsace and Lorraine. It was essential to prevent the Germans from getting through. Anguish was widespread: among politicians, journalists and the population at large. The soldiers understood how important this was and in the decisive moments of the battle, at the end of February or in June, when the German advance came to within 4 km of the city, they fought with unimaginable fury in absolutely abominable conditions. In fact they took legitimate pride in this and as a result we have a considerable volume of accounts of the battle with publishers and the public keen to be informed.

The remains of the unknown soldier leave Verdun for the 11 November 1920 ceremonies in Paris.

© Neurdein / Roger-Viollet

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE SPECIAL PLACE VERDUN HAS IN THE FRENCH IMAGINATION?

Antoine Prost: I have already answered in part, but we must be more precise. The myth of Verdun is focused on the right bank of the Meuse: between the city and Douaumont ossuary. The left bank was of much less importance, to such an extent that the French claimed victory in December 1916 after taking back the two forts of Douaumont and Vaux but not Hill 304 or the Mort-Homme which had been the subject of fighting that was just as fierce and that the Germans still held. This dissymmetry can be explained by the choice made on 25 February by the military and politicians to defend Verdun on the right bank. It was playing tough because militarily it would have been possible to retreat behind the Meuse. This possibility had in fact been discussed several times. But this decision gave the right bank exceptional symbolic value.

Ceremony at the Douaumont ossuary with the arrival of the coffins of 52 unidentified soldiers, 1927.

© Albert Harlingue / Roger-Viollet

In 1916, everybody who was anybody, ministers, parliamentarians, journalists, academics, artists, everyone wanted to go to Verdun and to say they had been there. Poincaré went there six times. In September, he decorated the city with the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre and the town also received a dozen foreign decorations. In November, the City created a medal for Those of Verdun. In 1920, it was from the citadel of Verdun that one of the eight coffins of unknown soldiers was chosen to be buried under the Arc de Triomphe. Cities named streets after Verdun. Numerous players contributed to making the battlefield a sanctuary where normal life was at a standstill. It was the building of the ossuary by a Committee that collected fourteen million in donations pending a grant from the State that enabled it to be completed in 1932. It was the grouping of twenty-two small cemeteries into one big one of 16,000 graves in front of the ossuary. The pilgrimages by veterans, tourism and commemorations rounded off this work. In July 1936, 30,000 veterans from ten countries, mostly French, Italians and Germans came to Douaumont to take an oath to defend peace. Between 1962 and 1967, the National Verdun Remembrance Committee built a memorial beside the destroyed village of Fleury to perpetuate the memory of the soldiers when the witnesses will have all disappeared.

But the context is changing. Because Douaumont was an epicentre of national pride, but a peaceful pride: that of a France that does not attack, but that can defend itself, this was the ideal place to seal the reconciliation between the two peoples, two peoples who had fought so hard against each other. A reconciliation marked by a silent yet powerful gesture, that of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl holding hands.

WHAT PLACE DOES THE BATTLE OF VERDUN OCCUPY IN THE EUROPEAN CONSCIENCE?

Gerd Krumeich: What has been said about the "uniqueness" of this battle is also of great importance in the European memory.

The First World War had tremendous consequences for Europe; it definitely lost its global pre-eminence. and the Battle of Verdun was of such a nature that it will forever be the symbol of the Great War. If fact it had this status right from the time of the battle, when "Verdun" was made into this shrine by the French political and military establishment, a place where "you shall not pass", a place visited not only by the President of the French Republic, Raymond Poincaré but by numerous representatives of allied and neutral states who came to visit the city and who decorated it many times in numerous different forms.

50th anniversary of the battle of Verdun: General of Gaulle and Pierre Messmer, Minister of Defence at Douaumont ossuary, 29 May 1966.

© Rue des Archives / AGIP

After the war, everyone knew that Verdun was the impassable location of massacre and horror; to those who might be considering the possibility of war, it demonstrated the futility of any war. Verdun became a sort of European peace capital. And this all the more since the French memory of Verdun was not a triumphalist one of victory, but rather a delicate mix of pride in what had been accomplished and deep mourning for the dead, whose horrible fate was beyond commemoration...

So the memory of the Battle of Verdun quickly became the memory of the great sacrifice that had been asked of so many soldiers - soldiers from two neighbouring peoples who had been enemies for centuries. It was acknowledged in both countries, who have now formed the nucleus of the new Europe taking shape, that Verdun was only the triumph of death. And this is also the reason why we started to commemorate this battle together, French "poilus" and German feldgrau side by side. And this was the case as early as the end of the twenties when meetings between veteran organisations were organised. This movement towards a common memory came to an insurmountable peak on 12 and 13 July 1936 when over thirty thousand veterans from ten countries, mainly French, Germans and Italians met in the Douaumont cemetery opposite the ossuary and pronounced an "oath" of peace, as follows:

"Because those who rest here and elsewhere have gone to the peace of the dead only to establish the peace of the living...

And because it would be sacrilege for us to allow what the dead abhor,

we swear to safeguard and to will the peace which we owe to their sacrifices."

This was the first step towards a final reconciliation, but it had no significant effect at the time since the Germans wanted revenge before peace could be made. But once the "interlude" of the Second World War was over, Verdun could ultimately resurface as an emblematic place of reconciliation and confirm the city's function as a symbol of peace that it had taken on in the twenties and thirties.

Today in the European consciousness, "Verdun" is still the emblem of war so "absolute" it ultimately crushed any desire for war.

WHAT PLACE DOES VERDUN HAVE IN THE GERMAN MEMORY?

Gerd Krumeich: Today, the Germans are not very aware of the fact that Verdun is of concern to them as an integral part of their history. For most of our contemporaries it is a distant battle as remote as Sedan or Leipzig. This follows from the fact that as a whole the Great War is in no way as important to Germany as it is to the French or British. The memory of the Great War was "swallowed up" by that of an even greater war, that of 1939-1945, when Germany was devastated and where its crushing responsibility continues to concern us right down to the present day. If Verdun is present in the German memory it is more in the form of the war history rather than German history. There are no more grieving associations. We do not personally make any difference between a grandfather or great-grandfather who fell at Verdun or the Somme or on the eastern front. All that is so far away...

And this is all the truer, of course, since Verdun was not only a lost battle but it is also marred by a deep feeling of complete absurdity.

François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl at Douaumont ossuary 22 September 1984.

© Picture Alliance / Rue des Archives

This is the effect of the so-called "Christmas Memorandum" from Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, who claimed he did not want to take Verdun, but saw it as a suitable place to "bleed the French white". Yet it is now established that this Memorandum is most likely a fake, produced after the war to explain away the failure. Nevertheless, the feldgrau at Verdun and then the public as a whole were deeply shocked in 1920 to discover this version of the battle: the Germans knew only too well that their army had been "bled out" at Verdun just as much as had their enemy. A useless battle therefore, and Falkenhayn's so-called plan was seen to be a kind of stab in the backs for his soldiers: they had sacrificed themselves at Verdun with the aim of taking Verdun and by this victory put an end to a war that nobody wanted any more and now they were being told that the only purpose was to bleed out the French. An that's why they themselves had been bled out! A useless sacrifice therefore and which took away any "sacred" aspect the memory of Verdun might have had.

WHAT WAS SO SPECIAL ABOUT THIS BATTLE?

Gerd Krumeich: There are several peculiar features about the battle of Verdun. This is why it remains one of the great battles not only in The Great War but in world history.

This is firstly due to the lasting nature of this battle. The battlefield was relatively small (between 30 and 40 km2) and a hundred years later, the site remains ravaged by the war. A landscape where the shell holes - slightly levelled - still give the land a dune appearance in which the vegetation has finally won out but with great difficulty. In such a way that we always easily imagine what it was like at the time. There are also the huge forts, all places and names that recreate the horror of the time: Douaumont fort, Vaux fort, Tavannes tunnel, Mort-Homme etc. And overshadowing the site is the Douaumont ossuary, this impressive building, where one can peek through small basement windows to see the huge pile of bones kept there. About 135,000 French and German soldiers whose name nobody knows. "All that" was scattered all over the battlefield and buried in the earth, then collected in the 1920s and later. All this brings home the carnage of Verdun to all and for all time, a formidable - even unspeakable - 10 months of carnage. Close combat, a real archaic "corps à corps" which had the particularity of being accompanied by the pounding of shells of all calibres from huge guns located some 10 km away. This form of combat was unique; it was like a transition to the truly industrialised warfare that would later bring death at a distance across an "empty" battlefield as in the Somme and Flanders But Verdun remains unique: there was no other battle that combined archaic warfare in which soldiers literally strangled each other and industrial death from afar.

Commemorating "Verdun" therefore means commemorating the Great War as a whole, on a site where death is still present, whose landscape is dominated by military cemeteries where some two hundred thousand young French and German soldiers rest not to mention those in the ossuary. French and Germans - since the battle only opposed these belligerents and this too is a unique case in the entire Great War. Commemorating the battle of Verdun is therefore important on several levels and for several reasons: Verdun is the symbol of the war in all its forms and its devastations. Verdun is also a key site in the huge conflict one hundred years ago between France and Germany, a conflict that was so absolute that it could only lead to definitive peace between both nations. Peace and agreement perfectly symbolised by François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand in hand on 22 September 1984. An agreement that is the basis of a peaceful Europe in which no one ever thinks of a war of conquest.

War graves, major national remembrance sites, national museums, traditional museums and other memorial sites... in France and abroad, the Ministry of Defence has an extraordinarily rich historic and memorial heritage that must be protected, renovated and promoted. It is therefore only natural that the Ministry of Defence, the second largest cultural operator in the state, has become a partner for those territories working to promote remembrance tourism.

Visitors in front of the firing squad wall at Montluc prison in Lyon, Rhône.
© ECPAD / A. Karaghezian

THE MAJOR SITES: THE MEMORY OF CONTEMPORARY CONFLICTS

Places of memory and contemplation, the nine major remembrance sites are venues for national commemorative ceremonies. In paying tribute to the memory and sacrifice of these soldiers, remembrance sites contribute to young people's civic education and help pass the values of the Republic on to them. Each of these major sites evokes an aspect of contemporary conflicts. Among these are the two most iconic military cemeteries in France: the national cemeteries of Notre-Dame de Lorette, in Pas-de-Calais and Douaumont with the Bayonet Trench, in the Meuse, that recall the sacrifice of the soldiers fallen during the Great War. Five other major sites are given over to the Second World War: the Memorial of Fighting France at Mont Valerien in Suresnes (Hauts-de-Seine), the National Memorial of Montluc Prison in Lyon, the Memorial to the Martyrs of Deportation, on the Île de la Cité in Paris, the site of the former Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace and the Memorial to the Landing and Liberation of Provence, at Mont Faron in Toulon. For the decolonisation period, two major sites pay tribute to the veterans of colonial conflicts: the Indochina Wars Memorial in Fréjus, and the Memorial to the War in Algeria and Fighting in Morocco and Tunisia, on Quai Branly in Paris.

Inauguration of the monument by the President of the Republic.
© Presidency of the Republic

Close to three hundred thousand visitors flock to these major sites each year. The increase in visitor numbers, the changes to take account of the public's new expectations and the absolute necessity to transmit the memory on to the younger generation have led the DMPA to undertake major work programmes at these memorial sites in recent years. These programmes started with the creation of the European Centre of Deported Resistance Fighters (CERD) in Struthof that opened in 2005. Similarly, at the Fréjus Memorial, a renovated educational room was opened to the public in 2010. A permanent exhibition and documentation centre were set up in Mont-Valérien. Since then the programme has continued with renovations to the Deportation Martyrs Memorial and the Mont Faron Memorial.

THE DEFENCE MINISTRY'S RICH CULTURAL AND HISTORIC HERITAGE

The Ministry of Defence runs three national museums: the Army Museum at Les Invalides, the Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget and the National Naval Museum at Le Trocadero along with its four annexes in the ports of Brest, Port-Louis, Rochefort and Toulon. These three public institutions have been awarded the "Musée de France" label and receive over two million visitors a year.

The Ministry also has 17 other museums all over the territory. 16 weapons museums illustrate the history, traditions, crafts and techniques of the various component parts making up the French Land Army (artillery, armour, cavalry, marines, Foreign Legion, parachutists, engineers, communications, logistics, Train et Equipages, mountain troops, light aircraft for the Land Army...) and the Military Health Museum.

Moreover, many prestigious buildings classified as historical monuments are the property of the State and are entrusted to the Ministry of Defence: the Hôtel National des Invalides, the École Militaire, the Château de Vincennes or the Fortifications of Vauban. Determined to preserve and promote this unique heritage, the Defence and Culture ministries have for the last 35 years been cooperating through an annual agreement to finance monument restoration projects over the entire national territory.

Maissin Cemetery, Belgium
© SGA-DMPA / G. Pichard

CARING FOR THE GRAVES OF SOLDIERS WHO DIED IN ACTION FOR FRANCE

Nearly 900,000 bodies are buried in 266 national cemeteries, 2,200 communal military sections and seven foreign military cemeteries in mainland France. Around one thousand burial sites are also present in 80 countries where 230,000 French soldiers are buried. A pluriannual programme (2011-2018) has been drawn up for priority restoration of First World War cemeteries. It provides for the renovation in France of over forty national cemeteries and military sections in communal graveyards accounting for nearly 100,000 graves and 66 ossuaries, not to mention work on overseas sites, in particular in Belgium and on the former Eastern front. A programme to replace history information panels in these cemeteries and in the main military sections was also launched in 2014. Finally, a landscape charter drawn up in 2015 sets down the general site planning and development principles to help visitors contemplate in the best possible conditions but also to enable them to learn and understand the history of the site and the soldiers buried there.

SUPPORT LOCAL TERRITORIAL PROJECTS

While the Ministry of defence is a major player in remembrance tourism, it is also a promoter of such tourism by encouraging the development of local partnerships to improve or rehabilitate sites. The Ministry supports communities and associations that have coherent and high quality remembrance projects. Already some 20 projects have been supported all over the country. Thus, the Ministry took part in the development of the Hartmannswillerkopf (Haut-Rhin) with the renovation of the crypt, the monument and ossuary and the construction of a Franco-German historial inaugurated at the end of 2015.

Similarly, the activities carried out by the La Meuse Departmental Council have been supported for the last six years: rehabilitation of the World Peace Centre in Verdun, restoration of the Douaumont ossuary, work on the Vaux and Douaumont forts and renovation of the Verdun Memorial, which has just reopened to the public. The Defence Ministry is also working with the Nord-Pas-de-Calais regional council in an ambitious project to promote and develop tourism at such remembrance sites as the Ring of Remembrance and the War and Peace History Centre in Souchez near the national cemetery of Notre-Dame de Lorette.

In the Somme, the Ministry is taking part in redesigning the Museum of the Great War in Péronne and the Interpretation Centre in Thiepval. The creation of the Rivesaltes Camp Memorial (Pyrénées-Orientales), inaugurated in October 2015 by the Prime Minister, the rehabilitation of the former Bobigny railway station (Seine-Saint-Denis) or the establishing of a memory trail dedicated to the Resistance in Morvan (Nièvre) also received financial support.

