Nothing had prepared him to confront the war and join the Resistance. Yet at 25 Philippe Viannay became the undisputed leader of one of the main resistance movements in the north. We go back over the life of a freedom-loving man who was a pioneer in many areas.

In the galaxy of the great leaders of the French resistance, Philippe Viannay has a unique position. Although he directed Défense de la France (DF), a leading movement in the north, Philippe Viannay is less well known than many of his counterparts - Frenay, Bourdet or the Aubrac couple to name just a few. His young age - just 23 years old in 1940 - his refusal to go into politics after the war, the posthumous publication of his memoirs... all these elements go to explain this relative silence. Yet everyone who met him - in undercover night-time operations as in the Journalists Training Centre (CFJ), the Jean Moulin club or the Glénans centre - all keep a fond memory of a highly charismatic personality. Whatever his merits, we do not want to give idolising biographical details of this resistance fighter's life but rather explore the uniqueness of a prominent leader in the Army of shadows.

Philippe Viannay was born in 1917 in a conservative family: his father was close to Colonel de la Roque's PSF movement and his mother had a nobles of the robe background. He also felt that his family belonged to "an honourable bourgeoisie" that despised money while having a small amount of it. After a year of hypokhâgne at Louis-le-Grand secondary school, he began studying philosophy while considering the priesthood - a vocation he abandoned in 1938 to resume his studies at the Sorbonne.

After fighting bravely in 1940, he returned to Paris, determined as the saying goes "to do something". Indeed, in October 1940 he considered publishing an underground newspaper, an idea given him by the boss of a friend, Marcel Lebon. Backed by a former classmate, Robert Salmon, and a student he met in the Sorbonne, Hélène Mordkovitch, whom he married in 1942, he launched an underground newspaper, Défence de la France with the first issue being published on 14 July, 1941.

Can you escape from your roots? The answer to this question is neither black or white when considering Philippe Viannay's life. Coming from a conservative Catholic family background, in many ways his opinions reflected those of his upbringing. In fact, up to 1942, DF adopted a Petainist line, wrongly crediting Petain with resistant tendencies. Similarly, the apprentice philosopher built his fight on an ethical basis. He did not try to fight against the occupier militarily but mainly focused his efforts in calling for a moral uprising.

Simultaneously, Philippe Viannay moved away from his milieu. Far from blindly following Petain, he considered the fight against Germany as a burning priority. And thanks to Hélène Viannay, DF became a patchwork where rather right-wing bourgeoisie elements mingled with more left-wing Russian migrants.

Through his charisma, sense of organisation and open mind, Viannay then influenced the line taken by the movement. As he came to realise the obvious, the paper gradually abandoned Petain and supported de Gaulle after an initial Giraud period. Above all, DF gradually embraced the idea of an armed struggle, setting up corps-francs then maquis groups in Burgundy-Franche-Comté and Seine-et-Oise in particular. But he failed to win over fighting France. While getting funds that enabled him, among other things, to finance a false ID papers workshop, the movement was not a part of the National Council of the Resistance. Viannay was probably a much better organizer than he was a politician! In fact, he preferred in 1944 to fight in Seine-et-Oise - where he was severely wounded - than go to Paris to prepare the now open publication of Défense de la France / France Soir .

Albert Bernier, Philippe Viannay (centre) and Françoise de Rivière, the Seine-et-Oise maquis in August 1944.

©Fondation de la Résistance, AERI, coll. Défense de la France DR

Although a member of the Consultative Assembly, at the Liberation Viannay abandoned both his political career and France-Soir . However, anxious to train journalists who he had found lacked professionalism before the war, he set up the CFJ, invested in the newspaper France-Observateur, and created the Glénans nautical centre. In this he remained faithful to his ideas. While remaining interested in public affairs through the Union of the Socialist Left and the Jean Moulin club, he preferred to get involved in civil society - the common link between his clandestine commitment and his investments in calmer times in a restored Republic. He died in 1986, aged 69.

Olivier Wieviorka, author of Une certaine idée de la Résistance, Seuil, 1995, reprinted. 2010. In Les Chemins de la Mémoire, 240/November 2013

In 1940, Gilbert Renault, alias Rémy, set up the biggest intelligence network in free France: the Confrérie Notre-Dame that was to carry out numerous actions in France. His biographer, historian Guy Perrier, talks about his actions, in particular in 1943.

