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The maquis

Maquis of the Drôme. A maquisard keeps watch at a refuge, armed with a German MG-42 machine gun. Copyright private collection.

Europe in face of the Yugoslav crisis

Near the Bosnian checkpoint of Malo Polje, Bosnian soldiers repair their vehicle, Mostar, August to November 1995. ECPAD/Janick Marcès

International relations expert Pierre Hassner likened the Cold War to a ”refrigerator effect”. If, for nearly half a century, the East-West standoff had ”frozen” regional complexities, the disappearance of that climate in the 1990s brought a resurgence of old animosities and marked the return of ”strategic disarray” during the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Rebuilding the French Army (1943-1945)

The French Expeditionary Corps embarks at Oran, Algeria, 21 November 1943.

Embarquement à Oran du Corps expéditionnaire français (CEF), 21 novembre 1943. © ECPAD, photographe inconnu. Réf. : TERRE 125-2659

The military capability, the political instrument and operational control

By Tristan Lecoq

Inspector-General of National Education
Associate lecturer in contemporary history
at Paris-Sorbonne University

The Resistance Movements

The National Council of the Resistance, chaired by Georges Bidault, September 1944, in Paris. Copyright MRN

Combatant France

General de Gaulle reviews French troops in Italy, in 1944. Copyright private collection

Joining up and singing La Marseillaise: a symbol of commitment to France

By Adeline Poussin, PhD in Ethnomusicology

Nice Sophia Antipolis University

LIRCES interdisciplinary research centre

The high reliefs of Mont Valérien

Le monument du Mont Valérien. Source : MINDEF/SGA/DMPA - Jacques Robert

The Mont Valérien monument stands against the fort's southeastern glacis. It forms an outer wall of Vosges pink sandstone, over 13 feet high and 300 feet across.

Sixteen studs, corresponding to the 16 tombs of the crypt, are spaced at regular intervals along it. Each is decorated with allegorical motifs in high-relief bronze.

A 40-foot Cross of Lorraine stands at the centre of the monument. Before it, an eternal flame burns in a bronze brazier.

Approaches to the Marseillaise under German Occupation

Bernard RICHARD - Approches de la Marseillaise sous l’Occupation allemande : Un hymne et un drapeau pour deux France.

Under the Occupation, the national anthem blossomed across the political spectrum, in both Free France and Vichy France, the so-called ”free” zone not occupied by the Germans.

Around Father Blanc: the infiltration of a network

Father (”abbé”) Blanc, born on 21 June 1903 in Maillane (Bouches-du-Rhône), the former curate of Sorgues in Vaucluse and La Capelette in Marseille, managed to assemble a small mixed team of resistance members at the beginning of 1943. The special services documents about the Blanc case illustrate very precisely the methods of infiltration, investigation and then repression used against the Resistance.

The fall of the Alliance network

Strasbourg Gestapo report on the Alliance organisation, 31 August 1944 (extract).

Spi-Fall Dellagnolo-Matrose (sailor) and Spionage Organisation Alliance: these code names reveal the stages in a joint investigation conducted by the Strasbourg Gestapo and the Paris SIPO-SD to bring down, twice, the members of the Alliance network, founded by Georges Loustaunau-Lacau in spring 1941.

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