The Ministry of Defence also helps remembrance sites develop their programmes by funding cultural activities (temporary exhibitions, publications...), educational projects or tourism tools such as remembrance circuits. Partnership agreements along these lines have been signed with various sites such as the Péronne Historial, the Milles Camp Memorial (Aix-en-Provence) or the Study and Research Centre on internment camps in Le Loiret and the deportation of the Jews (CERCIL).

Due to the interest of many countries in remembrance of contemporary conflicts, the State's remembrance policy extends beyond the borders of France and takes on an international dimension: monuments in tribute to the countries involved in the two world wars are renovated or established. Thus, a French monument will be built in Memorial Park in Wellington, New Zealand. France thus pays tribute to its allies and several projects such as the renovation of the La Fayette Escadrille Memorial in Marnes-la-Coquette (Hauts-de-Seine) or the construction of a Canadian Memorial in Loos-en-Gohelle (Pas-de-Calais) should attract foreign tourists to France.

STRUCTURING THE SECTOR: THE ROLE OF THE MINISTRY AND SETTING UP A NETWORK

France therefore has a remembrance tourism offer that is as invaluable as it is impressive. To bring together memorial sites and remembrance tourism partners, the Ministry of Defence has set up the contemporary conflict museum and memorial network (MMCC). This professional network promotes synergies between its members, coordinates their initiatives and facilitates their integration both into the State's remembrance policy and that conducted locally to promote tourism sites.

In addition, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Tourism signed a partnership agreement in 2004 to structure remembrance tourism. The goal is to have an internationally visible offer of excellence emerge beyond the commemorations related to the two world wars. The first action is to measure visitor numbers and assess the economic importance of this tourism sector. The first national study on remembrance tourism was carried out in 2010 - 2011. It revealed that historical sites related to contemporary conflicts attracted over six million visitors in 2010 and generated close to 45 million euros in turnover.

To keep track of this very popular trend, an observation platform, developed in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism and its "Atout France" operator, went online in 2015. This tool is used to see how the sector is changing, keep track of trends and the impact of the major commemorations. Thus, attendance at remembrance sites is steadily increasing: in 2014, the number of visitors was 14 million, 42% higher than the previous year.

For example, the Struthof site welcomed 172,745 visitors in 2014 (+ 5% over 2013). The Douaumont ossuary had 419,000 visitors the same year (+72% over 2013).

The second action is to set up a "Qualité Tourisme^TM" label specific to remembrance sites. This approach is based on the national "Qualité Tourisme^TM" brand administered by the Tourism Ministry. The goal is to improve the reception given to people visiting these sites. Another action is to participate in the "Great war" and "Normandy Remembrance Tourism" destination contracts. The State is a partner to these two contracts, with "Atout France" and the local authorities concerned. These projects also promote the two destinations abroad and aim at developing a professional approach to remembrance tourism among territories especially as regards receiving visitors.

The last action is to develop innovative mediation tools. Both ministries encourage the use of new technologies to help visitors understand the history of the remembrance sites and to accompany them on their visits. In 2015, they took part in a call for digital projects as part of the Destination Normandy contract. For its part, the Ministry of Defence funds digital technology-based projects that promote remembrance sites. Last year, it funded a remembrance circuit for the "Battle of Abbeville" in the Somme.

The contemporary conflict museum and memorial network is a formidable development tool that now has over 90 members all over France. In recent months, it has been opening up to foreign sites that wish to join such as the "In Flanders Fields" museum in Ypres in Belgium.

National Cemetery of Metz Chambière, Moselle
© ECPAD / J. Lempin

In 1925, Hitler had written in his book Mein Kampf: "In times of war, words are weapons". Fifteen years later, German radio had become a formidable weapon "as effective as tanks on the battlefield" according to the German Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. The battle of opinions was launched and, in this game of seduction and propaganda, the BBC won over the hearts and minds and became the spearhead of an unprecedented civil resistance.

Amazing letters found in the archives in England testify to the unique relationship forged between Radio London and its listeners, and reveal the state of public opinion among these French under the German yoke. "My Dear English friends, thank you for the comfort you give with your broadcasts to those freedom-loving French who refuse to be forced to dance to Hitler's tune, to those who keep in their hearts, with an impotent rage against the evil shepherds, the tenacious hope of an uprising "(A listener from Beziers, 20 June 1940).

RADIO TABLE

In September 1939, France had 6.5 million wireless sets, compared to 9 million in England and 13.7 million in Germany where the leaders had a specific goal: destroy the enemy through moral poisoning and psychological paralysis. Since Hitler came to power, the nazification of the media subjected the citizens of the Reich to a daily diet of propaganda broadcast over the airwaves of the Reichsrundfunk Gesellschaft with citizens being prohibited from listening to any "enemy" radio stations under pain of severe penalties.

Pierre Bourdan, a famous voice on "The French speak to the French" on the BBC.
© Rue des archives / Tallandier

The master of the airwaves, Joseph Goebbels, took matters in hand. He developed the German international service and created black stations aimed at the rest of the world. Thus, the Voix de la Paix, a clandestine radio station launched in December 1939, took a pacifist and extreme right wing revolutionary opposition stance, complemented in January 1940 by Radio Humanité which spoke to French workers denouncing this "imperialist and capitalist" war.

Jacques Duchesne, at the head of the team running the radio programme "The French speak to the French" at the BBC, circa 1942.
© Rue des archives / PVDE

Faced with this machinery, the French government refused to use the radio as a weapon of war. In its eyes, in wartime the mission of the radio was to simply inform and guide the public, broadcast news that was of course directed and censored but free of any virulent propaganda. This was a major mistake! State radio rapidly alienated its audience, irritated by this infantile censorship and the excessively elitist tone of its broadcasts. So French listeners tuned into the BBC, the Swiss station Radio Sottens and more dangerously the German black stations with the most infamous in terms of misinformation and intoxication being the notorious Radio Stuttgart.

THE BBC ENTERS THE WAR

In a BBC studio in London (left to right): Jacques Duchesne, Jean-Jacques Mayoux, André Gillois, Maurice Schumann, Jean Oberlé and Geneviève Brissot.
© Rue des archives / PVDE

In France, one man understood the power of radio and words on the battlefield, a virtually unknown officer, interviewed for the first time on 21 May 1940 in Savigny-sur-Ardres in Champagne-Ardenne. Speaking into journalist Alex Surchamp's microphone, Colonel Charles de Gaulle, the commander of the 4th armoured division, rejected defeatism and predicted that by mechanical force victory would come. On 18 June, he launched his appeal for resistance from a BBC studio in London. The war of the airwaves was on.

Faced with on the one hand Radio Paris, entirely under the German boot with programming that combined propaganda, sharp diatribes, entertainment and music, and on the other Radio Vichy, Marshal Petain's station which started out with a moderate tone but then soon took a more hostile stance against the Allies and was apologetic with regard to the collaboration, the BBC was to be one of the finest instruments in this battle of the airwaves.

In June 1940, with six daily news bulletins, Radio London's French language services were just getting underway. But the defeat of the French army and the takeover of the national media by the Germans served as a catalyst for major broadcasting changes in England. On 19 June, a new programme, Ici la France (Here is France) was added from 20:30 to 20:45, first with the journalist Jean Masson, then, from June 24, with Pierre Bourdan, whose real name was Pierre Maillaud, a journalist from the Havas Agency in London, who took over the show for a while from 20:30 to 21:00.

But the English wanted to offer French listeners a real creative programme, without no obvious propaganda aimed at informing them and keeping up their morale, telling the truth and restoring hope. On 7 July, the Director Michel Saint-Denis, alias Jacques Duchesne, was appointed to form a totally French team with its national programmes and aspirations. He was to gather around him men and women from various backgrounds, including Pierre Bourdan, who commented on the news, Yves Morvan, alias Jean Marin, mobilised at the Anglo-French news mission on 2 September 1939 and present at the BBC since June 1940, Jean Oberlé, former correspondent for the daily Le Journal, Pierre Lefèvre, the youngest of the bunch, the poet and man of cinema Jacques Borel (Brunius on the radio), the designer and antiquarian Maurice Van Moppès who Duchesne turned into a popular singer, not to mention the beautiful Geneviève Brissot. At the end of 1943, Pierre Dac joined the team. The team started its broadcasts on July 14, 1940 under the same name Ici la France but took the title 'The French speak to the French' on 6 September. Denouncing the occupation and the damaging effects of collaborating with the enemy, the programme was a window on the free world, a breath of fresh air and a source of hope in those difficult times.

Meanwhile, from 18 July on, Free France was given 5 minutes of airtime from 20:25 to 20:30 under the title Honneur et Patrie and presented by General de Gaulle's spokesman Maurice Schumann. From 9 December, the programme was rebroadcast in the midday news bulletin. Aware of the strength of this modern tool, de Gaulle knew that the BBC would enable him to keep in touch with the French and instil in them the spirit of resistance.

Even though he only intervened on special occasions - 67 times in five years - his voice was keenly waited for by the French who firmly believed that "the BBC is de Gaulle". A misconception since every programme was subject to British censorship including those by de Gaulle who constantly strove to increase the power of Radio Brazzaville so as to gain greater freedom of expression.

Driven by an ideal, that of the destruction of Nazism and the restoration of freedom in Europe, the BBC's French programme started every evening at 20:15 (21:15 in winter) with the news written in English and translated into French, followed at 20:25 by the five minutes of Free France then from 20:30 to 21:00 "The French speak to the French" took over with news commentaries, sketches, small scenes, slogans, songs and jingles that the French hummed along with as a rallying sign. "Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German! " became the popular jingle launched in September 1940 by Jean Oberlé one of the members of a highly creative team. Another example is "The Three Friends Chatting" featuring three characters having different opinions and who are discussing current affairs. And "La Petite Académie", often broadcast on Sundays, took listeners to the French Academy where Jacques Borel in the role of President, Jacques Duchesne as Archivist and Jean Oberlé as reporter redefined the words in the dictionary in the context of the occupation: "Freedom = word temporarily removed" or "ration = the Occupier's leftovers." There was something for everyone, including children who every Thursday had their programme in which Babar and other children's characters served the Allied camp's objectives.

But the most intriguing aspect for listeners to Radio London was those mysterious sentences that slipped into the personal messages programme from 28 June 1940 on and initially reserved for escapees from France who wished to reassure their families by letting them know, in a rather cryptic manner, that they had arrived. From September 1941, Colonel Buckmaster, head of the French section of Special Operations Executive (SOE), came up with the idea of broadcasting coded messages over the airwaves of the BBC; "Lisette is fine", "The moon is full of green elephants", "The gardener's dog is crying"... Fascinating formulas that were to serve as means of communication with the resistance movements to identify agents, announce acts of sabotage, equipment shipments, arrests, future threats or any other resistance operation.

Franchot "Le Général Micro", lithography. Propaganda poster lampooning General de Gaulle because of his radio power, 18 November 1941
© Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet

THE GERMAN RIPOSTE

The station was a great success: proof of this came from the reactions of German caricaturists who drew de Gaulle as "General mic" and those at Radio Paris who mimicked their London opponents and the programme The French speak to the French with their programme called Au Rythme du Temps presented by Georges Oltramare. This mimicry was a first victory for the BBC! But that resulted in a violent backlash from the Germans...

The Germans retaliated by scrambling "enemy" airwaves and making it a crime to listen to Allied radio stations. Anyone caught in the act was at best liable to a fine and the loss of their radio and at worse to a prison sentence and hard labour.

School children listening to a speech by Marshal Petain on the national airwaves, in October 1941.
© Lapi / Roger-Viollet

A war of technicians started up on both sides of the Channel with the Germans seeking to make their jamming tactics more efficient and the Allies looking to increase transmitter power and counter German jamming. For London, it was also a question of being informed sooner in order to react more rapidly and influence public opinion. In March 1942, after setting up a tapping centre to listen in to enemy broadcasts, BBC journalists were able to avail of three news bulletins every day, a fantastic tool enabling them to be highly responsive. The finest example of this news battle is certainly the speech in favour of the Relève given by Pierre Laval, June 22, 1942 on the national radio station in which he said "I desire a Germany victory" and the scathing response from Maurice Schumann the same evening: "No to blackmailing of French workers!" A victory for Radio London in this war of words in which Radio Paris tirelessly advocated collaboration with Germany to usher in a new Europe and was not afraid to spread slander against Jews, the English, the French of London and Freemasons.

In addition, with the return of Pierre Laval to power on 17 April, 1942, the French broadcasting system aligned itself on the themes of Radio Paris. Programmes such as "The Jewish question", "The militia informs you", or "The Legion of French volunteers against Bolshevism" on Radio Vichy echoed "The LVF informs you", or the programme "The Jews against France" broadcast on German radio.

In this heated atmosphere, London waged a permanent all-out war on the voices who presented Radio Paris shows, such as Georges Oltramare, a Swiss Nazi writer and presenter of the sequence "A neutral persons informs you", Dr. Friedrich at the head of the show "A German journalist talks to you", but above all Jean-Herold Paquis on Radio

Paris since June 1942, and Philippe Henriot, future Secretary of State for Information and author of a successful twice-daily chronicle on Radio Vichy, broadcast in the northern zone on Radio Paris from 1943. The oratory skills of this man with collaborationist overtones, his vitriol-laced formulas, scathing denunciations of the "rabid liars at the BBC", the deadly bombing by the Allies, Jewry, the maquis terrorists and "bloody Communists" rightly concerned people in London and they appointed Maurice Schumann and Jean Oberlé to counter him. Finally, the dangerous Henriot was to find his most brilliant opponent in Pierre Dac until 28 June, 1944, the day he was executed by a group of resistance fighters at his home in Paris.

The France news editorial desk at the BBC.
© Rue des archives

RADIO, SPEARHEADING THE CIVIL RESISTANCE

"Yes, tell us what can be done. " On the walls, it's done. The leaflets are done. But this is not enough, we must destroy the traitors" (occupied zone letter, May 1941). The BBC was the radio station of freedom, truth and hope, with the ambition of informing the French population despite the state controlled media, building trust and shaking people out of their apathy. The BBC's first goal was to arouse a resistance in the minds of the French. But from a war of words, it finally moved into a war of acts, launching appeals, giving orders, and in this it followed the calls from the field... and the instinct of one man, General de Gaulle , convinced that a crucible of civilian resistance existed among the French population, ready to take to the streets of France to openly express their rejection of the current situation.

He was the first to take the initiative on 1 January 1941, asking the French to empty the streets, from 2 to 3 pm in the unoccupied zone and from 3 to 4 pm in the occupied zone. Other orders followed such as the famous V campaign orchestrated in March 1941, calls to protest on 11 May, 1941, every 1 May, 14 July, and 11 November, not to mention sporadic calls against the violence of the occupier, such as the national Stand to Attention launched on 31 October 1941, in memory of the hostages shot in France shortly before. Beyond word-of-mouth, the BBC could count on relays from the resistance movements, Radio Brazzaville, Radio Moscow from the summer of 1941, the Voice of America or Radio Algiers, starting from the spring of 1943. And the French did not disappoint.