Stunned by the collapse of 1940, Gilbert Renault, a devout Catholic close to the ideas of l'Action Française, a movement however that he was never to join, refused to admit France's defeat. Leaving his wife and four children behind, he left the town of Vannes and sailed for England where he joined general Charles de Gaulle, with whom he forged links of admiration and affection that were never to be broken despite their future differences. De Gaulle assigned him to the 2nd bureau, which was to become the  Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations (BCRA) led by colonel Passy, whose real name was André Dewavrin, who asked him to set up a network along the Atlantic seaboard, where the Kriegstnarine was harassing British ships.

Thus began a new life for this impulsive, eccentric and chivalrous adventurer, who had worked for a long time in film as a producer after taking up numerous other occupations. After numerous trips between England, occupied France and Spain, Remy soon had informants in every port. On 6 January, 1942, after visiting the Notre-Dame des Victoires church in Paris, he baptised his movement the Confrérie Notre-Dame (CND) whose success was to gain him "unprecedented prestige with the Intelligence Service" according to Sébastien Albertelli, author of Services Secrets de la France Libre.

The network became the largest network in free France, it processed and forwarded mail from several networks: the Civil and Military Organization (CMO), Libération-Nord, Fana (Communist). After a stay in France at the end of 1942, Rémy went back to London on January 11, 1943 and would not come back to France until the Liberation. It was at this time that he brought the Communist leader Fernand Grenier to meet General de Gaulle, an event with far-reaching consequences. For Remy, whose monarchist beliefs were totally contrary to those of the Communist Party, the fate of his country must transcend ideological divides!

While the Confrérie Notre-Dame continued its intelligence work, a serious event occurred that disrupted the activity of the network. On 6 October 1943, a CND agent, Parsifal, fell into the hands of the German Security Service, the Abwehr. He was interrogated by a Belgian collaborator, Christian Masuy, who submitted him to the bathtub torture. The agent could not bear it and revealed the names of important members of the network. This was a major blow to the Confrérie Notre-Dame.

Remy came up with a contingency plan to put his organisation back on track and wanted to return to France. But London believed that colonel Rémy was more useful in London to help prepare for the allied landings, as part of the Sussex plan which intended to use French soldiers on inter-ally missions. In England, Remy had the joy of spending Christmas 1943 with his wife at their small home in Elwood and hearing the message of support that he had recorded the day before being broadcast by the BBC and aimed at the resistance fighters imprisoned in France.

Named a Companion of the Liberation on 13 March 1942, Rémy was to become the proponent of a very unlikely cause after the Liberation: that of attempting to reconcile Gaullists, resistants of all persuasions and anti-German petainists! He became a militant of the Gaullist RPF (Rally of the French People) in the aftermath of the war. He defended the idea, refuted by most historians, that general de Gaulle and Pétain were complementary, the first representing 'the sword of France' and the second 'the shield'. An assertion expressed in several of his books devoted to his action in the resistance, but that de Gaulle himself refuted without however this harming their friendship and the esteem de Gaulle had for him.

On 28 July, 1984, Rémy, the No 1 secret agent for free France passed away, a few days short of his 80th birthday. François Mitterrand, President of the Republic, hailed him as "one of the most glorious heroes of the Resistance, who will forever remain the honour of France". Two years after his death his last book was published, simply entitled: La Résistance.

Guy Perrier, historian, In Les Chemins de la Mémoire, 235/april 2013

Despite being a renowned historian, the resistance activities of Marc Bloch, arrested in March 1944 by the Gestapo and shot with 29 others on 16 June in Saint-Didier de Formans, are not well known. Historian Laurent Douzou tells of the undercover action of this committed intellectual, from 1943 up to his death.

"We should focus more than we do on how academics die when they do not die of illness or old age" wrote the philosopher Georges Canguilhem about Marc Bloch, whose extraordinary reputation as a historian has sometimes obscured the active role he played during the Occupation.

A Professor at the Sorbonne and co-founder of the Annals of Economic and Social History, Bloch was a scientific luminary when war broke out. As he entered into the prime of life, he already had one work to his credit. He had also come under fire during the great war that he came out of with the Military Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre.

Aged 53 in 1939, this father of six asked to fight. Responsible for fuel supplies for the 1st army, he fulfilled his mission but noted with amazement that the building he believed to be solid was in fact very weak. In an analysis written in the summer of 1940 and published in 1946 under the title The Strange Defeat, he dissects the levels of responsibility for this disaster without trying to exonerate himself: "I belong to a generation that has a bad conscience. It is true that we came back very tired from the last war. Also, after these four years of fighting idleness, we were looking forward to going back to our jobs and taking up the tools of our various trades, tools now attacked by rust: we wanted to go all out and make up for the lost work. Those are our excuses. I no longer believe that they are sufficient to free us of blame".