Regularly, on set dates and times, processions of men, women and children walked through the streets of their towns and villages, some wearing banned national colours, others the V for victory, to the sound of La Marseillaise and in a atmosphere of communion. Thus, on 14 July 1941 in the capital alone, an estimated 26,000 gathered at the Arc de Triomphe. In 1942, on the same date, there were 150,000 in Lyon, 100,000 in Marseilles, 30,000 in Toulouse... a national revival that saw demonstrations in 71 French cities.

Radio London became a formidable vector for civil resistance, a crowd leader that hoped that, when the time came, it would coordinate this huge potential to help achieve the Liberation! But before this could be achieved, it had to combat the despair that was ruthlessly winning over the French from 1943 on.

THE RADIO AS A STAKE IN THE WAR

An instrument of power, radio was also a stake in the Allied camp. Thus, at the time of the Anglo-American landing in North Africa in the night of 7 to 8 November 1942, General de Gaulle and his men, after being squeezed out of the preparations for operation Torch, found themselves banned from the BBC's airwaves. Previously, in October 1942, still unknown to the General, the British had launched a black radio station called "Radio Patrie" in England. Picked up by combatants in France, this clandestine radio aspired to control the domestic French Resistance. After some heated discussions, it gave birth to a new station called "Honneur et Patrie, Poste de la Résistance Française" in June 1943, co-managed by the Franco-British. André Gillois worked there with great talent until 2 May 1944, before it merged with the BBC's French programmes as the 6 June Allied landings loomed. Before this, on 27 May 1943, General de Gaulle left London for Algiers now having a robust radio system based on Radio Brazzaville and Radio Algiers, two stations run by French combatants.

THE WIRELESS, AN INVALUABLE ASSET

From a war of words to a war of acts, the Allied camp had bet on radio to guide the French who they intended to transform into auxiliaries for the Allied forces on D-Day and to coordinate resistance movements. The wireless was therefore a precious object to be treasured, sold for high prices on the black market... up to 7,000 francs for a second hand model, 800 for a lamp, at a time when the average hourly wage of a skilled worker in Paris was 10 francs.

Concerned about the occupier's repressive policies, the British regularly launched awareness campaigns on the value of the wireless, urging listeners to form listening groups, keep their wireless sets safe, use sets that ran on batteries, crystal sets, and prepare a place to hide the set in case of mass confiscation in France.

As the climax to the war approached, radio set seizures were initiated, the largest being in March 1944 in l'Orne, Calvados, La Manche, L'Eure, Le Nord and Lower Seine, possible theatres for an Allied landing. But these localised actions did not prevent the radio from play its leading role in the French liberation operations, starting from 6 June, 1944, before exhorting the population, over the summer, to take the path back to normality.

On 18 August, Radio Paris ceased its broadcasts. On 20 August, at 22:30, La Marseillaise was heard on the station followed by this announcement: "This is the French nation's radio broadcasting service". On 26 August, Radio Vichy also shut down. The radio landscape was undergoing total change. A new era was being ushered in and the BBC gradually took the form of a myth; but the invisible link woven between "the grand lady of London" and the French would never be erased as shown in these letters that were still being sent to London: "Gentlemen, you are entitled to the infinite gratitude of French patriots. Through your daily programmes, at a time when everything was crumbling around us, you kept us in contact with the outside world, you were a beacon for us allowing us to avoid pitfalls and showing us the way home. You were a supporting and comforting guide".

At the end of 1914, it was no exaggeration to say army command was in disarray. Six months earlier, in August 1914, they went into war full of confidence fully believing in the illusion of a short war and with their heads full of Napoleonic dreams. War was first and foremost a matter of courage, guts, momentum, it was an affair of horse flesh, cavalry charges with sabres out and furious onslaughts by infantry with their bayonets mounted. They were to become disillusioned very quickly and discover that this 19th century model belonged to the past.

Right from the first clashes, the French understood that they had entered the industrial war era, an era of fire-power that made the canon the King of the war and forced the infantry to dig in if they were to withstand the shock without being wiped out. So between October and November, a trench line was formed over 700 km from the North Sea to Switzerland transforming the mobile war into a siege war.

The situation was virtually the same on the eastern front. Even though they were beaten in East Prussia by the Germans, the Russians caused great problems for the Austrian and Hungarian forces and pushed their troops right back to the Carpathians, but here again, the offensive stalled: the lack of ammunition, logistic shortages and the truce called by general winter blocked the situation until spring. So the question that was tormenting army command at the end of 1914 was: how to put an end to this trench warfare? How to overcome this stalemate? How to do away with the barbed wire, artillery barrages and the firing of machine guns that promise defeat to anyone crazy enough to attack? Both camps reflected on how to go beyond this new form of warfare that was still poorly understood, in the search for a new method or a new front that would unblock everything.

In the trenches before the attack, Souain (Marne), September 1915.

© ECPAD / Victor Chatenay

THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN IN REVERSE

With the experience of small or large scale offensives, that of the Germans on Calais for example, it soon transpired that defence was superior to offence. Even if you put in every resource you have, sacrificing thousands of men to take the enemy trench, they will just fall back to another second line trench a few hundred metres away and you have to repeat the whole operation again. Also, at the end of 1914, some generals and politicians had understand that if massive and fruitless deaths were to be avoided in 1915, it was necessary to stand back and take a good look at the map of the war. Two considerations were driving these far-sighted individuals who observed the stalemate on the western front: resume the mobile war and since you cannot defeat the strongest, attack the weak.

This debate was the same in France, Great Britain and Germany. In Berlin, in fact, there was always a fear of fighting on two fronts – Russia and France – and so as not to split up its forces, the German army designed the Schlieffen plan which was to quickly overrun France before turning back to fight against Russia, a war that would be longer since it was such a huge country. But The battle of the Marne scuppered this plan. Yes France had been invaded but it had held steady and the German army found itself in the situation it dreaded.

German soldiers in a trench near Ivangorod (Russia), July 1915.

© PA Archive / Roger Viollet

For this reason, a number of strategists, starting with Hindenburg and his quartermaster Ludendorff, leaders on the eastern front, advocated reversing the Schlieffen plan in 1915: stay on the defensive in the West and finish off Russia in the East. The army of Tsar Nicolas II had many soldiers but few guns and it was out of shells; it would therefore be easy to overrun it with a bit of equipment. However the head of the German armies, General Falkenhayn, who had the ear of Emperor Wilhelm II, was opposed to massively redirecting forces to the eastern front. Did not Napoleon come a cropper on Russia? In addition, taking advantage of its vastness, Russian troops could always retreat and force the Germans to hit into a pillow. Under pressure from Marshal Hindenburg, immensely popular since he defeated the Russians in East Prussia, Falkenhayn gave way some terrain in August. Instead of having 80% of German troops on the Western front, he agreed to lower this figure to 60% to given eastern front leaders resources to defeat the Russians.

TAKE THE WAR TO THE BALKANS

In both Paris and London, the same reflections were underway. There was total stalemate in the west and it was unlikely that the Germans could be beaten. So why not look for another theatre of operations in the Balkans, resume a mobile war and defeat the weaker force, namely Austria-Hungary so as to isolate Germany and then attack it on its southern flank? To do this, considerable forces would be needed, at least 500,000 troops in Greece, in Salonica, to go back up through Macedonia and join Serbia which was still holding out against Austria. Finally, together with the Russians, launch a major operation that would crush the Austro-Hungarian forces. On paper, the plan was perfect. Especially since it was as much political as military. Indeed, when the neutral Balkan states saw the likely defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they would no doubt want to join in the war to get their share of the spoils: Italy, which was eyeing up Trentino and Istria, Romania, who dreamed of seizing Transylvania, would no doubt join in but Bulgaria and Greece would almost certainly do the same. This idea was supported by Generals de Castelnau and Franchet d'Esperey in October 1914, but also by such politicians as Aristide Briand in France and David Lloyd George in Britain.

Austrian troops in the Dardanelles, 1915.

© Library of Congress / George Grantham Bain Collection

But here too there was opposition... and no small opposition either: Lord Kitchener, his Majesty's War Minister, after showing an interest in this project for an army of the Orient that could change the course of the war, changed his mind. There were already not enough men and equipment to supply the western front so he was not about to get involved in a distant and expensive Balkan adventure.

But it was Joseph Joffre, the French Generalissimo, who was the most hostile to the project. He, with his annoying habit of promising victory every three months, was sure he could beat the Germans in the spring and so he needed all the men and guns he could get. And then, beating lowly Austria was a bad idea in his view: "It isn't Austria we have to beat, it's Germany", he cried on 8 January 1915.

A HALF GERMAN VICTORY IN RUSSIA

While Falkenhayn accepted the idea of a major offensive against Russia, he did not have any illusions about the outcome: he did not think Germany could floor the Russians but it could inflict such losses on them that they would agree to sign a separate peace. In any case, there was no question of him strengthening the popularity of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff tandem so he entrusted the offensive to general Mackensen who also commanded the Austrian troops placed alongside the Germans.

British troops on the attack near Achi Baba on the Gallipoli peninsula, 25 April 1915.

© Akg - images

During the entire month of April, troops were concentrated in the greatest secrecy along a line about 50 kilometres long and over 2,000 guns were put in place with no less than one million shells. Never had such a formidable battle been prepared. On 1 May, the bombardment pounded Russian positions all day long. It was an awesome deluge of fire. The next day, when the assault was ordered, the Russian lines collapsed and Russian soldiers surrendered in droves or ran away as fast as they could. With barely one rifle for every three soldiers, they had good reason to avoid combat! In one month, the Germans took 300,000 prisoners. And nothing seemed to be able to stop Mackensen's advance: the Russian steamroller was no more than a joke. On 4 August, Warsaw was invaded and all of Russian Poland fell into the hands of the Germans. But as they progressed, the Germans were stretching their supply lines while the Russians were tightening theirs.

The offensive ended in September: a lot more men and guns would be needed to march on Petrograd through the Baltic countries. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were crying out for these but Falkenhayn could not grant them their wishes given that the French were preparing a major attack in Champagne and he had to prepare "for a pretty bad time ahead".

This was Germany's dilemma in 1915, forced to fight on two fronts and therefore never able to deal a decisive blow.

Ottoman troops during the Gallipoli campaign, 1915.

© Library of Congress / George Grantham Bain Collection

THE FALSE GOOD IDEA OF THE DARDANELLES

On the French and English sides, given Joffre and Kitchener's opposition, the idea of an army of the Orient that would fight in the Balkans stalled and got bogged down. Since high command was reluctant, the affair became essentially political. In February, both Governments agreed, for example, on the idea of creating a Franco-British expeditionary force intended to join the Serbian front but opposition was too strong: with France invaded and the Germans barely more than 100 km from the capital, was this the right time to strip the trenches of men and try a wild shot on a front that was as remote as it was secondary? Would public opinion understand that we remain on the defensive in the west and do nothing to repel the invader?

In addition, the Generalissimo was preparing a small offensive "from behind the faggots" that the Germans would remember. So he found the army of the Orient project completely useless if not totally ludicrous. "Why look elsewhere and so far away for what I will get in March 1915? I'm sure to break through and sent the Germans packing." It was in this stalemate situation that Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty, i.e. the Minister of the Navy, presented his own project, a project that competed directly with that of the army of the Orient: force the Turkish Dardanelles Straits and the Bosphorus and seize Constantinople. Since only the Royal Navy was to be involved in this spectacular move and since Churchill was not asking for any additional guns or army regiments, his proposal gained unanimous favour. But the French did not believe it would work. Despite their doubts, they joined in on the operation because were it to be a success, the English must not be allowed to be sole masters of the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and redraw the map of the Middle East for their own benefit.

French shells being fired on the Gallipoli peninsula, April 1915.

© Akg-images / Gérard Degeorge

On 18 March, a Franco-British armada thus arrived before the Dardanelles for an expedition they believed to be a foregone conclusion. Nothing went as planned. Overseen and equipped by the Germans, the Turks multiplied the batteries and threw drifting mines into the straits. The Allied fleet was unable to cross the Dardanelles. Humiliated, the English and French then had the idea of an amphibious operation and organised a landing on Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April, with a force of colonial troops (one third of French forces were Senegalese and Australian and New Zealand troops formed the bulk of the British battalions). Since the Turks held the high ground, the operation turned into a bloody fiasco with the same trenches and same stalemate here as on the western front and thirst and mosquitoes thrown in for good measure. In the end, the operation turned out to be very costly in men and material (more than 500,000 troops had been committed to it) and all this with nothing to show for it. The only success of the Dardanelles campaign was the evacuation without losses in December 1915 and January 1916.

TOO LATE FOR THE ARMY OF THE ORIENT

The disastrous Dardanelles adventure had dire consequences: not only did it parasitise the army of the Orient project, which was to land in Greece and join the Serbian front, but it gave second thoughts to the neutral Balkan states. With the exception of Italy who decided to intervene – it signed the Alliance Treaty on 26 April, at a time when it was thought that there could be a victory in the Dardanelles –, Greece and Romania who had been in favour were now suddenly cooling off and returning to a more prudent wait and see attitude. Bulgaria, which had been Pro-German since the Balkan war of 1913 which gave Serbia an advantage at its expense, came out of its reserve when it saw that the French and English were unable to defeat the Ottomans. It then secretly joined the central powers during the summer, and on 5 October, entered the conflict by catching Serbia in a pincer move at a time when Serbia was struggling against a major Austro-German offensive. The Serbian army was beaten and forced to retreat through Albania and the country was fully handed over to the invaders.

At the same time, the governments forced high command to create an army of the Orient to rescue the Serbs. When it landed in Salonica, in October, it was too late: Serbia was already collapsing. What a beautiful idea it was at the beginning of 1915, this idea of the army of the Orient but the delay in setting it up made it completely inoperative. At the end of the year, not only was Serbia wiped off the map but Romania and Greece shrunk back into neutrality while Bulgaria had fallen into the enemy camp: the procrastination by the Allies and their dramatic Dardanelles detour had handed over the Balkans to the central powers.

Docking of a French troop transport ship in Salonika (Greece). 1915.

© Roger-Viollet

THE YEAR OF NEEDLESS MASSACRES

If the Army of the Orient project was torpedoed, it was, as we have seen, because Joffre wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. For 1915, he sincerely believed in a breakthrough on the western front, like long needle spikes all along the front, operations with minor objectives or large ramming operations, in Artois and Champagne in the spring, in Champagne and Artois in autumn. As this was not actually happening and that men were dying by the tens of thousands, he justified his strategy by inventing the nibbling theory. In reality, this was the strategy of someone who did not have one and who did not know what to do. Nibbling the enemy's positions in fact meant perpetually attacking them in order to gain a moral ascendancy over the enemy and keep the troops sharp through these regular massacres that had no fundamental objective other than ensuring the men did not lapse into the comfort of staying on the defensive. In fact, the only effect of the nibbling strategy was to wear down the French army and not the Germans.

At the end of 1915, 320,000 soldiers had died for a gain of 3 km in Artois and 5 km in Champagne. Not exactly what you could call an overwhelming success... General Castelnau was right when he sadly observed that "our army has spent all of 1915 wearing its teeth down to the root against a wall." Lloyd George, an early supporter of the Army of the Orient plan was furious at the lack of ingenuity of military command which was always one step behind the enemy: "Too late in moving here. Too late in arriving there. Too late in coming to this decision, too late in starting with enterprises, too late in preparing." Fortunately, Joffre had a plan for 1916. He now swore by coordinating the fronts and did not want to attempt anything until the Russian army has recovered and was in a position to resume the offensive, but he was giving much thought to a huge offensive for the following summer.

In the inter-allied conference at Chantilly, from 6 to 8 December, it was agreed that the French, British, Italians and Russians would attack together around the month of June 1916. A simultaneous operation that would prevent Germany from moving its reserves from one front to another and would result in its defeat. But June 1916 was a long way away and it was very unlikely that the Germans would be polite enough to sit around and wait six months for the Allies to get ready. On the contrary, having nothing to fear from Russia which was licking its wounds, Falkenhayn could safely prepare a deep punch into the western front. His sights were now firmly set on the Verdun salient.

"In the entrenched camp at Salonica": French troops crossing the Galiko, late 1915. Photograph published in the Excelsior newspaper on Sunday 30 January 1916.

© Caudrilliers / Excelsior - L'Equipe / Roger-Viollet

In 1945, the toll of the war was disastrous. Sixty million people had been killed in all the theatres of operations around the world. The murder of six million Jews began to be seen as genocide in people's minds. The cities were submerged under the destruction. Millions of refugees were on the roads. Food shortages affected the population. The colonial empires started to fall apart. European currencies had lost value. Only three currencies had managed to resist, the US dollar, the pound sterling to a lesser extent, and the Swiss franc. The price of gold had reached new heights. Economies were administered by governments. Public opinions wanted a return to a normal life.

The first act played out at Bretton Woods in July of 1944. The British economist, John Maynard Keynes, proposed creating an international currency, the bancor, which would not be linked to gold, to be used for commercial exchanges. But the head of the American delegation, Harry Dexter White, a senior Treasury official, was worried that countries with deficits would be able to freely dip into the United States' material resources with the new, generously distributed currency. The Americans had every reason to want keep the gold standard insofar as they held 2/3rds of the world's reserves.

Molotov’s departure after the failure of the Paris Conference, 3 July 1947.

© DR

REORGANISING THE WORLD

White propose alors un fonds de stabilisation des Nations unies chargé de contrôler les dévaluations. La parité des monnaies sera définie par rapport à l'or ou au dollar, lui-même as good as gold. L'ensemble du système sera géré par les banques centrales et par le Fonds monétaire international (FMI). Il disposera aussi d'une banque internationale pour la reconstruction et le développement (BIRD) ou banque mondiale. Le système, révolutionnaire, organise ainsi la coopération internationale.

Marshall Plan: President Truman addressing the American Congress, 12 March 1947.

© L’Illustration

White then proposed a United Nations stabilisation fund in charge of controlling devaluations. Monetary parity was to be defined in relation to gold or the dollar, itself being “as good as gold”. The entire system would be managed by the central banks and by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It would also have an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or World Bank. This revolutionary system thus organised international cooperation.

The world was also reorganised on the political level at major international conferences: first at inter-ally conferences, then at United Nations conferences. The most famous were held in Moscow (19–30 October 1943), Tehran (28 November–2 December 1943), Yalta (4–11 February 1945) and Potsdam (17 July–2 August 1945). The Unites States, the USSR and Great Britain, respectively led by Roosevelt (and then Truman), Stalin and Churchill (and then Attlee), sought to agree on the map of Europe once peace had returned, and the fate of entire peoples was in their hands. The Big Three took decisions for the landings in France, the occupation of Germany, the fate of Italy and the borders of Poland. The question of Poland's western border gave rise to heated discussions with Stalin. And should Germany be broken up and deindustrialised?

Ratification of the Treaty of Paris (ECSC), April 1951.

© Akg-images

Yalta did not divide Europe: the declaration on liberated Europe issued after the conference was based on the liberal democratic principles of the Atlantic Charter (12 August 1941). In fact, the spirit of Yalta can be summed up as an attempt at dialogue between two competing economic systems to solve the major problems of post-war Europe and the world. But the decisions made at the conference were not complied with, notably the promise given to Roosevelt to organise free elections in the part of Europe liberated by the Red Army, and Yalta became the symbol of Stalin's victory. After the war, conferences were held on the ministerial level to seal the fate of Germany's allies (Paris Peace Treaties of 10 February 1947), and France took part in them. Denazification continued with the Nuremberg Trials during which, from 20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946, twenty-four war criminals were judged for conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lastly, territorial settlements were reached with the help of the UN in Africa and Europe (Finland, Tende and La Brigue, Trieste, Macedonia, Thrace, Transylvania, the Dodecanese, Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia). The USSR unquestionably succeeded in pushing toward the west and north of Europe.

CONTAINING COMMUNISM

And yet, the feeling that the post-war settlements were a failure grew in 1947 due to the frictions, then tensions, and finally threats weighing on the Grand Alliance. The Cold War was upon us. Disagreements had already become obvious in Churchill's "iron curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946. In Iran, the English and the Americans dangerously opposed the Soviets. The USSR demanded a review of the accords on access to the straits in Turkey. In Greece, placed under British military control, a civil war broke out and, on 12 March 1947, Truman defined a doctrine for containing Communism. Furthermore, slow economic reconstruction brought Europe to the brink of chaos.

Jean Monnet, President of the High Authority of the ECSC, officially launches the opening of the six member countries’ common market for steel, 30 April 1953.

© Akg-images/ Ullstein Bild

The "German question" remained a sticking point between Eastern and Western Europe. The Big Four Conference of Foreign Minsters held in Moscow in March-April 1947 did not reach an agreement and distrust reigned. In January of the same year in Poland, rigged elections gave power to the Communists. In Western European countries, the Communist Parties headed social struggles and, in May, the Communists, members of the governments in France, Italy and Belgium, left power. The quadripartite management of Germany collapsed and the Soviets blocked access to Berlin from June 1948 to May 1949. In reaction to this, the American, British and then French zones merged into a single zone to form the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in May of 1949. The Soviet zone was set up as a State: the German Democratic Republic (GDR). All these events totally blocked any settlement of the "German question". The Marshall speech of 5 June 1947 had opened up the possibility of an inter-European economic entente, but the USSR refused what it considered to be an anti-Soviet war machine. Fear progressively seized both sides, with the USSR fearing American domination while the United States worried about global Communist subversion. Fear replaced reason, maintaining and even generating conflicts.

The Western countries were impressed by the creation of an information bureau by the European Communist Parties, the Cominform, at Szklarska Poreba in September 1947. The Prague Coup by Czechoslovakian Communists on 28 February 1948 eliminated the "bourgeois" ministers. Western military containment gave rise to the Atlantic Pact on 4 April 1949. The Soviets responded to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON), in 1949, and to NATO with the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The United States' emergence as a very great power was an essential consequence of the war. Europe had lost its central role as a political and economic power. The war had hastened its decadence, weakened its economy and weighed on its finances. In this context, how can we situate the European unity phenomenon?

A WEALTH OF DISCUSSIONS ON EUROPEAN UNITY

European unity came after the reconstruction of the Nation-States and after the creation of global security organisations (the UN, in June 1945). But the idea of European unity already existed and haunted administrative souls. In 1929-1930, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, had proposed the creation of a European federation. The project was not adopted, but the creation of regional economic unions was a widespread idea among industrialists and in international trade circles suffering from the worldwide economic crisis. The war had temporarily established a German Europe, united by the force of a military dictatorship. The post-war period needed to liquidate that conception of Europe and focus on a democratic popular unity based on the values of the Atlantic Charter. A powerful collective action was needed to move beyond the obstacle of fear of Germany and the USSR, which was not provided by the new global organisations nor by the diplomacies of the European Nation-States. The Big Four conferences had failed, as we saw. Multilateral security treaties were then signed in Europe. The Treaty of Brussels of February 1948 reinforced the security of France, Great Britain and the Benelux countries. The Atlantic Pact brought together the countries of Western Europe and Turkey (starting in 1952) with the United States and Canada against all aggressors.

At the same time, another kind of collective action was conceived: a European Union. Forms of regional unity had been envisaged by an active, enlightened segment of public opinion. All the major democratic parties developed a discourse on European unity framing the discourse on national reconstruction. In March 1944, De Gaulle adopted a project for a Federation of Western Europe after asking the CFLN (French Committee of National Liberation) to work on European unity in Algiers during the autumn of 1943. Jean Monnet, René Mayer, Robert Marjolin, Jean Chauvel and Maurice Couve de Murville compared their unity projects. The European Resistance movements rose up against a simple return to national sovereignty, which needed to be guided by normative forms of European or international unity. Without any consultations, they drew up a generic project for a "Europe of free nations" or a United States of Europe (Frenay, Hauriou, Camus, Blum, etc.). It was no longer a question of getting revenge on Germany, but rather of judging the Nazi crimes, integrating the German people into a European Union and using the Ruhr for joint development purposes. Several meetings were held in Switzerland in 1944, including one in May that gave rise to a project for European Resistance written at the home of Pastor Visser't Hooft in Geneva, and another in July at the initiative of E. Rossi, A. Spinelli and H. Frenay for a Declaration of European Resistance. But approval from the main allies was needed. The United States encouraged them, but the USSR did not, as they wanted to create their own security system against Germany. Would Europe's Resistance movement, rather than the States, lead the European unity process?

THE COMPLEX REALITY OF THE UNITY PROCESS

European unity became very popular when Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of Britain, thrilled the crowds in Zurich in September 1946 with a call for the United States of Europe. He called for the creation of a Council of Europe. The myth of the "European spring" was born. At the same time, and while federalist and unionist organisations were campaigning, European governments continued to act sovereignly. France first wanted the disintegration of Germany and European unity under her direction to ensure her security once and for all.

Jean Monnet, Heinz Potthof and Konrad Adenauer, 9 December 1953

© Ullstein Bild / Roger-Viollet

Access to German coal was essential for the French modernisation and equipment plan put forward by Monnet who had attempted, as early as April 1945, to set up supranational steering for European coal exchanges. He wanted a "coal dictator" in Germany with authority over the mines and over the allied occupation authorities; Eisenhower refused. In 1946, Monnet once again proposed setting up autonomous international organisations in the valleys of the Rhine, Elbe, Danube and Oder, inspired by Roosevelt's TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority). Jean Monnet's functionalism did not receive the support of governments. The French government, on the other hand, was highly favourable to a customs union with Benelux. In early 1947, Léon Blum had to recognise Britain's hostility to his projects for a continental union and accept to link his fate more with the Americans for France's security and modernisation.

And yet, thanks to Churchill's role, a European unionist movement, the United Europe Movement (UEM), favourable to intergovernmental cooperation, was founded in May of 1947. The UEM inspired others in France with the Conseil Français pour l'Europe Unie (Herriot, Courtin and Dautry), and received political support in Europe, unlike most of the other pro-European and federalist organisations.

Economic liberalism found effective spokesmen with the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC) (Paul Van Zeeland, Joseph Retinger). On the other hand, Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church, the academic circles of the Forum Alpbach (Otto Molden) and the Rencontres internationales de Genève, Christian Democracy and its Nouvelles Équipes Internationales (NEI) and the Socialist Movement for the United States of Europe (Marceau Pivert) produced a very active environment seeking European political unity. The UEM then proposed to organise a synthesis for a conference of pro-European movements with the hope of bringing about Churchill's project for the Council of Europe.

On 7 May 1948, the non-governmental Congress of Europe, chaired by Churchill, brought together 775 delegates from 24 European countries in the Hague. Resolutions were unanimously approved, along with a Message to Europeans written by Denis de Rougemont. It called for partial abandonment of sovereignty and Germany's integration into Europe, the creation of a European deliberative assembly designated by the national parliaments, the drafting of a Human Rights Charter and the installation of a Supreme Court of Justice. The struggle between the unionists (British) and the federalists (French, Italians and Belgians), and the oppositions between the liberals and the planners gave a reminder of the limits of the pro-European movements' influence.

But three months after the Congress, the French government suddenly took up the European Political Assembly project (Georges Bidault). The five members of the Brussels Pact took up the project for the Council of Europe. The new organisation, established on 5 May 1949, was given and Consultative Council designated by the Parliaments, and a sovereign Committee of Ministers, voting unanimously. This was far from a European federation. Disappointment came quickly, despite the lyrical flights of Winston Churchill, Georges Bidault and Guy Mollet, Pieter Kerstens and Eamon de Valera, Paul Reynaud and Hendrik Brugmans in the summer of 1949. Spaak was elected President of the Council, but he resigned with great fanfare in December of 1951 after speaking out against the voluntary stalemate on greater Europe caused by the British.

The Cold War and the Marshal Plan carried more weight in the debate on Europe than Europeanist ideas. The idea of reducing national sovereignties had lost ground. The Brussels Pact of 17 March 1948, which was awaited by the Americans, could have created a European unity organisation, but it was more a regional defensive pact than a customs union project; the French and the British also wanted an American military guarantee. The pact did not introduce real European institutions in view of unity. Instead of an ideological, idealistic, pacifistic project concerning all of the historical Europe, European unity became a form of resistance to Soviet domination.

The Americans had placed conditions on their aid to Western Europe unity. An Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) was set up to distribute the aid. Against the United States' wishes, France, Benelux and Italy, Great Britain, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries imposed cooperation more than integration, but Germany was part of the organisation. The OEEC helped to liberate inter-European exchanges without creating a customs union and also encouraged the return of currency convertibility thanks to the European Payments Union (EPU). The Marshall Plan closely linked Germany's fate to a democratic Europe. France was therefore invited to change policies and outlook on Franco-German relations. To the East, the Soviet bloc came together in an original economic organisation, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON), founded on 25 January 1949; it was a structure for the exchange of economic and technical information. Unlike the experiments in Western European construction, what happened in the East maintained Soviet domination in an unequal partnership. This "other Europe" was not the expression of the local populations' European consciousness. In Western Europe, the democratic ideals shared with the dominant foreign power could be contested. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, no kind of contestation of the Soviet model was to be found in the marriage contract.

Signature of the Treaty of Rome, 25 March 1957.

© TopFoto / Roger-Viollet

That is why the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 astonished people and sent shockwaves throughout Europe. It was the manifestation of a radical change in French policy toward Germany and proposed shared sovereignty in the field of two key industries of the day, coal and steel. Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer took a clear step toward peace in Europe with the project for a High Authority for coal and steel, a federal body. It is not easy to decide what this success owes to the powerful, innovative ideas of this text or to the context and unfulfilled aspirations for European federal unity. While the Americans were not at the origin the text, they did a lot for the success of the Treaty of Paris in April 1951.