Moved by the status of the Jews in October 1940, Marc Bloch was expelled from his position as Professor seconded to the University of Strasbourg, which had fallen back to Clermont-Ferrand. Under Article 8, which provided exemptions for individuals who had rendered exceptional services to France, he was reinstated in January 1941 and assigned to Montpellier in July. He refused to use the visa he had obtained for the United States because he would not leave his friends and family. He served in Montpellier until he was dismissed on 15 March 1943.

On this date, his peaceful medievalist life of toil took a radical turn. By going headlong into the resistance, Marc Bloch became "Narbonne" by making contact with Franc-Tireur. Georges Altman, leader of this movement, told of this encounter: "I can still remember that charming instant when Maurice [Pessis], one of our young friends in the underground, his 20-year old face red with joy, introduced me to his "new recruit", a fifty year old gentleman with military decorations, a finely sculpted face under a head of greying hair, a sharp look behind his spectacles, his briefcase in one hand, a cane in the other, rather ceremonial at first, my visitor soon smiled at me reaching out his hand and said kindly: Yes, I'm Maurice's "young colt"...

This precious testimony suggested what this plunge into the underground movement might have represented for the academic Marc Bloch where starting afresh he had to prove his worth just like any other beginner. Everything he then had to do was a break with his former life Georges Altman noted: "And we soon came to see the Sorbonne Professor share this gruelling "street dog" life that was the underground Resistance in our cities with amazing composure." "Maurice's colt" was quickly entrusted with tasks to match his talents. He worked on the Political Journals for the General Studies Committee and the Free Review, published by Franc-Tireur. These publications bear his mark, in particular this methodical table of the articles from the first year of the Political Journals in issue 5 in January 1944!

In July 1943, Marc Bloch became one of the three members of the regional directorate of united resistance movements, a position that was both exposed and strenuous. Aware of the danger, effective and determined, "Narbonne" asserted himself as a legitimate and respected leader in the small but demanding world of the underground. His arrest by a well-informed Gestapo, on the morning of Wednesday, March 8, 1944, on Boucle Bridge in Lyon shocked his comrades. Tortured on the premises of the military health school, interned in Montluc prison, Marc Bloch was shot on 16 June 1944 with 29 other resistance fighters in Saint-Didier-de-Formans.

Laurent Douzou, historian, In Les Chemins de la Mémoire, 234/march 2013

A leading figure in the French Resistance, an ethnologist and writer, Germaine Tillion drew lessons from her experience of World War II that served her throughout her entire life. At all times she managed to combine testimony, reflection and action.

Germaine Tillion was born on 30 May 1907 in Allègre in Haute-Loire. In 1919, the family moved to the Paris region. During the twenties, she began to study ethnology and obtained a scholarship to study the Berber population in the Algerian Aures region in 1933. Between 1934 and 1940, she stayed with the Chaouias for four long periods and continued to write her thesis.

Back in France, on 9 June 1940, after the Armistice, she decided that "something had to be done". In the company of Paul Hauet, a retired colonel, she began her resistance activities under the cover of an association to help prisoners of war, the National Union of Colonial Combatants. This cell came into contact with similar groups, such as the one at the Musée de l'Homme, bringing together other ethnologists with Boris Vildé at the head. It was in 1946, when Germaine Tillion took care of getting administrative approval for the network, that she gave it the name "Network of the Musée de l'Homme", in tribute to the majority of its founders. The Group had numerous activities: collecting information to be passed on to London, taking care of escaped soldiers or organising prison breaks, sheltering English paratroopers, making false ID papers, spreading calls to combat, eradicating traitors and Gestapo agents.

Even though she was a dedicated patriot, Germaine Tillion never forgot one guiding principle to which she adhered at all times: dedication to truth and justice. In a note to the underground press, she observed that a lot of information concerning the situation at the time was circulating in French society but was contradictory because it came from different sources. She directed her fellow resistants to not skew the truth, to not hide anything, to strive to understand and to judge impartially. "In terms of ideas, at the outset we only know one cause that is dear to us, that of our homeland, it is for love of it that we have come together, to try to preserve its faith and hope." But in no way, in absolutely no way do we want to sacrifice the truth to it, because our homeland is dear to us only on one condition, that we do not sacrifice the truth to it".