Thus, an initial form of unity came about that State cooperation and diplomacy never could have imagined. It justified other unity efforts, starting with the EDC, which ended in failure in 1954, then the Treaties of Rome of 25 March 1957 (Euratom and the Common Market). European unity was not imposed by the strength of its idealistic message. The Schuman Declaration worked because it appeared to be better adapted than the sovereign States' traditional action to the Cold War situation, to populations' aspirations for material wellbeing, and to France and Germany's condition for solving their centuries-old material and moral disorders.

For the vast majority of the French, 1944 is the year of the Liberation . With its parades and street parties, euphoria... and illusions, the summer of 1944 was one of the highlights in French history, on a part with the Fête de la Fédération in 1790, the first weeks of the Revolution in 1848 or the 11 November, 1918 . In 1944 , the present cast off the shackles of the past, the defeat in 1940 and four years of German occupation.

But in 1945, the past came back with a vengeance through a procession of disappointments and disenchantment with a future that looked anything but bright. The year 1945 could only be a let-down following on the euphoria of 1944. The time had come to look at the consequences of the conflict face on. The French had to soberly cope with the heavy heritage left by the war and the German occupation.

Déblaiement dans les ruines de Caen.

© ECPAD/Vincent Verdu

FRANCE OCCUPIED AND BOMBED

On two occasions, the French territory was the scene of violent clashes: in May and June 1940, at the time of the German invasion , and then from June 1944 with the fighting for the Liberation. During the four years separating those two dates, can we say the country was kept out of the conflict? Can we subscribe to the argument put forward by Pierre Laval when he exhorted his compatriots on June 6, 1944 to refuse to support the Allies who had just landed in Normandy saying: "We are not at war! " In fact, the armistice of June 1940 was not a shield protecting France from hostilities. Allied airstrikes on France continued throughout the war. With 550,000 tons of bombs (or 22% of the total), it has the sad privilege of being the most bombed country in Europe after Germany.

Arrivée de prisonniers de guerre français à la gare de l'Est à Paris.

© SHD

In 1940-1941, under the threat of a German invasion of England, RAF aircraft pounded the channel and Atlantic ports. In 1942-1943, when the US Air Force joined in, bombing - while continuing on the French coast - spread inland. Companies working for Germany were the prime target with such bombings as the Renault factories in Boulogne-Billancourt for example. 80% of all bombs dropped on France were dropped in 1944. As part of operation Overlord , the "transportation plan" aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the communications network, in particular the rail network . But France also felt the weight of the war through the massive German occupation in 1940 (when preparing for operation Seelöwe), an occupation which while significantly alleviated in 1942 built up again from 1943. The following year, it comprised over one million men most of them based along the coast.

Gare ferroviaire du Mans, 1945.

© ECPAD

LOOTING AND REPRESSION

The "maintenance fees" for these troops, imposed by the winner on the loser, reached the astronomical sum of 700 billion francs for the four years. Added to this was the looting of consumer goods that German soldiers could indulge in with impunity due to the arbitrarily overvalued exchange rate of the Reichsmark. But looting took other forms: that of the most modern machines being dismantled and taken to Germany; mass requisition of horses required by a German army that was much less mechanized than is generally thought; the takeover of nearly 30% of coal production, 74% of iron ore and 50% of bauxite; requisition of meat (21%), wheat (13%), milk, butter and other foodstuffs which were eaten at the tables of German families. All this paid for... through occupation fees, i.e. by France itself. Goering had said "I intend to plunder and plunder extensively" and he did.

Visite du général de Gaulle en Bretagne, Brest, 26 juillet 1945.

© ECPAD/Henri Malin

Reconstruction d'immeubles après la guerre à Saint-Malo.

© Roger-Viollet

Nor should we forget the people plundering. Due to a massive mobilisation to fight the war on several fronts, the Reich economy is short of labour. Starting in 1940, 1,500,000 French prisoners were sent to camps in Germany where many were used as labour mainly in agriculture. But needs became even more pressing with the opening of the eastern front. In France, as in other conquered countries, intense propaganda called for volunteer workers. Around 200,000 people (and not 70,000 as is often said and written) agreed to go abroad for varying durations. Among them, a fairly high proportion of foreigners and women. To meet Germany's growing needs Vichy promulgated two laws, in September 1942 (establishing compulsory labour) and February 1943 (that set up the STO, the Compulsory Work Service), which were used to send 650,000 workers to the Reich, most of them young men.

Repression was another facet of the German occupation. 90,000 men and women were deported to concentration camps. These were members of resistance organisations (44%) or people arrested for acts of refusal or even hostility towards occupying forces (29%). The remainder (27%) were hostage, people rounded up, common law prisoners, former Communists... At the same time, the Nazi persecution hit 75,000 Jews, mostly of foreign origin, and mainly sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those who were deemed capable of working were sent to factories or workshops as were concentration camp inmates. The number of men shot was around 4,000 (a figure greatly overestimated for a very long time). While civilians in northern France suffered atrocities by German troops (especially the SS) from 1940 on, summary executions in France disappeared until February 1944 when the Sperrle decree allowed the introduction in western France of those expedient methods already in force on the eastern front to combat resistance fighters and civilians. It actually opened the way for appalling atrocities by specifying that the perpetrators would not be condemned: "No sanction will result from excessive severity in the measures taken". The first massacres struck the maquisards in the Alps and Massif Central regions as well as civilians suspected of assisting them but also the inhabitants of Ascq in the North , following a sabotage operation.

After the Normandy Landing this atrocious logic continued to be followed with the killings in Tulle , Oradour-sur-Glane Argenton, Buchères, Mesh committed by various SS units...

With the exception of Alsace and the "Atlantic pockets", the bulk of French territory was liberated in Autumn 1944. But in what state ?

HIGH TOLL IN HUMAN LIVES

Dresde en 1945.

© Richard Peter/Deutsche Fotothek

The number of people killed by acts of war between 1939 and 1945 was between 460,000 and 480,000, i.e. significantly lower than the estimate put forward at the end of the 1940s by the Damages and Reparations Commission (600 000). It is incommensurate with the carnage of the first world war, but on a par with the losses suffered by the United Kingdom (400,000) or Italy (440,000). The other difference with the Great War is the roughly equal breakdown between military and civilian losses reflecting in fact the human toll taken by World War II as a whole.

Between 55,000 and 65,000 men lost their lives during the fighting in May and June 1940 and not the widely believed 100,000 figure that is belied by the database established by the Ministry of Defence. The difference comes from the confusion, maintained deliberately or not, that came from adding the dead in the 'phoney war' (more than 10,000) and the 30,000 to 40,000 prisoners of war captured in 1940 but who did not die until later in Germany, to the number of dead in the spring of 1940. The main additions to this were the losses by the Vichy army in Syria, North Africa... (4,300), those of Free France (3,200) and finally those of the French army reconstituted in 1943 and engaged in Tunisia and Italy then, in the Liberation of France and the final assault against Germany, i.e. a total of 23,000 soldiers, to which must be added the 14,000 FFI killed in battle or summarily executed in France. Nor should we forget the 32,500 soldiers from Alsace-Moselle who died fighting for Germany. Civilian casualties are due both to the Germans, the allies... and incidentally to the French. Repression and persecution by the Nazis were responsible for the disappearance of close to 4,000 hostages and persons sentenced to be executed by firing squad, 36,000 deportees who died in concentration camps, over 70,000 Jews and 10 to 15,000 civilian victims of summary executions and deliberate massacres. In addition to this total are the civilian workers, both requisitioned and voluntary, who died in Germany: 60,000? 40,000? We still do not know. The number of deaths during allied air bombings is estimated at between 50 and 70,000. Finally, 'wild' purging after the Liberation resulted in the death of approximately 9,000 individuals accused of being collaborators.

MASSIVE MATERIAL DESTRUCTION

Between 1939 and 1945, France suffered material destruction much greater than that of the first world war. Of course, 13 departments had been totally devastated but the rest of the country had not suffered any damage. Between 1940 and 1945, the territory had to cope with two ferocious campaigns. The impact of the 1940 campaign was mainly felt in the North of France; the 1944 campaign ravaged Normandy and to a lesser extent Provence, but also the East; between these two campaigns allied air bombing spared very few regions. In all 74 departments were hit.

The most visible destruction concerned property: 452,000 buildings were completely destroyed (twice as many as in the United Kingdom) and 1,436,000 were partially damaged. Close to 20% of buildings in the country were concerned, compared to 10% in the first world war. There were a million homeless families, i.e. 4 to 5 million people; giving rise to a severe housing crisis. In 1946, the Damages and Reparations Commission estimated the cost of a return to normal at some 5,000 billion, i.e. two to three years of national income. 1,838 communes were declared to be disaster areas. Among them, 15 of the 17 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. 21 of the 39 having between 50,000 to 100,000. But rural areas suffered just as much: a quarter of the communes hit had fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. The more severely hit department, Calvados, had 120,000 buildings destroyed. In

1945, transportation systems were largely paralysed due to the massive destruction that left a fragmented France in its wake. The rail network in particular suffered from being requisitioned by the Germans, attacked by the Resistance and bombed by the Allies: half of the railway lines were out of service for a more or less long period; 115 major stations were destroyed along with 24 of the 40 marshalling yards; close to 2,000 structures (bridges, tunnels, viaducts) were unusable. The SNCF only had one out of two passenger wagons in working order, and only one out of three freight cars and one out of six locomotives. Road transport was no better off with 7,500 bridges and four-fifths of all trucks destroyed. Inland waterway transport and especially the ports also suffered from 4 years of bombing by the RAF. Huge numbers of electricity pylons were destroyed and 90,000 kilometers of telephone lines were out of service.

Ruines de Coblence, les ouvriers du STO occupés à déblayer les rues.

© ECPAD/André Gadner

A DEVASTATED ECONOMY

The war and the Occupation were terrible blows to a French economy already weakened by the crisis of the 1930s. Even in the form of cold statistics, the figures are shocking. During the war, agricultural production declined by 40%. In 1945, the wheat harvest only amounted to 42 million quintals compared to 73 in 1939; the potato harvest dropped from 144 to 61 million quintals; there was only half as much meat available in the shops. The reason for this was the 3 million drop in the number of hectares being cultivated; stretches of land infested with the 13 million mines left by the Germans; the disappearance of one third of work horses, requisitioned by the Germans; the shortage of fertilizer, a fatal blow to crop yields, but also that the shortage of labour with numerous fields lying idle.

The drop in industrial production was even more impressive: 60 per cent down on 1938 and even 70% down on its level in 1929. In 1945, the coal mines provided over 25 million tonnes compared to 47 million before the war; the steel industry just 1.6 million tonnes compared to 6.2 million and cement factories just 126,000 tonnes compared to 296,000. Everything combined to explain this collapse: the bombing of the factories, plundering of machines, raw materials and workers by Germany, power and raw material supply difficulties... As for the recovery, it was difficult in 1945 given the two bottlenecks that were the destruction of transportation systems and the shortage of coal, the essential energy source at the time.

The collapse in production caused a serious drop in supply compared to demand and inevitably a sharp rise in prices and wages. Taxed prices were multiplied by three between 1938 and 1944; all prices (including therefore the black market) were multiplied by five. Already present under Vichy, inflation became rampant after the Liberation and was a recurring evil under the Fourth Republic. Under these conditions, the franc depreciated strongly against the dollar. Production shortcomings also hit foreign trade with huge falls in exports while imports climbed sharply to meet the needs of the economy and the population.

In 1945, imports were five times higher than exports. To finance these imports, France lived on credit. Public finances themselves were at risk with a colossal budget deficit estimated at 460 billion for the years 1939 to 1944. That year, tax revenues only covered 30% of expenditure and a little more than 55% in 1945. To cope with this situation, government borrowing soared. The debt was multiplied by four during the six years of the war.

While the French man in the street was not necessarily conscious of the huge economic and financial problems, he was however brutally confronted with some of their consequences and, first and foremost, the ongoing food and other supply shortages. This essential issue during the entire Occupation did not disappear at the Liberation, on the contrary. A certain resignation gave way to stupor and utter incomprehension. Many felt that with the departure of the Germans, who were "taking everything" in the words of Radio London, surely the country should return to its former abundance and prosperity. But rationing remained in force. The infamous rationing tickets were still there as were the queues for the shops and a black market that was more flourishing than ever. In fact the production and distribution systems suffered so much during the Occupation that it was impossible to wipe out four years of disruptions and a parallel economy overnight. Restrictions therefore continued. Dinner plates were far from full; gas and electricity were still distributed sparingly. Rationing was to continue until 1949. Surveys conducted by IFOP showed that the most pressing concern for the French remained procuring supplies.

Papillon anti-allemand. La question du ravitaillement devient un sujet de préoccupation quotidien alors que les Allemands prélèvent à leur profit 40 % et plus de la production.

© Musée de la Résistance nationale – Champigny

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

In the spring of 1945, the "absent" began to return: two million men and a few thousand women: prisoners of war voluntary or requisitioned workers deportees . Some came back to families that could have changed, especially the children. They have grown up and have few if any memories of this prodigal father. All discover a country that does not necessarily resemble the one they had left. A terribly scarred country!

Yet the war and the Occupation, despite great tragedy, also laid the foundations for a revival. Thus, the increase from 1943 in the birth rate ushered in the famous "Baby Boom" that had been called for by de Gaulle : "We need ten million beautiful babies in ten years"; and this put a sudden stop to the ageing of the French population as well as being one of the driving forces behind the future "thirty glorious years".

The material destruction caused by the war was at the origin of an episode known in French history as the 'Reconstruction'. In reality, it would be more accurate to talk of a "re-urbanisation" that was not content to just reproduce the destroyed cities in the same way, but which imagined them as being more coherent, more spacious with dilapidated and unsanitary neighbourhoods being replaced by buildings with all modern comfort. In another area, the French State - in reaction to the need - expanded its scope of economic intervention thus preparing public opinion for the major reforms in this area by the Provisional Government , then by the Fourth Republic.

The Resistance, meanwhile, while continuing the fight against the occupier and Vichy, initiated in-depth reflections on what the new France should be like after the war. It was in this spirit that the famous programme of the National Council of the Resistance was adopted in March 1944 and which called for numerous reforms in the economic and social sphere. It was to serve as a "handbook" for French governments after the Liberation. In 1945, the future is still not bright but at least there is a spark of light at the end of the tunnel.

Tous les produits, absolument tous, intéressent les Allemands… Étiquette placée sur le wagon d'expédition vers l'Allemagne.

© SHD

"The gates of hell have opened", American journalist John Berkeley wrote in May 1945. Horror sums up the discovery of the Nazi camps by the Allied armies. The event was the starting point for many stories, often highlighting the exceptional case of Buchenwald, where the prisoners took up arms to free themselves and expel their SS guards. A minority of the prisoners were lucky enough to be liberated under the agreements signed between the SS and the Red Cross, thus avoiding the deadly camp evacuations. But the most striking realities are those of the prisoners who were executed or left on the roadside or elsewhere, exhausted, and discovered by chance by the Allied troops, without a fight. Under these conditions, the repatriation of the prisoners was organised in an improvised manner. The event was nonetheless the source of understanding about the camps and déportations.

La 11e division blindée américaine entre dans le camp de Mathausen, 6 lai 1945 (reconstitution).

© Donald R. Ornitz/collection USHMM, Washington

THE SHOCK OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE CAMPS

At the end of July 1944, the war was not yet over and the Soviets entered the empty Lublin-Majdanek camp, where the gas chambers were still in place. At the end of November, the Americans and the French liberated the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, deserted by its SS guards and its detainees. The same situation was found at Auschwitz in January 1945, although a small number of prisoners were still there.

Un soldat britannique parles avec un détenu, Bergen-Belse, 17 avril 1945.

© Sgt Oakes/IWM, Londres

In liberated France, the press, which was unable to verify the information received and was still being censored, published little or nothing on the subject, notably so as not to frighten families awaiting the return of a loved one. L'Humanité dedicated two articles to the discovery of the camps in December 1944, then nothing until 5 April. Le Figaro published a paper on Struthof on 3 March 1945, three months after the camp was discovered. Even then, these articles were not "Front Page" material. The same discretion applied to the radio and cinema newsreels, which is why people were all the more stunned when the stories and photographs of this horror were published.

At the start of April 1945, first the Kommandos at Neuengamme were discovered. On 5 April, entry into the Ohrdruf camp, in Thuringia, presented the horror of the situation. More than 3,000 bodies lay there, naked and emaciated. On 11 April, the Americans entered the "little camp" of Buchenwald, a veritable slaughterhouse, from which convoys had left for Dachau during the previous days. Many prisoners were so exhausted that they barely understood that they were free. The sight of Boelcke Kaserne in Nordhausen, where the sick from Dora were parked, was another horrible scene: 3,000 bodies and 700 dying survivors. On 14 April, the carnage at Gardelegen was discovered, a little village where over 1,000 detainees were sent on a death march after the Kommandos evacuated Dora and were burnt alive in a barn. The next day, the British liberated the Bergen-Belsen death camp, where thousands of people were dying amidst the many cadavers. On 29 April, the Americans entered Dachau and discovered over 2,300 dead bodies in the station, left in a train that had arrived from Buchenwald. Faced with this horror, some soldiers could not stop themselves from killing the SS guards. In all, it is estimated that one-third of the 750,000 detainees in the concentration camp system died during the last weeks of the war, in the camps or during what the detainees called "death marches".

The Allied High Command was quickly informed of these terrible discoveries. On 12 April, Eisenhower, accompanied by Patton and Bradley, was at Ohrdruf. That very day, he decided to broadcast the news to all the press, even asking his troops nearby to come and witness the atrocious chaos. "We are told that the American soldier doesn't know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against," he declared. Visits were organised for journalists and parliamentarians a few days later. From then on, the lockdown of censorship was blown apart: the images of this horror, filmed or photographed, were legion. The aim was to show all the horror, to make it a "lesson". The American cameramen of the Signal Corps received strict instructions for filming the atrocities, the camps and the people who were there. Several war correspondents who saw these sites were also highly talented photographers – Margaret Bourke-White (of Life, at Buchenwald), Lee Miller (of Vogue, at Buchenwald and Dachau) and Eric Schwab (a Frenchman, at Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, Thekla and Dachau).

"The entire world has to know," said Sabine Berritz in the newspaper Combat of 3 May 1945. "Should we tell these horrifying stories?" she wrote. "Should we let our children see this mass of crimes? In the past we would have said no. We would have spoken out against the distribution of such atrocious documents. […] But now, the reviews and newspapers here and around the world must publish these stories and these photos. That is why, despite our repulsion, we must show them to our children, to all children. These abominable memories must leave a mark on their memories […]". The images of bulldozers pushing bodies into the mass graves at Bergen-Belsen were largely distributed. The French press which, up until then, almost never talked about the camps took up the subject in the second half of April 1945: three-quarters of the articles were dedicated to their discovery between mid-April and mid-June.

All the pictures published are pictures of absolute horror. They left their indelible mark on our consciences. With their power and their number, they form a veritable threshold, the threshold of how we represent mass murder. As Clément Chéroux demonstrated, if Word War I had shown death, it was still "individual" and it was mainly "that of the enemy". "It had nothing to do with the collective, mass murder of the camps, with piles of cadavers filling up the images" in 1945.

LIFE AND DEATH IN THE LIBERATED CAMPS

The progression of and reactions to "liberation" during the following weeks varied greatly from one deportee to another. But for most of them, those days were first and foremost difficult and deadly given how poor their health was and how catastrophic the sanitary conditions were.

At Dachau, for example, there were widespread epidemics. One week after the camp was liberated, not all of the bodies had been buried despite the requisition of neighbouring residents. In May, despite the measures taken by the American troops, over 2,200 people continued to die there. And yet, these first hours and first days of freedom were also intense. The extraordinary photographs that the Spanish prisoners at the Mauthausen camp immediately took bear witness to this. They took them first of all to record the event, like the reporters who came to testify to the horror. Detainees thus had pictures taken of themselves showing characteristic features of the camps. But it was mainly a thirst for life and the winds of newfound freedom that these snapshots show. They capture groups of friends, sometimes posing with their weapons, symbols of the victory of a community of survivors. Many snapshots concern men photographed alone, thus regaining their stolen individuality.

The signs of their past dehumanisation have disappeared – they are wearing new civilian clothes, their matriculation numbers torn off… – or, on the contrary, are parodied – some are imitations of their old identity photos taken in the camps, but next to their matriculation number they now ostensibly show their name. Many people were then thinking about the future and the societies to be rebuilt, learning the first lessons of the tragedy that had just ended. At Mauthausen, on 16 May 1945, as in most of the liberated camps, an International Oath in recognition of the liberators, brotherhood and hope was pronounced. The declaration of the Comité Français de Libération du Camp (French Committee of the Liberation of the Camp) launched a call to the community of "citizens of the great allied people before whom is opening the amazing future of collective society, national elevation and individual development." Newspapers with evocative titles, such as Liberté (that of the French at Dachau), were founded.

During those first days of freedom, detainee organisations were set up in most of the camps to organise everyday life before their repatriation and to prepare for their return. At Dachau, an International Prisoners Committee (IPC) took on the difficult task of assisting the American army in managing an enclosure that still contained more than 30,000 people who had to be clothed and fed. Many administrative formalities were necessary, first of all to give identity papers to everyone. The IPC also drew up the first lists of the dead. The Americans also demanded that a strict security service be set up to maintain a health quarantine – and therefore an interdiction to leave the camp – and impose compliance with the rules: no cooking in the Blocks, no degradation to the buildings for making fire, etc. Many detainees did not understand all these restrictions, especially having to wait several weeks before being allowed to go home.

Barbelés et baraquements du camp d'Auschwitz, Pologne, 1945.

© Mémorial de la Shoah

REPATRIATION TO FRANCE

In Algiers, starting in November 1943, Free France set up a commissariat to deal with displaced persons. This was entrusted to à Henri Frenay, founder of the “Combat” resistance movement. After the Liberation he became the minister of prisoners, deportees and refugees, in charge of organising the return to France for all the "Absents". Nearly 950,000 prisoners of war, over 600,000 forced labourers and tens of thousands of deportees were in Germany, awaiting repatriation. Documents and large archives from the camps and prisons set up in occupied areas were retrieved to round out the information that had so far been rather patchy. Starting in February 1945, French repatriation missions made it easier to locate victims. A decree dated 3 November 1944 officially ordered a census of the war victims in order to understand the number of repatriated prisoners to be handled.

But, at the time of repatriation, Frenay's ministry largely depended on the Supreme Headquarter Allied Expeditionary Forces – SHAEF – and its margin of manoeuvre was reduced in the end. Heavy constraints were thus placed on the very organisation of their return: war prisoners were emphasised by the Anglo-Americans; a quarantine was placed on people who, in the meantime, have to stay on site; health inspections and identify checks take place at the borders. Thus, the repatriation "scenarios" differed widely depending on the liberation site: they worked fairly well for those who were returning from Buchenwald, but it was more complicated for the former deportees from Dachau, Flossenbürg and Bergen-Belsen.

The first returns of freed war prisoners and deportees by the Soviets took place in March 1945 in Marseille, by ship from Odessa. The first women from Ravensbrück reached the Gare de Lyon in Paris on 14 April, welcomed by General de Gaulle. Their comrades liberated thanks to the Swedish Red Cross's work returned home via Sweden. Most of the prisoner returns were centralised in Paris: the Gare d'Orsay for those arriving by train, Bourget Airport for those returning by plane (the sickest deportees and personalities). Given the physical and mental condition of the returning deportees and following the revelations in the press on what was discovered in the camps, a large reception centre was set up at Hotel Lutétia at the end of April, with medical and administrative services. Nonetheless, many deportees criticised the complexities and missteps of an administration that they said had not taken into account what they had undergone.

And yet, as Robert Belot pointed out, based on Bilan d'un effort (Assessment of an Effort), the summary presented by Frenay when he left the ministry, "the system appears to have been effective since, in less than ninety days, two-thirds of the liberated people were repatriated. During the year of 1945, in a totally disorganised country, more than 1,500,000 men, women and children were repatriated in less than one hundred days. The people repatriated received a stipend and clothes […] and received free medical care. The country's overall financial effort was considerable: 20% of civilian expenditure for the year 1945 according to the figures in the Bilan." On 1 June, the millionth repatriation was celebrated: Jules Garron, a war prisoner.

AN INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CAMPS

Intérieur d'une baraque du petit camp de Buchenwald, 16 avril 1945.

© Harry Miller/collection NARA, Washington

Pictures of the discovery of the camps are the first "source" of information revealing the existence of the world of the concentration camp. But the horror that was shown, given its vast scope, outweighed any detailed analysis. These photographs are, at the end of the day, not very precise and give a poor picture of the reality in the camps. The front page of L'Humanité dated 24 April 1945, for example, presented an article on Birkenau with a picture of Bergen-Belsen captioned "Ohrdruf". These photographs fixed an image of a concentration camp system that was breaking down: many detainees had been thrown out onto the roads in the face of the Allied advances in deadly "death marches". These snapshots do not show their usual operations: the discipline, humiliations, forced labour, etc. The purpose of the deportations can be summed up by the mass graves discovered, which notably did not report on the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Minister Frenay's speech on the return of the "Absent" also encouraged a global approach to the "deportees", contributing to the misunderstanding of the specificities of Nazi policies.

Devant le camp de concentration de Dachau, Allemagne, mai 1945.

© ECPAD/Pierre Raoul Vignal

Couverture de "Magazine de France", numéro spécial consacré aux crimes nazis, été 1945.

© Collection Musée de la Résistance nationale, Champigny-sur-Marne

And yet, even though we must not forget its weak dissemination, an understanding came out of the first months after the discovery of the Nazi camps. Along these lines, the genocide of the Jews, often summed up as a "great silence", was significant. We can provide details of this by presenting the various vectors of our understanding of the camps. This understanding firstly comes from the deportees themselves: nearly 210 testimonials were published between 1944 and 1947. Those of Jews, few of whom returned, are obviously rare. Furthermore, as Annette Wieviorka showed, these stories did not much interest a society that, overall, was not ready to hear them. The associations of victims that were set up started the work of transmission that continues to this day. Annette Wieviorka points out that, despite their imprecisions, the Jewish associations made "considerable progress toward truth". Excerpts from the Vrba and Wetzel report on Auschwitz were published by their newspapers. Moreover, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (CDJC – Contemporary Jewish Documentation Centre) undertook an impressive work for understanding the genocide, notably thanks to a collection of scientific works.

Le général de Gaulle accueille des rescapées de Ravensbrück, avril 1945.

© Mémorial de la Shoah/CDJC

The search for and judgement of Nazi war criminals was also an opportunity to bring together essential components. The first summaries by the Ministry of Justice's Research Department or those provided by the General Intelligence were, in several cases, already precise. At the International Nuremberg trials, in their inaugural indictments, prosecutor Robert Jackson talked about the murder of 60% of Europe's Jews, or 5.7 million dead, before presenting the "Nazi plan" to annihilate "the entire Jewish people" during the following sessions. "History has never recorded such a crime, perpetrated with such premeditated cruelty against so many victims", he concluded, quoting, for example, a report from the Einsatzgruppe A dated 15 October 1941 on the extermination of Jews in Lithuania.

Retour vers la France de rescapés de Buchenwald, 1945.

© Service historique de la défense

The State is often absent from this picture, having seen nothing and not wanting to see the unique nature of the genocide. And yet, the missions from the Frenay ministry of repatriation and the census, later of reparation and recognition of the victims, were organised to better understand them, with all their special features. At the sub-directorate of Intelligence – then of Research – and Documentation, a "deported Israelites" section, directed by a former internee at Drancy, François Rosenauer, began working in the autumn of 1944 to take a census of Jewish deportees and the convoys in the "final solution". Notably thanks to the part of the Drancy file that was found, good results were quickly achieved: on 23 July 1945, for example, Minister Frenay announced the figure of 66,576 deportees from Drancy, an assessment that was nearly exhaustive. Already at that date, the ministry knew that the vast majority of these people were Jews murdered at Birkenau. One of the rooms of the "Crimes Hitlériens" exhibition that opened in Paris in June 1945 used this work to offer a chronology of persecution and deportation. Roger Berg's book, La persécution raciale, in the "Documents pour servir à l'histoire de la guerre" (Documents Serving the History of the War) series put out by the State, is another illustration.

Even though it would take years longer to grasp the full scope of the criminality deployed by the concentration camp system and the unique aspect of the genocide of Europe's Jews, an initial understanding came out of the camps immediately after the war. After the shock, sources and analyses began to irrigate our reflections on the major phenomenon that the Western World discovered with horror in 1945.

On 7 May 1954, after 56 days of fighting, the entrenched Dien Bien Phu camp fell. The next day, newspapers in France took hold of the event and the French defeat was making the headlines in every paper. A part of public opinion was dismayed and could not understand it: the war in Indochina was now making France sit up and take notice in a especially cruel way on this the anniversary of the German surrender. The political class of the Fourth Republic - with the exception maybe of the Communists - along with many military who did not know much about the reality in Indochina were asking themselves the now famous question: "Why Dien Bien Phu?".

Crossing of the Nam Nim river by elements of the 2nd foreign parachutist battalion as they move on to Nghia Lo in October 1951.

© ECPAD

THE FRENCH ARMY IN AN IMPASSE

"On the other side of the Hill", the victory of the Vietnamese people's Army (VPA) was celebrated with fervour. For all Vietnamese who had espoused the cause of the Viet Minh, Dien Bien Phu represents an important step towards peace, while for many still colonised peoples it was a symbol of hope. Yet, for Paris, the fall of the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp is not an insurmountable loss since the forces engaged - and therefore lost - in the course of the battle accounted for less than 3.3 percent of the 450,000 fighters that France and its allies then had facing the Viet Minh. In fact, the psychological shock was such that it further strengthened the political will to put an end to the conflict and speeded up its conclusion.