An initial denunciation led to the arrest of several members of the Musée de l'Homme cell; in April 1941, a second betrayal led to the arrest of its remaining members. They were tried a year later, in February 1942. Ten people, including several close friends, were sentenced to death. Germaine Tillion, who escaped these arrests, struggled to get them reprieved but in vain: the seven men in the group were shot and the three women deported. She herself was arrested in the street in August 1942 by the German police after being betrayed by a French priest posing as a resistant. Detained for more than a year in the French La Santé and Fresnes prisons, she was deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in October 1943. She was freed in April 1945.

After returning to France, she devoted most of her time to the history of the Resistance and Deportation and published several works on these themes. However, she did not neglect her civic commitments and took part in the campaign against the camps that is still in operation in the communist countries in Europe and Asia.

In 1954, she was sent by the French government as an observer to Algeria, where the insurgency was getting under way. At first, she proposed strengthening the education given to the indigenous population (boys and girls, children and adults) to enable them to emerge from the poverty that economic development had failed to stem. As the conflict intensified, in 1957, Germaine Tillion devoted all her efforts to mitigating the effects of the violence: she campaigned against torture, executions and met with FLN leaders to convince them to stop indiscriminate attacks.

Elected studies director at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in 1958, she spent the following decades studying North African societies. She also published a new reviewed edition of Ravensbrück, her book about Deportation. She died on 19 April 2008 aged 100. Her autobiographical work, Fragments of Life, was published the following year.

Tzvetan Todorov - President of the Germaine Tillion association. In Les Chemins de la Mémoire, 241/december 2013

Resistant in 1940, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was the only woman recognized as the head of a large French resistance network, the Alliance network. Michèle Cointet, her biographer, tells of her extraordinary journey.

Marie-Madeleine Bridou escaped from the conformism of the bourgeois background she was born into in 1909. She lived with her two children in Paris, far from her husband Edward Méric, an Indigenous Affairs officer in Morocco. She divided her time between "Radio-Cité" and Commander Loustaunau-Lacau's General Secretariat of anti-communist and anti-German publications. Loustaunau-Lacau was the founder of the Corvignolles network and La Spirale and the person who initiated her into undercover activities. The love of a mythical homeland gained from a childhood in Shanghai where her father was the General Maritime Messaging Agent and... "honourable correspondent" and a lack of illusions about Marshal Petain inspired her in June 1940 to believe that since the men had put down their weapons, it was up to the women to take them up.

However she let herself be convinced to follow Loustaunau-Lacau in Vichy drawn by a general delegation to the powerful French Legion of combatants. A network centered on Marseilles and Vichy was set up which proved fertile ground from which to recruit officials from ministries and patriotic officers. The break with Vichy was not long in coming when Admiral Darlan expelled Loustaunau-Lacau from the Legion in February 1941. Developments in the war offered them an opportunity to engage actively against Hitler. Indeed, submarine warfare threatened the survival of the British. Getting information on submarine departures from Lorient was vital. Only the French could provide this. In April 1941, contact was established in Lisbon where Loustaunau-Lacau got money and a first transmitting station, the most effective weapon to get round the several weeks delay with conventional mail and finally enabling an immediate response. Alliance owned up to 17 of these stations. Since Marie-Madeleine's cover was not blown, unlike Loustaunau-Lacau in Paris, she organised the Alliance network in the north and west proclaiming loyalty to England and equality among partners. The Germans called it "Noah's Ark" because of the animal nicknames adopted by its members.

Arrested in Algiers in May 1941, Loustaunau-Lacau was found guilty then handed over to the Germans. Marie-Madeleine concluded from this event that it was best to refuse to make political commitments and this led some members who wanted to have closer ties with General de Gaulle, such as General Alamichel, to put some distance between themselves and Marie-Madeleine. Driven by her companions, she took over from Loustaunau-Lacau using a neutral signature: POZ 55. Since the results were exceptional, the British eventually acknowledged her, finally unveiled, as the head of the military intelligence network, the only one to benefit from this status in Europe. A great organizer, authoritative, rigorous, a natural leader and bold, she had enough mental flexibility to follow the advice of the British to decentralise the network into sub-networks such as Sea Star or Georges Lamarque's remarkable Druids.

Alliance recruited heavily among civil servants and was unique in  another way: 24% of members were women, making it the resistant organisation with the strongest female presence. Alliance played its greatest role in the Battle of the Atlantic providing information on train operations (German transports to the east), the first information about the V1 and V2 testing at Peenemunde through Amniarix (Jeannie Rousseau), records of launch pad operations in north-western France and a detailed map of the Atlantic defences. Marie-Madeleine organised General Giraud's submarine departure from Lavandou on 4 November, 1942 to Algiers to facilitate the Allied landing there.

She was held up in England following the arrest of her assistant Faye in September 1943 but got to return to France in July 1944 and, after escaping from a German barracks, carried out intelligence missions ahead of Patton's army.

Sensitive to the material and moral suffering of the members of her hard-hit network, 431 were killed i.e. one third of the total, she spent over twenty years caring for the survivors and their families. She published memories in the form of a memorial entitled Noah's Ark and defends the memory of the Resistance as Chairwoman of the Resistance Action Committee. With her husband, Free French fighter Hubert Fourcade, she helped return General de Gaulle to power in 1958. She was neither a political party icon nor anti-fascist activist and remained faithful to her idea of the Resistance: an efficient patriotic struggle against Nazi Germany.

Michèle Cointet, University Professor Emeritus, In Les Chemins de la Mémoire, 239/october 2013

For more information:

Marie-Madeleine Fourcade-Un chef de la Résistance, éd. Perrin, 2006.

John Joseph Pershing was born on the 13th of September 1860 in Linn Country, a village in Missouri. His family was originally from the Alsace - one of his ancestors had emigrated to America in the middle of the 18th century. At the age of 22, after having been a teacher, he went to the West Point Military Academy. He left in 1886 and then followed a classic military career: as sub-lieutenant in Arizona, an instructor in military science and tactics at the University of Nebraska (1891) where he also studied law and in the 10th Cavalry Regiment in Montana. As a lieutenant in Washington (1897), he took part in the Cuban war and then in the suppression of the Moros uprising in the Philippines. In 1901, Captain Pershing was military attaché in Tokyo and closely followed the Russo-Japanese war. In 1906, he was appointed Brigadier General and carried out a new mission in the Philippines before taking a post in Europe, where he studied French and in 1914 he took charge of the Western Division in San Francisco. He took part in suppressing the revolt by Pancho Villa in Mexico. In August 1915, his wife and three of his children died in a fire in San Francisco. On the 10th of May 1917, President Wilson appointed him as commander of the American Expeditionary Corps in Europe. On the 13th of June 1917, General Pershing arrived in Paris.

Thirteen days later, the first American troops landed at Saint-Nazaire. Until the 11th of November 1918, General Pershing continually strove to create a vast autonomous American army along the French front. General Pershing left France on the 1st of September 1919; on the 29th of September, American Congress stated that his country could be proud of him. Just after the war, Pershing was appointed Commander in Chief of the American Army (1921). In 1924 he became a reserve officer. He thus retired from public life, only becoming involved in an official capacity for commemorative ceremonies, in which he participated every year as the founding chairman of the "American Battle Monuments Commission", the organisation that manages American graves and memorials in Europe. In 1937 he also took part in the inauguration of his own statue at Versailles. He came back to France for the last time in May 1939. He published "My Experiences in the World War" in 1931, a work that was to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize the following year (published in France by librairie Pion). On the 4th of August 1940, he addressed the American people for the last time via a radio message in which he took a stance against Hitlerism. In 1944, he was admitted to the Walter Reed hospital in Washington; that is where he was to receive General de Gaulle in July of the same year. John J. Pershing died on the 15th of July 1948 and was buried at the Arlington national cemetery in the presence of President Harry S. Truman.

Woodrow Wilson was the twenty eighth president of the United States. He committed his country to the First World War in April 1917, following three years of neutrality and at the end of the war strove for the reconciliation of the European countries, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian pastor who raised him with strictness and commitment to his values. Following studies in law at Princeton University, he became a lawyer (Atlanta 1882-1883) and professor of political sciences at various institutions (1890-1910). Elected Democrat Governor of the State of New Jersey in 1910, he was chosen by the Democratic party as its candidate for the presidential elections of the 5th November 1912, which he won thanks to the rift between his republican opponents, Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. Wilson was in favour of strong executive power and set in place an ambitious democratic and economic programme. He reduced customs rights, reformed the banking system by creating a federal reserve facilitating credit and strengthened the antitrust law authorising strike and boycotting action by workers. On a political level, he had a law voted in banning child labour, introduced the woman's right to vote, established income tax and a pension system for federal employees and reduced the working day to 8 hours.