In the spring of 1953, the Indochina conflict entered its eighth year. The numerous Governments never really set clearly defined goals for this war. While it was no longer a question of restoring the old colonial order, was the idea to build a genuine French Union, something that would be a burden for the country from every point of view or were we fighting on behalf of the "free world" against international communism? No one really knew, but for many officers there was little doubt that, victorious or defeated, it would not be long before France had to leave.

First landing in Dien Bien Phu, Operation Castor, 20 November 1953.

© ECPAD

From a military point of view, the war was in a rut. Since 1946, the French had gradually lost the initiative in the face of the Viet Minh and military command was content to try to minimise the impact of the blows, something they did with varying degrees of success. The victories in the "year of Lattre" - 1951 - seemed very far away and 1952 was marked by no significant advances.

The press releases proclaiming victory after the battle of Na San should not overshadow the fact that the defensive success achieved was in reality no way satisfactory. As Marshal Juin wrote a year after the events: "We got off thanks to the value of our command and our troops, but the fact remains that the results [are] mediocre".

FIND "AN HONOURABLE EXIT" FROM THE CONFLICT

In fact, even General Gilles who commanded at Na San reportedly told his staff: "Never, ever again, should we get into a similar situation"... While some pacification progress was being made in South Viet Nam enabling some provinces to be transferred to the battalions of the national Vietnamese army, in Centre-Annam and even more so to the North of the country, the increasingly dangerous threat posed by the Viet Minh augured bad for the future. The situation continued to deteriorate and the "rot" in the Tonkin delta, as the military called it, was spreading every month further afield to such an extent that at the end of that year a General wrote with a certain irony: "It isn't the Viet Minh who are undercover in the delta, it is us"... Many Fourth Republic politicians were looking for a chance to "get the conflict over with", a conflict that had become a real financial drain. It was René Mayer, Chairman of the Council between 8 January and 28 June 1953 who was responsible for putting a new policy in place with the firm intention of getting out of the Indochina quagmire.

This desire for change resulted in the immediate replacement of General Salan. General Salan certainly knew Indochina and the enemy better than most but his strategy was challenged - in particular by the Americans who felt he was too "timid" and not "offensive" enough - and it was especially important to find a man to implement a new policy. This man was to be General Henri Navarre, appointed commander-in-chief on 8 May 1953, whose total ignorance about Indochina would, he was assured, enable him to grasp the situation with "new eyes". General Navarre's mission was clear: he had to find an "honourable exit" from the conflict, i.e. get the Viet Minh to the negotiating table after firstly weakening them politically and militarily.

Patrol west of Dien Bien Phu with machine gun battery in 1954.

© ECPAD

In order to fulfil this mission, Navarre proposed a two-year plan in which, for the first year - corresponding to the 1953-1954 campaign - the expeditionary forces would take a strictly defensive stance in North Viet Nam merely defending the delta if it was attacked. However, the pacification process was to be continued in the south and major operations would only be undertaken to clean up central Viet Nam, the Viet Minh's famous Lien Khu V (or interzone V). At the same time, general Navarre would strive to transfer security in the safest regions as much as possible to the Vietnamese national army. This policy would enable troops to be redeployed and help rebuild a battleforce worthy of the name capable of opposing general Giap's divisions.

The second year, 1954-1955 was to mark a resumption of the offensive in the north and with fresh mobile forces, a greater number of Vietnamese formations and increased U.S. aid, the French could hope to inflict serious setbacks on the enemy that would, to quote general Navarre, make "a suitable political solution to the conflict" possible. This plan, greatly inspired in fact by recommendations made by general Salan, was ultimately very theoretical and based on fragile assumptions.

Indeed, for it to have a chance to succeed and achieve the expected results, it was necessary for the Viet Minh to not launch a major offensive towards Laos in the Winter of 1953-1954 and secondly that they should not receive increased aid from Communist China. In fact, shipments of equipment and weapons for the Viet Minh divisions increased substantially within a year. As Pierre Rocolle recapped in his book Why Dien Bien Phu?, the Navarre plan was "designed to be equal to the Viet Minh battleforce in 1954 and to exceed it in the second half of 1954".

The Navarre plan was discussed in Paris in July 1953, firstly on the chiefs of staff Committee, the body that brings together the chiefs of staff of the armed forces (land, air, sea), then in various restricted meetings bringing together the Ministers concerned by the Indochina question. There were no major objections to it. Curiously, while the plan was not formally approved, the Commander-in-Chief in Indochina still did not receive any clear instructions as to the policy the Government intended to apply. So, when Navarre raised the question about the strategy that should be implemented if Laos is threatened, his question remained unanswered.

Transfer of a wounded solder from Dien Bien Phu to Luang Prabang (Laos).

© ECPAD

THE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE ENCIRCLED IN DIEN BIEN PHU

On the Viet Minh side, the aims of the war remain unchanged; i.e. take power and establish a Communist regime in a reunited Viet Nam. However in autumn 1953, the strategy Giap intended to apply had not yet been decided: an offensive on the delta seemed risky as the French could fully benefit from their firepower safe behind their fortifications all the more since reinforcements were expected to arrive from France. So, at the end of October 1953, the Viet Minh command decided to move the war to the upper Tonkinese region: the goal was to take Laichau, a thai country sector that had remained loyal to the French, and destroy the pro-colonial maquis fighters who had considerably hampered Viet Minh units.

The 316 division and the independent 48 regiment were therefore directed to Laichau. Perfectly informed of the enemy's intentions, general Navarre ordered that Dien Bien Phu valley be reoccupied on 2 November 1953 in order to prevent it from becoming a Viet Minh operational base. At the time it was the only important plain in the rice-fertile region. It was shaped like an ellipse whose north-south axis was up to 17 kilometres long and whose east-west axis was nearly 7 km wide in some places. Operation Castor was finally launched on 20 November 1953: three paratrooper battalions from Airborne Group No. 1 (GAP 1) were dropped and were joined the following days by three other battalions from Airborne Group No. 2 (GAP 2). In the evening of 22 November 1953, 4,560 French and Vietnamese paratroopers took possession of Dien Bien Phu Valley and started to turn it into an "air-land base", i.e. a logistics complex centred around an airfield and defended by outposts.

In Navarre's mind, setting up an air-land base at Dien Bien Phu was certainly useful in protecting Laos, but it was also to serve as the starting point for French troops to hit the enemy behind their lines and ultimately draw them far away from the delta where an attack was always possible. General Giap saw the opportunity to win an important victory in this garrison that was fully dependent on airborne supplies: so in the aftermath of operation Castor, he ordered some of his troops to march on Dien Bien Phu. So Dien Bien Phu was not the result of a long, well thought out offensive, but rather the result of decisions and reactions by each of the belligerents.

Dien Bien Phu GAP (Airborne Group) staff officers with from left to right, Captain Botella, battalion commander Bigeard, Captain Tourret, Lieutenant Colonel Langlais and Commander Seguins-Pazzis.

© ECPAD

At the end of the month of December 1953, colonel Christian de La Croix de Castries and the twelve battalions of the expeditionary corps based in the Dien Bien Phu garrison

were surrounded. General Giap had massively concentrated a large share of his troops around what had de facto become an entrenched camp: the infantry divisions 308, 312, 316 and part of the 304. Furthermore, the entire 351 infantry division was present with its artillery and anti-aircraft regiments.

THE VIET MINH ATTACK

At the end of January 1954, the general finally postponed the attack judging that the conditions for victory were not met. Despite the disappointment of the Viet Minh fighters, eager to put an end to this waiting situation, this postponement was the right decision for the Viet Minh. Indeed, the announcement in mid-1954 of the holding of a conference in Geneva that would notably aim to study "the problem of restoring peace in Indochina", had the consequence of brutally speeding up Chinese aid: weapons, ammunition, trucks and fuel arrived in huge quantities.

Indeed in the Viet Minh camp, arriving at the negotiating table in a position of force required a victory at Dien Bien Phu: this was vital regardless of the human cost. On the eve of the attack, the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp is a site that impresses visitors - politicians and journalists alike - who come to the site. The defence of Dien Bien Phu was focused on protecting the key element in the system, the airfield, by means of outposts in the hills that were given women's names: Anne-Marie, Béatrice, Gabrielle, Huguette, etc.

On March 13, 1954, at 17h10, the Viet Minh artillery opened fire: the battle was underway, it was to last almost two months. While the French were not surprised by the attack, their intelligence services knew what time it was to start, the violence of the attack took them aback. But an even bigger shock was awaiting them when they learned on the morning of 14 March that Beatrice, had fallen. "Beatrice" was defended by what was believed to be one of the strongest battalions in the army: the 3rd battalion of the 13th Foreign Legion demi-brigade. The next day it was the turn of the Gabrielle outpost to fall despite fierce fighting. Roland Mecquenem, Battalion Chief was for a time concussed and recalls when he regained consciousness: "I start to perceive sounds [...] the din of battle first, then closer sounds, moans, cries of pain. [...] I went out by lifting the cloth of the tent that was used as the door. It was still dark, the air was filled with yellow dust. A Dakota [plane] dropped illumination flares one after the other. Friendly and enemy fire criss-crossed: Dien Bien Phu artillery was firing to the north of Gabrielle, where I am. The sight was mind-blowing".

In the days that followed, the defection of a number of Thai soldiers who occupied Anne Marie was the final stage in the capture of the entire northern part of the entrenched camp by the Viet Minh. So Giap had won the first round: he now directly threatened the runway, the lifeline of the French garrison and ceased to operate on 26 March. Only parachute drops could now resupply the French soldiers or reinforce the garrison. The Viet Minh attacks were however very costly for Giap who decided to adopt the tactic of alternating head-on attacks and a gradual sapping of French positions. For this he had his troops build a huge maze of trenches that would literally "suffocate" the entrenched camp.

A MAJOR DEFEAT

On the night of 30 to 31 March, Giap initiated the second phase of his offensive and this was the start of the so-called battle of the "five hills" east of the fortified camp. The Dominique and Eliane outposts were the subject of furious hand-to-hand combat but keeping them was essential for the French because the fate of the garrison depended on the fate of these two outposts. Ultimately, fighting continued until 10 April 1954 with counterattacks by paratroopers and legionnaires taking back some of the lost positions. However the sapping became even more intense in the second half of April with the coming of rain. For the French, the shrinking entrenched camp made resupplying increasingly precarious and thousands of wounded were crammed into the shelters in unhygenic conditions. On 1 May 1954 General Giap launched the final offensive: the support points, defended by exhausted fighters who were starting to run out of ammunition, fell one after the other. On 7 May, in the late afternoon, after reporting to Hanoi, General de Castries (promoted on 15 April) gave the order to stop fighting. After the fall of the fortified camp it was time to take stock.

As often when it comes to quantifying losses, the data differed depending on the source and it is difficult to get an accurate estimate. For the expeditionary force that threw 17 of its best battalions into the battle the calculation was not that complicated. On 5 May 1954, we know that 1,142 solders were reported dead and 1,606 were missing. In addition,

4,436 were more or less seriously wounded. To this total must be added the losses of the last two days of fighting, estimated at between 700 and 1,000 men. In all, the Viet Minh therefore captured just over 10,000 men, 60% of these were to die in Viet Minh camps from malnutrition, disease and physiological misery. As for the VPA, although Viet Nam still officially only acknowledges 4,020 dead, 792 missing and 9,118 wounded, the figures widely accepted by historians are some 22,000 dead and injured.

While it was time to take stock and grieve the losses, it was also a time for accountability. On 8 May 1954 General Navarre assumed his responsibilities while also justifying the occupation and the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. This battle saved Laos, the enemy forces were seriously diminished and French forces fixed a total of 33 Viet Minh battalions far from the delta perhaps saving it from disaster.

In this context, while Dien Bien Phu was certainly a tactical defeat, it nonetheless constituted a strategic victory since the goals sought by the commander in chief were ultimately achieved. Indeed this view can be defended and Navarre's arguments are relevant even if he is not totally without blame.

Troops of the Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) enter Hanoi, October 1954.

© ECPAD

However, the fall of the fortified camp was a major political and psychological defeat for France regardless of the objective reasons for the defeat - the increase in Viet Minh firepower through Chinese aid due to the announcement of the Geneva conference, the weakness of French aviation and errors in the conduct of battle at all levels. Three months later, on 21 July 1954, the cease-fire ending the First Indochina War was signed in Geneva. Sixty years after the battle, Dien Bien Phu has become a city of some 70,000 inhabitants with remnants of the violent battles that pitted the French against their Viet Minh counterparts still visible here and there. The feats performed on both sides must continue to be maintained in the national memories of both France and Viet Nam in respect of the historical truth.

Paris, the "heart of the captive country", is of paramount importance in the final battle. For de Gaulle, it is a prerequisite for regaining national sovereignty at both national and international levels.

On 3 June 1944, the French Committee for National Liberation (Comité français de la liberation nationale - CFLN) in Algiers becomes the Provisional Government of the French Republic (Gouvernement provisoire de la République - GPRF), which shows the Allies that there is a wartime government led by General de Gaulle. "National liberation cannot be distinguished from a national insurrection”, he had stated in April 1942. De Gaulle repeated this in 1943 and again in 1944, while insisting on the fact that it had to be carried out in an orderly and controlled manner. This was indeed the aim of the measures implemented in Algiers concerning the organisation of civil and military powers devoted to the seizure of power and the restoration of republican legality in metropolitan France during the Liberation. In addition to the restoration of the Republican State, the Order of 21 April sets out the role of the Military Committee for Action in France (Comité militaire d'action en France - COMIDAC), presided by de Gaulle, in "conducting operations in occupied territories", with General Koenig, head of the French Forces of the Interior (Forces Françaises de l'intérieure – FFI), as the military representative in London. One month before, it had been announced that COMIDAC was taking command via a clandestine national military delegate—General Chaban-Delmas—who was appointed in April.

Leclerc avec Rol-Tanguy accueillant le général de Gaulle à la gare Montparnasse, 25 août 1944.

© coll. privée

Paris— sovereignty at stake

Paris regains its status as France's political capital in 1943 under the impetus of Jean Moulin, who establishes the headquarters of a clandestine counter-State by federating the resistance and creating the Conseil de la Résistance in an association of movements, trade unions and political parties. Despite being weakened by the death of Jean Moulin, the General Delegation asserts its authority as a product of the State during the Liberation. Alexandre Parodi, a member of the Council of State, appointed in April 1944, is promoted to a "member of the GPRF and Commissioner of State delegated to the occupied territories" on 14 August. As the direct representative of de Gaulle, he makes preparations for the establishment of the provisional government in the capital city. The National Resistance Council (Conseil National de la Résistance – CNR), presided by Georges Bidault since 1943, establishes itself as the Resistance's most representative body and asserts its independence. It has joined forces with the Communist-dominated Military Action Committee (Comité d'action militaire - COMAC), with a view to leading the military action in France. Despite participating in the GPRF since April, the Communist Party seeks to exert an influence in the French capital with its members in positions of power, which causes concern in the GPRF. Neither Chaban-Delmas nor Parodi were worried about the Communists seizing power.