In overseas politics, Wilson was not in favour of interventionism but nevertheless expanded active diplomacy and strengthened American dominance on the continent by trying to impose American style democracy there. But he did not want the United States to become involved in European conflicts, as per the Monroe doctrine, which prevented the United States from intervening in Europe and meddling in international problems. On the 4th August 1914, he declared American neutrality in the conflict by stating "this war is not ours". He would, however, be re-elected for a second term in November 1916, most notably because "He kept us out of the war", indicating nevertheless in his inauguration speech that this position would probably be very difficult to maintain. So, falling victim to the all-out submarine warfare waged once again by the Germans - it had been suspended following the death of a hundred American citizens in the torpedoing of the liner Lusitania, on the 7th May 1915 - and outraged by German manoeuvres to coax Mexico into war against the United States - a telegram from Zimmermann, the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs - President Wilson asked Congress for permission to enter into the war against Germany, a request that was approved on the 6th April 1917. A month later on the 18th May, he reintroduced compulsory military service which had been abolished at the end of the American Civil War (1865).
Wilson coordinated the war effort and provided the Allies with equipment and military and moral support (In October 1918, around two million American soldiers under the command of General Pershing landed to fight in France). He also sought to take political control of the coalition and defined the Allies' war aims. On the 8th January 1918, in a speech to Congress, he set out a fourteen point defining the peace objectives. These Fourteen Points advocated the end of colonialism, the abandonment of economic barriers between nations, the guarantee of freedom of the seas, nations' rights to self-determination and the creation of a League of Nations with a view to providing "mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity for both large and small nations". Some of the points in his programme would serve as the basis for the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
On returning to the United States, Wilson himself presented the Treaty of Versailles for ratification by Congress, but he ran up against a powerful isolationist tide that refused to sign a treaty obliging them to intervene in a new conflict. Congress twice rejected the Treaty of Versailles, in November 1919 and in March 1920, and declared itself against joining the LON. Repudiated by Congress and the majority of the American people, Wilson thus witnessed the ultimate irony of seeing his own country refuse to join the League of Nations, whilst his efforts at reconciling the countries of Europe nevertheless earned him the Nobel peace Prize in 1919 (received in 1920). Physically exhausted by the effort he had put into establishing peace, he suffered a stroke which left him practically paralysed. He would remain shut away in the White House until 1921, after the crushing victory of the conservative republican candidate, Warren Harding. He then retired to his home in Washington where he died on the 3rd February 1924. He is buried in Washington cathedral.

< Joséphine Baker in 1948.

Josephine Baker entered the Pantheon on 30 November 2021 at a ceremony presided over by the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The American-born music hall legend who was a member of the French Resistance and an anti-racist activist fought for every cause. The perfect embodiment of the role of women engaged in the struggle led by Free France, she received full honours from her adoptive homeland.

Visit an online exhibition about Josephine Baker on the Musée de la Résistance website

Born on 3 June 1906 to Carrie McDonald and Eddie Carson, Baker grew up in a poor neighbourhood of St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 13, she left home and worked as a waitress. She first started dancing in small dance troupes before joining the Jones Family Band that performed from Washington to St. Louis. She moved to New York at the age of 18 where she performed in various productions including the Folies Bergère and the Revue Nègre.

In 1925, her troupe performed in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The young artiste swiftly won the hearts of Parisian audiences where jazz was all the rage. A cabaret dancer, she performed a dance number named the ‘Danse Sauvage’. A year later, she was headlining revues at the Folies Bergère. She danced there sporting her famous belt of bananas and took to singing too. In 1930, she performed her revue at the Casino de Paris, hers following the show of another legendary music hall artiste, Mistinguett, including the song ‘J’ai deux amours’. In Europe, she notched up success after success: she was named queen of the Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931, starred in films ‘Zouzou’ with Jean Gabin and ‘Princesse Tamtam’, performed at the Casino de Paris in ‘Si j'étais blanche’ and in 1934 put on ‘La Créole’, an operetta by Offenbach.

The following year, Josephine Baker was back in the US where she presented her show to mixed reviews. She returned to France where, in 1937, she married a Frenchman and became a French citizen.

When war was declared, she was still able to perform at the Folies Bergère and the Casino de Paris alongside Maurice Chevalier. Faithful to her adoptive country, Josephine Baker joined the Resistance, working for Free France's intelligence service serving as a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force. It was Daniel Marouani who suggested to Jacques Abtey, head of the military counter-espionage unit in Paris, to enlist her.   During the phony war (September 1939 to May 1940), Josephine Baker gathered intel on the location of German troops from officials she would meet at parties. At the same time, she performed at the Maginot Line fortification to raise the troops’ morale. However, from summer 1940 onwards, the Maginot Line was breached and, due to the racist laws instated by the government, she was banned from the stage. Scheduled anyway to go on tour around Portugal and South America, accompanied by Abtey, she smuggled intelligence to Portugal written in invisible ink on her music scores. She revived ‘La Créole’ as a means to resume contact with Captain Paul Paillole, chief of the French secret service, in Marseille before rejoining Abtey in Portugal, then a neutral country, and heading over to North Africa. En route for Morocco, she helped Solmsen, a German-born film producer, and her friend Fritz to leave France.