FFI à l’affut derrière une barricade, Paris, août 1944.

© DR

Paris, concerned about the spectre of its revolutionary past, is subject to a special Order governing its municipal and département-level administration. The Prefects of the Seine and of the Police are appointed in compliance with the principle of one member of the Resistance and one member of the Free French Force. At the Prefecture of the Seine, the Resistance member Marcel Flouret (1892-1971) is appointed on 28 April 1944. He takes up his duties at the Hôtel de ville (City Hall) on 20 August, on the date of the occupation of the Maison Commune, to ensure the continuity of municipal services. On 17 June, de Gaulle appoints Charles Luizet, who had joined the Free French force on 18 June 1940 and proven his merits as Prefect of liberated Corsica, to the post of Prefect of Police.

Amené à la Préfecture de police, un canon antichar pris aux Allemands par les FFI – policiers ; certains d’entre eux portent le brassard réglementaire.

© Gandner Musée du général Leclerc et de la Libération de Paris/Musée Jean Moulin (Paris Musées)

From the international perspective, de Gaulle considers it to be vital for French troops to go into combat in Paris before the Allies. He is worried about the Americans establishing an Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) as in Italy. In December 1943, he gives General Leclerc and the French 2nd Armoured Division the task of liberating Paris and establishing a base for a French government. The enthusiastic welcome given to de Gaulle by the people of Bayeux on 14 June 1944 and the appointment of the civil authorities, stave off the threat of an AMGOT. In mid-August, the breaching of the Falaise pocket and the landings in Provence cause Eisenhower to postpone the liberation of Paris and bypass the city in order to prioritise the efforts on the Eastern Front. He is anxious to avoid Paris becoming a “new Stalingrad” due to the logistical problems associated with resupplying the population.

The road to insurrection (14 July-18 August 1944)

For the Germans, although the Battle of Normandy is their priority until mid-August, the City of Light remains a powerful symbol for Hitler who puts General von Choltitz in charge of Gross Paris (Greater Paris) with the task of holding the city down to the last man. The forces (20,000 men and around 20 tanks) consist of administrative staff and elderly soldiers lacking in motivation, in addition to other soldiers and SS troops that spread terror, as evidenced by the mass graves at the site of massacres (waterfall in the Bois de Boulogne and Mont Valérien. Remaining faithful to their strategy of repression, the occupying force continues the deportations: the last convoys leave the Paris region on 31 July and again on 15 and 17 August, taking 3,451 Jews and resistance members to the death camps. Deeply concerned about the fate of political prisoners in Paris, the Swedish Consul—Raoul Nordling—negotiates with von Choltitz and the SS to obtain the release of 2,000 people in exchange for German prisoners. In mid-July, the Communist party, COMAC and the Paris Liberation Committee (Comité parisien de la Libération - CPL)—created in October 1943 by André Tollet, a Communist Resistance fighter and trade union activist—decide they want to make the French national holiday on 14 July a day of demonstrations to mark the start of the insurrection. The tension rises between activists and the advocates of a waiting game. The demonstrations are followed by insurrectionary strikes called by railway workers on 10 August, followed by the police force on 15 August and the city's civil servants, postal workers and nurses on 18 August. They are carried out in response to General de Gaulle's call for action on 7 August: "French people standing proud and in combat [..] "Refrain from doing any useful work for the enemy." On 18 August, the events in Paris can no longer be controlled from outside the city. Despite Koenig's instructions—brought from London by Chaban-Delmas—to slow down the movement, the insurrection is now underway, as observed by Alexandre Parodi. "Paris was ripe for a major uprising". In Paris, the chain of command had been simplified: Colonel Rol-Tanguy (Communist, FTPF), commander of the FFI in the Ile-de-France region and a renowned military leader, assumes the military leadership of the insurrection involving the armed forces of the Resistance, the FTPF (Francs-tireurs et partisans francais – French Irregulars and Partisans) led by Charles Tillon, a national leader, and all government forces, gendarmes and fire-fighters that Parodi has placed under his command in the interest of unity and efficiency.

Leclerc examinant le plan de Paris avec son supérieur le général Gerow, 25 août 1944.

© coll. NARA, Musée du général Leclerc et de la Libération de Paris/Musée Jean Moulin (Paris Musées)

General mobilisation! (19 August-23 August 1944)

The spontaneous occupation of the Préfecture de police (Police Headquarters) on 19 August by 2,000 officers supported by Rol-Tanguy, comes soon after the general mobilisation order, typed out by his wife Cécile, which clearly sets out everyone's roles: patrols and the occupation of public buildings and factories… culminating in "opening up the road into Paris for the victorious Allied armies and welcoming them to the city". The lack of arms to counter German attacks leads to the negotiation of a truce by the Swedish Consul with von Choltitz. This initially applies to just the Police Headquarters but is subsequently extended to the entire city. Backed by Parodi, Chaban-Delmas and Hamon of the CPL, who see it as a way to await the arrival of the Allies, the truce is rejected by Rol, COMAC and the CNR, who denounce it as a form of demobilisation and consider it to be a trick used by the enemy to facilitate the withdrawal of their forces from Normandy. The truce is never observed and is broken on the 21st. In the meantime, policemen, members of the Resistance and young members of national teams manage to gain access to the City Hall, in the name of the provisional government. There is a resurgence of the mobilisation with the building of nearly 500 barricades – an exceptional occurrence in France during the summer of 1944. The population of Paris rediscovers an age-old tradition. Although the insurgents are isolated due to the difficulties in communicating with London and Algiers, the "Radiodiffusion de la nation française" public radio station and the written press, which emerged from its underground existence on 21 August with dispatches provided by the newly created “Agence Française de Presse” press agency, stir people into action.

Le général de Gaulle est accueilli par les représentants de l’État installés à la Préfecture de police. (de g. à dr.) Charles Luizet, Achille Peretti, commissaire de police et Alexandre Parodi, ministre des territoires occupés.

© Service de la mémoire et des affaires culturelles - SMAC- de la Préfecture de police.

From its headquarters at Denfert-Rochereau, the FFI's senior command staff, in addition to ordering guerrilla operations, organises the surveillance of the drinking water network in order to prevent any poisoning by the enemy, which has also mined certain sites: the telephone exchanges on the Rue des Archives (3rd arrondissment [district]) and Saint-Amand (15th), the Senate, the Saint-Cloud, Alexandre III and Neuilly bridges, the Cercle militaire Saint-Augustin and certain roads, in addition to the Fort de Charenton and the Château de Vincennes. The burning of the Grand Palais by the enemy on 23 August, in reprisal for the attack on a German column by the police and FFI, leads to fears of plans to destroy historic monuments. The fears are fuelled by the retreating German units and tanks, acting as temporary reinforcements.

Advance of the French 2nd Armoured Division (23-24 August)

General Leclerc grows increasingly concerned when the insurrection is announced on 18 August and even more so when he hears that the Americans are bypassing the city. Paris has been his obsession since mid-August and upon hearing of the attachment of his division to General Gerow's US Army V Corp, he protests to General Patton (commander of the US 3rd Army) and then to Hodges (1st Army). Without waiting for confirmation of the order, his musters his unit and on 21 August, sends a light detachment (of tanks, armoured cars and infantry) commanded by Major de Guillebon— a member of the Free French from Chad—to Versailles, with orders to enter Paris if the enemy withdraws. Messages delivered by emissaries sent by the Resistance to the Allies and the insistence of de Gaulle, who threatens to order the 2nd Armoured Division to march on Paris, finally prompt Supreme Commander Eisenhower to send the 2nd Armoured Division and General Barton's US 4th Infantry Division to the capital city. This reflects a sudden pang of conscience in the Americans who want to save Paris.

After making quick progress on 23 August, the advance is halted on 24 August when the 2nd Armoured Division encounters strong German resistance. Parodi, Chaban-Delmas and Luizet urge Leclerc and his division to enter Paris. Leclerc's response, in defiance of the German anti-aircraft defence (“flak”) is to send a Piper Cub (small reconnaissance aircraft) to drop a message on the Police Headquarters proclaiming “Hold fast, we're coming”. That evening in Antony, instead of entering Paris with his unit as planned, Leclerc's anxiety reaches a peak upon learning that German reinforcements are on their way from northern France. Realising that one of his first companions-in-arms—Captain Dronne—is the ideal man for the situation, he orders him to “storm into Paris”. At 9:20 p.m., the tanks and half-tracks of “La Nueve” (Ninth Company), manned mainly by Spanish Republicans, reach the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, to thunderous applause. As the news spreads, church bells start ringing. Shortly afterwards, the General issues his orders: "enter Paris by the main routes, head right to the heart of the capital, take the bridges […] go directly to von Choltitz and get him to surrender".

"Paris liberated" (25 August 1944)

On 25 August, while his three units are entering Paris, Leclerc, in his command car with Chaban-Delmas as his guide, makes his entrance via the Porte d'Orléans and heads through a cheering crowd to his headquarters at the Montparnasse train station. Joined by General Gerow—his American commanding officer—he sets out his battle plan. After congratulating the railway workers: “You've done a fine job”, he then makes his way to the Police Headquarters to meet Barton. In the Prefect's billiard room—headquarters of Leclerc's assistant Colonel Billotte—Choltitz, now a prisoner, arrives at around 3:00 p.m. to sign the surrender agreements for the German troops. Luizet, Chaban-Delmas, Kriegel-Valrimont of COMAC and Rol-Tanguy are also present. Taken to the Montparnasse headquarters in Leclerc's command car, Choltitz sends around twenty orders of surrender to his units which are still fighting. At this time, Leclerc, at the request of Chaban-Delmas and Kriegel-Valrimont, authorises Rol-Tanguy to sign one of the copies of the agreement in which the role of members of the “interior Resistance” in the fighting is acknowledged. In a face-to-face discussion with von Choltitz, Leclerc forces him to do what is necessary to resupply the population, pending the arrival of allied food aid. Leclerc's men, with the support of the FFI, wear down the German defences. In the meantime, the 4th Division is in action in the eastern part of the city. The fighting continues in the suburbs in the evening of 25 August.

At just before 5:00 p.m., Leclerc and Rol greet the head of the provisional government in a liberated city that remains intact. De Gaulle has decided in advance how the events will unfold: "The idea is to bring people together in a single national spirit, but also to immediately reveal the embodiment and authority of the State". Leclerc submits his report. There has been no power vacuum. Having been annoyed that very morning by a text proclaiming the CNR to be the sole authority, de Gaulle reprimands the commander of the 2nd Armoured Division for having allowed Rol to sign the agreement. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the role of the FFI and, on 18 June 1945, makes Rol-Tanguy a Compagnon de la libération.

He returns to his post of Secretary of State for War—a post that he had occupied in the last government of the 3rd Republic—thus demonstrating the continuity of the State. With the war not yet over, the President of the provisional government also wishes to make it clear that he is the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. He then heads to the Police Headquarters to meet the provisional representatives of the State: the Prefects Flouret, Luizet and the General Delegate Parodi. It takes considerable persuasion by Luizet before de Gaulle agrees to meet the members of the CPL and CNR awaiting him at the City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). After Marrane and Bidault, he delivers the speech of a head of government who needs no endorsement by anyone, other than the sovereign population. "Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred but Paris liberated, Paris liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies."

De Gaulle sur les Champs-Élysées (à gauche) Le Troquer Georges Bidault, Alexandre Parodi, Achille Perretti, colonel de Chevigné, (à l’arrière) les généraux Koenig, Leclerc et Juin, (à droite) le FFI Georges Dikson.

© Serge de Sazo. Musée du général Leclerc et de la Libération de Paris/Musée Jean Moulin (Paris Musées)

A Republican government (26 August-13 October 1944)

When asked by Bidault to proclaim the Republic, de Gaulle dismisses his request out of hand on grounds that the Republic has never ceased to exist. The combat carried out since 18 June 1940 is in keeping with Republican principles. The Order of 9 August 1944 does indeed stipulate, in article 1, that “The form of the Government of France is, and shall remain, the Republic. It has never ceased to exist under the law”. It is indeed the outcome of the manifesto of 27 October 1940, issued in Brazzaville, which invalidates the laws of the Vichy government. It is only later that de Gaulle discovers that the CNR and CPL were planning to proclaim this Republic with or without him.

De Gaulle's invitation to the Resistance to join the parade on 26 August, in accordance with the centuries-old tradition of celebrating triumphs and victories, eases the tensions. Nothing is left to chance. De Gaulle—the man famous for making the appeal of 18 June 1940—reviews a detachment of the Régiment de Marche du Tchad (ad hoc infantry regiment of Chad)—a Free French unit of the 2nd Armoured Division, providing a reminder that French weapons were in action from the summer of 1940. The head of the provisional government then places a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and sets out on a triumphant procession from the Champs-Élysées to Notre-Dame, which he wanted to act as a “meeting with the people” to whom he entrusts his safety. Accompanied by Parodi and members of the provisional government, Bidault and the Resistance fighters of the CNR and CPL, the Prefects Luizet and Flouret, Generals Leclerc, Koenig,in addition to Juin, Chaban-Delmas and Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu, he covers the two kilometres from the Place de l'Etoile to the Place de la Concorde on foot to great acclaim from the public. It is one of those rare moments of national unanimity. The man of 18 June—formerly just a voice—now has a face... it is a real consecration. It marks the triumphant reinstatement of the Republican State in the French capital.

The provisional government takes up its functions on 31 August. The priority is to restore order. The parade by two American divisions on the 29th is a show of strength in response to a concern that de Gaulle had discussed with General Eisenhower. On the day before, de Gaulle had signed an Order to disband the FFI's command staff in the liberated regions. Koenig is appointed Military Governor of Paris, General Revers (head of the ORA) is given control of the Paris region and Colonel Rol-Tanguy is responsible for integrating the FFI into the Army of Liberation (Armée de la Libération). At the end of October, the Communist-controlled patriotic militia are disbanded and de Gaulle imposes the authority of the State.

After the Allies announce their recognition of the GPRF on 23 October 1944, there can no longer be any doubt as to the legitimacy of General de Gaulle, in France or abroad. In addition to the government's adoption of an economic development programme, the provisional Consultative Assembly holds its a ceremonious inaugural session on 9 November 1944 at the Senate, where it will sit until the election of the Constituent Assembly on 21 October 1945. France also revives its tradition of consulting the public, whose electoral body is extended to include women and soldiers in the municipal elections of April 1945, followed by the district and legislative elections in November 1945.

From 18 to 30 August (date of the last battles in northern Paris), nearly 5,000 people lost their lives in the fighting: 1,800 people were killed on the French side (156 men from the 2nd Armoured Division and a thousand FFI members including 177 policemen and approximately 600 civilians) while 3,200 Germans were killed and 12,800 were taken prisoner). The liberation of Paris by the Parisians, supported by the 2nd Armoured Division and the Allies, is an act of major historic significance, even though the war is not yet over.