Settling in Marrakesh, she fostered political relations: Moulay Larbi el-Alaoui, the sultan’s cousin, and Si Mohammed Menebhi, his brother-in-law, son of the former Grand Vizier, and Si Thami el-Glaoui, the Pasha of Marrakesh. From 1943 onwards, Josephine Baker was a true ambassador of Free France. In the spring, she went on a long tour of North Africa, Egypt and the Mashriq. For the occasion, she was officially appointed sub-lieutenant of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force. Baker’s resistance activities were made public in 1949 in a book published by Jacques Abtey (La Guerre Secrète de Joséphine Baker) accompanied by a letter from General de Gaulle.

Official recognition was received on 18 August 1961: General Valin awarded her the Cross of the Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre with palm.

Remarried to Jo Bouillon, she was an active defender of civil rights and came to the aid of war victims, hosting a series of charity galas. Her charity work ended up eclipsing her entertainment career from which she retired in 1949. She bought a château in Milandes, in France’s Périgord region, and adopted 12 children.

After ending up in financial strife, she resumed her world tours performing in theatres where cabaret had stopped being such a huge money-earner. Her dogged determination brought her back to the Bobino stage in 1975 for a show that took a look back on her life. The success was short-lived since she died four days after the premier following a short illness.

Sources : Abtey J., 2e Bureau contre Abwehr, Paris, La Table Ronde, 1966 - Abtey J., La Guerre secrète de Josephine Baker, Paris, Siboney, 1949

Bilé S., Noirs dans les camps nazis, Editions du Serpent à Plumes, 2005

For more information:

• A page dedicated to Josephine Baker’s induction into the French Pantheon

Wilhelm Keitel joins the army in 1901 and holds several posts during the First World War, serving primarily as an officer in the General Staff. After Germany falls in 1918, he pursues his military career at the heart of the new German army, the Reichswehr, as it was authorized by the Treaty of Versailles.

When Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933 and started rebuilding the armed forces, Wilhelm Keitel's career began to rapidly progress. He was named a brigadier in 1934 and the following year became chief of the War Cabinet and the director of the Wehrmachtsamt, in charge of the coordination of the armed forces. In 1938, Wilhelm Keitel became chief of the newly-created Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW - Armed Forces High Command). On 22 June 1940, he signed the Franco-German armistice at Rethondes. This zealous executor of Adolf Hitler's orders was named chief of the OKW -- the Armed Forces High Command -- in 1938, and during the war authorized all Hitler's military decisions as well as the terror tactics he employed in countries taken by the Germans, most notably the execution of hostages and NN (Night and Fog) prisoners. He was promoted to Marshal in July 1940. Despite several attempts on the part of the leading circles of the army and the General Staff to shake up the top of the military hierarchy, he kept his positions until the end of the Second World War. On 9 May 1945, he signed the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on the orders of Grand Admiral Doentiz. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg condemned him to death for Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity.

A French general and politician (1890-1970), Charles de Gaulle was the first person to advocate the need for France to have armoured military vehicles. A leader of the French resistance during World War II, he was the founding father of the Fifth Republic, which was particularly noteworthy due to the election of the president under universal suffrage.

Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille on 22 November 1890 to a patriotic Catholic family. He spent his childhood in Paris, studying with the Jesuits and very early opted for a career in the forces. In 1908 he entered the special Military Academy at Saint-Cyr. After four years of study, he was transferred to Arras in 1912 as a sub-lieutenant.

During the First World War he was wounded in combat three times and left for dead in the Battle of Douaumont (1916). Taken prisoner by the Germans, he attempted to escape on five occasions, but was recaptured each time. He was not freed until the Armistice, on 11th November 1918. Pursuing his military career, Captain De Gaulle saw active service in several countries (including Poland and The Lebanon). Between the wars he wrote several works in which he was critical of French defence policy: in particular he believed that the army must be subject to the decisions of politicians and that it was essential for the defence of France, to raise a corps of armoured vehicles in order to face the threat of German mechanised power. At the same time he began his involvement with politics: in 1931 he was seconded to the General Secretariat for National Defence in Paris. Promoted to Colonel in 1937, de Gaulle was given the command of the 507th tank regiment in Metz. When France and Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, he was given temporary command of the tanks of the 5th army. At the time of the German invasion, de Gaulle distinguished himself several times at the head of his unit, in particular halting the Germans at Abbeville (27-30 May 1940). Appointed General on 1 June 1940, de Gaulle became Under Secretary of State for War and National Defence a few days later, in the Government of Paul Reynaud.

On 17 June, de Gaulle left to continue fighting the war from London; he launched an appeal for resistance over the BBC, on 18 June. As a rebel General, he was sentenced to death in absentia. Recognised by Churchill as the "leader of the Free French", de Gaulle organised armed forces that became the Free French Forces. Meanwhile, he provided Free France with a kind of Government in exile, the French National Committee, which became the French Committee for National Liberation (CFLN) on 3 June 1943, following its arrival in Algiers. From 1942 onwards, De Gaulle gave Jean Moulin the task of organising the National Committee for Resistance (CNR) in France within which political parties of all persuasions, trades unions and resistance movements had to be represented, in order to co-ordinate the struggle. After the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, de Gaulle insisted with General Eisenhower, supreme commander of allied armies, that Paris should be quickly liberated, although the strategy was to head directly eastwards, bypassing the Capital. Eventually, the 2nd Armoured Division of General Leclerc liberated Paris on 25 August.

Once the fighting was over, de Gaulle began to rebuild the country at the head of the interim government. He introduced several major measures (including the founding of the Social Security system). But, on 20 January 1946, he left power due to a disagreement of the role played by political parties. The Constitution of the 4th Republic, adopted shortly afterwards, greatly displeased him. He criticised it several times (such as in his speech in Bayeux, in June 1946), reproaching it for the weakness of its executive power. De Gaulle then entered the opposition. In 1947, he launched the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF or Alliance of the French People), a movement that performed badly in elections, despite attracting many members. This was the beginning of the "wilderness years" : de Gaulle withdrew to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, wrote his memoirs and travelled.

From 1954, France was involved in a war of decolonisation in Algeria. On 13 May 1958, the French Algerians launched an insurrection in Algiers to consolidate their position. They called for de Gaulle to take power. The President of the French Republic, René Coty, fearing that this crisis might descend into civil war, offered de Gaulle the position of Leader of the Cabinet. De Gaulle refused to return to power unless he could change government institutions. During the summer of 1958, he inspired the writing of a new Constitution: this was approved in a referendum on 28 September 1958 by almost 80% of French people. The 5th Republic was born. On 21 December 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected President of the Republic by indirect universal suffrage.

The most urgent task to be faced was Algeria. De Gaulle offered the Algerians self-government in 1959 and organised a referendum on the subject in 1961: 75% of French people said "yes" to Algerian self-government. In April 1961, disaffected partisans of French Algeria staged an attempted coup that failed. Negotiations between the French and Algerians ended with the Evian agreements, signed on 22 March 1962 and accepted by referendum in both France and Algeria. 1962 was a real turning point, firstly on an institutional level: the General proposed electing the Head of State through universal suffrage. This reform aroused strong opposition, but the referendum on constitutional reform was successful, with a "yes" vote of 62.2%. In 1965, the presidential election was conducted by direct universal suffrage for the first time. Through to the second round (with 43.7% of the vote), de Gaulle was finally elected, beating Mitterrand, with 54.8%. In terms of foreign affairs, de Gaulle pursued a policy of national independence, providing France with its own means of defence: the first French atomic bomb was detonated at Reggane in the Sahara in February 1960. De Gaulle refused the protection of the United States and in 1966 withdrew France from the integrated NATO system - but France remained a member of the Atlantic alliance. At the same time, France entered the European Economic Community (EEC) on 1 January 1959. The country faced a major crisis in May 1968. Students organised huge demonstrations, and were joined by workers, triggering a general strike. De Gaulle succeeded in calming the situation by granting certain benefits to workers. On 27 April 1969, he put a plan for regionalisation and reform of the senate before the French people. His proposal was rejected in a referendum by 52.4% of the vote. Failing to gain the approval of the French people, he felt he lo longer had their trust and preferred to resign. Charles de Gaulle retired to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises and continued to write his memoirs; he died on 9 November 1970. In accordance with his will, de Gaulle was not given a state funeral. He was buried next to his daughter Anne, with a simple inscription on his grave, "Charles de Gaulle 1890-1970".